(From PvP, by Scott Kurtz)
WARNING! QUASI-RELIGIOUS DEBATE AHEAD!
Ok… ok. Now this strip inspired a very interesting frame of mind for me. Because I agree but also disagree. Or maybe more appropriately, believe but also refute.
We here on the liberal side of the political spectrum generally all support the movement for gay rights. I know I do. Why, just last night I was elated to discover that Same Sex Marriage is now legal in Canada. I’ve been supporting each and every one of my gay friends in everything they do. I’m 100% on the Gay people’s side. You might even say I support “The Gay Agenda,” if you think of it that way.
Now, what Kurtz has been doing has been going on for a long time, but for some reason it didn’t click with me until illustrated it in this manner. Maybe there’s a reason all webcomic drama seems to begin and end with Kurtz, I don’t know.
For a long time, the Anti-gay movement has been using the Bible or any other religious text or figure as a means to support their argument. They scour the bible for any line that either descriptively denounces homosexuality or any other passage that can be misconstrued to support that notion. Particularly by saying that Jesus Condemns homosexuality, or to put it simply… “God Hates Fags.” Essentially, the radical opposition declares that Jesus supports their side, and they begin putting words in Jesus’s mouth and otherwise definitively declaring what Jesus and/or God stand for. They shout “Jesus says this…” and “Jesus hates that…”
And how dare they? That’s fucked up in any book. Because who gave them the authority to say what Jesus represents, much less the right to speak for anyone? How dare they sit there on their high horse and proclaim that…
What? Oh shit. We’re doing it too, aren’t we?
We are. I know I have in the past, and Kurtz has in this strip. We’re using Jesus for our mouthpiece as well. The fact that we stand up and say “Jesus loves Gays,” or “God is totally down with homosexuality…” that doesn’t make us any different from our opposition in the debate. Not even the fact that we do it more quietly, and with better web design. The fact that we may use the idea of Jesus as a means to justify our beliefs and our argument totally reduces us to their level. In any argument, not just the homosexuality debate. Even if we say “Jesus is cool with us using his name as a curse, it’s not that big a deal.”
Because we don’t know. We don’t know what he loves and hates, condones and condemns, etc. We don’t know at all what makes the guy tick. All we can do is speculate. And believe.
It’s fine to believe that Jesus agrees with us. Hell, it’s quite preferable that he’s on our side. We can say that he loves Gays, Lesbians, Bi-folk, Transgenders, and even Straights all the same. We can even say he prefers if that’s what we choose to believe. We can say that all Jesus ever wanted was for every man and woman on this earth to love each other with equality and kindness until the end of time. We can say that Jesus supports whatever we want. It’s our right to say it and our right to believe in it. He’s Jesus, and he loves everyone, even if they don’t believe in him (is the common belief).
But… We can’t use Jesus as a method. We can’t declare what he approves and disapproves of. Not if we want to hold any ground in the argument. Not if we want to succeed. Jesus is not a tool. We can’t do the same thing our opponents do, just because it sounds nicer when we do it.
So, not to get on all about how Kurtz is some sort of blasphemer or something, because he’s not. He’s saying what he believes, and made me think very hard. And for that, he deserves full marks.
We are in a world that demands sides be taken. It’s unfortunate, but we havent really evolved that much from the territorial pack ape we were for the last three million years. Instinct tels us it’s us or them, so that’s why we give our mythological figures our own opinions. To add the support that superstition can bring your grunting and chest beating.
OK. I’m not going to freak out here and start screaming and start a flame war or anything, because that will just reinforce what you already seem to think about the “anti-gay movement”. But I just want to say a few things that illustrate what I believe.
Savvy?
OK.
Putting words in His mouth? Who said that anyone was putting words in His mouth? Nobody should put words in His mouth, but what you should do is look in the bible for the things he actually DID SAY. There’s a difference from using Jesus as a “mouthpiece”, and quoting Jesus to illustrate something that we believe. God and Jesus (who are one, by the way, but I’m not going into that) are the starting point (or they should be) of Christianity. Which means that we’re not twisting and using the things they said (the bible says, same thing) to further the beliefs we already have, but that we just believe thay they actually said. Maybe actually reading through the bible to see what God actually thinks would do you a lot of good.
