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The complaint that religion leads to violence has been in the Top 10 Reasons Not to Be a Christian for decades. In the last few years I think its gone to about No.3 with a bullet

Perhaps most articulate statement of the complaint comes from Christopher Hitchens who was recently in Sydney promoting the theme of his bestselling book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. There, he writes: ‘We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true – that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser to raise an eyebrow.’ (page 6).

Christians have to acknowledge just how serious this complaint is. They also need to concede that it is partly right. Believers have done and said abominable things in the name of Christ. When we put this question to Prof Edwin Judge, one of Australia’s leading authorities of Western history, he insisted that the church has always been “a mixed bag; a mix of good and bad”.

Modern believers have to face the facts and admit that the church has often failed to live up to Christ’s standards. In this context I find it fascinating that the opening statement of Sermon on Mount, which in many ways was a speech directed against those in first century Galilee who thought the kingdom of God could be established by violence against the occupying Romans, asks us to acknowledge our failures before God: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” *(Matt 5:3). The kingdom, Jesus says, belongs not to those who think of themselves as morally and spiritually rich, but to those who look into their souls and find poverty.

Real Christians, therefore, shouldn’t have any difficulty admitting their failure to live up to the ideals of Christ; the true church likewise shouldn’t have a problem admitting the seriousness of the modern world’s complaint against it. Terrible things have been done in Christ’s name.

The seriousness of the complaint against the church should not be underestimated. But in my next post I want to point out what I think is wrong with the complaint.

John Dickson



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Simon Smart | Wednesday, October 28, 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink