"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple."
Where's this quote come from? A jihadist manual on terror? One of the Surahs of the Koran? Maybe Mao's little red book? Was it spoken by the terrorist prophet himself, Mohammed? No, it comes from the Gospel of Luke.
It was read to millions of Christians a few Sundays ago in churches around the world. I wonder how many people in the pews heard it and thought "Wow, that really wouldn't sound too good as a sound-bite in the media of the Muslim world" (or in atheist media, or even secular media for that matter). In the same way that lines from the Quran are taken out of context, lines from the Bible can also be taken out of context.
Do Christians hate life?
Christians that I know personally do not behave as if they hate life. As an industrialized country with such a high level of church attendance, the U.S. is a statistical anomaly. Many Americans identify themselves as Christian, 78% according to this Gallup poll. We are by multiple measures a Christian country.
This Christian country of ours has a very high illegal murder rate, especially when compared to other industrialized countries. Preventing those murders is an issue of much contention. This Christian country of ours also has a very high rate of "legal" extraterritorial murder in undeclared war zones all over the world. Those murders are not so difficult to avoid. For example, if an American soldier is not outside of the U.S., that American soldier will not be able to shoot or be shot by anyone outside of the U.S. In reality, despite my loved ones showing no outward signs of hating life, the argument can be made that Christian Americans do hate life based on the behavior of the society in which we live. We Americans tacitly agree to extraterritorial "legal" murders.
Murder is the ending of life. Surely a case can be made for Christians, at least American Christians, not realizing the gravity of life. I'm unable to argue that life is "hated" as opposed to "disliked" or even worse, simply not appreciated. Or maybe it's just the value of other people's lives that is the problem. I suspect an American does tend to recognize the importance of his or her own life.
I know quite a few people who call themselves Christians and quite a few who aren't Christians and I don't see a clear hatred of life among the one group more than the other. At its surface, those people I know don't seem to have very effectively followed Jesus' command to "hate…life itself."
It's a strongly worded statement written in the Bible that doesn't look good as a sound-bite taken out of context, away from the centuries of schools of Biblical scholarship that exists and that many of us now read the Bible through. Perhaps it's intellectually lazy of a person to try to do the same thing with the Quran and to speak like some kind of Quranic scholar because he knows a few ideas from the Quran that he read in USA Today. I supposed in general we all know better than to trust self-proclaimed authorities. However, the fact that a single person watches the network news or buys a major newspaper indicates that there are many people who are comfortable with putting faith in those self-proclaimed authorities.
On Sept 19, again Christians heard another confusing verse. It can quite effectively be taken out of context when one imagines the corporatist American government, like a greedy octopus, slithering around the world taking things by force. "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes." ~ Luke 16:9
Christians agree that Jesus actually said that.
This upcoming Sunday, the many Christian churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary will hear a reading from the book of Genesis where the patriarch Jacob wrestles with God. During this reading, God changes the unfortunately named Jacob's name to "Israel." Jacob, one of the patriarchs to which Judaism and Christianity trace their faith, literally means "he who grasps the heal." Figuratively, this name has an even worse meaning: "He who deceives." Israel, his new and improved name, means: "he struggles with God."
To me, there can be a beauty in a faith that lets you struggle with God. At the same time, it's easy to take this out of context. To struggle with God is to be opposed to God, to challenge the Almighty and His ways. This presents a rather unflattering talking point about Israel. The word Israel, the name of the most problematic state in the Middle East, was chosen by leaders of that country as a way to present itself to the world – "struggle with God." For the billions of people out there who believe in a God that's about the worst name you can come up with for a country.
Let me just restate all that in a nine-second talking point about Judeo-Christian culture:
Jacob means "he who deceives"; Israel means "struggles with God"; Jesus commands his followers to be dishonest and to hate life. Are these the professed values of a good people? What more does one need to know distrust Christians and Jews?
Do these facts make me not want to go to church? No, they just make me realize how important it is to never trust the media about anything. Nine-second sound-bites are alluring and deceptive. Just like my religious proclivities seem very strange to others when taken out of context, the religious, political, athletic, emotional, and physical proclivities of nearly any person seem strange when taken out of context. For shock value, the hate mongers of American society love taking religion out of context, as long as Christianity's not that religion.
Filter the Media
On all topics there is an agenda. Base your understanding of situations on your relationship with people. Use the media to try to challenge yourself and to seek out differing perspectives. Never let your own experience be overshadowed by the words you read from some unknown journalist. I've sat down with enough respected journalists to realize that they are not as critically questioning and decent as their readers seem to believe.
Slovak-Hungarian Hatred?
In Slovakia Hungarians are said to be hated. There's a long history in which Hungarians (Magyars) controlled the land known today as Slovakia. That history spanned a good thousand years and had some very ugly moments, akin to a soft genocide, that sought to snuff out the existence of Slovaks.
It is said that Slovaks hate Hungarians. I can attest that some do.
However, when I am invited to visit a Slovak family that has Hungarian neighbors, I recognize that relations between Slovak and Hungarian neighbors tend to be quite hospitable. Just as hospitable as with any other neighbor.
The media and the whispers of popular culture, especially around election time, are quick to tell ugly stories about how bad those ethnic relations are. This no doubt actually influences some relationships. However, experience in the intimate relationships of a handful of diverse people tells me that the media is likely incorrect in this matter. I choose only to speak from my own experience on this topic, which also has its shortcomings, but is far more honest than pretending myself an expert just because I've read lots of work from some far-off journalists.
