TERRORISTS

Karl Marx once famously quipped that religion is the opium of the people,

By that he was saying that religion is used to keep people happy, to keep them complacent, and to keep them in line.

Basically, if you be good and follow the rules and do not stir up any trouble, you are being faithful to God, who is in charge anyway, and you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams in the afterlife.

To be fair, Marx was right that too often this is what religion becomes. I saw it growing up where some of the more strict baptists I knew believed the world to be a vale of tears from which they would one day be rescued. And when you see this life as a place you need to be rescued from, what difference does anything really make? Why recycle for example, if there is no value to this world. Why worry about the environment? Why try to change things?

As long as you are good, follow the rules, confess your faith… you will be rescued from the hell that is life on earth.

If you are a Christian I am thinking this might not sound all that crazy. There is at least a part of that way of thinking built into every denominations way of understanding the faith. I just don’t think that most of us are so black and white anymore. But when someone dies we console each other with the thought that they are in heaven, and we make half hearted jokes about getting rewarded for our good behaviour.

I feel that sometimes we conveniently forget our own foibles when we look out into the world and condemn others.

So I want to suggest to you that when a fundamentalist does something terrible, when there are suicide bombers, when there are death threats, whenever religious extremism resorts to violence, their thinking is not very far off from our own.

Religious extremists come in many forms, don’t forget. There was that guy in Norway who shot all the teenagers, there was Timothy McVeigh in the states, I could do you a whole long list. But here is an interesting fact as reported by the Globe and Mail, 90% of the worlds terrorist attacks are performed by non Muslims, while the number one, overwhelmingly, targeted group of terrorism, is Muslims.

Terrorism, Murder, even rudeness have their genesis in this idea I have been talking about, that this world, these people, life itself, is only temporary. That there is something better waiting on the other side.

But for some reason we convince ourselves that Islamic extremists who are willing to strap a bomb on themselves, or open fire on strangers are completely crazy for thinking their reward is in heaven.

It is also a very Christian way to think. Think of the crusades, for example.

Think of Waco, the Jonestown Murders, even Charles Manson. These people all felt that death was preferable because it would usher in salvation. And they are all Christian.

Which brings me to the latest bit of London terror, the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque. The media plays it up as if this guy was mentally ill and that is why he did it, which certainly is true. But he was also anti Muslim, and Christian.

I know I am circling around a topic without naming it. So here it is, the only true religious value is love. That is it, pure and simple. And the worst, the absolute worst people in the world for disregarding this truth are Christians - the people who claim to follow a person whose one message was that all of religious truth can be boiled down to “love God, love others, love yourself.”

That is not opiate stuff - that is not get into heaven stuff - that is hard truth, and hard work. And the first step to getting back in track is to admit that we are the ones who got off track in the first place, just saying.

Speaking of Sex....

I was reading about a taboo subject today – sex! And particularly about the Christian understanding of sex. You all know what it is. Sex is bad. Or at the very least the slippery slope to sin. But have you ever wondered why we feel that way?

After all, it seems pretty much hardwired into us that it both feels good, and is necessary to make more of us. But that is the problem, when it feels good we think we are doing something wrong.

The person to blame for this is Augustine. He was one of the original, and earliest writers about what Christianity should look like. He was a Bishop in Africa some 300 years after Jesus. He wrote these massive books on the church, on faith, on belief, and his writings became the norm for our thinking about church.

But he had issues. Most of them having to do with sex. He had a mistress. He had boyfriends. He had an illegitimate child. He got in more trouble than all of these fallen mega church pastor's put together. And the root of his trouble was sex. Or at least, that is what he felt. He could not control his temptations.

And so he developed something you have heard of, but was never, and is not, in the Bible. Original Sin.

Yup, Augustine made that up to explain why he could not stop having affairs. Original Sin was lust, and lust was injected into us as unborn children because we were conceived through, gasp, sex. This was not natural, as most biologists would feel, but a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

Therefore every single person is born sinful – and every single person is incapable of controlling or accepting their sinful sexual urges.

This is a brief history lesson and ancient theological explanation but I just want you to have some background for the idea that our Christian views on sex and sexuality are actually crazy. They are not from the Bible, they are not from Jesus, they are probably not even from the Holy Spirit, they are from some guilt driven sense of remorse in one man's writing.

