Give Me That Old-Time Religion

I have a weakness that I must confess to you: During my travels about the countryside, I love occasionally listening to religious radio. I find it entertaining and downright hilarious! Whether it's James Dobson advising a wife that she should sex her husband up whenever he demands it, or Jimmy Swaggart verbally tiptoeing around his... er... working girl incident, or the self-righteous pronouncements of any of dozens more holy hucksters, it's always good for a laugh.

But there is a disturbing thing that I have noticed over the years: Even though these people call themselves "Christians," they really don't give much of a damn about Jesus.

Oh, sure, there are plenty of references to "Christ, crucified," but the things that Jesus is supposed to have actually said and done while he was here, in the flesh, on planet Earth, are routinely ignored. There's just not much reference to Matthew, Mark, Luke nor John; instead these folks are overwhelmingly consumed by a love for the writings of Paul - a guy who didn't even meet the historical Jesus. They ought to call themselves "Paulians" rather than "Christians."

Jesus the man? He was too concerned with ideas like social justice and forgiveness and turning the other cheek (the man dined with tax collectors, for the love of God!). I mean, jeez, that sort of thing takes introspection and hard work! Paul, on the other hand, was far more into being a self-serving moralistic prig -- just the kind of red meat that Evangelicals can really sink their teeth into. No, for them, Jesus is much more safely experienced through the amorphous ambiguity of the Holy Spirit, where he can be reduced to a cypher, a symbol, and then ignored when he is inconvenient.

I've watched the growth of this sort of "Christianity" (and the slow dwindling of older, more dignified churches) over the course of my life, and have come to believe that this phenomenon is strongly tied to demographic trends; I see it as a natural outgrowth of the narcissism of the Baby Boom generation. Churches are now something that I shop for to find the "right" one for me. I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.

And to hell with everyone else (just ask the fans of the "Left Behind" series). Even Jesus, the man.