| Some Challenges for Christians If our God is so WISE, then how could he let this world get so messed up ? { or } If our God is so GOOD, then how can he let so many suffer so much ? |
 To proceed to page 2 of 2, (if you have already read this one), click on : |
 |
If 100 people were chosen to represent the entire world population, | |
|---|---|---|
|
57 would be Asians , 21 would be Europeans, 8 would be Africans, and 14 would be from North and South America | ||
|
30 would be white |
70 would be non-white |
|
| 48 would be male |
52 would be female |
|
| ||
|
Approximately 24,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes. That translates into one person dying every 3.6 seconds -- 74% of whom are children. The majority of hunger-related deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition. An estimated 800 million individuals -- children, mothers, fathers, grandparents -- simply cannot get enough to eat. ( from www.thehungersite.com as of 12/12/2000 ) How can a loving God allow the vast majority of mankind to live in abject poverty and squalor, while reserving mind-boggling comfort and luxury for a tiny portion of mankind in developed countries like America? What kind of God sits idly by and watches as three individuals in America accumulate as much wealth as the combined gross domestic products of the world's 40 poorest countries, with their 550 million impoverished citizens ? !*1 The world has come to this because -- despite all our church-going, all our prayers, all our baptisms, all our altar calls, and all our professions of faith -- we show by our actions and our inactions that we don't REALLY believe what the Gospels teach, best summarized in the words of Luke 3:11 : "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise". This DAILY CATASTROPHE is occurring day after day while millions of middle-class and wealthy people in countries like America enjoy thousands of times more wealth than the poor. Are these people being told that the price which Jesus set for the salvation of those WITH MEANS is helping those who are WITHOUT MEANS (the homeless, the jobless, the uninsured, the hungry, the imprisoned, the sick, the addicted, the oppressed, the outcast, the immigrant and those not fortunate enough to have been born in the more prosperous parts of the world)? Or do they believe INSTEAD what the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, taught ? In a famous speech in 1630, John Winthrop proclaimed :"By divine Providence, some ( like middle to upper class Americans ) must be rich, some poor; some high and eminent in power and dignity, some mean and in subjection." Even Americans who may not identify with these sentiments on the INDIVIDUAL level tend to embrace them on the NATIONAL level, imagining that God has blessed and will continue indefinitely to bless America with fantastic wealth, and that he has apparently ignored, if not cursed, vast portions of people in OTHER parts of the world. Here is an example of how powerful American corporations "redistribute" wealth, i. e. from the POOR to the WEALTHY, and then complain if people vote through their legislators to redistriubte wealth from the rich back to the poor :
|
|||||||||||||
|
The Bible's "Golden Rule " :
The vast majority of Americans love Norman Rockwell's paintings and profess to fervently believe in the Bible's Golden Rule. Yet, a century and a half ago, some 550,000 young Americans perished pointlessly in a war between brothers, just because people in our nation's "Bible belt" gave lip service to the Scriptures and to its golden rule, but proved by their words and deeds how little impact the teaching in that Holy Scripture actually had on their lives and on their political decisions. Far from persuading their congregants to "go and do like the good Samaritan", for example, so-called Christian preachers actually GAVE THEIR BLESSING to those who brutalized their dark skinned neighbors, instead of loving them. The Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church, for example, proclaimed in January, 1861: "African slavery is a wise, humane and righteous institution APPROVED BY GOD. " *2 And the general assembly of the Southern Presbyterian church boasted in 1864: "We have no hesitation in affirming that it is the peculiar mission of the southern church to conserve the institution of slavery and to make it A BLESSING TO BOTH MASTER AND SLAVE." And, in an 1862 sermon at Savannah, GA, Episcopalian Bishop Elliott actually condemned OPPOSITION TO SLAVERY as "presumptuous interference with THE WILL AND WAYS OF GOD." (Emphasis : mine)*3
 "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you." The CHURCH & African Americans:
Frederick Douglass was an extraordinary man, who not only managed to throw off the shackles of slavery, but went far beyond the conventional wisdom of his enslavers. In his autobiography, he contrasted the Christianity that prevailed in the southern part of America at least in his day, and the Christianity of Christ : " I FIND, since reading over the foregoing Narrative that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation.Despite a Civil War and a great deal of effort on the part of many "Liberals Like Christ" since then, there continues to be a tremendous amount of antipathy in today's southern white Christian establishment to efforts to deal with the long term EFFECTS of centuries of slavery, i. e. affirmative action, justice for black farmers, justice for black prison inmates and for blacks falsely accused of crimes, voting rights for black "felons". decent housing, and reparations.! *4 Are America's Churches more faithful today than they were in America's deep south a century ago? We would hope so. Yet, while many of today's Germans appear to be ashamed of that part of their "heritage", a great many southern white Americans who consider themselves "Christians" still wish the Civil War had been won by those who wanted to keep their black brothers and sisters in bondage. And, along with many of their northern brethren, they still resent being forced by federal laws to do out of fear what they are not yet prepared to do out of love or fairness. In fact, some of those whose predecessors clashed with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at every turn, are now trying to dismantle the hard won "Affirmative Action Program" and they have the gall to use this visionary prophet's own words against African Americans struggling to make up for centuries of unspeakable oppression! If you haven't read that preacher's visionary lately, we invite you to be inspired by the "I Have a Dream" sermon right now.
