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The Cognitive Dissident

A blog by Ronald P. Thompson, Ph.D.

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Christianity

How the Rise of Donald Trump will Benefit the American Christianity

So large parts of the leaders of the evangelical community has embraced Donald Trump whose entire life epitomizes the pursuit of wealth and personal vainglory at the expense of anyone who gets in his way. Even without any discussion of how he treats women or specific minority groups, it is fair to say his value system stands diametrically opposed to that of Jesus. However, at the debate this week he endeared himself to the political Christian right by promising to overturn Roe v. Wade and thus pave the way for the banning of all abortion in at least some states.  No matter that the opposition to abortion was conceived in the Vatican and has only the most tenuous relation to any Christian scripture and none at all to the teachings of Jesus. I see this is an outright surrender by the evangelical right of any real connection to the religion they claim to follow. They are now simply fighting a rearguard action to preserve any political clout when the very nomination of Trump indicates their influence is on the wane.

As presented by Jesus and as practiced by the early church, the Christian religion was focused on helping the oppressed find meaning in their lives despite living under a political system that did not care one wit for their well-being.    Neither Jesus nor the writers of the New Testament ever once suggested or even hinted at the idea that Christians should expect the government or the society at large to live by the morality that they espoused for themselves.   Quite the contrary was true. The early church assumed they would always be the small minority subject to the whims of the larger world and their way of living was what set them apart from the general society in which they lived. Continue reading “How the Rise of Donald Trump will Benefit the American Christianity” →

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The Eternal Message of Adam & Eve

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The book of Genesis presents the early monotheist’s vision of nature of humanity and of life.  Like monotheism itself, it is a huge step from the elaborate conceptions of reality and nature of older religions, to one stripped down to the basics.  Compare the creation story in Genesis to other ancient traditions. There is no war of the gods, no birthing of a god race, no complicated story line; just one simple and elegant idea. Everything was created from nothing by a power that was beyond comprehension to humans.   Sadly this beautiful and honest simplicity is completely missed by conservative Christians today.

The story goes on to present Adam and Eve as the protohumans. They are the embodiment of the human condition as it was for many thousands of years prior to the first written records. I would suggest, this story is an important allegory that can give us insight that the basic challenges of life are intrinsic to the human condition, not some modern invention of technology, modern society or capitalism.

Consider this, the story of Adam and Eve show that the binary of male and female is not a modern construct; rather it is a biological construct that predates human civilization. This does not say we must be constrained by that construct any more than we must be constrained to travel no faster than we can run, but it does say the argument that the male-female binary is some form of modern oppression is a false claim.  We humans now have the power to move from our evolutionary roots. In many ways, that freedom is a good thing; but, we should never buy into the lie that those evolutionary roots are some sort of evil conspiracy by a nefarious group of people. Continue reading “The Eternal Message of Adam & Eve” →

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Exodus: The Story of a Brutal God

 

With the spectacle of religious violence on the rise, particularly by Islamists; I think it is time to take a hard look at the monotheistic vision of God from its inception. Not from the time of Mohammad, though his followers were spectacularly violent, but further back to the effective birth of the monotheistic religion that is the basis for Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  I think we need to look at the story of Moses and his general Joshua.  Actually, we need to look at the vision of God that is presented in the story of the Exodus and the conquest of the land of Israel and the actions of those two key figures.

I know most people in the US know the story, but the question is have you ever really thought about what it says beyond the feel good story of an oppressed people being freed?

Consider this.  The story opens in the empire of Egypt, ruled by a god-king, Pharaoh Ramses the Great.  In this world, everyone, rich and poor, are essentially owned by the Pharaoh.  In the story God tells Moses that his people should be released from bondage and leave Egypt. Significantly, not all people should be freed from slavery and oppression, but only a select group.  This clearly indicates that the God of Moses did not believe in universal human rights, but only in rights for his chosen people.  Thus the concept of justice by race and/or group affiliation is given divine sanction.  Continue reading “Exodus: The Story of a Brutal God” →

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Abortion: A case of Jesus v. Pope

The other day I watched an interesting documentary about the Pro-Life movement on Netflix.  In some ways it was difficult to watch due to the content, but it was very illuminating as to the methods and mindset of the core anti-abortion activist.  The method of the film maker was not to have a debate, but to let the excesses of this movement’s leaders speak for themselves.   Though I commend this method, particularly for this topic, it left a great many deceptive assumptions lying on the table with no rebuttal.

