avoiding both the Christian mask and overreactions to it

the mask

Much has been said and written about Christians who have hypocrisy of action: unholy behavior that abruptly vanishes during official church events but dominates the rest of their lives. Hypocrisy of attitude is a close cousin that attracts less attention, yet long-time churchgoers often cite it as a common complaint or at worst a primary excuse for quitting attendance and membership. The typical description is "Christians bring their masks to church. They pretend to be stable, well-adjusted, and happy around other Christians because they're scared of looking like failures. As much as possible, they project the false impression that they're excellent Christians who are always tranquil. In effect, everyone is petrified of sullying an antiseptic atmosphere of safe perfection that by definition disqualifies all unworthy people and/or feelings."

Fortunately this posture of pretense has many obvious weaknesses that earnest, perceptive Christians should notice. 1) It's difficult and exhausting to maintain the fakery. 2) It's devastating to evangelistic efforts. 3) It's in direct contradiction to the Lord's acceptance of the lowly and despicable people of His time, the ones who, before meeting Him, neither aspired to be holy nor tried to appear as such. 4) It's pointedly overlooking each and every believer's undeniably pitiful condition before conversion. 5) It's ignorant of the pervasive biblical passages that mention sins committed by the righteous, and their sometimes ugly emotions like rage and lust. 6) It constricts the authentic spiritual growth that comes partly through others' cooperation and understanding. 7) It's an inadequate basis for practical Christian living since it's flimsy "wallpaper" over someone's sincere motivations rather than "overflow" from out of one's inner spiritual development.

overreaction to the mask

It should be clear that I'm in favor of authentic interactions between Christians. However, I worry about the possible consequences of the opposite excess, which seems to consist of encouraging total/unrestrained (public) honesty about everyone's sins, doubts, temptations, and angst.

• Egocentrism. There's definitely a time and place for discussing an individual's unique problems in living up to the lofty Christian standard. Yet placing too much focus on this topic has the danger of confirming the altogether natural tendency of egocentrism. That is, too many "I..." statements when weighed against too few "God..." or "We..." statements. For instance, selfishness is indeed a personal struggle, but surely it's astoundingly blind to not also acknowledge its detrimental effect to everyone around you? As we pursue God, our attention should progressively shift from off ourselves. Preoccupation with one's strengths is egocentric, but so is preoccupation with one's faults at the expense of other important ideas.
  
• Shock. One ostentatious method of emphasizing "openness" is for a speaker to select shocking concepts or presentations solely because of the provocativeness. Nothing else quite so effectively screams "this isn't your parents' church". Plus, shocking (and repelling) your listeners focuses them on bracing themselves for what may come next: what terrible thought will summarily assault them as they listen? Although shock may be a valuable rhetorical tool in some circumstances, shock shouldn't be an end in itself. "Pushing the envelope" doesn't impress God, and enjoyment of mere dreadfulness is childish. And unlike shock, other devices can capture your listeners' attention without repulsing them. (Of course, desensitization will blunt the effects of frequent shock in any case, and over time this desensitization to awfulness could lead to a destructive greater acceptance of it in daily life, too.)
• Inappropriateness. Closely related to shock is inappropriateness. Whereas shock is seeking to stun listeners with horrible/taboo admissions, inappropriateness is usually an oblivious harming of the relationship with listeners via specific "sensitive" vices or details about those vices. Children are well-known practitioners of such inappropriate truth-telling. Another example is people revealing graphic struggles with lust in a group that includes the opposite sex, needlessly sacrificing their comfort. Discreetness in general is a vital ingredient for communities of people, and simply because a sentence is true doesn't imply that everyone who hears it "should be willing and able to handle it". A whole truth can be partially or completely masked in some contexts while coming out as appropriate to its audience.
  
• Inaction. Exposing one's dark side to the light of day yields freedom and relief. Its power feels lessened. Everyone feels closer. The confessor perceives the enemies of his soul with greater clarity. The anxiety of rejection by fellow believers proves to be mistaken. For all these reasons and more, confession and honesty are beneficial. Nevertheless, a "realism" that consists of talk but not action betrays its superficiality. Talking about unpleasant/negative aspects should spur the talkers to repentance, forgiveness, retribution. An apology or a frank doubt should produce renewed efforts to avert sin and dispel unbelief. And since the church is His body, it should be active and out-facing in addition to its members ministering to one another with words. I've known excellent Christian counselors, but none of them have claimed to be the end-all of Christianity.
  
• Despair. It's commendable to commit to confronting oneself (and the world) as is, not in fictional terms. Still, relentless narrow-minded concentration on stating and/or hearing the flaws of existence erodes hope. Confession of the same old transgression is highly discouraging. Facing no more than a temporary temptation becomes a trial when the temptation has been gratified from time to time over a period of years and it hovers on the edge of awareness. Therefore, a Christian who refuses to protect himself with a mask of fake moral accomplishment must be wary of despair, especially when it's mixed with...
  
• Mundaneness. Similar to other supernatural belief systems, Christianity is an intermediary between the otherworldliness of the supernatural and the mundaneness of everyday practice. Some believers want more otherworldliness (ahem, "mystery") that's compelling and different from other options. Some believers want more mundaneness (ahem, "relevance") that's directly applicable to current concerns and experiences. As a church reform that's meant to address the actual state of believers' spirituality, explicit rejection of the Christian mask (of hypocrisy of attitude) tends toward the mundaneness pole. The hazard of too much mundaneness is losing track of the essential otherworldliness in biblical commands like "be ye perfect" and rejoicing in persecution. Admitting that one is depressed shouldn't prevent one from searching for joy or doubting its possibility. Mundane guilt over a failure to resist shouldn't prevent one from grasping for an otherworldly victory from the Lord. An honest appraisal of minimal progress shouldn't prevent one from embracing the concept of lasting change. An angsty, gritty, edgy Christian life may be preferable for artsy purposes, but if it's always that difficult for someone then he or she may be doing it wrong. A Christian mask with a frown permanently affixed is false as the mask with the smile.
  

"How do you explain this?"

The title question is what someone often asks after calling attention to an event that appears to contradict one of the responder's beliefs. Its implied meaning is "If you can't fit this actual occurrence into your perspective convincingly, why do you continue to think that your foundational assumptions are right?"

However, this line of argument generally isn't persuasive...for any side. Since nobody can cause the event in question to recur nor investigate it more exhaustively after-the-fact, nobody should expect to have the event be perfectly explained...by anyone. Hence, events of this type fall partially or completely into the realm of the unknown. And the way that someone explains or understands the unknown is just his or her own preexisting assumptions.

