It was in a chat room a few years ago. A pompous, judgmental personality was busily condemning those who were not professed Christians. Of those who were Christians, many were condemned for not holding the right hatreds. “Apostasy” was a favored word.
Chat rooms are often dens of overstatement and bravado. Anonymity allows a level of daring that polite company might otherwise inhibit. His boasts were, at least in part, an attempt to goad his opponents into anger. For him, an insufferable persona was a weapon.
So I began posting. I asked him if he took full credit for his evident moral superiority. No, he responded, he was much too humble to accept full credit. I speculated how grateful he must be.
BurrLand: You must offer prayers of gratitude fairly often.
Mr. Z: I am grateful that I can pray in humility.
BurrLand: Not like others of inferior morality.
Mr. Z: yes, the inferior do resent my greatness.
And so I posted an obvious scripture from the Gospel of Luke:
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others:
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, `God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.’
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, `God, be merciful to me a sinner!’
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
What held my interest was Mr. Z’s furious answer. It was as if my screen was about to be flecked from the inside with angry spittle. As a Christian, I had no right, no right at all, to use scripture for the unholy purpose of rebuking a fellow Christian.
I am reminded of that indignant reaction of years ago by a couple of appearances, both on television, by self-proclaimed Christian historian David Barton. Barton famously holds to the discredited belief that the founding fathers intended the United States to be an explicitly Christian nation. One famous tactic by the relentless Mr. Barton is the partial quote. He often quotes a passage written by John Adams which proves that Adams wanted Church and State to be intimately involved.
The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered, but by the Holy Ghost, who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the bishop upon the heads of candidates for the ministry. … There is no authority, civil or religious; there can be no legitimate government, but what is administered by the Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it; all without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words, damnation.
Well, there you have it. Adams really objected to any separation of Church and State! Right?
Except for one little detail. Adams was summarizing a view to which he was opposed. In fact he thought it was kind of silly. Two sentences Mr. Barton likes to leave out immediately follow the misleading passage he likes to quote. Adams laments that weak and ignorant people believe the view he just summarized, the view Mr. Barton says Adams believed. The weak minded, says Adams, believe it so much they would be willing to face the executioner’s ax or be burned at the stake for what he regards as a silly artifact.
Although this is all artifice and cunning in the secret original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lie down their lives under the ax or the fiery fagot for it. Alas, the poor weak ignorant dupe human nature.
Mr. Barton does to the historical record what Andrew Breitbart does to video tapes of innocent people. The fellow, not to put too fine a point on it, falls short of the truth. On television, interviewed by Jon Stewart, he protested that he could not possibly be misleading anyone, because the original letter can be found on his website by anyone who looks enough to drill down to it. The interview was exceptional. For the most part, no mention of the inconvenient sentences are to be discovered in his public pronouncements.
But now he comes up with another tale. The founding fathers, he insists, rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution. Oh my. It is true that some form of the idea of natural selection goes back to Aristotle, but it was not accepted or even widely discussed in scientific circles until the second half of the 1800’s. That is because, until Darwin, scientific evidence simply hadn’t been gathered. Mr. Barton insists a full Evolution vs Creation Science debate took place during original Constitutional deliberations.
Many of us oppose mixing up religion with government support for a simple reason that goes beyond Mr. Barton’s parsing of words. It is simply unfair to use government to support religion. Religion should be voluntary. Period.
But the tolerance of some Christians for demonstrable falsehood is still jarring. The ethic seems to be that of my chat room buddy, Mr. Z. Christians should never call other Christians on the carpet when a lie is told in the service of the Lord.
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