Wave goodbye to America, say hello to the garden.
Motivation, please come back. I only have several more weeks left of this semester. I'm not asking too much, am I?
I like how relatively straightforward papers seem to take me all night simply because I cannot think of enough to say to fill the quota length of a rough draft ( Read more... )
I like how relatively straightforward papers seem to take me all night simply because I cannot think of enough to say to fill the quota length of a rough draft ( Read more... )
The thesis of the article by Bill McKibben is essentially that the predominately Christian United States has abandoned the central teaching of Jesus Christ ("love your neighbor as yourself") in favor of some strange brew of individualistic fervor mixed with a lust for violence and death. Certainly, this is an old argument updated with a new and interesting twist (a liberal openly advocating a return to the Word of Christ). I was very intrigued by this premise and had hoped for a compotent and logical elaboration, but that was sadly far from what I got. The strength of the paradox argument soon crumbles under its own weight.
Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans-most American Christians-are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
This is the perception that McKibben sets out to rectify. I figured he would explain why in fact the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is wrong, indeed "counter-biblical." Even with a cursory glance though, it stands to reason that the two phrases are so diametrically opposed as McKibben would have us believe. It is indeed possible to love your neighbor while at the same time extolling him to help himself. And weirdly, it seems that McKibben argues with me when he states in the middle of the article that: "It may, in fact, be true that “God helps those who help themselves,” both financially and emotionally. (Certainly fortune does.) But if so it’s still a subsidiary, secondary truth, more Franklinity than Christianity." If the "Franklinity" is a secondary principle, then what explains his consernation? He would have had a much stronger argument if his thesis was that Ben Franklin's interpertation of the Bible had overtaken the original message of the Sermon on the Mount. But he doesn't argue that.
Essentially, he argues that since there is a supermajority of the population that claims to be Christian and the country was supposedly founded on Judeo-Christian ideals (nevermind that the founders of the Constitution explicitly didn't want to have a dominate, official religion and that Thomas Jefferson himself was a Deist) that the phrase should be the basis of American society. He wants to instill this ideal the society. Religious freedom, indeed.
McKibben lists several examples where America has fallen way behind in striving to reach the teachings of Jesus.
(continued below)
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