Are All Christians Christian? Maybe not.

I have relatives who openly and constantly proclaim their strong Christian beliefs. You might say they are continually  bearing witness, publicly declaring their great love for Jesus. They believe they are confirming their deep commitment to God but are they?

 

I was raised a Christian. I taught Sunday school in my teens, and yet I am repulsed by these self-admitted sinners who readily accept Jesus's gift of imputed righteousness. They put their faith in Jesus and this faith is, in their eyes, the conduit for God’s grace—a grace available to all sinners.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor killed by the Nazis, had a word for this. He called it "cheap grace"—forgiveness devoid of true repentance or transformation. If a sinner is truly "in Christ", they must forsake their evil ways. Sinners cannot persist in their sinning ways confident that Christ forgives all.

 

Bonhoeffer practised what he preached: "costly grace". Bonhoeffer saw cheap grace as one of the greatest dangers to Christianity. He went so far as to help form a church in opposition to the mainline German Christians movement which supported the Nazis.

 

For his efforts, Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943. He spent about two years in jail where he suffered greatly. Just weeks before the war ended, he was hanged.  Bonhoeffer's death was true to his message: “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

 

Most evangelicals have not been asked to put their lives on the line for Christ but they were asked to get vaccinated against covid-19. Many refused. When vaccination was mandated they saw this as an attack on their God-given freedom of choice.

 

This attitude is not in keeping with the Christian religion of my youth. Back then, I would have argued that Saint Paul taught personal freedom ends where the danger to another begins. If refusing the covid-19 vaccine puts the old and the weak at risk, then the choice appears to be driven not by Christian values but by selfishness with an overlap of pride. 

 

But the covid vaccine is the least of my concerns. A big concern, one of many elephants in the room, is the truly horrifying war in the Middle East. On October 7, 2023, Hamas crossed the border into Israel, killing about 1200 Israels and others and then retreated with about 250 hostages.

 

The Israelis responded with an all out attack on Hamas with massive collateral damage. As of the middle of September, some 65,000 Palestinians have died. About 39,000 are women and children.

 

I believe Jesus would be appalled. Jesus said: “When he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’”
— Luke 19:41–42

 

What were the things that made for peace? I believe they were, and are, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, and trust in God, in stark contrast to the violence, division, and hard-heartedness encountered as a rule.

 

Palestine and the war are complex situations but, no matter, this war must stop. The monstrous number of dead is shocking but the number of injured and the types of injuries are truly horrifying. Today, hell flourishes in Palestine.

 

Like many on the extreme-right, my relatives are not appalled. They don't even believe the widely reported casualty numbers. They are insulated from reality by a mix of theological conviction, political ideology, and media distrust.

Sources such as the NYT or the CBC are discounted as "fake news". 

Today's state of Israel is seen as a direct fulfillment of God’s promise. Its survival and expansion since its birth in 1948 are signs that all is unfolding according to God's plan. As God's plan does not included the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, the reports must be fake news. The New York Times, CBC, BBC and even UN reports are all part of the fake news conspiracy.

 

How would Jesus react to the fake news conspiracy story? It is hard to say but let me hazard a guess. He would see this refusal to see truth as the sin of wilful blindness. The Jesus of my youth was discerning, not gullible. He would not have been taken in by either Roman spin or manipulation by the Pharisees. He would not have dismissed all the MSM with one broad brush stroke.

 

In a related situation, Jesus confronted those who shut their eyes to what was immediately in front of them. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he said: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand… their hearts have become calloused, they have closed their eyes” (Matthew 13:13–15).

Working for three decades in the media did not give me credibility. 

There is so much amiss with today's extreme right-wing Christianity that I will begin wrapping up this post. Otherwise, I might go on and on almost endlessly. Instead, I will leave you with this thought: For all the talk of love, Christians on the extreme-right are fear-driven, anger-filled and insulated by hate.

 

They demonstrate fear of losing their culture (replacement theory), fear of religious displacement (Christians are under attack) and fear of the other (gay people, Muslims, immigrants) just to name three.

 

Anger is also a mixed into this nasty brew and there is a lot of anger to go around. Liberals, progressives, Muslims, gays, immigrants, woke folk and all-too-often blacks quickly come to mind. These are all easy targets for right-wing hate.

 

In this worldview, love isn’t absent—right-wing Christians still talk about it and talk about it incessantly—but in practice love is restricted, contained and finally stripped of the compassion of Jesus.