A Dude In Bedlam

It has been interesting to track the recent reputation of Christianity in America, especially the Evangelical “brand” of Christianity. What has made things especially interesting is my awakening to the great issues which now threaten the global economy and the modern industrialized societies of the First World.

In pondering these issues, I have frequently been arrested by the reaction of many spokespeople for the American Religious Right when they have been confronted with these issues. I think of people like the late Jerry Falwell who said that global warming as an issue was a tool of the devil to distract the Church from the work of proclaiming the Gospel, or James Dobson, who tried to censure the president of the National Association of Evangelicals for speaking out against manmade pollution. I think of the Bible-thumping Republican politicians who have recently bitten the political dust, people like Mark Sanford and Paul Stanley. I think of Monk and Neagle and their pro-Iraq War song, “That's What Soldiers Do.” I think of the flag-waving cheerleaders for the Republican Party who held up John McCain and Sarah Palin as paragons of American godliness during the last election. Then there's the arresting spectacle of Sarah Palin herself, and all of her recent pronouncements against that evil “Muslim,” Barack Obama ;) .

Those on the Left have quite rightly ridiculed many of the things they have seen coming out of the American evangelical community, including its materialism, war-mongering and hypocrisy. But they have gone farther, holding up our examples of idiots as a proof that all of Christianity is therefore idiotic and therefore invalid. To me, such a conclusion is intellectually dishonest; yet there are so few public examples of people who are both reasonable and Biblical, who might be able to refute the conclusions of the Left.

This is a shame. The Good Book itself says, “Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.” (Romans 12:1, World English Bible) The word rendered “spiritual” is logikos (Greek), and literally means “agreeable to reason, reasonable, logical.” By this “reasonable,” “logical” service, we are to “... be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.” – Romans 12:2. In other words, Christians are to be a display of the goodness and reasonableness of the perfect will of God.

I would like to be an example of that reasonableness, though I must admit that I'm not always willing to bear the cost of such reasonableness. I look at the antics of many of my so-called “brethren” and feel at times like one of the few sane people in a madhouse (a “dude” in Bedlam, if you will, with all due apologies to the long-deceased author of the song “A Maid in Bedlam” and apologies to the John Renbourn Group). Yet as much as in me is, I will try by both word and deed to prove the reasonableness of the Faith. Hopefully some of that proof will be seen on this blog. So I proceed, cast upon the grace of Christ, to Whom I come again and again to be cured of the same insanity I so often see in my brethren. “For all have sinned...”