Opinion | Selfishness Is Not a Virtue – The New York Times: (gift link)
America has always been a country with lots of Christian citizens, but it has not always behaved like a Christian country, and for reasons that resonate again today. An old error is new. Too many Christians are transforming Christianity into a vertical faith, one that focuses on your personal relationship with God at the expense of the horizontal relationship you have with your neighbors.
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There are now Christian writers and theologians who are mounting a frontal attack against the very value that allows us to understand our neighbors, that places us in their shoes and asks what we would want and need if we were in their place.
But Christianity is a cross-shaped faith. The vertical relationship creates horizontal obligations. While Christians can certainly differ, for example, on the best way to provide health care to our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, it’s hard to see how we can disagree on the need to care for the poor.
Theology actually matters – a lot more than most people are willing to acknowledge. And bad theology leads us to make serious mistakes.
The linked article (an essay by David French) is a critique of a new/old current in American popular religion that puts the emphasis on your personal relationship with Jesus, your “faith” to the exclusion of any consideration of the impact your actions have on your neighbors or fellow believers. This is idea is explicitly rejected by St. James in the second chapter of his letter to the whole Church.
The idea that our personal relationship is all that matters underpins racist teaching, sexist beliefs and much of the language about the Prosperity Gospel.
The essay ends by making the point that Politics is changing the nature of American Evangelicals more than they and many other people are willing to admit.
It’s worth reading.
I suspect that Ernst and those like her are reacting against a weaponized empathy of the last several years. The bill said, those who are of working age, healthy, and without young children must work at least part time to receive Medicaid. People on the left respond using Christianity to shame the politicians for a practical sense policy. St Paul says, those unwilling to work should not eat. That’s who this change in policy affects, those who can work but who chose not to. It is my opinion that if liberal Christisnity wants to offer a relevant contrasting voice, it will need to be more practical and nuanced. Also, when Obama and Clinton did the same things, liberal Christianity praised them. Everything on the left and right are tribal rather than morally consistent.
Excellent, and thanks for the gift link!