Religion must keep up with changing times
Richard Swainson
We are all sinners. Sinners go to Hell . . . among other pizza franchises. It’s the fundamental premise of the Christian faith, if you can still use the term ‘‘fundamental’’ in this context.
Certainly, it’s what I remember being preached at me during mandatory morning sermons in the late 1970s.
Why then all the fuss over an Australian rugby player who feels
inclined to state as much on his social media platform?
Israel Folau’s rant could have been that of the Reverend Armstrong, a fire and brimstone Baptist who, to the evident amusement of the teaching staff and possibly in violation of sex education legislation, warned my female classmates to ‘‘save themselves for marriage’’.
Had Armstrong taken Leviticus 18:20 as his text – ‘‘You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination’’ – we would likely still be in the Sunset Intermediate assembly hall, 40 years later. You could argue that what passed for basic Christianity in 1979 doesn’t pass muster today.
Religion must keep up with the times.
Scriptural interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.
At the same time as Armstrong was talking up virginity, far more influential theological minds were at work.
As certain scholars from the hallowed halls of Oxford and Cambridge made clear that year, if Christ teaches that ‘‘blessed are the cheese makers’’, it is ‘‘obviously, not meant to be taken literally’’.
Our Lord and Saviour really meant to bless ‘‘any manufacturers of dairy products’’.
I guess the overwhelming percentage of our farming community and all those over salaried b ...... ds from Fonterra aren’t going to Hell, after all.
Funny, I would have thought despoiling the water table and polluting the rivers just might result in metaphysical comeuppance. It’s always amused me how religion purports to deal in universal and absolute truths yet retains a capacity to accommodate itself to the prevailing political and cultural conditions.
A commandment that states ‘‘thou shalt not kill’’ would seem to leave precious little wiggle room yet has there ever been a war mainstream churches haven’t got behind?
As current reflection on the Canterbury Super Rugby side’s sword-and-horseplay has reminded us, often religion has instigated conflicts. From the Crusades to the Northern Ireland troubles, the Iraniraq conflict to current tensions in the Kashmir, faith stokes the fire of hatred and intolerance.
Eisenhower warned of the Industrial-military Complex – he might just as well prophesied of the Religion-military Complex, a collusion between misplaced superstition and a desire for selfdestruction. How many virgins are waiting in the afterlife?
Is there anything more seductive than glorious martyrdom for an imagined deity?
Where is Israel Folau in all of this?
A Christian soldier, no doubt, marching onward, without the stomach for hypocrisy.
He believes what he believes. That he feels compelled to share this ‘‘good news’’ is surely within evangelical traditions.
Perish the thought, but is there much difference between the Folau faith and Michael Jones sitting out Sunday games? If you asked Sid Going circa 1972 if he believed that sinners go to Hell, or what the Bible says about homosexuals, what would he have said?
I doubt either Jones or Going would be as tactless as Folau.
They would likely put emphasis on repentance, love and salvation.
But what do they believe? Actually, it’s nobody else’s business.
One of the most distasteful things about the Folau affair is the social and media pressure placed upon his wife to make some public pronouncement, to either stand by her spouse and be publicly vilified or distance herself and risk marital discord and church retribution.
It brings back memories of studying the Elizabethan era in high school.
If subsequent treatment of Catholics did not always bear out the sentiment, Elizabeth I famously told her subjects upon ascending the throne that she would not ‘‘make windows into men’s souls’’.
It’s advice we should all follow. Let Maria Folau’s beliefs be a matter between herself and her conscience. I stand with Marx in seeing religion as opium for the masses, but persecution of the faithful is no way forward.
Having ignored clear warnings, Folau is the author of his own fate, engineer of his own martyrdom.
The Wallabies will not miss him at the World Cup.
All righteous thinkers will rejoice in his fall.
Yet to meet his prejudice with prejudice of our own will create more problems than it solves.
Heaven and Hell are imaginary realms. Let those who believe in them be free to invent entry criteria.