I had an online dialogue recently with my cousin in Israel who was questioning the apparent discrepancy between the teachings of Jesus and the way Christians live. I tried to draw his attention to the difference between those who call themselves Christians and those who really are followers of Jesus. I tried to explain that following the teachings of Jesus is humanly impossible and that it is only through being born again of God's Spirit that we are given the ability to do this.
It felt like a bit of a ping pong match. He kept saying: look at all those awful murderers who were Christians (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition etc), and I kept saying: just because these people called themselves Christians, that doesn't mean anything. He kept giving me more and more examples of people who did awful things whilst calling themselves Christians, and I kept saying: just because people call themselves Christians that doesn't mean they've been born again. People who really love Jesus wouldn't be able to do that sort of thing.
The other side of the coin was him saying: there aren't any Christians who do live up to the teachings of Jesus about love and about turning the other cheek. At some point he accepted that maybe there are a few, but he reckons they are very few. I said: I don't know the numbers, nobody does except for God, but my point is, if you want to see the teachings of Jesus lived out, don't look at the nominal Christians, look at born-again believers.
He suggested that even Christians who do good works, even they only help fellow Christians. At this point I was outraged. How dare he write off all the works of charity being done all over the world, Christians who go out to live in all sorts of difficult conditions to help the poor and needy simply out of the love that Jesus has put in their hearts!
But this is where we run into the stumbling block of humanism - faith in the goodness of humankind. For a humanist, all the examples I could bring of Christians showing kindness would be of no value, because to him the kindness of human beings is taken for granted - he believes we are naturally good. To him the aberration is when we do evil.
Whereas I look at the old me, the natural, sinful me, and I know how much evil there was in there. I know that I was not born good - far from it. I was born selfish and self-centred, and consideration for others is something I had to be taught. We like to think of babies as sweet and innocent but the truth is we are born completely self-centred, not yet aware of other people and only aware of our own needs and wants. When a baby is hungry, it cries. When it's uncomfortable, it cries. When it cries and doesn't get what it needs quickly enough, it screams. It takes us time to grow and learn to appreciate other people as separate human beings with their own needs and feelings, to learn that other people can be hurt by what we do or say - and once we've learned that, we have choices: do we use the power that we have to hurt others, or do we withhold that power? Sadly for many people the answer is: depends if you'd get caught or not. Through being punished we learn not to do things that we shouldn't. We are taught certain ways of behaviour that are deemed acceptable by society. I remember at school when someone in my class had upset another pupil, the teacher made him stand in front of everyone and apologise. The teacher could make him say the words, but was he really sorry? Was he sorry that he had upset the other pupil? Or was he just sorry that he had got caught and that he had to go through the humiliation of standing in front of the whole class and apologising?
It would be nice to think that human beings are nice and good and loving. But open the newspaper, turn on the television, check out the news any given day and you will see plenty of examples of people being far from good. Are all of these examples really the exceptions? We like to think so. We like to hear about some particularly awful murder and think: look at him, he's evil. Because then we can allow ourselves the comfort of believing that we, in comparison, are good. But are we really so good? Are our hearts full of love for everyone? Even my humanistic cousin, who believes in the goodness of humankind, says of course he doesn't love his enemies - but what sort of goodness is it that is kept only for those who are nice to you? (Yes, Jesus said something like this.) Being kind to your friends is relatively easy, being nice to those who are nice to you is relatively easy. If you're nice to your friends, that doesn't make you good, it makes you pretty normal and sensible - very early on in life we learn about the value of friendships, the value of belonging to a group, and for the sake of this belonging we sacrifice some of our self-centredness, because it's worthwhile to us. And even doing good to those who aren't our friends (I don't mean our enemies, I mean just strangers) is something we sometimes do for selfish reasons - for the nice warm feeling it will give us, or for a chance to do something interesting, to get out of the house, to have a sense of purpose. (I speak as one who in December 1994 went to help prepare and serve Christmas Dinner to homeless people simply because I'd split up from someone after a very long relationship and was suddenly faced with the prospect of spending Christmas Day on my own. Good deeds? yes. Unselfish motives? not quite.)
