I stumbled across this really interesting post by Dr Richard Beck called The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity that I wanted to share. Â Before following the link, I should preface it by telling you that Dr Beck is Associate Professor of Psychology at a Christian University.
The reason I wanted to draw your attention to this particular post is that Dr Beck hits on a point that we’ve discussed previously, namely people using religion to duck their responsibilities. Â Ther pertinent part of the article:
Obviously, I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture. Specifically, when the student said “I need to work on my relationship with God” I knew exactly what she meant. It meant praying more, getting up early to study the bible, to start going back to church. Things along those lines. The goal of these activities is to get “closer” to God. To “waste time with Jesus.” Of course, please hear me on this point, nothing is wrong with those activities. Personal acts of piety and devotion are vital to a vibrant spiritual life and continued spiritual formation. But all too often “working on my relationship with God” has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being.
The trouble with contemporary Christianity is that a massive bait and switch is going on. “Christianity” has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed “spiritual” substitute.
The example Dr Beck used in the beginning of the article cited a young woman who wanted to “work on her relationship with God”. Â Dr Beck’s response was that she should, instead, work on her relationship with people. Â Or specifically, people she had wronged. Â This is a refreshing approach. Â I’ve seen religious people ask their chosen deity for forgiveness rather than the people they have wronged. Â I’ve also seen religious people refuse to take responsibility for their actions because they believe it to be their deity’s “will” or “plan”. Â I’ve heard religious people defending this attitude in the past, so I’m glad to see it’s not universally accepted.
This does beg an interesting question. Â Is it more important to have a good relationship with your deity, or with the people around you? Â I’m not implying that the two are mutually exclusive, but clearly some people give preference to one over the other, and in my experience (and one would assume from the article, Dr Beck’s) it tends to be their deity.
I’ve questioned the motives of the religious before, and I’ve also questioned using religion as a source of morality, and while the post linked doesn’t take quite as harsh a view, it’s certainly interesting to hear a voice of discontent from within organised religion. Â I’ll let Dr Beck sum this up:
The point is that one can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being. Much of this activity can actually distract one from becoming a more decent human being. In fact, some of these activities make you worse, interpersonally speaking. Many churches are jerk factories.
Isn’t the whole point of being christian to avoid death and achieve everlasting life ? Only god offers this, not the people around you. So why bother with them ?
That’s certainly something that’s crossed my mind, and I’ve said as much elsewhere on this blog. That’s one of the reasons I found the article so refreshing.
the Atheist, I wanted to thank you for your view. It seems you have come to the point that many Christians need to come to. As Christians we remain ignorant of the fact that Jesus called us to go and do what he did not just talk about it and say how good it is. Thank you for not bashing Christianity and seeing beyond the arrogance of both Christians and atheists. Your article was refreshing to me as well.
These people are weak minded, and are scared of their world. They fear death and they fear life, we should be mindfull of their many insecurities. Unfortunately this is our majority. Tony Abbott makes them feel secure. in my workplace the worst bigots (how suprising) are the christians, usually the kooky baptists, who hate the coons (that is actually how they talk)
god help us, ha ha
I know of a student doing a music degree that told their teacher they couldn’t practice their instrument because it interfered with their relationship with God. A handy and versatile excuse.
The whole constitution of human society exists for the express end, I say, of teaching the two truths by which man lives, Love to God and Love to Man.
The love that enlarges not its borders, that is not ever spreading and including, and deepening, will contract, shrivel, decay, die.
The man thinks his consciousness is himself; whereas his life consisteth in the inbreathing of God, and the consciousness of the universe of truth. To have himself, to know himself, to enjoy himself, he calls life; whereas, if he would forget himself, tenfold would be his life in God and his neighbours. The region of man’s life is a spiritual region. God, his friends, his neighbours, his brothers all, is the wide world in which alone his spirit can find room. Himself is his dungeon. If he feels it not now, he will yet feel it one day—feel it as a living soul would feel being prisoned in a dead body, wrapped in sevenfold cerements, and buried in a stone-ribbed vault within the last ripple of the sound of the chanting people in the church above. His life is not in knowing that he lives, but in loving all forms of life.
True Christianity, by which I take to mean following the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, has no opposition between developing relationship with God and with people.
His teachings,
Matthew 6:14 “if you forgive others their sins, your father will forgive your sins – but if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.”
Matthew 25:45 “whatever you did not do for the least of these you did not do for me.”
Nothing new in this. Maybe distorted by Christians, but if you go to the source you find it pretty strongly expressed.