Prejudice

Often when I read famous and influencial Christians of the past I am surprised by their compassion and their liberalism.

I don't know why I should be.

On some level I have been convinced by the propeganda of our age, that compassion was invented in the late 20th century, that tolerance is a new idea, that the benighted imbeciles of yesteryear were all barbaric, savage, violent, hateful and narrow-minded compared to the open, accepting, loving folks of today.

I expect eccumenicism to be new.

So I expect people like Neibur and Barth and even Bonhoeffer to be coldly intellectual--theologians removed from the practicalities of everyday life to a formulaic and unforgiving ideology. Instead I find that the practicalities of everyday life are what they all really care about, that what each is primarily concerned with is how to live out God's love to the people around them. And I find that Bonhoeffer took God's love for the people of Germany so seriously that he--in what seems like an act of desparation--abandoned passifism and tried to assasinate Hitler, only to be executed as a traiter to Germany. And I'm surprised.

So I expect John Milton to be legalistic and morally absolutist--"puritanical" if you will. Instead I find him writing about grace, about God's love and the human response to it, about freedom. Even about the doctrine of divorce as a mercy. And I'm surprised.

I expect Augustine to be acetic and repressed, with strange authoritarian leanings. I hear rumours that he invented Just War, that he thought he could force people to be Christians. Instead I find him writing primarily about God's love. I find him arguing passionately that nothing conquers but truth, and the victory of truth is love. And I'm surprised.

And today, I hear Christians condemning each other and the world, I see Christians being bigoted and uncharitable and unloving. I see us giving Jesus a bad name. And then I watch tv and a sappy manipulative commercial for World Vision comes on, and I am about to change the channel when I realize that World Vision is a Christian organization. And so is the Red Cross. And MCC, and the Christian Children's Fund, and it occurs to me that I've never heard of the Atheist's Children's Fund. And I'm surprised.

But I shouldn't be.