"Not That Kind of Christian"

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

My daughter sometimes re-posts on facebook things she's seen on a website called "I'm Not That Kind of Christian."

Usually those posts spotlight a telling contrast between what Jesus taught, and the teachings of today's Christian "leaders" who toady to "conservative" politicians.  One I especially remember paired Jesus' words on how we should treat "enemies" with a quote of Franklin Graham's obsequious praise for the current president's threatening to "incinerate" every North Korean.

That group's name reminded me of the discomfort many of us felt some years ago, when Fred Phelps' followers' were continually keeping themselves in the news, with their "God Hates Fags" signs, and demonstrating at the funerals of soldiers who died (they claimed) because God was punishing America for allowing same-sex marriage.

If a passage came up in Bible study calling homosexuality sin, my friends would agree it's so, but usually feel they needed to reference Phelps group, and quickly add, "But I'm not that kind of Christian."  If we're honestly trying to follow scripture's teachings, we're put in the position of having to differentiate ourselves from the "Christians" who use God's words to justify their anger, hatred, and violence.

When people doing the works of satan perversely call themselves "Christian," we're right to separate ourselves from them.  Our identity as Christians is Christ's Identity.  He only gives it to those who do His works.

I've been wholeheartedly "pro-life" for 50 years now.  Ronald Reagan converted me.  I was a convinced Goldwater conservative after reading "The Conscience of a Conservative" in the early '60s: so when Goldwater's greatest spokesman became Governor of California, I was eager to see how a real conservative would change government.

One of the first changes Reagan made was to California's anti-abortion law.  With his encouragement, Republican legislators enacted America's most "permissive" abortion statute, and Reagan signed it into law.  The number of legal abortions in California skyrocketed.

It was quintessential conservative doctrine, that government's interference in citizens lives should be severely limited.  And what greater individual "right" could there be, where government's "intrusion" was more illegitimate, than in the individual's decision to have, or not have, a child ?  (The later Roe v. Wade decision for a "right" to abort was also based on that conservative principle.)

At the time (1967), I really didn't know what abortion was.  I had to look it up.  When I found out what it meant, my reaction was (the same as John Brown's the first time he saw a slave) "That's wrong."  I haven't changed that view.  And my contempt for conservatism probably dates to that time as well.  Contempt is the only right reaction to any doctrine that justifies evil.

When Reagan ran for President a decade later, I thought maybe he'd had a change of heart.  He said he was "pro-life" then.  But in his 8 years of popularity and power, he did nothing to actually change abortion law.  It seemed clear he talked "pro-life," as his faction of "conservatives" have talked it ever since, primarily as a vote-getting tactic with the "Christian conservative" movement that was created to elect him (over that arch-nonChristian, Jimmy Carter).

My hatred of the politicians' hypocrisy, and that of "Christian leaders," has grown in the 40 years since Reagan.  So it's become increasingly necessary...and I'm increasingly glad...to distinguish between following Jesus, and following "Christian conservative" politicians and preachers.  Anyone whose intent is to follow Jesus is forced to distinguish himself from those whose "Christianity" amounts to supporting liars (like the current president) and murderers (like the N.R.A.).

I'm not that kind of Christian.  Nobody who is a Christian is.

In our time, it's become necessary to distinguish ourselves from those who claim Christ's Identity, while doing the works of satan.  We can best draw that distinction by doing the works of Jesus.  One of His works was calling out the hypocrisy of "religious leaders" who were leading His sheep to destruction. Let us all do the works of Jesus.