Toxic Christianity and the Little Red Book

It takes a leap of faith to go from historical Joshua (Jesus) to theological Jesus . . . but faith is highly subjective

Ron Jenkins is again spewing forth his toxic Christianity. After reading his earlier letter (“World history vindicates Israel”, Guardian, 11 July 2018) and his recent missive (“Headlines Reflect”, Guardian, Nov. 20, 2018), I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Being a materialist, empiricist, and secular humanist, no doubt condemns me, by Jenkins’s standards, to being the Anti-Christ.

My wife, who is the daughter of a former Newfoundland politician, lay preacher, and church elder, urged me to refrain from replying to Jenkins’s provocations. Why Jenkins insists on invoking Scripture strikes me as being completely irrelevant to understanding the many socioeconomic problems and issues plaguing the world today, including the current middle-east situation.

Jenkins’s religious incantations remind me of someone chanting slogans from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. This is pedantic and obscurantist religious hairsplitting at its worst.

Such “true believers” are not merely intellectually flawed, they are fundamentally totalitarian. He gives religion a bad name. Jenkins’s entire approach is highly suspect, especially when one places his various biblical statements or citations within the history of Christianity. Religious scholars now know enough about the many discrepancies between the sequence, dating, and wording of the various Synoptic Gospels and letters to call into question whether they are historically accurate, or whether they were written and edited by mortals over the years for their own purposes. Biblical interpretation is a game.

Indeed, it can be argued that the history of Christianity, and the evolution of various texts, undermines Christian theology. As one clergyman said to me, it takes a leap of faith to go from the historical Joshua (Jesus) to the theological Jesus. But faith is highly subjective and hardly qualifies as historical fact. So why look for answers to contemporary geopolitical and problems based on such weak or dubious historical evidence. Jenkins, while long on fire and brimstone, provides absolutely no evidence that, “world history validates Israel,” or that our many current social problems are a result of declining religious belief. Indeed, a world without religion would be a step forward.

Furthermore, Jenkins cherrypicks his biblical references. He fails to acknowledge that Ishmael, Isaac’s older half- brother by Abraham, was also promised a great nation because he, Ishmael, was of the seed of Abraham.

In Genesis, it is said that He “would make a nation of the son of the bondswoman, Ishmael (21:11-13).”

Thus, Scripture states that Ishmael and Isaac were both promised a nation. But one group’s homeland, is another group’s Nakba.

But one can only wonder why Jenkins felt it necessary to invoke Jesus (Joshua) since Jesus was a practicing Orthodox Jew his entire life. And as a good Jewish boy he had profound differences with the Jewish establishment of his day, but he never was a Christian. So why invoke him?

Joshua despised the money changers, hypocrites and bullies.

Theocratic Zionists and Christian fundamentalists have two things in common. First, a belief or obsession that the Messiah is coming. And second, a total disregard for the teachings of the early, universalist Hebrew prophets, in particular Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah who severely criticized Israel and set the moral compass for Jewish values.

It is the great Rabbi Hillel who set the tone for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and contemporary ethics when he said, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man.”