What I find odd is how easy people find it to believe in the goodness of humanity despite all the evidence to the contrary, whilst at the same time they seem to find it so difficult to believe in the goodness of God. Which of these demands a greater amount of irrational faith?
It felt like a bit of a ping pong match. He kept saying: look at all those awful murderers who were Christians (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition etc), and I kept saying: just because these people called themselves Christians, that doesn't mean anything. He kept giving me more and more examples of people who did awful things whilst calling themselves Christians, and I kept saying: just because people call themselves Christians that doesn't mean they've been born again. People who really love Jesus wouldn't be able to do that sort of thing.
The other side of the coin was him saying: there aren't any Christians who do live up to the teachings of Jesus about love and about turning the other cheek. At some point he accepted that maybe there are a few, but he reckons they are very few. I said: I don't know the numbers, nobody does except for God, but my point is, if you want to see the teachings of Jesus lived out, don't look at the nominal Christians, look at born-again believers.
He suggested that even Christians who do good works, even they only help fellow Christians. At this point I was outraged. How dare he write off all the works of charity being done all over the world, Christians who go out to live in all sorts of difficult conditions to help the poor and needy simply out of the love that Jesus has put in their hearts!
But this is where we run into the stumbling block of humanism - faith in the goodness of humankind. For a humanist, all the examples I could bring of Christians showing kindness would be of no value, because to him the kindness of human beings is taken for granted - he believes we are naturally good. To him the aberration is when we do evil.
Whereas I look at the old me, the natural, sinful me, and I know how much evil there was in there. I know that I was not born good - far from it. I was born selfish and self-centred, and consideration for others is something I had to be taught. We like to think of babies as sweet and innocent but the truth is we are born completely self-centred, not yet aware of other people and only aware of our own needs and wants. When a baby is hungry, it cries. When it's uncomfortable, it cries. When it cries and doesn't get what it needs quickly enough, it screams. It takes us time to grow and learn to appreciate other people as separate human beings with their own needs and feelings, to learn that other people can be hurt by what we do or say - and once we've learned that, we have choices: do we use the power that we have to hurt others, or do we withhold that power? Sadly for many people the answer is: depends if you'd get caught or not. Through being punished we learn not to do things that we shouldn't. We are taught certain ways of behaviour that are deemed acceptable by society. I remember at school when someone in my class had upset another pupil, the teacher made him stand in front of everyone and apologise. The teacher could make him say the words, but was he really sorry? Was he sorry that he had upset the other pupil? Or was he just sorry that he had got caught and that he had to go through the humiliation of standing in front of the whole class and apologising?
It would be nice to think that human beings are nice and good and loving. But open the newspaper, turn on the television, check out the news any given day and you will see plenty of examples of people being far from good. Are all of these examples really the exceptions? We like to think so. We like to hear about some particularly awful murder and think: look at him, he's evil. Because then we can allow ourselves the comfort of believing that we, in comparison, are good. But are we really so good? Are our hearts full of love for everyone? Even my humanistic cousin, who believes in the goodness of humankind, says of course he doesn't love his enemies - but what sort of goodness is it that is kept only for those who are nice to you? (Yes, Jesus said something like this.) Being kind to your friends is relatively easy, being nice to those who are nice to you is relatively easy. If you're nice to your friends, that doesn't make you good, it makes you pretty normal and sensible - very early on in life we learn about the value of friendships, the value of belonging to a group, and for the sake of this belonging we sacrifice some of our self-centredness, because it's worthwhile to us. And even doing good to those who aren't our friends (I don't mean our enemies, I mean just strangers) is something we sometimes do for selfish reasons - for the nice warm feeling it will give us, or for a chance to do something interesting, to get out of the house, to have a sense of purpose. (I speak as one who in December 1994 went to help prepare and serve Christmas Dinner to homeless people simply because I'd split up from someone after a very long relationship and was suddenly faced with the prospect of spending Christmas Day on my own. Good deeds? yes. Unselfish motives? not quite.)
What I find odd is how easy people find it to believe in the goodness of humanity despite all the evidence to the contrary, whilst at the same time they seem to find it so difficult to believe in the goodness of God. Which of these demands a greater amount of irrational faith?