1. "Horrible event X happened. But you say that your god is good. How do you explain this, Christian?" One of the rather standard Christian stances is that an omniscient God is to some degree unknowable (well, "unfathomable") in His thoughts and actions in relation to the "big picture" of the whole of creation in time. So the true, full morality and/or purpose of an event is unknown to all but God. Therefore, all that we can honestly say about how we explain a specific event is that we continue to believe that God is good (or bad, or nonexistent, etc.).

2. "We prayed earnestly on behalf of X's health, and a few days later the sickness is almost gone. But you say that based on the evidence of the universe, God must be either nonexistent, morally ambiguous, or even evil. How do you explain this, atheist?" An atheist might retort that a specific regression of illness is impossible to analyze completely, and in any case medical knowledge isn't absolutely complete. So the true, full physical cause of an event is unknown. Therefore, all that we can honestly say is that we continue to believe that a god wasn't involved (or that He was, etc.).

The upshot is that people can usually find sufficient "wriggle room" within any evidence to support what they already believe. They answer "How do you explain this?" with "I can't examine the evidence as much as I would like, to remove all doubt; nevertheless, I still assume _______."

Christian authoritarianism

One objection to Christianity is so direct, its expression is three words: "Christianity is authoritarian." The intended meaning of "authoritarian" is straightforward: the trampling of freedom by Christian authority. On the other hand, the intended meaning of "Christianity" could be referring to any number of entities, accused of authoritarianism:

• A Christian government
• A (or The) Christian church
• Christian individuals (parents?)
  
• Christian belief systems, inherently
  

As usual, it's not hard to appreciate the objection's perspective. Nobody likes always being ordered around; slavery's most basic indignity isn't mere pain and labor. Undoubtedly, Christianity can be a powerful tool for authoritarians, within and without the actual church, to effect control. But the general, unqualified charge of authoritarianism rings a tad hollow to Christians, for a few reasons.

• Philosophically and ethically, freedom is a trickier concept than its noncontroversial popularity suggests. Therefore, as the opposite of freedom, authoritarianism is a trickier concept than its noncontroversial unpopularity suggests. Someone saying he or she "supports freedom" is not distinctive or informative. Simply put, freedom is great, but which freedoms? Clearly, the freedoms to murder, destroy, and steal should be absolutely suppressed by governmental/societal authoritarians. The extent of other freedoms, and whether the suppression of those freedoms belongs in governmental hands, are vital questions in democracies. Similar discussions occur in churches and organizations of churches: what activities should members of the church never engage in, and what activities are left up to individual judgment? (Although heavy-handed church discipline, due to its tendency to backfire like all instances of negative reinforcement, is probably less effective than earnest, forgiving, and caring correction.) Even deeper, just between a Christian and his or her God, is the question of what areas of life have the freedom of being more or less morally neutral, as opposed to what areas of life are under God's intimate concern. (Actually, the strategy of apportioning bits of lifestyle to God and self is not how to please God; seek out God and his Spirit for true, real transformation, to reflect His holiness in all situations.) In any case, calling Christianity authoritarian is a simplification of the fact that all entities which regulate behavior contain tension between freedom and authoritarianism.
  
• This may be hard for the cynical to accept, but the parts of Christianity that curtail freedom aren't solely motivated by a fastidious craving for perfection. God does want His people to be as good as Him, yet their goodness will accomplish much more than failing to offend heavenly sensibilities. Good people improve the existence of other people. Good people improve the parts of the world they touch--and this is both an intentional and accidental effect of their actions and decisions. Lastly, people who do good may be happier than they otherwise would be, because evil is self-destructive sooner or later. The point is that (ideally!) when Christianity takes an authoritarian stance on some behavior, it's in order to preclude evil and evil's corresponding negative effects, neither on a whim nor out of an obsessive thirst for domination.
  
• Humility remains essential to Christianity. When Christians bow their heads to address the supreme God, the motion should be the outer "face" of the soul's reality. Faith "walks". Any church-goer can say that God is all-knowing and sacred, then live as he or she chooses, regardless. People of faith trust that God is all-knowing and sacred, then live as God directs, because being all-knowing and sacred are excellent qualifications for an authoritarian! If Christianity is authoritarian to its devotees, such "victims" of authoritarianism aren't coerced. They have as much freedom as ever, which they use in recognition of Someone infinitely greater than they.
  
• Christ refused to become part of the societal hierarchy of power, to the point of fleeing zealous crowds who wanted Him to do exactly that. He also refused to use His reign over both supernatural and natural to destroy and punish. Not because He was never angry and disappointed, as evidenced by the "temple clearing" and His many rebukes, to Pharisees and disciples alike, but because He chose to take the less authoritarian path. People who would follow in His footsteps should take note.
  

questions I need help answering

The Web is a medium of communication. Rather than holding back from writing down the questions/concerns about Christianity that I personally struggle with, I have decided to create this blog entry to invite illuminating comments, not only for my benefit, but for blog readers. I plan to keep this entry updated.

1. What is the precise relationship between the body, mind, and soul? What is the dividing line? Related questions, which the answer should also satisfy:

• When does a soul begin existence? How?
• What is the soul doing in cases of mental impairment, or merely when someone is asleep?
• When souls become disembodied, are the "personalities" of the souls the same, despite now being apart from the limitations and regulation of the endocrine and nervous systems of the body?
• In the case of children, especially the very young who don't yet speak, is the soul fully developed? Are they suspect to judgment? If not, then at what point in life?

2. Heaven has been described as a return to an Eden-like existence, or as an eternity of worship. Related questions:

• People like to work, meet challenges, and compete with each other. Does heaven meet such desires?
• People like to learn, study, and discover. In a heaven inhabited by an omniscient being, will there be opportunity for those pursuits?
• People like to create and tweak technology. In a paradise, where would this impulse be directed?

3. If salvation is through Christianity, do the damned include everyone who hasn't been presented with the decision, as well as everyone who was presented with a "faulty" version, and even everyone who simply weren't privileged to hear the message in a form persuasive to them?


4. How does one disentangle/distinguish the effects of the Spirit from effects of emotional/mental/psychological phenomena? For instance, people who expect to feel God are more likely to report feeling Him (see table-turning). People who continually reinforce a belief are doing something like autosuggestion or self-hypnosis. What's involved in authenticating a divine vision, such that it can't be reduced to externally-caused (chemical) hallucinations or unorganized neuronal firings? If someone experiences an unexpected idea, is it surely from supernatural origins or could it be from the subconscious or nonverbal brain parts, as in a bicameral mind? When a flock (i.e. congregation) of people perceive a present proximity of God's presence, especially after an extended period of carefully-engineered worship activities, how much of the effect comes from empathy and/or peer pressure ("I see the way others are reacting, I should be feeling and acting the same")?

