Why I Have A Problem With Many "Christians"

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More than one person has asked me why, if I believe in most if not almost all of Christ's teachings, do I have such a problem with Christians? Simple answer - because, in my experience, I find that most claiming they are Christian really aren't Christian.

This became abundantly clear to me the day after Osama Bin Laden's assassination at the hands of the U.S. military. There were actually people expressing not just jubilation in the streets (literally), but they were acting as if their team had just won the Super Bowl with their in-your-face laughter and screams of delight. I won't debate whether or not his assassination was the best solution or not. Even if it was, and there are many logical arguments for it, the taking of a human life (even his) was not something that warranted celebration.  At best, it should have resulted in humility or silent despair that the situation had come to that.

If you're a Christian who supports killing your enemies and torture, you have to come up with a new label for yourself because "Christian" just doesn't fit. "Capping thine enemy" is not exactly what Jesus would do. It's what Dick Cheney would do.

For almost 2,000 years, Christians have been lawyering the Bible to try and figure out how "love thy neighbor" can also mean "hate thy neighbor," and how "turn the other cheek" can mean, "screw you, I'm buying a bigger gun." Mostly, I just hear how that ol' "Thou shalt not kill" commandment doesn't really apply in times of war or how God even commanded his followers to kill others. The problem with that is THAT is in the Old Testament, which was written before Christianity even existed. You have to look to the New Testament for Christ, obviously, and killing thine enemy for God's glory isn't exactly what Jesus' message was in the New Testament.

Martin Luthor King got to honestly call himself a Christian because he actually practiced loving his enemies.  Gandhi was so Christian that he was a Hindu. But if you support revenge or torture or war regardless of your reasons or justification - you cannot say you're a follower of the guy who explicitly said, "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you." The next line isn't, "And if that doesn't work, send a titanium-fanged dog to rip his nuts off."

Jesus lays on the hippie stuff pretty thick. He has lines like, "Do not repay evil with evil," and "do not take revenge upon someone who wrongs you." Really. It's in that book that some Christians hold up when screaming at gay people about how God hates them. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but non-violence was kind of Jesus' trademark. Kind of his big thing. To not follow that part of it is like joining Greenpeace, but hating whales or enjoying a good baby seal clubbing.

I mean, there's "interpreting" and then there's just ignoring. It's just ignoring if you're for torturing your enemies to get information you want . . . which is exactly what more evangelical Christians support than any other religion. You're supposed to look at that figure of Christ on the cross and think, "How could a man suffer like that and forgive?", not "Romans are such pussies because he still has his eyes."

And even our President, who says he starts every morning by reading some scripture, said on "60 Minutes" that anyone who would question that Bin Laden deserved assassination should "have their head examined."  And he'd be able to say that . . . if he didn't claim to be a Christian. Logically, if you ignore this basic tenant of Christianity, you're not a Christian - you're just auditing the class. What you really believe in is wearing and displaying the label . . . not trying your best to live up to the label.