Although there has been a lot of improvement in the South, there are actually so-called "people of faith" in that part of the country who still dream of restoring "the good old days". Rev. Steven J. Wilkins, the Presbyterian founder of the League of the South, argues that the South was the only part of the U.S. to remain true to the Bible. The North, he says, abandoned true Christianity and became a heretical society. . . It was this theological divide, and not slavery, that led to the Civil War. . . " We believe the South was the last bastion of Christendom, we want the principles upon which the South stood to be embraced again by the entire country. We want, not only the South, but the whole union to rise again from the paganism that presently prevails. Our goal is to rebuild on the ruins and see this lost civilization restored again by the grace of God."
|
|||||||||||||
|
The CHURCH & Native Americans : As a schoolchild, were you taught to revere Christopher Columbus as the heroic discoverer of America? Have you grown at all in your knowledge of the TRUE history of the founding of "America"? America was discovered by Native Americans thousands of years before Christopher Columbus stumbled onto the "West Indies" on his way to the "East Indies". What would Europeans of the sixteenth century have said, had Native Americans landed in England, France, Italy, Portugal or Spain and proclaimed to have "discovered" Europe, and proceeded to invade it? In "American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World" (Oxford University Press 1992), David E. Stannard shows that Columbus wasn't just a slave owner -- we could perhaps overlook owning a few slaves since "everybody did it" --. Columbus is the man who initiated a genocide of an entire people. All of the founding fathers had serious flaws, true -- but Columbus was in a class by himself. We might as well have the founder of the KKK as a national hero as Columbus. How many people know that Columbus, prior to his career as an explorer, had been a slave trader? And how many know that as a holy crusader he would become responsible for the killing of about half a million Natives and that it was already Columbus who introduced those measures generally attributed to later conquistadors, such as enslaving Indians and hunting them down with dogs? David E. Stannard not only dispels common myths in his work. He tells the reader what was lost: the incredible variety of cultures and the impressive achievements Native Americans had developed throughout the millennia. How well known is the fact that most Native Americans were living in towns and villages as farmers, long before Columbus and that the majority of Native societies in Northern America was organized democratically, including women's right to vote, long before such an idea was conceivable to Europeans? How well known is it that - unlike European cities of the time - the magnificent capital of the Aztec society took its "drinking water . . . from springs . . . piped into the city by a huge aquaeduct system" that amazed the Spaniards (p. 5), just as they were amazed at the city's cleanliness and order: "at least 1000 public workers were employed to maintain the city's streets and keep them clean" (p. 5). When Columbus and a handful of Spanish sailors landed in the Caribbean, this was the beginning of "far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world" (p. x) and cost more than a hundred million lives in five centuries. How well known is it that in the Spanish missions in California the natives were forced to do slave labor and died in the thousands and that the missions were "furnaces of death that sustained their Indian population levels for as long as they did only by driving more and more natives into their confines" (p. 137)? Not long ago, white people who wrote about this period demonstrated much less compassion for the fate of the Native Americans. Paul Hutchison and Winifred E. Garrison, for example, wrote in a chapter entitled "Religion on the American Frontier": "The space into which the United States was about to expand was a vacuum -- EXCEPT FOR THE INDIANS. -- That seemed a negligible exception, or at most a minor and temporary obstacle. It must be admitted that the Indian matter was handled badly, and at times ruthlessly, yet the main course of events was inevitable. In a clash between a hunting economy and an agricultural economy the outcome is never doubtful. The Indian population was sparse and impermanently settled, as always in a hunting economy. The invading settlers WANTED NOTHING FROM THE ABORIGINES EXCEPT THEIR LAND. As always in such a conflict of cultures, the more intensive users of the soil prevailed and the permanent drove out the nomadic. It might have been done more kindly and more honestly, but IT HAD TO BE DONE." ( page 235 *6)Just imagine white people overhearing Africans, Asians, or Hispanics talking that way about displacing America's WHITE population! Many of us feel threatened when all immigrants are doing is taking menial jobs that most of us wouldn't ever want to take ourselves! ) A wise Native American asks : "Do you call yourselves Christians? Does then the religion of Him whom you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease, then, to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease, too, to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they."Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) Mohawk ( from "A Cherokee Feast of Days," by Joyce Sequichie Hifler).