"the religious are sheep"

A sibling of the idea that Christians aren't smart (the third blog entry!) is the idea that people with religious belief systems are "sheep" who somehow lost the ability to think for themselves: under specific conditions they just don't question what they hear. This is how, according to the rest of the diatribe, they can be uncritically duped by "irrational but seductive lies", even to the point of martyrdom. The religious maxims flourish in the mind through isolation from any other knowledge.

The automatons so described obviously exist. Cults, and the top figures of those cults, exploit them. Yet not all people who have religious belief systems are "sheep". Like "Christians aren't smart", "the religious are sheep" is a bald overgeneralization, having some flaws.

• Consider the grid of four possibilities, with rows of "religious" and "secular" and columns of "sheep thinking" and "non-sheep thinking". Some of the people in the "religious" row are in the "sheep thinking" column (the cults just mentioned) and some of the people in the religious row are in the "non-sheep thinking" column (much of this blog entry will essentially cover why and how those people can exist) . "The religious are sheep" implies "non-sheep are secular", so people in the "secular" row and the "non-sheep thinking column" tend to support rather than disprove the objection. But the fourth possibility of the grid, the intersection of row "secular" and column "sheep thinking", while not strictly applicable to the objection, also has many examples. This means in statement form that "all secular people have non-sheep thinking" is false. Clearly, people can think "like sheep" about virtually anything, religious or not. That's why active parenting is so important, why trends have influence, why outsiders (any outsider relative to any group) receive scorn, why oppression often operates through media control and "loyalty-creation exercises". The point is that while this doesn't disprove that all religious people are sheep, it does disprove that "secular" and "non-sheep thinking" are one and the same. Therefore, religiosity and sheep thinking are distinct scales of measurement.
• Sometimes people (choose to) forget that their belief systems contain foundational doctrines which cannot be challenged because those doctrines are the method to structure other knowledge, yielding its meaning. Removing the foundational doctrines would leave the person with no way to comprehend, interpret, and apply. These foundational doctrines will be in the "sheep thinking" realm; someone must have gotten them from somewhere. Granted, some people have more elaborate and explicit doctrines than others. They would doubtless argue that the doctrines are thereby more effective and honest.
• The "sheep thinking" accusation glosses over the subtle, delicate relationship between ideals and particular ideas. Belief systems in general, religious or secular, have ideals/values (of almost equal importance to the foundational doctrines of those belief systems). Part of what makes human communication tricky is the easy pitfall of mistaking the ideals of belief systems and common, everyday ideas. Someone who, under specific conditions, imbibes every idea communicated, is by definition sheep thinking. However, someone who, through sharing ideals (more or less) with the communicator, understands and checks the ideas communicated, is not sheep thinking. Also, if the communicator is reinforcing ideals, nobody is learning what he or she hasn't already consciously chosen as an ideal in the past. In these situations, the participants in the communication are jointly figuring out what ideas best match the ideals. The most drastic of conversations, a switch to a different belief system, can work by identifying similarities in ideals between belief systems. Of course, the mistaking of ideas for ideals can also be put to the sinister use of luring someone to accept an idea that seems to match an ideal when it is actually opposite and/or false.
• A telling discriminator of a belief system's dependence on sheep-thinking, and the person advocating that belief system, is if the believers are (truly) encouraged to rely on more than one source of truth. Practically speaking, a belief system should make it clear that authority over truthful information isn't the province of the Person Whose Name Is ______ (what happens when he or she is no longer able to serve that function?). Centralizing authority in one regularly-swapped official isn't too convincing, either, although one must grudgingly admit absolute dictates have the benefit (curse?) of avoiding debates. In the Christian traditions I am involved in, a balanced, self-checking approach to Biblical truth is the nominal norm: a combination of tradition, reason, and experience do and should inform one's understanding. A prescription for sheep-thinking this is not! I bring this up solely to give an example.
• The desires of independence and freedom are active in people, to varying degrees in various people with their various personalities. The religious are people, regardless of a "sheep" label. They will believe what they choose, and do what they choose. In a society privileged to have religious freedom, any religious "leader" will discover how little control he or she really has. Scolding, discipline, and correction will only be effective on believers who on some level welcome it. Requests for volunteers usually don't lead to an overcrowding of applicants. Levels of commitment and participation are on a wide range. In their deepest of hearts, in the bottom of their minds, and in their locations of privacy, the outwardly "religious" can be surprisingly unwilling to carry out what they claim to believe. Honestly, the religious can be too insincere or weak-willed to aspire to be sheep.
  
• "The religious are sheep" may be connected to the assumption that religious belief systems gain believes through filling a personal, perhaps emotional, chasm, instead of through a "rational" evaluation. This assumption has some merit, since in most cases a belief system engages entire people, not just the part known as the mind. And it shouldn't be controversial to note vulnerable, damaged people are easier to influence, nor that people who are undergoing forced life transitions are more likely to take the opportunity to jump belief systems. Nevertheless, isn't it naive and unsympathetic to expect that people would act any other way? A belief system that doesn't work for someone is likely to be left behind for another. If a large number of people, the "sheep", are rejecting a belief system or replacing it with a competitor, then might that indicate something?
• "The religious are sheep" may be connected to the assumption that religious belief systems gain believers through people imitating and inculcating each other. This assumption has some merit, considering all long-lived belief systems (religious or not) are at least partially spread in this manner. But this assumption is too much of an overgeneralization of how religious belief systems spread, and applicable to too many secular belief systems, for it to be compelling. It also conveniently overlooks the fact that belief system switches also may come about through imitation and re-inculcation. In fact, it's not hard to imagine (or observe) a family in which a grandparent's religious zeal caused the parent to be anti-religious, and the parent's anti-religious zeal caused the grandchild to indulge religious curiosity.
  
• It would be negligent not to acknowledge the Bible's recurrent metaphor of the Church as sheep, still more because the quotes are from Christ. The content and context of those verses don't support the interpretation/application that people should follow each other like sheep. Rather, the relationship between Christ and the Church is like the relationship between a shepherd and a flock, as He enumerates. Shepherds guide, protect, care, sacrifice themselves for sheep. The emphasis is on the shepherd's actions, not the sheep. Note that when preachers talk about the "flock", call themselves "pastors", and so on, the meaning is (or should be) a Christ-inspired sentimental affection for the people they serve, not a way to degrade/dehumanize them.
  

