Sherry Chandler

Knowing that I have an interest in how Christianity has been politicized in this country, a reader pointed me to this Bill McKibbon article from Harper’s 2005 entitled The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong. I’ve been trying to digest it for a week or so, thinking how I might talk about it here without just simply throwing fair use to the winds and excerpting every third sentence. It really is that good, in my humble opinion.

Mr. McKibbon begins like this:

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments*, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture.

You remember Ben Franklin? He’s the guy who invented the “Christian work ethic” while himself believing that it’s better to look busy than to be busy. The guy whose daily calendars and self-improvement lists inspired that other great American, Jay Gatsby.

Ben Franklin was a great American but he was not really all that much a Christian. Continues Mr. McKibbon:

The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

The problem is that Americans never let anything as mundane as science or fact interfere with what they believe.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

Mr. McKibbon argues that what we practice in this country and call Christianity should more accurately be called Franklinity: the idea that the righteous are rewarded here on earth and the poor deserve to be so. Like Jay Gatsby, we all believe if we work hard, live clean, and make self-improvement lists, we’ll wind up among the idle rich. (And if we have to sell a little illegal booze along the way, maybe run a few guns, well, so be it.)

Franklinity doesn’t have so much trouble with the concept do unto others as you would have others do unto you. That so-called Golden Rule is pretty much universal, though I tend to think of it as Greek. It’s a very practical concept, one that keeps the wheels of society well greased. But McKibbon argues that the central tenet of Christianity is much more radical than that:

36″Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
38This is the first and greatest commandment.
39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
— Matthew 22:36-40

By the way, “love your neighbor as yourself” is part of the Mosaic law, too, so Jesus is following precedent here:

18You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
—Leviticus 19:18

But this version, while it stops the revenge cycle, seems to keep the love within the tribe. McKibbon thinks Jesus applies this commandment more universally:

Love your neighbor as yourself: although its rhetorical power has been dimmed by repetition, that is a radical notion, perhaps the most radical notion possible. Especially since Jesus, in all his teachings, made it very clear who the neighbor you were supposed to love was: the poor person, the sick person, the naked person, the hungry person. The last shall be made first; turn the other cheek; a rich person aiming for heaven is like a camel trying to walk through the eye of a needle. On and on and on—a call for nothing less than a radical, voluntary, and effective reordering of power relationships, based on the principle of love.

It’s the Beatitudes, not the Ten Commandments, that we should be posting on the courthouse wall.*

Think about that.

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Added note: Not all proponents of placing the Ten Commandments on the courthouse wall can quote more than a few of these same commandments. For reference, this Colbert Report segment.