I think I’ve been subconsciously developing a sociological theory over the past few years which is ironic because I hated sociology.
The historical myths that we allow culture to tell us have a horribly negative effect on how we perceive events and how we live our daily lives. The two I’ve nailed down thus far aren’t even 100% inaccurate, but just wrong enough to do a lot of damage.
1. (Primarily as an example): Hitler did what he did because he was nuts
Ok. From what I’ve heard Hitler actually was a bit loopy, which is what keeps this myth from being 100% true. But if one follows Darwinian evolution (or any kind of materialistic evolutionary theory) to its logical conclusion (See: The Descent of Man) and combines that with nihilism (esp. the “Will to Power” variety), Socialism & throw in some German Romanticism and what would you expect?
Hitler believed that he was doing the right thing. I suppose that most murderous dictators do. The only place that bad-guys wring their hands and think up intentionally evil things to do is in Disney movies.
2. The reason I’m writing today – God gave us America
Yes, yes, I’m just a big, horrible heretic. And yes, this also isn’t 100% accurate. Of course God gave us America – all good things come from Him. But generations of our American spiritual forefathers fought tooth and nail politically, polemically, culturally, and physically to create the comfortable, Christian-friendly country in which we currently live.
But if one were to listen to many sermons today or read Christian literature one could easily come to the conclusion that America fell from the sky. Created ex-nihilo by God and dropped on the North American continent like the New Jerusalem. We have create this comfort zone and nothing terrifies us more than it becoming un-comfortable. We balk at same-sex marriage and weep over abortion, but leave it up to others to stop them. We pray for the troops overseas but don’t get involved in the political system that ensures that those troops are properly equipped and deployed. We “don’t want to get involved in the world” that way or some such nonsense and instead want to focus on “God’s work” of going to church, reading a whole bunch of books, listening to sermons and what else exactly?
What other thing does the Christian believe that God has given them and they aren’t supposed to take care of? Look their houses and their cars and that will tell you. Normally when someone says something like that they are about to ask you to pull out your wallet and give generously to the building fund.
This is just a draft that will probably never see the light of day, so I’m going to rattle off a few things that have been bouncing around in my head lately:
- $40 tickets and an entire evening/afternoon taken up to go to a Christian concert but no time or money to go to a pro-life event.
- Can’t figure out how they can be “oppressed for God” but won’t volunteer anywhere.
- Refuse to become educated about politics or preach on it – as if Christians haven’t done that in the past.
- Won’t fix schools, America’s #1 disgrace because they babysit their kids for them.
- Care more about being seen as “loving” than taking care of problems. But this isn’t motivated by actual love as much as either avoiding uncomfortable conflict, losing friends or converting the lost. The Evangelistic Movement used to be a rather radical activist movement, has evangelism become an excuse not not to be activist? An excuse to not upset anyone?
- We seem to think that we can fix our country by growing the church. Our emphasis has therefore shifted to marketing God and being nice to everyone rather than following the commands of God, attempting to reform our culture and trusting Him for the outcome.
- What our forefathers pledged their lives for as a matter of faith, has become passé and even vulgar to us.
- We believe the caricature that society has created of us. We are more focused on not being the pastor from Footloose than we are on being Christ.