Underlying the entire argument of those who seek to ban abortion is the assumption that the United States is, or was, or ever has been a “Christian” nation in the sense that Israel under King David was a Jewish nation.  This assumption is critical because the fact that Jesus, the person they ostensibly are seeking to emulate, never once even suggested that the mission of his followers was to sway or change Roman government policy.  In the day of Jesus, the whole of Israel was a province of Rome and it follows that if his message was to change the civil government’s practices he would have said so.   And Roman governmental practices were both brutal and unjust.   Christians today wince at the reality of Jesus’s crucifixion, yet in his day it was just a small but normal part of life, in the good times.  In bad times the main roads were lined with rotting crucified corpses.   For non-Roman citizens, no trial nor evidence was needed to be presented before the victim was crucified, just the capricious whim of a Roman official.   Yet, what do we see Jesus’s model for response to such injustice?  In the gospel of Luke Jesus answered:

“But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well. When they wish to haul you to court and take your shirt, let them have your coat too. When they force you to go one mile, go with them two.”

Jesus was presenting a way of life for the individual who lived in a brutal and oppressed citizenry.   Not once did he, nor the apostles, seek to implement his new morality of love and compassion via any means of coercion, least of all by the strong arm of the state.   In the end Christianity was created for the powerless individual to find happiness in an unjust world. Continue reading “Abortion: A case of Jesus v. Pope” →

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Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

Note: I’ve been working on this for some time, but due to the nature of the content have been slow to publish it.

It has become a refrain from the left (and the media) to hear how Islam is a religion of peace and those who engage in violence have are not “real” Muslims.   If one questions this premise the interesting moniker of Islamophobe is tied to the questioner.   However, the question “Is Islam a religion of peace?” is legitimate and should be considered.  However, the more I have looked into the issue, rather than get a simple answer I find it becomes ever more difficult to make simplistic answers.

To be a Muslim, a person simply has to agree there is only one God and Mohammad is his prophet.  Though the mantra does not expressly say so, the assumption is that one accepts the Quran as the literal words of the one and only God and that the Quran supersedes all other older religious texts. All that is beyond question.  The problem is that the Quran is not a book of systematic theology, nor is it a single narrative; but rather it is a book of various styles and subjects and content.  Muslims say this style is because it is divine and its unique style is due to that fact.  Secularist would respond that the lack of clarity is due to the fact that the Quran is nothing more than a mishmash of Persian, Arabic, Jewish and Christian ideas plagiarized by Mohammad and his immediate successors.

The divine or secular nature of the Quran is a matter of faith, but for this discussion the significance of this is that such a non-linier text is infinitely subject to interpretation.   Of course issues of interpretation is true with all religions; but it seems monotheistic religions struggle with variations in interpretation more than most. I would suggest that this is because practitioners tend to be far more dogmatic about the unique rightness of their theology than other religions. In the case of Islam the initial schism in interpretation goes right back to the origins of the religion itself as if to make the point that there is not just one Islam a prima fascia case. Continue reading “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” →

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Of Narcissism Passed Off as Moral Courage

A couple of years ago I read an article that pretended to be advocating human rights, while in fact it was a story of moral cowardice passed off as courage.

The story was simple: a man who taught at a Catholic school came out as transgender.  He did not resign, but rather waited to be fired and then promptly sued the Catholic school.

You might ask, why if I spend so much time writing about liberal values do I condemn rather than support this man and his cause.   The answer is simple, this man, and CNN, have confused self-serving narcissism for moral courage, and that offends me.