|
|||||||||||||
|
On Dec. 7th, 1941, there was a little article in the New York Times that didn't get much attention in America, perhaps because it was buried on page 33, or because Japan was bombing Pearl Harbor on that day. But you can be sure that German Catholics, who were already engaged in hunting down and trying to exterminate fellow human beings of a rival faith, noticed such news reports and their Nazi rulers surely made sure they didn't miss them.
"The German Catholic who looked to his religious superiors for spiritual guidance and direction regarding service in Hitler's wars received virtually the same answers he would have received from the Nazi ruler himself."( from German Catholics and Hitler's Wars Zahn, Gordon c. 1962, Sheed & Ward L.O.C. 62-9102) For much, much more on these and other books and web sites that uncover what the Vatican has been so successful in hiding from the world for years, see the tragic silence of the German Christians during the Nazi Holocaust.
|
|||||||||||||
|
What's the Lesson in all this ? For anyone wondering what is the point of bringing up all of these failures of the church(s) regarding so much suffering in the world, the point is THIS: We asked at the outset :"If our God is so WISE, then how could he let this world get so messed up ?" or "If our God is so GOOD, then how can he let so many suffer so much ? " We "Liberals Like Christ" believe that the answer is what Proverbs 29:18 says, "Where there is NO VISION, the people PERISH." And we believe that it isn't NECESSARY that there be so much poverty, war and famine in the world. We believe that a great deal of this suffering is a direct result of the church's failure to fulfill the role they claim to be exercising, namely of spreading the teaching of Jesus and of the Bible. We believe that when God created the world and when he put mankind on earth, it clearly wasn't in order to start a free-for-all race to see who could accumulate the most of the world wealth in their own bank account. We believe that there is a vision first revealed in the Old Testament, and then revealed more fully in the New Testament that GOD's plan is that the riches that he built into this world are supposed to be SHARED among all of its inhabitants, not HOARDED by a few. We explore the part of that biblical vision which was revealed in theOld Testament in Chapter 2 of our 3 part series of web pages, and then explore the contributions made by Jesus and other New Testament prophets to that biblical vision in the 3rd and final chapter |
|||||||||||||
|
Notes on the above : *1 According to New York University economist Edward Wolf, " The financial wealth of the top 1% of Americans now exceeds the combined net worth of the bottom 95%. Bill Gates' wealth alone exceeds the net worth of the bottom 45% (of Americans). The personal assets of Microsoft co-founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates, plus Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffet exceed the combined gross domestic products of the world's 41 poorest countries, with their 550 million citizens."
(on their providers and employees) through its monstrous "Wal-Mart" corporation. Charles Fuller model Conservative Christian business man 
*2
The shameful behavior of the Methodist preachers
is especially tragic, in light of the inspired anti-slavery
efforts of their extraordinary founder, some 70 years
earlier. Check out these historic items:
"The Roman Catholic Church had taken no position on slavery either before or during the war. 'By their silence,' one Catholic writer explained ' our prelates (i.e. hierarchy) divorced this burning political question from church affairs.' "*4 The Narrative of his life (until he escaped from slavery) by Frederick Douglass *5 (the quotes above, as well as the earlier ones about the way religious bodies dealt with the issue of slavery in America, all come from the chapter "Religion on the American Frontier" in the book entitled Centuries of Christianity published by Harcourt, Brace and company of New York, in 1959.) Here is an additional link to a very interesting lecture by Dr. Terry Matthews on Slavery & Religion in the South Since these lectures date from 1995, we can't guarantee that the links on that site still work. | |||||||||||||
What I have said respecting and
against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the
slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible
reference to Christianity proper; for, between the
Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I
recognize the widest, possible difference--so wide, that
to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity
to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the
friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the
other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity
of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding,
women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical
Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but
the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land
Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers,
the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
| To proceed to page 2 of 2, click on :
|
Click here to  this page or here to
to others (or yourself), There is much more where this came from at
|
