by Charles Kluepfel
3/13/. What I Say, Not What I Do
Hypocrisy in religion
Christianity is the biggest cult there is.
Luke 6:27 "But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
John 2:15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
Summary
- According to Biblical passages, Jesus did not follow his own sayings. Neither do today's Christians, and rightly so, for they represent ill-advised ideas to begin with. One cannot "turn the other cheek" or give more to the one who steals from us. Why put these ideals on a pedestal?
Criticism of fundamentalist Christianity centers on finding biblical contradictions, because of the complete literal faith such fundamentalists have in the Bible. Some are based on purported facts being described differently in one part of the Bible from another part. However, here we see reported behavior of Jesus contradicting his own admonitions to do good to one's enemy, and even though the Catholic Church doesn't take the Bible literally, certainly the spirits of these two passages are in disagreement. Now let's see how the Temple behavior is "justified":
John 2:16 He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
Selling doves, needed in the religious rituals of the Temple, was expediently carried out in the Temple, convenient to their place of use.
Contrasting pronouncement and behavior are also found in:
Mat 5:22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
Mat 23:17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?
Luke 11:40 You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?
While I was still a practicing Catholic, I thought about the situation in the Temple that so angered the normally pacifist Jesus. I thought about it when I visited the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. On the premises is a gift shop where bibles, missals, rosary beads, postcards, etc. are sold. It struck me as rather strange in light of this Gospel scene. Were these sales somehow more holy than that of the Hebrew paraphernalia? Steve Allen in his Guide to the Bible, Religion and Morality, on pages 244-245, recounts similar bemusement at moneychanging in his childhood parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Chicago.
Later, already on my road away from the faith, I heard a sermon on this Gospel story, using it to show that well-intentioned people may be "in denial" of the wrongness of their behavior. The idea was that those in charge of the Temple did not see the wrongness of having the money-changers there. Not considered was the possibility that it was Jesus who was in the wrong, and the priest giving the sermon "in denial."
Among other Bible readings the Church sees fit to include in its liturgy are such familiar ideas as turning the other cheek, and sharing all with others:
Mat 5:39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;
Mat 5:40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well;
The letter of this law deals with coats and cloaks, but the spirit would encompass much more than this. One should not worry about material possessions, nor seek retribution from those who wrong us.
I cannot reconcile what the Church is telling its believers that they must do, with what the Church itself does. The doors of the church buildings are locked out of hours. Why, if one is not to worry about material possessions? And, on occasions when money or golden treasures have been stolen from churches, the Church has cooperated with police in apprehending and prosecuting the offenders, as would any citizen not under the spell of Christian doctrine. How does this square with the spirit of giving your cloak to those who steal your coat? The Church should, by its professed ideals, be seeking to find the thief in order to give him more rather than to testify against him in court.
The admonitions to honor and obey ones parents, which I quote in "False Advertising," help Christian parents convince their children to follow their own example and be good young Christians. But what of gaining converts? If everyone were to honor their parents by retaining parental beliefs, the church would not grow, so we are told to follow a different example in Jesus:
Mat 10:37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
Mat 10:38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
And
Mat 12:46 While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him.
Mat 12:47 Someone told him, "Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you."
Mat 12:48 But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?"
Mat 12:49 And pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!
Mat 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
While modern "with it" Catholic priests may take part in Jesus seminars to debate what are the true words of Jesus (as if that were possible at this late date), the Church in days past and present uses the scriptural Canon to get its point across, and the specific chapter and verse used depend on whether the point is to keep Catholic families in the fold, or to win new converts from other folds. Along the way, some of the quotations in support of the latter are of course also used by other folds as well. The smaller ones are labeled "cults," as if the mighty Catholic Church were not at one time small enough to be called a cult, at which time it helps if your potential converts are convinced that it is necessary to leave their parents and family behind if they object to the converts' new beliefs. These scriptures once enabled the small Church to grow. But now these same scriptures are used by the likes of David Koresh, or Jim Jones, with their charismatic personalities, to pull people away from their families and other loved ones.
This reminds me of an incident at a local college's Newman Club, where we once regularly attended mass. The bulletin noted, and the priest (the chaplain) announced, that a certain spiritual group on campus had been declared to be a cult, and that thus one should avoid it. In fact, even today, the Catholic Church fits the dictionary definition of a cult:
cult (kult) n. 1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies. 2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult. 3. the object of such devotion. 4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. 5. Sociol. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols. 6. a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader. 7. the members of such a religion or sect. 8. any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.
- adj.9. of or pertaining to a cult. 10. of, for, or attracting a small group of devotees: a cult movie.
[1610-20; < L cultus habitation, tilling, refinement, worship, equiv. to cul-, var. s. of colere to inhabit, till, worship + -tus suffix of v. action]- cul-tic, cul-tu-al adj.- cult-ish, adj.
Copyright © 1966-1994 by Random House Inc., All Rights Reserved.
- adj.9. of or pertaining to a cult. 10. of, for, or attracting a small group of devotees: a cult movie.
[1610-20; < L cultus habitation, tilling, refinement, worship, equiv. to cul-, var. s. of colere to inhabit, till, worship + -tus suffix of v. action]- cul-tic, cul-tu-al adj.- cult-ish, adj.
Copyright © 1966-1994 by Random House Inc., All Rights Reserved.
No one would argue against meanings 1, 4 and 5 applying to the Catholic Church, and anyone considering the Catholic Church to be false would be thereby attaching meaning 6 to the Church, the same sense which applied in the announcement.
What is a Catholic to do when he has been taught from childhood that multiple repetitions of prayer imposed as penance after confession are good, and that saying the rosary with its multiple "Hail Mary"s interspersed with an occasional "Our Father" is good, and then finds that the Bible, which even Catholics revere as the inspired word of God, quotes Jesus as saying
Mat 6:7 "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.
or, in the familiar words of the King James version:
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Jesus and the Truth
Modern Bible historians would like to believe only the best statements were really Jesus's, but why not just reverse the process? Say a fire-and-brimstone guy like Jesus would never say the kindly things that evangelists attributed to him. As for keeping one's word:
John 7:2 Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near.
John 7:3 So his brothers said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing;
John 7:4 for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world."
John 7:5 (For not even his brothers believed in him.)
John 7:6 Jesus said to them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.
John 7:7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil.
John 7:8 Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come."
John 7:9 After saying this, he remained in Galilee.
John 7:10 But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret.
John 7:11 The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, "Where is he?"
John 7:12 And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying, "He is a good man," others were saying, "No, he is deceiving the crowd."
Can the Catholic Church disown parts of the Bible, insisting that Church tradition has equal weight with Scripture? How does it justify its own authority? It quotes
Mat 16:18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
Mat 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
If Biblical Inerrancy falls, this quotation is left in no-man's-land, along with the Catholic Church. Believe it as you will, and in doing so, let the chips fall where they may: believe it, and believe in the Catholic Church; don't believe it, and don't believe in the Catholic Church.
