Andrew Hackman would like to see Maher’s commentary preached from the pulpit by pastors and ministers. The celebrity’s crude language would undoubtedly prevent this from happening, although I suspect that were some pastor to brave the risk and read what Maher said, it wouldn’t be the f-bomb causing the most offense. Andrew writes:
Let's face it, pretty much everyone outside of Christian circles thinks Christians are ass-hats. I think most Christians are ass-hats, and I am one of them (sort-of, kind-of, maybe). Why is that? I think it is because of what Bill hits on here. If we lived these core teachings, we would really be Christian. However, we have turned Christianity into a club where I am in and you are out. Instead of spreading Jesus' teachings - that the Kingdom of God means you love your enemy and bless those who curse you - we encourage people to join our church or get them to do an "accept Jesus" prayer. Then, with our blessed assurance in tow, we go on to live just as self-absorbed as our darkest corners dictate.
Like the Kingdom of God, the ethos preached by Jesus Christ turns the world on its head. The first are last, the last are first. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hurt you. Turn the other cheek. The Beatitudes truly are not of this world. The early Christians, especially the martyrs, took this ethos to heart and to their graves (metaphorically). They worried less about their own safety than for the souls of their enemies. They weren’t constructing “get out of hell free” cards so they could feel spiritually safe when rising up against the Romans. They accepted martyrdom not only for the sake of their Lord and Savior, but also with the hope that their witness would speak of Christ’s love to the very people murdering them. They knew that if the Beatitudes didn’t apply when feeling from a lion’s maw or while hanging from a cross, they were not worth the salt in their outpouring blood.
Let’s face it, if the ethos of Jesus Christ doesn’t apply in the real world, with all its nuances and morally messy difficulties, then it’s bubcus. If it doesn’t apply when Christians are faced with the annihilation of their families or their country, then it’s a crap system. An ethos is only worth something if it applies in the worse situations imaginable.
Maher is more or less right when he says, “…nonviolence was kind of Jesus’ trademark. Kind of his big thing. To not follow that part of it is like joining Greenpeace and hating whales. There’s interpreting, and then there’s just ignoring. It’s just ignoring if you’re for torture – as are more evangelical Christians 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 pussies, he still has his eyes.’” You can’t say you’re a follower of Jesus when you rejoice in revenge, torture, and war.
If Christians respond to their enemies the same way that others do, then there’s something really big missing in the practice of their religion. I won’t go so far as to say that Christians can never legitimately engage in violence, but I must conclude that to do so means, for a moment, to put the Beatitudes aside. In What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, John Caputo puts it this way, and I think he’s about right:
The doctrine of just war, formulated four centuries after the death of Jesus, was the result of sitting down to table with the powers of this world. War looks different from the thrones of power than it does from the galleys of the persecuted. Just-war doctrine makes sense, but it weakens and attenuates what St. Paul called the folly (moria) of the cross. It adopts the views not of Jesus but of Cicero, not of the kingdom of God but of the Roman Empire. […] If the theory is meant to keep one eye on Jesus, a very squinting eye indeed since Jesus called for unconditional peace, it keeps another and much larger wide-open eye on the motto of the Roman general, si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, get ready for war).
[…]
Just-war doctrine is already a failure of faith, treating unconditional peace and forgiveness as simply impossible, even while repeating the words of Jesus that with God all things are possible.