"why a Holy God?"

Objections to Christianity (and similar belief systems) fall into two broad categories: objections against the existence of God, and objections against a particular conception of God. One of the objections in the second category, roughly summarized as "why a Holy God?", has many expressions. "Why would the master and creator of the universe care about what tiny humans do?" "How likely is it that an all-powerful, all-knowing Force is constrained by merely human morality?" "What does matter matter to an eternal Spirit?"

Any answers to this objection will probably be insufficient to convince the objector, especially one who doesn't believe in God at all. Nevertheless, the Christian has some reasons to remain unfazed by it.

• Given that God is all-knowing, all-seeing, etc., is it really any more unbelievable that God is intimately aware of all aspects of creation? When someone can lift twenty pounds, what's questionable about positing that same person's ability to lift ten pounds? Ultimate awareness is ultimate awareness. Magnificence in the large includes, not precludes, interaction in the small. Put another way: assuming God can care about anything in the universe, why can't it be true that God cares about everything? God's plans may operate on the grandest scale, yet those plans can have roles for the tiniest participants.
  
• Given that God is the creator of the universe, the more surprising outcome would be not caring about his creation. Is it more reasonable to suppose that God went "through the bother" of all that creating without actually caring about the result, or that affection for the creation motivated the act? It's certainly possible to think of God as winding up the universe like a timepiece, then leaving it alone to proceed without any further attention (smart people have really thought this). But if God is sentient and has somewhat comparable motivations to human creators, clearly God wanted the universe to happen--God had a strong interest in it dating from its inception. That interest probably continues.
  
• The idea of a hard separation between the natural and the supernatural may not be well-supported by Christianity. Miracles presume that the supernatural can work in and with the natural. Sanctification is another recurrent indication. How can the notion of holy objects like a temple, an ark of the covenant, and so on be reconciled to a gap between God and creation? Saying that God's holiness, if it exists, has nothing to do with the universe, ignores or conflicts with the Christian accounts of how the supernatural hallows the natural. Assuming that a divide from the supernatural implies a divide from holiness also may be equating all supernatural beings with holiness, which is again not well-supported by Christianity's picture of the real demonic.
  
• Moreover, the distinction between matter and spirit hits closer to "home" in the concept of the human soul. The body and soul must have some connection for the soul to matter; how can the seat of free will even be the seat of free will if it has no effect on the movements of the body? Just as the soul can interact with the body, so can God interact with the universe.
  
• The seeming arbitrariness of the ultimate, divine God working according to the same morality as people is less stark after considering two points central to normal Christian doctrine. First, human morality's source is divine morality. God is good not only because that's God's nature, but also because the human concept of good originates from God. God acts justly not only because that's God's nature, but also because the human concept of justice originates from God. God shows mercy not only because that's God's nature, but also because the human concept of mercy originates from God. Second, human beings have been created in the "image" of God. Exactly what this refers to is mysterious. However, one of the common interpretations is that God created humans to have minds and souls that reflect (to a small degree) God's mind, and to share some of the same motivations and moral concerns. Humans were for fellowship with God. The point is that God doesn't resemble us through us imagining God; we resemble God through God purposefully creating us to do so.
  
• The objection against a holy God derives some of its vigor from the perception that attributing human-directed holiness to God is like placing constraints on the one entity which should have none. This perception is too hasty. God's concern for the world doesn't eliminate the possibility of concern for the universe, or other worlds. In the same way, God's concern for humanity doesn't eliminate the possibility of concern for other creatures, or the world itself. We have the moral laws for people, since God has communicated to us. Laws and holiness for others may exist, too (angels, etc.?), but we don't need those. God's holiness has been shown and demonstrated to us, and God is not reduced.
  
• A final reason, maybe the most important, why Christians think God cares about the actions of individual people, is (almost laughably) simple: God loves. Part of love is desiring that the beloved excels. Another part of love is desiring the beloved's safety and happiness. One narrow definition of holiness is functioning as it should. The intent of human holiness is to produce the outcomes planned for humanity in the beginning. Love and holiness are linked in God. God desires to impart this combination to people, for the benefit of all.
  

Agent of Harm?

Of the statements one may hear or read about Christianity or religion, one is almost shocking or laughable in its overgeneralization: "Religion is an agent of harm". I've tried to express the statement in its purest form, because the variations are legion; some say "blight" or "pestilence" or "plague", and not all with the same level of virulence. In some cases, it's even irreverently humorous to hear, when someone more or less switches from saying "all viewpoints should be respected" to saying "I spit on the religious viewpoint" without acknowledgment of any contradiction...

In my opinion, an overgeneralization is hardly worth discussing, because by definition each side has evidence, and the only fallacy is one side ignoring contrary evidence. I'll just cover some evidence on both sides of the overgeneralization. First, some reasons why the simple assertion, "religion is an agent of harm", is not true. Obviously, I'm heavily biased on this side.

• The opposite statement, "religion is an agent of aid", clearly has some evidence, and since the two statements contradict one another, therefore neither can be absolutely true. Charity is a religious virtue, followed by innumerable believers who continually give. Moreover, principled religious believers have worked to rectify systemic social problems like slavery. To try to say that religion played no part in their beliefs and actions is ridiculous; their own quotes disprove that.
• Serene happiness requires a sense of purpose. Religion is a common way of meeting that need. Christians might even go so far to say that other ways of obtaining purpose are relatively ineffective and unsatisfying. "Man cannot live on bread alone". In any case, the fact that religion fills a (existential?) void in life is evidence that religion is not all harmful.
• Stable societies are upheld by their institutions. While I would argue that Christianity is meant to be treated as far more than one of many social institutions (institutions in which people participate just because it's what people do), religion generally has traditionally played an important role in the majority of cultures. Religion is often, if not directly at least indirectly, a basis for ethics, customs, etc. People have a tendency to take religious elements and embellish them (witch-hunting? angels?) like any other cultural artifact, but that again is evidence for the importance of religion in culture. If a society is stable, and religion is (likely) a part of that society, then religion may be serving as a stabilizing force. There is a negative way to view this effect, expressed as "religion is the opium of the people", but that's reality for ya. It transcends categories.
• A possible companion statement of "religion is an agent of harm" is the somewhat more modest "without religion, on the whole the world would be better off". Here are a few responses. 1) Religion is so entwined into human existence, this speculation borders on meaningless fantasy (try asking "would the world be better off without government?"). 2) Instead of trying to imagine a world without religion, one could calculate religion's "net worth" by tallying and comparing its upsides and downsides. Must it really be said that such an undertaking would be extremely inconclusive, not to mention subjective? I mentioned this when I offered some thoughts on the Crusades. 3) Is the "track record", measured by whatever metrics, of non-religious people uniformly superior to religious people? I don't think so. In fact, the Christian doctrine of human depravity would lead me to believe that religious or not, people can find ways to be desperately wicked. Also, people often say that someone believes in something "like a religion". Is it at all surprising such beliefs would be subject to many of the same objections as religions per se?
  

