Christianity And

My dear Wormwood,
The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call 'Christianity And'. You know -- Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring...

That would be the introduction to the 25th Screwtape Letter, and if you don't know what that means, please see the link. C.S. Lewis at his finest.

I have grown particularly sick of the current Fashion in America to describe Christianity as Christianity and Conservatism, or Christianity and Republicanism, or the battle cry "For God, America and St. George W. Bush!" (or whomever shall replace said fallen idol). While God may have opinions in American politics, I doubt very much that He has anointed any particular political party or political organization with the whole measure of His blessing and favor; democracy leaves little room for the divine right of kings, after all, and if God favors America, He surely favors democracy. The inherent conflation of "religious" and "neither left nor center" in "Religious Right" worries me, especially the gnawing suspicion that some members see a different "right" in that phrase - "We are the ones to the right; therefore, we are the ones IN the right!"

Still, I know plenty of people who belong to the Religious Right who place their faith in God first and foremost, who are wonderful, decent Christians and possibly better in their faith than I can ever be. The movement, therefore, is not spawned of Satan, whatever I would like to believe when Religious Right spokespeople appear on television. I've learned to view quite a lot of fallacies as either merely amusing or fallacies on the part of the liberal interpreter rather than the conservative speaker.

Therefore, I was shocked to learn about the Conservapedia Bible Translation Project. Now, my link is to an outside source. This is intentional. I do not wish to encourage the project by diverting any traffic its way, and this article does a fairly good job describing and quoting it. If, like me, you find it unbelievable, an exaggeration or joke, there is a link to the actual project inside the article. The link to the actual project may not work at the moment; Stephen Colbert set the Colbert Nation to work last night vandalizing the project, and probably-not-coincidentally the servers for the Bible Project are currently unreliable. But you know. You can figure it out.

This project, ladies and gentlemen, proposes that the Bible itself is too liberal as received and needs to be adjusted accordingly. There appears to be some restraint; excisions are technically limited to later additions to the text and the suggested word replacements have at least a shred of validity. But any "translation" which works by adjusting the KJV by fiat rather than learning and interpreting the original languages... does not deserve the name "translation". At best, it is a paraphrase; at worst, a retcon. The guidelines look suspiciously like a retcon. (I was not aware, for instance, that Jesus' parables were supposed to be a clear and unambiguous statement of support for the free market.) This is considerably beyond Christianity And. This is getting into And Christianity. Or, Is Christianity. We can change the Bible, because if God Himself supports our ideology, we are justified in putting words in His mouth to clarify His position.

This is exactly the kind of thing I hate. Christianity is loving the Lord thy God and loving thy neighbor as thyself. Christianity is doing unto others as thou wouldst have them do unto thee. Christianity is not defined by capitalism, small government, military spending, the death penalty, or harsher jail sentences by any logical stretch. Christian politics ought to have priorities in line with Christ's. To me, this means that homosexual marriage is a nonissue; divorce is a more pressing one. If abortion is to be a priority issue, for the love of all that is holy, hold politicians accountable - don't permit a politician to buy your vote with an entirely empty promise to "support" abortion prevention, and don't permit a politician to give lip service to that ideal while performing unChristian acts in every other area.

Got that?

Now here's the hellishly tricky part for me. It's incredibly tempting to fight Christianity and Conservatism by becoming Christianity and Anti(Christianity and Conservatism). I have friends who entice me into Christianity and Liberalism - which, with some idiot Conservapedia people thinking that forgiveness is a Liberal concept (fine, I caved and linked directly), seems awfully tempting to believe. If being forgiving is inherently liberal, wouldn't that mean that Christianity is inherently liberal? The only judgment and damnation I recall in the NT was on people who claimed to be believers but acted falsely. There I go, buying into the Christianity And Anti-Anti-Christianity again.

It comes back to learning to stand - learning to follow God Himself, to stand for God rather than against something else. I am not called to rant about the follies of legalism. (Howevermuch fun Paul might have had doing so. So, so much fun.) I am not called to go out of my way to confront fringe elements, and it's not like I have any erring high authorities to correct in the daily course of things. I have to drop "Christianity And", even when the "and" is fighting "Christianity And". Of course, this can create an infinite regression of Christianity And Anti(Christianity And)...

I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble', and almost immediately pride - pride at his own humility - will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt - and so on, through as many stages as you please.

Oh, Number 14, how thou knowest me.

New look

Look! A shiny new template. I'n'it pretty?

Screw introspection, dangit

And the question pops up again, making me want to tackle innocent bystanders until it gets answered.

Did you click the link?

No?

I can wait till you do.

Okay, hopefully you clicked the link and hopefully it took you to Johnny the Tackling Alzheimer's Patient. If not, look it up. It's worth it. Best Scrubs-joke-to-become-a-running-family-joke ever.

Who am I?

At the moment, I'm not terribly concerned about the deep philosophical implications. I feel like I know myself pretty well. The whole existential who-are-we-as-human-beings thing? It's an interesting question to pursue, but not one I have a pressing need to figure out at the moment. I'm good with self-knowledge and pretty happy with my current level. 'S all good.

But apparently, it's not enough to know myself. I have to explain myself to everyone else - within the space of a single piece of paper. Or multiple pieces of paper. You see, I'm doing a job application which involves not only a resume, but also an autobiographical statement. Simultaneously, I'm having to revise my "Who am I?" essay for my teaching class. I have to figure out, not who I am, but how best to project my identity onto a few pieces of paper - and not even my identity, but that part of my identity which is acceptable for introducing myself to a stranger who may wish to employ me. So I have to figure out the balance between honesty and reserve - as Hitch would say, "not show it all at once, but show the real you." What part of me is the part that needs to go on that paper?

And do I really care?

I'm irreverent and flippant and silly, because I'm passionately, fervently and intensely dedicated to things that either don't interest or outright scare other people. (Old stories and language would be in the former, religion the latter.) I'm slow to commit and I keep my commitments few on the ground, because I'm intensely loyal and I'll give my all once I'm committed. I follow the rules meticulously when I agree with them and break them spectacularly when I don't - which makes me an unpredictable employee. Don't get me wrong, I don't randomly break rules - I go through discussing, disputing, etc if something really doesn't work for me. I'm just going to do what I think is right, and if negotiation doesn't work...

Well, that's not something you put on stuff for an employer to see. "Creative," "determined," what have you, but not "occasionally stubborn as a mule." Also, "laid back" and "adaptable" can be good, but "lazy" really can't. Not that I'm okay with laziness, but if I'm talking about myself...

Also I have a possible addiction to ellipses...

But I'm not sure...

Gah. This doesn't even get into detailing accomplishments for my resume. I hate resumes.

And I don't wanna talk about me. Don't wanna talk about "I". And if I want to talk about Number One, that's some other Guy. Why? Why? Why?

Screw introspection. And linguistics, while we're at it.