Moral courage is the willingness to stand for right, without personal benefit but at a personal cost (think Gandhi). The case was not about being transgendered; it was about selfishness and self-absorption.   This man taught at this school for decades, so he knew full well what the beliefs of the Catholic Church are in matters of sexuality. It is not a secret.  He had been in the employ of a Catholic school and in his employment agreement, there were religious and moral expectations, as there were for all employees. There was no possible way he wasn’t informed of those expectations year after year.  Continue reading “Of Narcissism Passed Off as Moral Courage” →

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Blessed are These

A few Sunday thoughts wearing my “Rev. Thomson” hat.  

We live in a day when it seems to be a virtue to stir up anger and resentment at the least form of mistreatment.  We live in a world where “do unto others before they do unto you” has become the new golden rule.  The quiet suffering through life’s hardships has been replaced by loud complaints at the unfairness of life.

I have news for you. Life is unfair and will always be so. We only gain happiness as we strive to set the example of fairness and justice, not when we complain that others don’t show those qualities to us.  Jesus lived in a world that was violent and oppressive in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.  We recoil at the actions of Islamic extremists in the Middle-East and Africa, yet such actions would not have drawn a yawn in the world occupied by ancient Rome.   It was to people in that world Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount which begins like this.

 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Continue reading “Blessed are These” →

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Gay North Carolina waitress receives bible verse instead of tip

From the article:

“Alexandra Judd was working at Zada Janes in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday, when she claims that two patrons left her a bible verse on the tip line of their bill instead of cash — followed by a note at the bottom that says “praying for you.”

The customer wrote “Leviticus 20:13,” which reads, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

From Me:

Perhaps it is good that neither the person who wrote the article, nor the woman herself, seems to get the point. This person who left the note actually believes that homosexuals should be put to death.

It is hard for those who are not fundamentalist to grasp how extreme those who claim to believe in the supremacy of the Bible’s moral laws can be.

 

 

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Buffalo Bill Cody, Jack Hyles and Modern Evangelical Christianity

A Note from the author: Among my other credentials is my ordination to the Gospel Ministry.  I worked for several churches and was an assistant-chaplain for the US-Army Reserve. In this blog, I will from time to time make Sunday posts regarding Christianity and Christian churches. This is the first of these posts. 

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Buffalo Bill Cody is one of the most colorful and iconic figures in US History.   He was a buffalo hunter and US Army Scout for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor, but mostly he was a showman.  Not a huckster like P.T. Barnum, but a man who brought an amazing display of living artifacts from the “Old West” in a show to people in the eastern United States and Europe.  His “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” was the most dazzling show if its day. He had real cowboys and real Indians, and personalities right out of the dime novels, like Calamity Jane.  On one hand he was not a fraud, when Annie Oakley shot the ashes off Kaiser Wilhelm’s cigar in one famous show, it was no optical trick. When he said the stoic Native American in his show was indeed the real Sitting Bull, he was.  But on the other hand his show was just that, a show. His reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand and is presentation of the cowboys and Indians was pure show biz, and he set the standard image for the look of the American Old West that would become “fact” via movies and television to generations of people throughout the world.  But, his presentation was stilted, condensed and dramatized so much as to make it anything but a history lesson. It is very likely that by the early part of the 1900’s Buffalo Bill no longer could tell the difference between the exciting story he had created, or the real life he had actually lived during the Indian Wars.

It was quite a show though.

Fast-forward to the early 1960’s to a gritty industrial city about an hour south-east of Chicago.  A young minister from Texas had recently become the pastor of the very traditional 1st Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana. However, this young new clergyman was not a typical pastor who saw his job to minister to the needs of his flock. Rather he had both righteous zeal for his unique brand of Christianity; and he had boundless ambition matched by a vision for what he could achieve.   Within a few short years he had purged the congregation of most of its previous leadership and the majority of the members. Then he led the remainder to vote to pull the ¾ century old church out of the American Baptist Convention because it was “too liberal” (i.e. they were supportive of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement among other things).  As a brilliant, driven and visionary dictatorial leader of a church freed from all denominational obligations, he was poised to do something spectacular. Continue reading “Buffalo Bill Cody, Jack Hyles and Modern Evangelical Christianity” →

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