Now, some reasons for why "religion is an agent of harm" is true. Someone else would probably be more qualified to fill in this section, but here goes. I can't help myself offering immediate counterarguments to these points, sorry.

• Among certain personalities in particular, religion can be twisted (some easier than others) into a justification for atrocities. Sadly, the killing of heretics and infidels is well-documented and oft-referenced. The counterargument is that disturbed individuals, who are truly motivated by revenge or delusion or power, would act maliciously with or without a veneer of religious justification. For someone on a rampage, religion's role is dubious in the same way a violent video game's role is dubious.
• "Religion blinds people to reality" is an argument that is a perennial favorite, especially for the "if I can't experiment on it or measure it, it don't exist!" crowd. And as usual, there is a nugget of truth. Religious people have been known to act irrationally. Yet I fervently affirm irrationality is not a prerequisite of faith. People of faith should act rationally, with faith suppling a larger context for the facts instead of a replacement for the facts. For instance, I don't believe people of faith are obligated to trust someone who has proven to be untrustworthy every time. However, if someone sincerely wishes to repent of his past deeds, showing genuine resolve, I believe people of faith are obligated to offer that person a chance to earn new trust. Consider the difference between optimism and pessimism. The facts are the same, but one's outlook on those same facts is radically different. I agree that it's harmful for religion to blind people to reality, because religion should not be escapist. However, I strongly disagree that faith implies blindness. Those who say they don't believe in religion based on lack of proof also may just be evasive.
  
• Intolerance is another popular accusation of damage wrought by religion. Nugget of truth? You betcha. Intolerance is something I dislike too! As I've already said, though, this argument applies to more than religion. Any time someone believes in anything, there is an opportunity to not grant others the same freedom.
• This last reason is the counterpoint to the second reason for religion not being harmful, sense of purpose. Those who follow their (non)belief systems to the logical conclusion may state that there's no reason for religions. Whether or not it's right, it's a self-consistent position to take. If there is no afterlife, and humans are animals with oversized brains, and abstractions in general are to be valued not as independent but as pragmatic entities, and ethics are created in the same way art is created, and all of existence is a fortunate accident, then religion is rather pointless and wasteful, isn't it? There is no existential void. There is no such thing as purpose; it's a question devoid of concrete meaning. The best thing to do, when such concerns overwhelm, is to lie down until they go away or drown them out with pleasure or pain. If this is reality, if this is all there is, then religion is an agent of harm because it gives answers to nonexistent questions and thereby distracts from real questions, where "real" means "artificial" or "man-made". Ready to believe this?
  

"an afterlife makes virtue mercenary"

Or, in other words, if religions (not just Christianity) promise rewards or punishments in the afterlife for deeds done now, doesn't that reduce good deeds to be "services rendered" in exchange for personal gain?

Sure, but only if a happier afterlife is the motivation for a good deed. In Christianity, no good deeds are sufficient for admission into heaven. It's true - Holy Harry, the upstanding community figure, can't cut it any more than anyone else. As Jesus told his listeners, they had to be more morally correct than their society's experts on moral correctness, the Pharisees and teachers of the law, in order to be part of the kingdom of heaven. The only way to make it in, is for the Christ to cover your unrighteousness with His perfection - known as "justification". Given that this is a central tenet of Christianity, no Christian (who knows what he or she is doing) should be consumed with concern for earning what is essentially a gift.

Does this mean Christians no longer need to care about what God thinks? Read some of Paul's epistles on the subject to convince yourself that forgiveness is not a "green light" for doing wrong (confession is vital, but the aim is to have progressively less to confess!). Again, this is an annoyingly common mistake. Sin is separation from God, meaning no fellowship with God. Hell is the soul's eternal separation from God. To put it frankly, the removal of sin is not just for You, that is, for your benefit. The sin is removed so people and the Holy God can come together. Someone who wants forgiveness for sin without pursuing a relationship with God is missing the point entirely! Not to mention that asking forgiveness is rather deceptive if you plan to go on doing what you asked forgiveness for. If you honestly, humbly desire to be a follower of God, you won't continue to do wrong, because that is the opposite of following God. Your moral compass has been corrected; why are you still going in the wrong direction, pray tell?

To repeat, hell is the soul's eternal separation from God. Heaven is then the soul's communion with God. The fact that God is good and the Source of all good things can make it seem like desiring communion with God (i.e., Heaven) is the same as desiring good things for you. Remember that according to the challenging book of Job, Job's trials are precisely to establish that Job honors God because Job's goal is to honor God, and not because Job wants God's blessings. So there is a difference. Someone who's making mental calculations like "if I do good deed C which costs me Q, I'll receive reward Z in the afterlife" has the wrong attitude. Just as people who correctly observe the root selfishness of that approach are not fooled, God is even less fooled.

A useful analogy is any act of sharing. People can contend for any resource, taking the whole by force, or they can agree to take a reasonable fraction and live peaceably, which is a better solution for everyone. Does the fact that sharing is a better solution for resource allocation imply that sharing is motivated by selfishness, out of the economic choice to certainly gain a little instead of risking injury and likely receiving nothing?

Coming to the point, the Good should be desired passionately, but such desire is not greed! Greed (or selfishness) is desire without limit. There can be no paradise for all if one individual refuses to appropriately curtail his own lusts. The believer should not overindulge, being mastered by addictions. But the believer should not overindulge in self-denial, believing that the highest ambition is to never be happy. Other belief systems may mention a Middle Way; Christianity's path is not so different in that respect.

Desiring to cultivate and experience the Good of harmonious moderation, and the ultimate of which is an afterlife with the Good God, is nothing to be ashamed of. Desiring to notch up points in the here-and-now in order to gain more for oneself in the hereafter, that is something to be ashamed of!

