I got a comment on my blog about The Passion that stirred some passions of mine. There was a pointer to an article about a reformed Presbyterian group in Belfast that made some public comments, which were blantantly anti-Catholic.

The statement that got me: “the message of the film is that of Roman Catholicism, not biblical Christianity”. How utterly condescending, arrogant, and totally clueless about the values that said Bible stresses: love, peace, doing it unto the “least of these”. When these values are displaced by insiting upon “correct interpretation” to the extent that disagreement is tantamount to “lack of faith”, then orthodoxy has sprung a leak from which it does not recover. It has lost its reason for existence. When “right opions” become more imprtant than actual living of the values Jesus taught and lived, then “belief” has become something entirley intellectual and divorced from life.

Of course, this is the problem so many religions have in their oftentime not-so-illustrious histories: “orthodox” followers take offense at the application some prophets have, and consider it a threat when their leadership style comes under question (and Jesus certainly challenged the “theological senibilities” of the Jewish leaders who happened to be in power.)

I honestly believe that a hindu or a Moslem or an athiest is closer to the Kingdom than a so-called “Christian” if their lives are lived with more love, more compassion, more concern for their fellow humans than a “Christian” who is of the type that is exrtremely anal about their orthodoxy and yet it has no seeming effect on their level of concern for the people around them. Because the Christian says “I believe in Jesus as Saviour” does not put them in higher favor with God than that of a non-confessing Christian who neverthless lives from something tht has happened in their heart and life out of which they live a life committed to love for one’s neighbor, or advocating for the removal of some injustice (also including the love part).

Fundamantalists will scream “Works Righteousness!” Well, yeah. I belive there must be FRUITS. If not, then the Faith is without substance, and USELESS. Like many groups in many religions, the theisitc values are distorted beyond all reognitin or recovery of “compassionate values”. And where this irks me the most, of course, is within Christianity and within the Baptist denomination, and the Southern Baptists (but I won’t go into that here).

Yes, I believe that Gandhi was actually a Christian (even though many sort of shrug off the statement of his that “I am a Hindu, AND a Muslim, AND a Christian”). I belive so because although he was a Hindu, he embodied a life of service and compassion for fellow humans that dwarfs that of most people…..and I bleive that it was a vision of humanity and society that God gave him, and he lived out within the bounds and context of a Hindu faith, but one which also produced its own “guardians of orthodoxy” who despised Gandhi’s reaching out to Muslims, and had him assasinated while saying prayers with other Hindus (the one who shot him and had him shot were Hindus who thought him blasphemous…….sound familiar?