My Complaints About Christianity:

I know I am treading on dangerous ground here, and as usual I will be the fool that goes where angels fear to tread.
Two recent happenings set off this blogpost. A good friend (Pastor Rajkumar) asked me to put together my major complaints about Christianity...

I couldn't do it right then, but it got me thinking. Then, a young friend questioned me about a facebook post I'd done that was critical of some modern atheists including Dawkins and Hitchens, and asked me to clarify where I stood on science and Christianity...

Well here I stand! I am a firm believer in Jesus. I think I know Jesus and I'm even more confident that Jesus knows me. But, I do not like much of the religion of Christianity. So, here are some rather randomly put together thoughts on some of the things that I don't like about Christianity:

1. Youth are not encouraged to question their faith. When they meet serious questions they are unable to answer and get shaken. In fact to take this a bit further, the teaching of "no doubt" is ridiculous. We do live with and in doubt, and the less we teach our children about how to deal with reality the less good we do them.

3. We teach theology and theory instead of Jesus. Paul says he preaches Christ and Him crucified. We should stick to that and strip off all speculation. I think the way to knowing Jesus should be through a deeper understanding of the gospels - which are our primary sources. Instead of immersing ourselves in Jesus and His words of life, we turn to the much misunderstood epistles and end up building our theologies and ethics from contexts that we have no way of understanding.

4. Our basic understanding of concepts like sin and forgiveness, righteousness, justice, mercy, love, wrath, and indeed of God’s own nature and relation to us, and what the gospel is that Jesus taught, are based on selective readings and improper understanding of Jesus/Pauline teaching. We need to reexamine each of these in the light of the gospels.

5. We have glorified the church; in fact we have created monsterous organizations that seriously detract from whatever would/should have been Christianity. It is without doubt that building the church has become the primary function of Christianity. The gospel has been subverted to that task and has suffered for this. In fact, our glorification of theology is primarily a church building activity, and creates an extrabiblical authority that has modified the gospel to suit the uplift of the church.

6. All that is found evil in the world has been imported into churches, as is natural when groups of people get bound together by an organization rather than by true belief.

-We have glorified wealth/status as a sign of God’s blessings and favour.

-We reject the poor, the suffering, the disenfranchised, the despised, the sinner, the marginalized in society, and so we have left Jesus and his gospel far behind us.
-Hierarchies are all too common.

-We make much of our liturgy and of our church buildings refusing to recognize that these are the trappings of idolatry.

7. Bibliolatry also figures especially in conservative-evangelical circles. We have a view of the bible that is not supported by the bible itself and is detrimental to honest belief.

8. Our interaction with science (broadly including social science, anthropology, history-archaeology, biology, and physics) has been ridiculous. We look at science as philosophical and therefore as a rival to Christian philosophy, whereas by doing this we have abandoned science to nonbelievers. We teach our children defensive ways of understanding science so that it is not allowed to conflict what the ‘church’ teaches as truth. God becomes a god of the gaps, and the gaps where we try to hide this god become ever smaller.

9. Our ethics are based more on societal and cultural norms rather than on the gospel. I am not a Jesus vs Paul person, but again, I think we tend to misunderstand Paul’s epistles and build our ethics on principles that are not traceable back to Jesus’ gospel. We also ignore the fact that Jesus reframed OT teaching in a whole new way and ignoring our Lord, still try to bring long dead OT concepts into our ethics. On the whole, our failure to understand temporal concepts in the bible is a major stumbling block and we add insult to that with our habit of selective application of only those OT principles and practices that seem conducive to our concept of what Christian ethics is, as taught by the church.A case in point in South India is the support for casteism that is theologically derived from the tribalism of the OT!


10.  Any religion is supposed to help point the way to God. Yet all religions end up pointing the way into their own folds, and therefore end up obscuring the way to God. The servant becomes the master!