"There's no proof"

A favorite argument for atheism (agnosticism, antitheism, whatever) sounds similar to this: "I would believe in Deity X, but sadly there's no objective proof. When Deity X shows up, proclaiming its (the argument wouldn't use His or Her) existence with undeniable demonstrations, I will bow down to Deity X forthwith". This argument is particularly attractive to the same folks who tell you to replace religion with science. For them, the shorter version "your Deity doesn't fit in my test tube or appear in my telescope" is sufficient.

My point here is not to trot out specific proofs for or against God, but to show that someone who uses the above argument is engaging in creative deception. No proof is sufficient for them, who for the sake of convenience I will refer to as "no-proofers":

• The testimony of a witness or twenty is insufficient because a no-proofer can and will assert that the witness or twenty is unreliable/biased. What is the proof that the witness is unreliable? Because he claimed to see God, of course!
• A miracle or just a curiously providential coincidence is insufficient because a no-proofer can and will assert that the occurence was dumb luck or that it has an underlying natural cause (like a mirage) or that it's a piece of evidence that existing theories happen to not yet be broad enough to handle - such as explaining consciousness by theorizing that it somehow "emerges" from the multiplied actions of neurons.
  
• A no-proofer may assert that "Deity X" must not exist because a ritual didn't have the intended effect. But one cannot test the existence of a sentient being the way one might test the existence of charge in a battery. A sentient being must cooperate by responding, but for any number of reasons that being may elect not to. This is doubly true if the responding being is more intelligent and/or informed than the requesting being. To take a purely illustrative (not metaphorical) example, if person A phones person B, person B might refuse to say anything because person B is under surveillance that person A knows nothing about. A sentient being's lack of response doesn't imply that sentient being doesn't exist.
• In a deeper sense, even the "clouds breaking to reveal the face of God" isn't sufficient to convince some people that the apparition in question is Deity X. There's a principle often referred to as Occam's Razor which states that the less a statement assumes, the more likely it is to be true (because there's less for it to possibly be wrong about). Practically speaking, an omniscient/omnipotent/omnipresent God would almost never fit the Occam's Razor criterion for explaining anything. It's assuming a lot to state that any entity is just omniscient, or just omnipotent, or just omnipresent, not to mention stating that the entity is all three. Someone who's dogmatic about Occam's Razor would explain that the apparition in the clouds was some being with sufficient powers to move clouds and project a large image. No more, no less. One of the reasons Jesus' contemporaries kept accusing him of blasphemy is because according to Occam's Razor a blasphemous human is a far less assuming explanation than God Incarnated. So sooner or later, faith must be taken on faith. On the other hand, those who wish to consistently apply Occam's Razor can't admit the existence of a large class of intangibles; they're too busy trying to justify to themselves why Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong to work on the God question.
  
• No-proofers may comment that since others aren't believing based on proof, others are believing based on convenience. This comment has no bite for two reasons: first, beliefs that people hold to in the face of persecution/hardship/unpopularity hardly count as "convenient", and second, opposite beliefs can be convenient too. No God, no supernatural, no afterlife, all can sometimes be terribly convenient for no-proofers. They can think and do whatever they want. They can care about what they choose to. (Of course, conscience, responsibility, love, and duty won't be smothered or denied, so freedom isn't absolute even for no-proofers no matter how they try.)
  

Too Many Religions

Everybody can admit that the world has many differing belief systems, not to mention the divisions within belief systems (those divisions can be greater in ferocity than divisions between separate belief systems, in fact!). Confronted with all this diversity, how can one conclude that any one belief system is true? If one belief system was really (objectively) true, wouldn't everyone just claim that one instead of disagreeing all the time? Mathematically speaking, if there's an equal chance of any one member of the mass being correct, the probability is quite low that someone happens to bet on the right one! Since the "God exists" camp can't get their act together, doesn't it make more sense to forget 'em and join the "God, who's that?" camp?

Or so the "Too Many Religions" argument goes. Fortunately, the argument is riddled with holes, in the form of flawed assumptions:

• Flaw 1: disagreement means that none of the disagreeing parties can be right. Clearly, this flawed assumption isn't true in the general case, because someone can certainly be both wrong and in disagreement with someone else (who is right). I think the intent of this flaw is to assert that disagreement about an issue means it is subjective, and a subjective issue is a matter of taste or preference, not truth. Since people can disagree about objective issues as well as subjective issues (most of the time perception is a mix of objective and subjective), disagreement is not sufficient evidence of subjectivity.
  
• Flaw 2: atheism & agnosticism are in a different class from other belief systems. If an atheist believes there is no such thing as the supernatural, that is a definite belief based on supposed (anti-supernatural) evidence. If an agnostic believes that no evidence applies to the existence of the supernatural, that is a definite belief based on a supposed lack of ANY evidence for either side. The meta-belief of "no belief without positive evidence conforming to standards XYZ is truly true" is itself a belief! Compare the agnostic and the pro-supernatural believer to two people in a pitch-black room. The agnostic corresponds to the person who only trusts visual evidence, and the supernatural-supporter corresponds to the person who trusts both visual and tactile evidence. The sight-only person, like the agnostic, experiences no evidence acceptable to him, and uses that lack to believe that he can know nothing about the room's contents. The visual-tactile person, like the supernatural-supporter, also experiences no visual evidence but does experience tactile evidence acceptable to him, and uses that evidence to form beliefs about the room's contents. Each person in the pitch-black room has belief systems about the room's contents. There is nothing special about the belief system of one person compared to the belief system of the other. To put it bluntly, people who seek atheism or agnosticism to "escape" the "messiness" of supernatural belief systems are merely switching to another belief system!
  
• Flaw 3: all of the belief systems that have supernatural elements have an equal chance of being correct. This flaw is only convincing to people who have already decided that all belief systems with supernatural elements are false or without evidence. Those who have actually studied any of the supernatural belief systems know that some are more plausible than others. Not to be disrespectful, but in some sense belief systems can be evaluated like competing scientific theories. Which belief system has the least internal contradictions? Which belief system explains the most? Which belief system best matches someone's experience? Which belief system is the most fitting answer to the "human condition"? Which belief system has less "excess baggage" tenets, which seem to serve no purpose besides making the big picture more complicated?
  
• Flaw 4: one true belief system would result in everyone following it. This flaw is self-defeating, strictly speaking. Each person who believes that his own beliefs are true, and not elaborate fantasies, can't help acknowledging that others disagree with him or her, which means the statement "everyone would follow the true belief system" has to be false. The very diversity of belief systems leads to either flaw 4 being true or the statement "my belief system is true" being true. I think the intent of this flaw is to argue by contrapositive: if "God exists" implies "everyone believes the same thing about God", then the reality of everyone not believing the same thing about God implies that God must not exist. This is actually laughable, the idea that God's existence would somehow trump the ability of people to choose their beliefs. Have you met someone stubborn, someone who will not "see reason" or not "see what's right in front of his face"? I have too. Christianity not only has the doctrine that God exists (a central piece, indeed!), but the doctrine that Fallen Man tends to disregard God's existence. Rebellion is not only possible, but expected.
  
