Thursday, October 13, 2011

Where is the Love?

On page 76 of On Christian Teaching, Augustine writes,
"But since the human race is prone to judge sins not by the strength of the actual lust, but rather by the standard of its own practices, people generally regard as culpable only such actions as men of their own time and place tend to blame and condemn, and regard as commendable and praiseworthy only such actions as are acceptable within the conventions of their own society."
Augustine then goes on talking about how scripture only ever speaks of love and the only true way to interpret the scripture is to interpret it in a way that facilitates love. When reading, I couldn't help thinking of so many christian fundamentalists who only take the scripture at face value, and think that so many modern ideas are sinful or ungodly. I remembered this episode of the Tyra show where she had fundamentalist baptists on her show, and I feel like it fits into this blog topic. Here is a little bit of the interview on her show:
In her interview, the baptist lady and her family spoke of love many times, but to me, it seemed incredibly false. They believed that they loved homosexuals because they had the courage to tell them they were going to hell. Does that make any sense? I really don't think it does at all. Augustine writes about misinterpreting the scripture, and I, and also Augustine, think that is what this family is doing. Augustine writes
"And so it happens that if scripture enjoins something at variance with the practices of its readers, or censures something that is not at variance with them, they consider the relevant expression to be figurative." 
In this interview, these women are blindly quoting the bible and speaking out against gays while not giving any context to these quotes. Religion changes to fit society. It constantly is changing to account for the new ideas in and structures of social culture. So back when the bible was first written, things like homosexuality were not as widely present and accepted. But what Augustine is saying is that because homosexuality is present in our society, we should only look at seemingly anti-gay things in the bible as merely figurative, or ignore them altogether. This is definitely something that is not being done by the fundamental baptists.



In the same paragraph, Augustine then writes, "Scripture enjoins nothing but love, and censures nothing but lust, and mounds men's accordingly...It narrates the past, foretells the future, and demonstrates the present, but all these things serve to nourish and strengthen this love." Just listening to the things these fundamentalists are saying, one gets a sense that there is no love in what they are saying. They are so defensive and are filled with such rage and anger, and I don't think that is what religion is all about. And I commend Tyra for actually pointing out the anger that these women are displaying.  Just blindly quoting the bible with anger in your words is not in accordance with the scriptures. This is the modern age. Just love.

3 comments:

  1. I don't agree that Augustine is saying that everything that exists in today's society means that because it exists it is ok. I think what he is saying is more narrow than that. Love still has to be a factor in what is deemed "ok." If you can show love through it, then it may be deemed ok.
    While I agree that the baptist extremist is misconstruing the Bible and taking it in a different way than it was intended and showing a lot of anger, having grown up in a conservative Christian church I may be able to shed some light on how she believes she is showing love by telling gays that they are going to hell. Think of it as a parent-child situation: Your parents love you and want you to grow up right and do the right things, right? They want you to have good morals and be able to tell the difference between right and wrong. If your parents just let you do whatever you wanted from the time you were born and never told you to stop doing things that hurt other people or yourself you might still think that there is nothing wrong with beating up your brothers or sisters, or that taking things that don't belong to you is perfectly acceptable etc. Of course you may learn these things from society but in a narrow scope, your parents or whoever raises you try to direct you on the path to become a "good person." I would say, and I hope that you agree, that by doing this, parents are showing love to their children. This is very similar to the principle that the baptist extremist is trying to follow: she is rebuking gays, who she believes are doing something wrong, by telling them that they will be punished. Admittedly her convictions may be flawed in the first place and that her tactics are flawed in that at one point she says that she doesn't want to stop their filthy deeds but it starts out the same as a parent telling their child that it is wrong to hit your siblings. I definitely do not agree with the extreme point of view of the baptists in the interview, but I hope this gives you a better idea of how she could possibly believe that she is showing "love" to gays by telling them they are going to hell.

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  2. I agree that we should just love others. The second rule of loving your neighbor as yourself is really important in our society. People need to just love other people regardless of their sexuality or anything else that makes them different from others. It's not fair if someone is written off just for the life they lead.

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  3. I like the connection to the video, and at the very least we can say that Augustine has a totally different tone than fundamentalists today.. Not to mention a more flexible approach to the Bible. Though at the same time I agree with Curran above that different models for love exist, and often separate liberals and conservatives.

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