YeKengalé

Everyone seems to have different versions of it, each often claiming absolute authority. Beliefs certainly have consequences. How do we settle the matter? The eternal destiny of a nation may actually depend on who and what one believes about who won an election. The eternal destiny of one’s soul may also depend on who or what one believes about God’s selection.

Starting with the theological question, more consequential in the minds of the majority of people in my nascent culture, sometimes so heavenly minded, we ignore earthly good…and earthly goods: I recently was introduced to the Bible Project videos – a serious attempt at challenging popular evangelical thought to greater sophistication in Biblical hermeneutic, a worthwhile challenge given the apparent abject failure of the *movement in giving light to a culture in the throes of turmoil as we now find in the capital of Western Christianity. In fact, it seems itself to have lit the match inflaming the racial and gender tensions threatening the nation.

• [So many evangelicals forget we are a minority movement in a larger global pool of Christianity but imagine ourselves, or worse yet, our particular sub group to be in fact the only true Christian movement on the planet, and as consequence of that belief, bear the characteristic fruit of arrogance, pride and divisiveness from every thumped pulpit from which our message is screamed.]

In the first video I examined, invited to reevaluate what Jesus, the Bible and Christianity are all about, as is characteristic of most persons, I formed an early opinion. Tim Mackie’s disingenuous and dishonest approach to the subject matter was apparent to me, especially since the preceding video I had watched was Billy Graham’s funeral.

Mackie’s see-thru attempt, from the very start, to cast the typical ‘fire and brimstone’ evangelical ‘gospel’ to the margins of mainstream Christian thought was not only disingenuous, it betrayed his seductive intellectual approach to influencing popularly held opinions. There may be a handful of believers that embrace his theological sophistry, but mainstream culture definitely embraces, and has built entrenched social institutions, core values and thought conventions upon the crude “accept Christ or go to hell” model he attempted to debunk by insinuation and innuendo before ever beginning the conversation, as might be certified by the most casual interpreter of the words and rituals at the celebration of the life of Mr Evangelical himself,

With that said, Mackie was right, the Bible….and reality itself, are often more complex than the flash- in-the-pan, simple minded judgments we render about them. Mackie may indeed have his pulse on transformative theological approaches that can reform a ‘flambunctious’ evangelical movement inept in bringing either salt or light to a corrosive, chaotic culture on the verge of implosion due to innate economic, racial and gender contradictions; as well as also have Jezebelian seductive motivations, whether due to lack of backbone, or fear of the influence of his intellectual opponents. One does not disallow for the other.

By the same token, who can be sure that a congenital liar, narcissist, fear monger and rabble rouser might not also somehow have gotten it right about electoral malfeasance and that his followers: white supremacist terrorists, fringe theory cult lunatics , evangelical leaders and charismatic prophets all in perfect lockstep, may actually have factual information on electoral fraud and be correct in their representations of the will of Almighty God (or the collective will of the American People…or whichever cult leader is exposing the Satanic child sex traffickers of Q Anon’s claims) or whatever visions and voices that speak to the heads of the American charismatic ‘prophets’?

This is why one of the centerpieces of modern civilization, and core institution at the heart of governance is the COURT. The symbol and space for the determination both to allow opposite views and voices to contend, as well as the diligence to search and strive for Truth, Justice, Peace and Harmony amidst inevitable human disagreement and disagreeableness. Take away the court and we are back to the jungle. (Wish I could say the same thing about the church….but alas, not today I cant….in fact the ‘rapturing’ off of some groups might actually be of some public benefit). Society without church in today’s postmodern clime is not just tenable,, some actually think desirable, but society without COURT and we are back to Rudy Guliani’s ‘trial by combat’ for everything from a pin to a needle.

What is truth? None of us may fully know it. All of us need it and abandoning its search and undermining its value is the most direct ticket to hell (however defined). And yes that’s exactly how I end this blogpost, minus any claims; whether personal, theological, historical or otherwise about Jesus. At his own court trial when asked this problematic question, the record shows Jesus was silent then, and with all this nonsense and confusion in His Name today, I do not imagine His objection to being silently represented here either.