• Flaw 5: people follow particular belief systems (just) because of upbringing. The simple retort is that converts happen. On an emotional level, mature believers who were taught their belief system as children would rightly find it insulting to be accused of being mindless automatons or pawns. "You don't share my belief system, therefore you're a mere product of your upbringing" is presumptuous. It's also not factual, considering that some people freely leave their childhood belief systems after reaching an independent age. Some of them take it a step further by veering off to the opposite extreme, in the attempt to prove their freedom through rebellion. Yes, in any specific example there are probably identifiable factors at work that "conspire" to convert someone to a new belief system or confirm him or her in the current one, but the decision still lies with the individual, not with the individual's circumstances.

Ultimately, whenever there's a right answer, a multitude of wrong answers are possible. The wrong answers can be inventive and creative ("who was the second US president?" "Mayor McCheese!"). The right answer stands apart from the pack.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is definitely one of the most referenced accusations against Christianity, and far from original. It has taken on even greater life as the advance of technology continues to make long-range communication to the masses more feasible and commonplace. Without publicity, scandals just wouldn't be as scandalous. (Better communication has also enabled opportunities for Christianity, too, so as with many things it's not inherently bad.) Hypocrisy is a sure way to raise someone's ire.

And it should! Christians don't like hypocrisy, either. No person with a shred or two of conscience enjoys being deceived. Jesus tossed the word "hypocrites" around all the time, often at the religious elite. As I have done thus far, I'm not going to try to prove that the attack under consideration is completely without merit. Instead, I'm going to add some perspective so that people can understand why hypocrisy does not prevent Christianity itself from being true and workable.

The most purely logical defense against hypocrisy is that failures, committed by people who claim a belief system, do not invalidate a belief system. Framed more classically, an ad hominem attack is a logical fallacy. Statements by pathological liars cannot be counted on to always be false, for example. Failures by people do not make Christianity false.

Sharp readers may have read the last sentence and immediately thought, "Moral failures do make Christianity false if one of the tenets of Christianity is that Christians (should) sin rarely if at all". To some degree, that is a valid criticism, but it is incomplete and inaccurate. Like any morality, Christianity has an Ideal which people are prone to fall short of. Indeed, moral failure seems to one of the prerequisites of being human (Christians identify this fact as congenital depravity). Other moral codes than Christianity's--whether more onerous, like religions that prescribe what clothes to wear, or less onerous, like the traffic code--are broken with disturbing regularity. Moral failure is not specific to Christianity, and Christians will make mistakes while living in the flesh, in this world. A Christian who can say, with a straight face, that he or she never commits wrongdoing, is a filthy hypocrite or deluded. The description "chief of sinners" was applied to one of the major apostles by himself.

Abstractly speaking, allowance and forgiveness for mistakes is part of Christianity, so those mistakes do not prove that someone is a hypocrite rather than a "real" Christian. Going beyond the abstract, this explanation can be unsatisfactory. When a "Holy Harry" or a "Godly Gloria" goes to church every Sunday, serves the community, participates in the neighborhood watch, refuses to let their kids play with other kids, and so on, but then has a juicy secret sin exposed, the hypocrite label can hardly be avoided. I have a few ways of interpreting the case in which an infamous misdeed has been performed by someone who clearly falls into the "Christian" category, at least outwardly.

1. One unlikely possibility is that the perpetrator simply was an amoral chameleon who indifferently adopted a Christian persona for selfish ends. Cult leaders, whose motivations are power and money, may be of this type.
   
2. A less insidious explanation is that the perpetrator believed in Christianity, but was not willing to undergo the "full treatment". Relax, conspiracy theorists, relax. All I mean by "full treatment" is the entirety of Christian teaching and practice. Like weight loss, holiness is not impossible. It merely requires stern dedication, willingness to obey directions or mull over advice, goal-driven desire, and other means as needed. The serious Christian should also be supported by and supporting of other Christians, and cultivating the habit of communicating with God in prayer and scripture and worship. Christians who don't demonstrate this level of commitment can't expect to "have it work". A half-Christian or one-hour-per-week Christian will probably yield to temptations that an earnest disciple of Christ would either shrug off or actively flee from.
   
3. The most distressing possibility (for Christians) is that the perpetrator had committed most facets of his or her life to God, perhaps even making numerous sacrifices, but purposefully kept a few unrepentant parts back, private from others and God and even the perpetrator's own conscience. Self-deception, in which one is a hypocrite to oneself, is surprisingly resilient. Someone can manage to keep the bad stuff separate for a long time. However, this is the realm of (sin) addiction, though the addiction may be emotional rather than physical, and an addiction tends to grow. The stress of both feeding it and keeping it dormant the rest of the time can wreck a person's moral center. Over time, the well-fed addiction may finally become public: the hypocritical inner self has escaped its cage. The wise don't need to go through this process to know how it works. They must keep in mind how necessary it is to stop it at the earliest stage.
   

The moral status of hypocrisy has another twist, one overlooked by many. In the simplest call of hypocrisy, there are two individuals: one is the accused, and the other is the accuser. The accuser would like other observers to believe that the accusation happens out of righteous anger, that is, a sense of justice. But I don't think that's true, or not in most cases I've experienced. A wrong action could be called out as wrong regardless of who performed it. A more specific call of hypocrisy isn't directed at the action, but at the hypocrite. The delicious satisfaction enjoyed by the accuser indicates that he or she feels rewarded by the hypocrite's action, in some way. By making the call of hypocrisy, the status of the accused drops, and the accuser's relative status increases. Someone who relishes making a call of hypocrisy is someone who cares more about his own status than about the fact that his fellow man failed. A happy muckraker is a person consumed by pride, with a craving for status. Hypocrisy is a serious matter. A call of hypocrisy should be a constructive rebuke to the hypocrite or a sorrowful warning to onlookers.

A suggested exercise: read the lyrics to the song Brother's Keeper by Rich Mullins.

