Pissing In (not on) the Body of Christ

I am continually amazed at the in-fighting that goes on within Christianity. I suppose I should be used to it by now, but I don't know that I ever will be used to it. Conservatives and progressives exchange barbs, as do Protestants and Catholics. Within Protestantism groups fight with one another based on tiny pieces of doctrine or practice, condemning one another to an eternity in hell based on minutiae that, were the broad long term view to be held, would be seen for the absurdity that it is. It wasn't that long ago that we burned people as witches. Maybe we aren't lighting literal fires under people any more, but we sure are lighting figurative fires.

Letting alone the fact that Jesus never encouraged this kind of behavior and in fact was critical of the Pharisees for just this sort of thing, there is so much important work to be done in the world for us to allow these petty arguments to be an issue. What issues?

HIV/AIDS is epidemic in the world. The Christian community was initially very resistant to working on the HIV/AIDS issue. At the very beginning that was due largely to fear caused by ignorance, but that excuse has long been proven to be invalid. None of us are going to catch HIV through a sneexe, or a dirty toilet seat, or anything other than the means by which any blood borne illness, such as hepatitis, are transmitted. There have also been many ill informed attempts to cast HIV/AIDS as God's punishment for something or other. The problem there, of course, is that such a view is inconsistant with the God that Jesus knew and loved. When you look at what the punishment is allegedly due to, the arguments become absurd. If AIDS is some sort of punishment for homosexuality, how do you explain that AIDS is now also a heterosexual problem? How do you explain that generations of heterosexual people on parts of the African continent have been decimated by AIDS and that the number of orphans are increasing daily? Even if you do believe that God punishes, I don't believe that you can honestly suggest that God is punishing those children who are now orphans because of the sexual orientation of a segment of the population in America.

Poverty and hunger are problems that go hand in hand. We hear so-called Christians attempting to make distinctions between impoverished and poverty stricken people who "deserve" help and those who don't. In response to that I must ask what child "deserves" to go to bed hungry tonight? Even if you want to argue that their parents are lazy (such arguments are always fallacious, by the way) how does that make a child deserving of hunger. What's more, the Hebrew people wandered - wandered, which is hardly productive) in the desert for forty years and yet God fed them with manna from heaven. How can that be reconciled with the notion that someone must have a certain activity level in order to be deserving of food to eat?

Immigration reform remains an urgent need in this country. We have forgotten that the vast majority of us are not, in fact, Native Americans and so we all have immigrants in our family tree. Some of those people came of their own free will and others came against their will, but they came nevertheless. When they arrived, they were welcomed with open arms. Somewhere along the way we lost our memory of this and became fearful of the very process that created this country. We became convinced that we were a culture of lack, despite the fact that we are far and away the wealthiest people in the world! We had better be careful, because there is great truth to the notion that we will create a world that is in accord with our beliefs. If we believe that we lack, we will soon lack. In fact, this Country's current immigration policies are steeped in racism and the Churches have largely remained silent.

Education reform is needed in this country, and it is needed badly. We are repeatedly told that the money simply isn't there - but it is there and freely available to prosecute two "wars against terrorism" that are actually little more than terrorist actions themselves - and the Church is all but silent.

HIV/AIDS, poverty and hunger, immigration, and education are just a few of the many issues that people of faith need to be addressing today, and we are failing miserably. I can't help but wonder if part of the reason is that we are engaged in pissing contests among ourselves. If I believed in a devil (which I don't) I would say that in arguing amongst ourselves we do much more to advance the cause of the devil that we do to advance the cause of God. Jesus said that no house divided amongst itself can stand. Its ironic that the people spending the most time to get the Christian house to fall are, in fact, Christians themselves.