11. Denominations are abominations.


12. Pride! One would think that the discovery that we are desperate sinners, saved purely by God's grace, would leave us humbled. Yet, the opposite happens. I remember that humbling beginning, but it was all too soon replaced by a growing pride in my newfound theology... I went on to quietly believe that 'unbelievers' were missing something, and then went on to believe that because I was 'blessed' I was a complete human being - the corollary being that others were not. Of course, I don't believe this was a conscious progression, or let's say I hope it wasn't. But the result, eventually, was that the humility disappeared and was replaced by a very silent but real pride. Eventually, then, the world got divided into the blessed saved ones - and the unblessed (all the rest). The blessed ones are by definition those within the church, and perhaps more particularly, those who have protected their faith with the most correct theology. 
    -It took a very long time for me to realize that I was wrong.
    -If loving others at least as much as oneself is the starting point to obedience to God, then in spite of my 'true-believer' status, my faith is suspect. By the same reasoning, those with better praxis, are better believers, even if they have nothing to do with church or Christianity. When Jesus demands action, then actions will always speak louder than words.


13. Finally, to end my rant with a political question - where does the church stand on issues of human rights? The church has always been a political handmaiden to the powerful. The Reformation only realigned the church's political dealings, it did not eliminate it.
    -The most glaring failure of today's Christian church has been its misinterpretation of the gospel to support oppressive, genocidal  regimes. Dare we ask ourselves what Jesus would say if he saw how we deal with Israel & Palestine? Yes, there are a few professing Christians who are horrified by Israel's blatant racism and even more blatant Palestine bashing, but these Christians are a tiny minority. Most prefer to close their eyes and ears to the truth that stares at them every day in the news, on facebook, and on Twitter, and blithely stump the church's litany of so called 'biblical' support for the state of Israel. 

  
More generally, what do we think a Christian foreign policy should be? What of Bahrain, what of Saudi Arabia, what of the various 'istans' who form the bulk of the friends of the "Christian nation" of America in the near East? Yes, this is not the church speaking, but neither does the church care to or dare to speak out!
Many a bewildered young (or sometimes even older) Christian is left to wonder at the huge gap between the gospel and the reality of Christianity - and not a few have decided that the gap is just too great!

Humankind, God, and the NEW CREATION

A Blogworld friend, author, psychologist, and deep thinker, John Doyle has been following a trajectory of thought based on his own reading of some of Paul's (of New Testament fame) thinking. This is remarkable not least because John happens to be somewhere in the atheist/agnostic camp.

On his famous blog "Ktismatics", John has done a whole series of posts on the concept of the "new creation" in some of Paul's epistles. The entire series of posts begins here and there is an index to the the whole series at the end of this post.

In commenting on one of those posts I had made the following statement -

“I’m sure that there are not ‘many’ gods or even more than one, but I’m equally sure that for humankind there have to be many gods even when we think there are none.”

- and John then invited me (perhaps in jest) to expand on the thought.

I admit to having been in a bit of a hurry and dashing that off without giving it sufficient (or even much) thought. Still, though crude, I can stand by the statement and try here to elaborate on the thought.

It's my own belief statement. I believe that God 'exists' i.e. is real. I don't think that the one that I have come to recognise as God is more than one but I could easily be wrong on that call.

The second half of my assertion is more difficult. Each of us is an individual and we know individually.

In an important sense my friend John Doyle is not the same as your friend John Doyle even when we are physically referring to the same person. I'm therefore sure, in my own pigheaded fashion that when I refer to Jesus that is not the same as when you do or when someone else does.

On a broader front, and perhaps more controversially, I think it is also possible that when someone refers to Shirdi Sai Baba they may in fact be thinking of the same one that I know as Jesus.

In fact, to broaden it out even further, it is possible that a person could be an atheist and still 'know' God...and that is not to say that God is not particular!

What do you think?


The New Creation in Paul: Galatians 6
The New Creation in Paul: 2 Corinthians 5
The New Man in Ephesians 2
The New Man in Ephesians 4
Doppelganger Theory in Colossians 3 and Romans 6
The New Creation in Paul - Summary Observations
The Return of the Ktismatically Repressed

License To Kill - But Why?

