The article gets a C- from me, mainly on reasoning skills: he castigates conservatives for not really knowing what Jesus said, and then asserts that we can't really know, but then proceeds to confidently speak of what Jesus said -- logical inconsistency is a big minus. Secondly, he's very sloppy in his claims about the authorship of New Testament writings; e.g. the claim that it was all written "generations" after Jesus lived -- when at furthest possible remove the Gospels were written by the disciples of those who knew Jesus, and there is good reason to believe that at least two were written by eye-witnesses.
OTOH, he's right on target about the ignorance of the Bible by the religious right. Many of them know a great deal of what is said, but they're like foresters who can name the trees but have no concept of a forest. Most are more fascinated by the very thing many accuse liberals of: operating on feelings rather than sound reasoning. They are fascinated by the Old Testament and its tales of glorious victory, and latch onto that as a theological determinant, skipping the Prophets and other writings except as a source of proof-texts about who Jesus was.
So they miss -- and here he misses as well, though he dances on the fringe -- who Jesus
really was, because they've turned Him into a theological object used as a tool -- or flown like a banner -- to bless an further their Old Testament yearnings. To read the Old Testament straight through and then on into the Gospels is to see that Jesus doesn't stand at all in the tradition of the kings and war captains, nor even of the great confrontational prophets who stood against outside influences, but of the prophets who called Israel to account for his own sins. Thus they miss two critical things: the depth of sin and the necessity of facing it in one's own life, and the actuality of the Gospel. They know of a Jesus who forgives sins, a Lord who speaks in God's name, but they've forgotten (or never learned) what it truly means to need a Savior-- because they don't grasp just what He saved them from, and they definitely don't grasp that He goes on saving them every single day, every single hour, every single moment.
This is at the core of Paul's admonition to "let everyone examine himself": to see one's self as Paul did, so fallen that every breath and every thought in this life require redeeming, that not for one moment do they have anything resembling righteousness that's their own. As a result, not understanding what it is they've been given, they fail to respond to Jesus' words, "Freely you received; freely give". Thus the Jesus who "healed every sickness" and "went about doing good" does not resonate with them. They end up singing about if they had all the wealth of the world, it wouldn't be enough to give in response to His gift, but see it as a theoretical exercise instead of recognizing it as a call to do as Jesus did -- to expend every resource they can to deal with every need they see. They have truly become those of whom He warned, who ask Him on the last day, "When did we see You hungry and not feed You? or naked and did not clothe You?" So they pray for God to take care of the poor, never realizing that -- as Charles Finney once noted to a group of wealthy businessmen -- God has already answered those prayers by putting the money in their pockets so that they, too, can go about doing good, as Jesus did.
There's why I point out over and over that if the Religiopublicans actually and truly believed that this is a Christian nation, we'd have no billionaires piously claiming His name (aside: that "Don't take the Lord's name in vain" command applies here -- they've taken His name on themselves, but as that dark philosopher noted, they aren't much like their Savior) because they wouldn't keep more than a few million for themselves, they'd be out in the worst neighborhoods picking houses to repair, filling food banks to overflowing, building hospitals serving the poor for free....
At any rate, the writer has a good point but fails in a real, deep argument for it.
From there -- this is beautifully said:
The sad truth is that most people never actually read the Bible and know only what they read and hear in church and in Sunday school as children. Thus they simply accept the word of those who portray themselves as knowledgeable in the scriptures without the ability to evaluate and question. What makes this even sadder is the protestant ideal is doing exactly that sort of self evaluation and questioning, putting one's beliefs to the test by individual study of the bible with the ministers and preachers simply providing advice and guidance on how to do that.
That personal examining begins with applying the Bible personally -- something they do only in part; they've forgotten the maxim that for every accusation of sin, they are to read it as accusing them... and admit that failing. Only then can anyone proceed to apply the words of forgiveness -- and when that point is reached, they cannot fail but to act more like Jesus than before (as a great theologian put it, faith doesn't have to ask whether it should be doing good works; it's already out doing them).
Yeah, these "christians" are the taliban of this country.