"Christians aren't smart"

Christians aren't smart. This is more of a broad generalization than an argument, but I think it's still effective, particularly on people who have been part of Christianity the social institution and not a part of Christianity the lifestyle--in other words, people who have participated for other reasons than actual faith. When they meet people who are both highly intelligent and antagonistic to religion, at one of the nation's fine universities or colleges for example, "Christians aren't smart" even seems to be factual.

Since this is a broad generalization, some counterexamples would prove it wrong, and there is no shortage of counterexamples; many famous geniuses have been Christian. Christianity was the prevailing belief system for years in the West, so it's only natural that the smart were Christian too. Considering the religious origins of many schools, Christianity may even have been more influential among the academically gifted than among those without the same talents and opportunities.

"Christians aren't smart" may not be stated openly because of its flimsy evidence and lack of political correctness, but nevertheless it can be implicit in the anti-Christian attitude and stance. In this form, the statement is an emotional appeal better expressed as "believe in Christianity, and you're a fool". The emotional appeal can be approached in a few ways, because it can mean several things.

First, the justification may be that Christianity has inherent logical flaws like self-contradictions. Since illogical flaws make statements meaningless, the only people who can find meaning in Christianity must be people without the capability to see or reject logical flaws, i.e., the stupid. The defense here is individual to each "flaw", but the defenses exist. Christians have been finding and reconciling apparent problems for a long time, even among themselves. Some "flaws" like God being three-and-one are special cases of being beyond human understanding/comprehension, but those cases can't be helped because reality can't be helped. If Christianity was purely a human invention, those "flaws" would have been excised or replaced.

Second, the justification may be that Christians rely on faith for some of their knowledge, so they must not be smart or honest enough to apply the scientific method to all domains. The problem is that science is not enough. Some things defy objective measurement. For even those that admit such measurement, science is not an exact science and not all experiments or studies support the same conclusions. Its strength and weakness is that its theories are never absolutely finished. It can explain many things, but those explanations are still not sufficient to answer some essential questions of the human condition. "What is my purpose?" "Where did the universe come from?" "If nothing has ultimate meaning in the end, why should I bother?" "What is right and wrong, and why am I unable to ignore that question?" A related statement is the ol' "fairy tale" comparison, which implies that any narrative with supernatural elements automatically is fictional. And I don't see much of a counterargument for that. If nothing supernatural can be real, then there's no basis for further dialogue. If one can't even allow that maybe there just might be the remote possibility of supernatural existence, then discussing the plausibility of Christianity is ridiculous. Of course, there is the point that the historical events in the Bible happen to be recorded and corroborated by other sources (which do not contain supernatural elements), and last I checked that wasn't true for any fairy tales I've read.

Third, the justification may be that Christianity is too simple, that it's tailor-made for dumb simpletons: "Dumb people can believe in Christianity, and many dumb people currently do, so if you believe in Christianity, you're probably dumb too". Part of this is a misunderstanding that's inevitable from not looking too deeply inside. While the core of Christianity, the Gospel, is simple enough to communicate in a variety of languages and to a variety of societies, it is also profound and deep. The Bible is large, after all, and it only contains a well-vetted canon of texts. Theologians and scholars study for years. Christianity is simple and complicated. A different way to counter the emotional appeal of "Christianity's so simple it's believed by dummies" is with an emotional appeal to democracy and unity. Proclaiming that dumb people believe in Christianity only shames someone who refuses to value dumb people. If a belief system is accessible to all, shouldn't that be a good thing, an egalitarian thing? If "all have sinned", then Christianity is not for elitist snobs. Christians have a responsibility to teach and correct one another in love, as well as serve as role-models, but there is no caste system. Christianity is "for dummies" because it is for all.

the Crusades

There is an oft-quoted piece of Internet lore known as "Godwin's Law", which more or less states that the longer an online discussion continues, the greater the chance there will be a statement related to Nazis or Hitler. I think a similar rule holds: the longer an online discussion about Christianity continues, the greater the chance there will be a statement related to the Crusades.

I'm certainly not going to try to defend the Crusades; that's the rhetorical counterpart of a Mission Impossible. It's not my place, either, to defend or ask forgiveness for actions which I had nothing whatsoever to do with. However, I will try to put this dark period of history in proper context.

First, no action performed by a nominal Christian implicates Christianity itself. If Norman claims to be a bicycle repairman but then fails to repair a bike properly, that wouldn't mean that bicycle repair is a lot of hooey or that all bicycle repairmen are crooks. Norman may have been lying when he said he was a bicycle repairman. He may have been a bicycle repairman, but a bad one. He may have been a good repairman, but had an off day. I realize that comparing bicycle repair to the Crusades is ludicrous, but I'm only trying to illustrate the faultiness of the argument by reapplying it to a different situation. Moreover, I will go a step further. I assert that someone who participates in a bloody Crusade is not a Christian or follower of Jesus. Or, to put it another way, someone who has interpreted Christianity to allow for a Crusade has twisted it beyond recognition. A Crusade is not a Christian action.

Second, the Crusades happened during one of the times in history when church and state were all tangled up into a gnarled mess. Read some of the history of the Middle Ages; it's a sordid tale. Kings claiming to be God's Gift to Man, church officials running various pieces of government (remember cardinal Richelieu from the Three Musketeers?), etc. Jesus lived during the time of the Romans, yet He didn't overthrow the government and place the disciples in charge. In fact, I've heard it argued that the disciples were often confused why He didn't do so. Jesus' mode of operation was not force, and there's an excellent reason for this: forced conversions are not conversions. One can't force people to be good, at least not in the way that Jesus kept describing: from the inside out (showing the condition of the heart by the attitudes that naturally flow out--the "fruit"), rather than from the outside in (keeping stringent laws but not having inner devotion--the Pharisees' "white-washed tombs"). The Crusades were carried out by governments that had usurped the true Christian community. To return to the increasingly-strained bicycle repairman analogy, this would be like the town mayor declaring that the holy cause of bicycle repair justifies ordering the police department to demolish all motorized vehicles. Again, Christians did not wage the Crusades; unchecked governments that paid lip service to Christian virtue and humility waged the Crusades. As I've heard, "the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman". By the way, from what I can tell, government entanglement in other religions hasn't done them any favors, either, in endearing them to unbelievers.

Third, if one insists on tallying the good and bad that have come from Christianity over the course of its existence, I think it's more than a little disingenuous to bring up the Crusades but neglect to mention the sacrificial giving performed under the same banner in countless times and places. It's impossible to state, for example, how many servings of soup or how much education outweigh one killing. Ultimately, I think the Crusades are the exception, not the rule. At the very least people must admit that those who have carried Christianity's legacy through the years have done a mixed job of it.