Sometimes I see something happening in the real world and compare it to how things work in religion. That happened this week as I watched a drama unfold around a gaming company’s big new update to their flagship game.
When Cody Herrera–who is accused of the rape of a 14-year-old girl–came before Judge Randy Stoker, he certainly got lucky. He was getting a paragon of Christian morality who knew exactly–EXACTLY–how to handle this situation.
In Christians’ prophecies, we can see the shape of the future Christians want–and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, will never ever get. (Come for the fisking, stay for the Firefly memes. I was feeling super-snarky today.)
Today we’re going to take a brief segue before we plunge into the murky world of Christian prognostication to check out a story that features all the aspects of fundagelicalism that we’ve come to know around here: blatant hypocrisy, illicit sex, and a denouement that is by turns horrifying and baffling. But there’s more going on here than just standard-issue Christian hypocrisy. This story is part of the overarching narrative about exactly why Christianity is failing.
There’s always a reason, in religion, for the stuff we see religious people doing. It might not be a great reason, no, but there’s always one there somewhere. Sometimes there are even several. Nowhere is that rule more in evidence than when we consider how terrible Christians are at selling their religion to others.
Last time we met up, we were talking about the differences between ambassadors and salespeople–and making the point that Christians may think of themselves as ambassadors, but they actually behave and react a lot more like salespeople. But they keep acting like they are totally ambassadors for Jesus. There’s a reason for it–and I’ll show you why today.
I’m a child of the 80s, which means that I’ve pretty much memorized Top Gun. There’s this quote in it that’s always stuck with me–and which illustrates a serious shortcoming in the Christian religion’s followers.
One of the biggest markers of modern Christianity–and one of the reasons it is eventually going to fall apart–is that its adherents are incapable of testing and evaluating their ideas in a credible way, which leads them to do really harmful things to themselves and others as they flail around with their magical thinking in hopes of fixing problems that magical thinking just can’t fix.
We are in the midst of a vast change in morality that is every bit as epochal as the Great Vowel Shift that brought us modern English pronunciation. This Great Morality Shift is sweeping us into a new era of Christianity, defining its adherents’ behavior and goals for years to come. Like most huge changes, though, this is one that is difficult to see while it’s happening. It took me a while to notice it myself. But now I see clear indications of where the religion is heading. I’ll show you one of the biggest indications of that change here today.
I’ve been noticing for some time that Christians’ morality appears to be shifting–very subtly, but it definitely is. The Christianity I behold today sometimes seems like it has only its name in common with what I experienced as a young person. I’m seeing a lot of Christian leaders remarking upon a new study that’s come out about morality, but they’re getting something very wrong about that study.