When it comes to neighbors, my Slovak acquaintances tend to be quite welcoming to the Hungarian minority that still live in Slovakia. Forced language is a sign of oppression. The Hungarian authorities used to force Hungarian language on Slovaks and understandably that period in history still impassions many Slovaks today. Freely spoken language, on the other hand, is a way to build a bridge into a friendship. I often hear Slovaks throw around a few Hungarian phrases with their Hungarian neighbors. Such relationships are in the best interest of neighbors.
Good relations are not in the best interest of those who 1. want to sell papers, 2. are filled with hate, and/or 3. have no other issues on which to win an election.
The nationalist parties of Slovakia and Hungary don't like these amicable relationships among Slovaks and Hungarians. They like to poke at the very real wounds of the past. The more they can get people to foremost remember those wounds, the more they can get their audience to forget that these are living breathing people they are asking them to hate and to mistreat, the more votes, the more media time, the more influence, the more money there is for those nationalist parties. They have a formula and they wield it effectively.
A political consultant by the name of Mike Rothfeld, linked to here, gives a great speech on political participation that I saw at the Leadership Institute in Arlington, VA. In his speech, Rothfeld makes a request of his audience: Whenever you listen to a speech, whenever you read a newspaper, whenever you are watching TV, or even just talking face-to-face and see someone trying to get you to believe something, you've got to ask yourself u2018How does it benefit this person if I believe what he's saying?' Cui bono? In whose interest? Is the old concept that he restates. We all know that people don't often exert great effort just for the heck of it. Receiving communication through the media, from some person you don't know intimately, let alone have never met face to face, makes the answering of that question considerably harder.
The Effective Stereotype of the Muslim
Are all Muslims secretly terrorist time-bombs waiting to go off? I don't know, I can't answer that one for you, but I can tell you that it's a pretty effective line – repeated ad infinitum in the media. In that little idea of the Muslim terrorist time-bomb, you are told 1. You cannot trust a Muslim, 2. It's worthless to get close to a Muslim, 3. the closer you are to a Muslim, the more in danger you are, 4. Muslims are unreliable and may try to kill you at any time, 5. Be on your guard around Muslims, 6. Muslims live to kill, and especially to kill you, and of course 7. A Muslim sleeper cell may become active and detonate itself and those around them at any time and without notice.
If you buy into this, you involve yourself in some self-fulfilling prophecies. You can't really believe numbers one through seven above without eliminating the possibility of a friendship with a Muslim. Muslim terrorists do kill Americans. It's true. But from the perspective of a non-American Muslim in the year 2010 things must look very different than from that of an American Christian. As far as I can tell Muslims are a very forgiving people. After all, there are many Muslims who have, for some reason, not risen up against the United States, despite the very aggressive action taken by out American government seemingly randomly against Muslim civilians.
Muslims seem so forgiving that I am somehow still able to travel the world and find a man or woman who does not think America is running a Jihad on Islam. American behavior – 1.4 million Iraqi Muslim civilian casualties over the last seven years according to Just Foreign Policy – is enough to leave me thinking that our Christian nation does not value Muslim lives. Once again, that is in Iraq alone, and in the last seven years alone. Expanding the focus would make America's treatment of Muslims appear much worse.
Political rhetoric might be expected to tell a different story. It might be the way that Americans offer a soothing smile to the Muslim world on television as the soldiers ransack the countryside roughing people up. Under Bush, even the political rhetoric made America look like a nation that does not value Muslim lives. George Bush in this video addressing the media unscripted on Sept 16, 2001 referred to the pending war as a "crusade." Here he is addressing U.S. troops in February 2002 from a script again using the same language. Those who learned something in World History know that "crusade" is literally a battle fought under the cross of Jesus, and effectively took place in the past to take land and treasures from the Holy Land where Muslims, Jews, and even Christians lived. Many Christian, Jews, and especially Muslims were killed by European invaders. Despite the treatment, despite the language, I'm able to find decent and welcoming Muslims. Reality doesn't match the rhetoric of the media.
Make Your Own Choices
Do you genuinely hate your Pakistani neighbor that you've gotten to know well? Fine. I'm not going to try to talk you out of building a nice tall wall between your family and his. At least you're being more intellectually honest than a person who ignores reality.
One example of a person who ignores reality might be the proverbial bleeding heart liberal who seems to infinitely ignore the bomb being built next door. He doesn't seem to be in touch with the fact that people do actually do real bad things. Another example might be the Huntington-preaching/thumping/wielding conservative who has never spoken with/met/known a Muslim. She may have a hard time acknowledging that human beings are capable of behaving like individuals. Neither of such persons seem to take the time to know or understand his or her neighbor. Both are blinded by significant intellectual biases that the media seeks to convey.
Overwhelmingly, the mainstream media can't be trusted to report anything to us with authority. Which is a good realization, because in all honesty few sources should be trusted as authorities. A thinking person should analyze multiple sources on every issue, trying to derive multiple perspectives before coming to any conclusions. Grandma can be trusted as an authority on baking delicious pies and breads, but not on immigration laws. Dad can be a trusted authority on fixing the furnace and on whatever it is he does best, but not on campaign finance reform. You know that the people closest to you have certain talents in some areas and have little more than unstudied opinions in other areas. At least that much due diligence ought to be done before you decide to trust an unknown out there in the media.
In the year 2010, using exclusively mainstream media sources to find those multiple perspectives is likely to leave you with a big bowl of thoughtless – but generally appetizing and surprisingly pleasant to swallow – mush in front of you.
