Liberals and Christianity (A Real World Exchange)

by walterm on February 9, 2011

Recently on Facebook, I found myself on a trail defending the GOP from one of the typical cheap shots lobbed by a liberal (and trust me, I am very hesitant to defend the GOP these days based on some recent experiences, but I will save that story for another post). On this trail, however, there were a couple of very nice liberal ladies, who shall remain nameless. One looked at my profile and questioned why I would want to be a conservative, since “liberals can be Christians too,” and conservative values are anything but the values “taught by Christ himself.” How is this? Well, according to one of the ladies:

Jesus espoused Socialist ideas! Help the poor without question, especially if you are asked to help, love everyone (even those who do you harm), share what you have with others, and – the biggest one of all – value people over possessions and money. Jesus chose to be poor. He relied on strangers’ kindness. Conservatives would’ve called Jesus a Socialist bum.

So that’s the whole game? Hardly. To begin, I don’t know any conservatives who are calling Jesus a socialist bum, all of whom today know “the rest of the story,” so to speak. Since a majority of conservatives are evangelical Christians who believe Christ is God and the only means of salvation, I believe this statement can be dismissed out of hand. My response was that if Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, then he claimed to be God from the beginning, and so we must understand Jesus within the full context of the Bible, and not selective, cherry picked parts of his ministry on earth. Now some might argue that the early Christians were socialist, but in actuality they lived in community for a small period of time, and they shared voluntarily, not under government rule. Helping the poor, loving your enemies, sharing what you have with others, and valuing people over possessions has nothing to do with socialism or political systems, because you are doing these things voluntarily out of obedience to God, not to government. And Jesus’ being poor had nothing to do with government in any way that I know of. So these notions of Jesus being a socialist may sound good but don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Now the key question here is if a liberal can be a Christian, since this lady wanted to make the point that liberals “can be Christians too.” I did not make that charge on this trail, but I have questioned this in previous blogs. My view is that I suppose it is possible, and it is not for me to judge, but I will certainly come to my own personal judgments. My experience with liberals who say they are Christians has decidedly been that they don’t believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but was primarily the work of men. Moreover, they almost always believe in Darwinian evolution, so from their perspective morality is something relative that has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. In other words, God did not create man in his current form of homo sapiens where he fell from grace sometime after creation, which we call “original sin”. Yet this lady’s view is that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but her interpretation may be different from mine. In that case, if the Bible can be interpreted in any way one chooses, then it wouldn’t matter if it is inerrant, as it would be of little use to anyone. Well then, the other charming lady chimed in on the trail, who is also a liberal Christian, but was a bit more open and representative of the liberal position. She believes Jesus espoused more “humanistic” values than conservative values, and had this to say:

Conservative Christians are elitists, they only believe in Christ as the one true God. Christians (all sects combined) make up roughly one third of the worlds population. I can not and will not believe that the other two thirds of the worlds population are not equally as good or deserving as the Christians because in essence (and maybe this is what you are trying to say) conservatives, in principle, simply believe there is a creator who grounds truth and establishes objective morality . I however would choose to replace the word conservatives with people of faith (any faith). I also do not believe that you can throw out the aethists or agnostics either as I am sure that the majority live by some kind of moral code.  Conservative republicans would have children pray every morning in school. And then only the Christian prayers. Where does that leave the Jews, Muslims, Buhdists, Native Americans, Aethists and Agnostics and let´s not forget the Liberals among us? (my emphasis added)

So her argument is that any Christian (conservatives, specifically) who believes Christ is the one and true God, unfairly leaves out all of the other “deserving” people of other faiths, not to mention agnostics and atheists. If she feels this way, then why is she a Christian? The problem with her view is that it doesn’t square with what the Bible says (but then again, it may be a matter of “interpretation” as with my other liberal friend). It is Christ who asserts he is the only way to God, not me. I am just interpreting his words (and I believe so correctly). So I’m the wrong person for her to ask about the fate of Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists and Agnostics (and of course, liberals). Each of these people must make their own free choices, and are free to reject or accept Christianity just as I am. The problem with many liberals who are Christians is that while they say that accept Christ, they simply cannot accept he is the only way to God, so they fall back on “its all about interpretation” so they won’t have to deal seriously with what the Bible says, and claim that Christ is doing some sort of injustice because he won’t accept people of other religions (including atheists). Well you can’t have it both ways. Since Christianity makes specific truth claims that are contrary to other religions, then one of these religions is true or they are all false. If someone has accepted Christianity, they are not elitist because they believe Christ is the one true God, they are simply believing on what Christ said. So my honest advice to those who have problems with the Christian faith is to just not be a Christian. Don’t try to make it into something it isn’t. No Christian should be arguing about who is “good” or “deserving” because they should know that Christianity tells us there is no one who is “good” or “deserving,” because we all deserve death. It is by grace we have been saved through faith.

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