OVO

On October 18th, 2004, the emergency dispatch for Taylor County in Detroit, Michigan got a call from a 62-year-old Christian and Eagle Scout. The caller (let’s call him Christian) claimed that he had just shot a man because the man did not believe in God. The man who was shot (let’s call him Atheist) was lying on the floor, and Christian was standing over him “in case he moved. I want to make sure he’s dead.” The emergency dispatch person asked Christian how many times he had shot Atheist. “Hopefully enough,” Christian replied. The police went to Christian’s house, found Atheist with a major trauma wound to his head, several spent shotgun cartridges, a rifle, and Christian. On the way to the police station, Christian told the police he “did not want to deal with anyone that did not believe in God.”

As an Eagle Scout, Christian is used to being a dedicated member of an organization that excludes atheists. As a Christian, Christian is used to being a dedicated member of an organization that advocates killing anyone who does not share his faith. And as the Boy Scouts have been around for quite some time, and Christianity even longer, the rest of us should know that this is what they believe and this is what they do.

Yet every day in which I bring up the behavior of people like Christian, I am told that he is not a real Christian. A real Christian doesn’t do things like that, and since he did them he isn’t a real Christian. While there is a single organization that has the authority to say who and who is not a Boy Scout, there is no definititive source for determining who is and is not a Christian. If you say you are a Christian, you are as much a Christian as anyone else who says they are. And so on this level alone, I can argue that he is indeed a real Christian. Add to this that the Bible (closest thing to a rule book Christians have) supports his behavior and I have two arguments that he is indeed a real Christian. Add to this the history of murder, on the individual and mass scale, there’s three arguments. Add that the majority of people in prison in the USA are Christians, four arguments and do I need to continue? All right then, I will.

There is a basic problem with the logic of saying that he’s not a real Christian because real Christians do not behave in that way. It is a claim that can be made, but the first time (much less the 10,00th time) that the claimant meets a Christian who does behave in that way, they have three choices. They can revise their claim that real Christians do kill people for their faith, or they can maintain their claim while knowing it is false, or they can say that good behavior is the defining characteristic of being a real Christian. The first choice is the honest one, and the one that benefits most both Christians and non-Christians. The second choice is the one in which deception, either of self or others, is the only means to progress: if you can successfully keep yourself or others in the dark, then you can maintain your beliefs. And maintaining one lie always takes another, and another, and while you’re at it why not just do any damn thing you please and say God told you to do it?

The third choice is the ‘real Christian’ route. What these people are saying is this: ‘(a) people with good behavior are people with good behavior; (b) people with good behavior I call Christians; (c) Christians are people with good behavior (from a & b); (d) therefore, if someone does not have good behavior I do not call them a Christian.’ This is a trick of re-defining what is being discussed. It is the same as saying all swans are white, and that any black swan must therefore not be a real swan.

The fact is, Christian is a real Christian. His faith is entirely unable to ‘clean their own house.’ Christians not only fail to prevent things like the Crusades, or the election of illiterate war criminals and tyrants to the highest posts in the land, or the ongoing terror of the Lord’s Resistance Army – Christians tend to support these things in large numbers (or ignore them in larger numbers). There isn’t a problem of distinguishing between real Christians and not-real Christians, at least not among atheists. That is a problem of ‘house cleaning’ that Christianity is responsible for, and so far (two thousand years and counting) they have failed. So perhaps – just perhaps – the problem is Christianity (and religion) itself.

[American Samizdat, November 5 2004. - Trevor Blake]