Also, just wanted to point out that God doesn’t hate fags (personally, that website makes me feel like I want to puke). God condemning homosexuality is not even CLOSE to the same thing. God condemns lying, but that doesn’t mean He HATES YOU when you lie.
Oh, and just a friendly note, William G, your use of the words “mythological figures” and “superstition” really make me feel sad.
…Right. That’s my two cents. I tried to do it as nicely as possible. I care about you guys, or I wouldn’t have said it. Peace out.
_Kneefers
I feel sad as well.
Eventually we’ll evolve…
Technically, Kneefers, “mythological figure” is a denotatively accurate description of Jesus.
I’m just sad as a mythologist to see the label being used as such a pejorative term.
Ermmm…well, good point! I read C.S. Lewis, and paraphrasing what he said, I left the ship of Materialism a long time ago, not because I thought Christianity better, but because I had concluded that it (materialism) could not stay afloat. Something was true, but Materialism (Atheism, et al) was not it.
William G, we’ve had quite a long time to ‘evolve’ out of our present state, one that is ‘of a mingled yarn, good mixed with ill’. So far, it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t appear it will – at least, not by itself. Even if it did, your fond hope that evolution will solve our various iniquities is the same as explaining away poor behavior on anyone’s part by claiming they haven’t evolved out of it yet. This is patent nonsense.
If you follow the reasoning, their behavior is a result of purely physical processes. That’s the way human brains work, and they can’t help it. Things work that way, whether they like it or not. It is not possible for anyone to be good OR evil, because they are, like rocks and trees and the weather, what evolution has made them to be.
By saying you “hope we will evolve out of it’, you are letting slip the idea that, whatever nature has decided we will be throught the blind laws of chance, you think it is possible for things to be better or worse, and for humanity to make progress towards – or fall back from – this standard.
The reason this tack is nonsense, is because if you take the materialism thing to its logical conclusion, your behavior – including what you are saying right now about evolution – is a mere fact about you, like the shape of your lungs or the way you walk. It has no connection with any external truth, and can never have any. It cuts its own throat.
I agree that using Christ, as a means to an end, is, as Lewis said, “as though one could use the stairway to heaven as a shortcut to the nearest pharmacy.” Christ may be quoted, to illustrate a point, but it had better be made very clear by the speaker that what he is saying is his own opinion, and “hath no command of the Lord”. I think Kurtz managed that, although he treads a fine line.
Lampoons are funny, that way.
Evolution does not have a goal or anything like that. It’s quite possible that out brains will evolve to become even more superstitious than they are now. But we have not had a long time to “evolve out of our current state” 20,000 years is roughly the best guess anyone has for how long homo sapiens has been around. I just make this statment out of hope. A feeling in my brain given to me by the random gene swapping that’s been going on for a very long time.
But this is all unimportant, because when it all comes down to it, there is no proof of the divine except what we create ourselves. It’s solely based on how our synapses are firing off. Simple as that.
There is no external truth. It’s all in your head.
Any time we can explain the behavior or opinion of another person as being partly or wholly caused by a non-rational event (a skull fracture, at tumor, he’s gay, she’s a bigot), we disregard that behavior. If the statement you made is true – that your entire line of reasoning (and mine) is based on non-rational events (randomly firing synapses, shaped by genetics, etc) – then it has no validity whatever. NONE. Trying to create a proof that there is no such thing as proofs, is much ado about, frankly, nothing. Everything you derive from this fatally flawed line of thought is poisoned by the wellspring itself.
I almost side with the post-modernists on this one. Your determination that “it’s all in our heads” is so counter to common sense, it signals an agenda of some sort. It’s either flame bait, or seriously misguided ego. Sociopaths honestly think that way, and no one else. Whatever the reason, your train of thought – and its subsequent influence on your attitude towards the existance of anyone else, never mind God, is manifest nonsense.
Steve S.