Bloodshed is bad but it's even worse when it is purportedly done for religion and race.The war against the Lebanese is obviously both racial and religious. Lebanon has nothing like a real army. The Hezbollah 'villain' is a shia religious organisation made up of haters of Israel but they happen to be Lebanese and live, vote, and even hold a minority of parliamentary seats in Lebanon. The "Party of God" came into being for self defense sometime after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Hamas, on the other hand is a suni religious organisation. It is claimed that Hamas learned how to use suicide bombers from Hezbollah. The Israelis are of course simultaneously continuing their incursions into Palestine (though this is far less reported on than the war in Lebanon).

The world and the media have been surprised by the Israeli inability to quickly destroy Hezbollah. The continuing horrors of civilians being massacred in Lebanon has supposedly put both Blair and Bush in a bit of a tight spot. But, I have my doubts on that reading of the situation. It almost seems that they want such horrors to occur that the world will heave a sigh of relief and not worry too much about the fine print of the resulting ceasefire!

For, it seems that a tacit goal of the present campaign is to win for Israel a neutral zone covering large parts of Palestine and Lebanon. That is to say that Israel wants complete control over swathes of these two countries. The current negotiation really involves who will provide security in these "buffer areas" of Lebanon/Palestine. And that's why I think the 'security council resolution' (itself not even really demanding a ceasefire) never made it out of the security council.

Public outcry from around the world has had no effect on those in a position to stop this war. The stakes are perhaps too high. In any case neither Bush nor Blair are going to be around for very much longer as heads of state. So, they have nothing to lose. The real question is, what do they have to gain?


I see two strong contenders. 1. A diversion from the horrible quagmire that they have been wallowing in in Iraq. 2. An opportunity to get Iran involved in the imbroglio - the first salvo on that front was the lopsided attempt to shut down Iran's nuclear activities. Now, the 'war on terror' gets to carry the baton.

In the meantime Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese pay the ultimate price.

There was never a hope of 'success' in Iraq for it was always a no-win situation. A strong, democratically elected government there would have to have been shiite and therefore trouble (from a neocon perspective). Under the eye of the world, the chances of setting up another puppet government in Iraq is slender. Don't forget that both the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein were puppets set up, trained and funded by U.K.-U.S. as a bulwark against the Soviet Union during the cold war. the main possibility of doing the puppet act and getting away with it only arises if an Iraqi civil war takes place...hmmm

I also wonder to what extent 'filthy lucre' (or "mammon" as the bible also calls it) is involved, for with the predictable rise in oil prices, whether or not the long term goals are achieved, in the short run Bush and his coterie will make a killing

The Perpetrators have nothing to lose; the horrors of war? That's all just a bit of necessary, and therefore unavoidable, collateral damage.

(check out the interview with Seymour Hersh (click on the title) that came out 2 days after I posted this blog)

Religious Disinterest

As a youth I used to think that everyone was interested in religion. I mean this very generally - all around my friends, classmates, acquaintances had to be involved in some religious activity at least once a week.
Hindu's would do pooja,
Muslims would pray facing Mecca, and visit the mosque,
Christians would go to church
and in the villages,
people would consult the spiritist/healer/soothsayer.



It took a while for me to realise that these activities had little (if anything) to do with how people behaved towards one another.

It took very much longer for me to admit to myself that how i practiced "religion" did not help me to become a 'better sort of person'.

In fact my denial of this fact continued for a number of years.



I had to come back to India, where our billion people and mountainous problems of daily life finally brought home to me the fact that what I had thought to be true religion was in fact nothing but.

My friend's father helped to crystalise this truth for me very simply when one day he casually remarked that "the great religions are supposed to be pointing us towards God. But all they do is to grab a hold of us and point us towards religion".


If my religion can't make me a more loving person then it is pointless. Perhaps the fault lies not with religion but with my failure to become a more loving person regardless...