The absolute only thing Jesus ever says about sex is that if you are married, you should not have sex with someone else. That is it, the entire ethical standpoint of Jesus Christ as to what is good and bad about sex.

The fact that we took Augustine's views on sex and made them doctrine is the equivalent of taking Charles Manson's views on group dynamics and making them the law in terms of how we build churches. It is crazy.

I have felt this for a long time, but now a woman named Debra Hirsch has written a book called Redeeming Sex. In it she points out that all of this is based on the physical aspects of sex and ignores the emotional and spiritual component – it ignores how sex can be an act of love, of passion, of intimacy which brings two people together in an extremely close and loving way.

She argues for us to start over. For us to realize that everything the church taught about sexuality for the last 1500 years has been based on Augustine's guilt.

It is hard to change your belief about something mid stream. I doubt we can really start over. But it is certainly worth starting to admit that some of what we think is just weird. How can sex be something so terrible if it creates such cute babies, for example?

Even if we could just start to make the change to thinking, sex is natural and everyone does it, that might begin to swing the pendulum. Who knows what we could do if we stopped fighting about this!

Are 'hipster Christians' really that different?

FAITH TODAY Published Saturday September 11th, 2010

Have you ever heard of Hipster Christians?

Me neither. That is, until this week when I all of a sudden realized it is everywhere down in the United States, thanks to some American preachers I follow on Twitter.

According to the press, admittedly, some of their own press, Hipster Christianity is where church and cool collide. Catchy phrase, that.

The problem is, I have no idea what they are on about.

Here are some qualifications for being a "Hipster:" You might have an artistic temperament, or play in a garage band; you might have piercings or a tattoo; you like movies, books and music that is well respected and well, normal; you don't listen to Christian Contemporary music; don't like political evangelists, or televangelists; and don't think people are going to hell.

I have to tell you that I have never been called hip in my life. I sometimes thought I was cool, but certainly not in a hip way. I think you would like me though. I am also very much a mainstream protestant minister - and have been one for 16 years now.

My favourite band is Third Eye Blind. My favourite movies are the same as most of yours - although I am a guy reared on Monty Python, so I have some stupid humour problems. Love Steve Carell, for example.

I read graphic novels; my favourites are Planetary and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I play a level 80 Paladin in World of Warcraft online.

My ear was pierced three times until I was 30. I have a tattoo and want another one. I dream of owning a Harley.

I have mostly dressed as Dracula for Halloween and have read and seen every vampire movie there is.

Oh, and I write science fiction for a hobby.

I also visit in hospitals, council people with problems, volunteer my time for organizations involved in change, sit with the dying, mourn with the widows, give to the church and World Vision and the World Wildlife Fund.

I hope you see the point.

Almost every one of the people I know is a Christian. We all drink. We all play Xbox. We all can't wait for Harry Potter to come out. Half of us love comic books and the other half think we are stupid for loving comic books.

To me, "Hipster Christian" is a definition of normal person.

In what far-fetched corner of the galaxy is someone who likes movies, songs and stories that are critically and artistically judged among the best of the best some strange sort of new evolution of humanity?

The labelling has to stop.

I don't even understand why we have Protestants and Catholics anymore. The things we fought about back at the end of the Middle Ages certainly don't matter anymore, let alone the 10 million denominations - and now we are subdividing denominations according to fads?

People do not come to church because they think the people in church are not like them, plain and simple.

Jesus spent his life trying to be "just some guy who understands what you are going through" and he changed the world for the better because of it.

The truth is those inside the church are exactly like those on the outside.

They make mistakes, they make stupid choices, they spend too much time watching TV and eat junk food too much of the time. By creating a whole movement that says "hey, there are Christians who are relevant, who are hip..." you are implicitly stating that the bulk of Christianity is irrelevant and anachronistic.

Which is a lie.

Jesus was a social engineer who lost his life because of his politics. He was not trying to get people into Heaven. He was not trying to leave the world behind. He was trying to introduce religious values into everyday life.

Pray - because it connects you to something greater than yourself. Be humble - you are not the creator of your destiny, the universe is. Love - everyone is connected and we all need each other. Respect - there but for the grace of God.

You get the idea. Stop imagining me as something I am not. Those who are religious, they are pro-human, pro-love, and possibly the community you are looking for, hip or not.