Fundamentalism: Christ as Teacher of False Doctrine

Posted on October 26, 2004 in Morals & Ethics

When I challenge flamboyant Christians who support George W. Bush with the Beatitudes or other appropriate words of Christ, I often get an accusation that I teach false doctrine! It’s telling that they know so little of the Way of Christ which isn’t so much a legal code (there are only two commandments prescribed*) but more of a world view. Those who gathered who stoned the woman who had sinned gathered to fulfill the law. Christ dismissed them with a telling point. He told the woman simply “Go and sin no more.”

Legalists often find themselves turning to authority figures such as a minister or another mentor at those times when a lover of the holy closet confronts them. This is telling: it indicates that they have trouble living with anything but rigidity. “Help me to find a loophole” and, often, when an answer does come back, it is glib. When I raised the example of Christ at the stoning, one Fundamentalist — a manager who prided himself in the profits he made on behalf of his capitalist owners — put the accent on the words “Go and sin no more”. In his estimation, this would have validated the crowd coming back if she slipped ever so slightly and executing her.

Did he not hear what Jesus said? Christ spoke out against the sharia of his time. Moreover, the message he delivered to both the crowd and the woman was the same: Go and sin no more.

This so-called Christian commits the one sin which the Bible denounces more than any other: the wanting of more at the expense of others. His problem is that he wants oppression at his fingertips so he can keep his workers coming to the job every day, so he can maximize profits even if it makes them sick, depressed, or lost. Because he gives money to a church, his minister undoubtably extolls him as a most holy and devout patron. Which means that neither is.

The tragedy of Fundamentalist Christianity is that it returns us to the very kind of society Jesus sought to reform. Many modern Christians flee the church and either run to another faith or go into hiding. I have met atheists who strike me as better Christians than Christians because they regard the social message — how we are to live with one another as central to their ethics. The True Christian often gets angry and turns over the tables consecrated to moneychangers. He or she may be a Communist who has turned to that ideology out of frustration with the blatant hypocrisy of the churches. I have watched many friends struggle against the Sadducees who wear neckties. Some become lost sheep. Others discover the Paradise Within where the True Christian — a Lover of the Universe, — resides.

My answer to those who denounce Christ as a false teacher when I quote him is simply advice: go to the closet and talk to God. If your mentor counsels you against living as Christ did — as a lily of the field — then it is about time you sought out the Ultimate as your one and only Teacher. Existence isn’t a matter of doctrine: it is growth in the Spirit.

To put it as the Lost Sheep-Saint Jack Keruoac said: “One man practising kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.” Instead of living out the cruelty of the Law, practice Kindness.

*The Buddhist reduces these two commandments to one: Love the Universe.