False Advertising

Trey Smith

It's well established that I take a very critical view towards the fundamentalist version of Christianity -- which is not to suggest that I'm enthralled with the non-fundamentalist Christian perspective either. On issue after issue or topic after topic, I typically find the fundamentalist perspective to be narrow-minded, self-righteous, hateful and not particularly just or fair.

So, I was thinking about my great distaste for this religious viewpoint the other day. I realized that it's not simply the issues themselves that get under my skin; my irritation comes from the fact that fundamentalist Christianity is born of false advertising!

Talk to almost EVERY single fundamentalist (evangelical) Christian and Jesus is front and center. He is the savior a person must accept. He is the one who died on the cross so the rest of us can live. He is the one who took all of the sins of the world onto himself and all a person has to do to be saved is to believe in Jesus with their heart, mind and soul.

So, this Jesus fellow would seem to be the rock bottom foundation of the faith and the faithful. And yet, most of the time, he is not.

Spend time at nearly every fundamentalist church and/or website and what do these Christians utilize to promote their perspective? Do they quote the famous Sermon on the Mount to rail against homosexuality, abortion, illegal immigration or premarital sex?

No, they do not. And the reason Jesus is not front and center on most of the issues contemporary fundamentalists hold dear is that Jesus -- the foundation of their faith -- is silent on these issues. For example, of all the various things Jesus was purported to have uttered, not one of them focused on the issue of homosexuality. Not one.

For whatever reason, Jesus wasn't interested in the majority of the issues that today's fundamentalists are interested in. If he had felt that many of these issues indeed were important, chances are he would have mentioned them at least once. He would have told a story, a parable or delivered a sermon on one of these themes.

Since Jesus doesn't address these so-called crux issues, where does a fundamentalist look to find passages to undergird their position? For the most part, the answer to this question is a) the Old Testament and b) the writings of Paul.

The Old Testament or Tanakh (the Hebrew term) is a text from a different religion: Judaism. While Christianity was formulated out of Judaism, the former rejects much of the latter's teachings. Shortly after the reported death of Jesus, there was a big tug 'o war between the gentiles and the Jewish Christians. As we all should know, the latter group lost!

And yet, when conservative Christians want to show that their man Jesus was staunchly against the "evil" of homosexuality, for one example, what do they use to buttress their perspective? Do they trot out a famous parable or lines from Jesus talking to the masses? No, they pull a few select quotes from the Book of Leviticus!

Leviticus was written long before Jesus was born. It predates him by hundreds (maybe thousands) of years. If Jesus was a good Jew, he too would have read Leviticus and he easily could have referenced it in any statement he wished to make on the "gay" topic. But this reference was never made because Jesus was completely silent on the subject. For whatever reasons, he didn't view it as an important or pressing issue to the foundations of the faith he espoused.

The other source fundamentalists use to build their case against this or that are the writings of Paul. By all accounts, Paul never met Jesus during the latter's lifetime. So, Paul didn't really know what Jesus actually said. But that didn't stop Paul from reinterpreting the chief themes of the Jewish carpenter. In many ways, fundamentalists worship more at the feet of Paul than at the feet of their actual namesake!

Think about this strange formulation utilizing a contemporary figure. For the purposes of our example, let's select one Barack Obama.

So, we have these ardent Obama supporters. In their eyes, Obama can do know wrong. When others advance strategies and policies that are at odds with the great Obama, his supporters would pull out quotes from...Millard Fillmore (the 13th president), Andrew Johnson (the 17th president) and the always quotable Rutherford B. Hayes (the 19th president).

When the public at large wanted to know what the great Obama meant in his most recent speech or what a certain policy he promoted entailed, his supporters would ask...Wolf Blitzer to explain it to them because Wolf understands the great Obama better than the great Obama understands himself!

At every turn, Obama's supporters would marshal quotes, statements, writings and insights from a cavalcade of luminous individuals and groups. When people wanted to know specifically what the great Obama had to say about this or that, his supporters would wave their hands and reply, "Let me tell you what Rutherford B. Hayes stated unequivocally!"

Wouldn't you start to wonder about these kinds of "supporters?" Wouldn't you begin to question why they worked so fervently to cover up or omit the words and thoughts of the great Obama? Wouldn't this whole scenario leave you scratching your head?

Christians fundamentalists say that Jesus represents the very core of their faith, yet the purported words of Jesus often are nowhere to be found in the causes they promote night and day. Consequently, it makes me wonder how important this Jesus fellow truly is to their perspective. It seems to me like a classic case of false advertising.