I am wretchedly terrible...in my awesomeness.

In the early 1990's, Bill Clinton's Presidential Campaign developed a communication tool now common place in the relationship between the American Press and society, marketplace, and politics...the sound bite. Clinton found himself daunted by the task of summarizing his policy, when his opponent had four years to reveal his to America. Before walking out to a debate, one of his advisers, Paul Begala, tossed a pocket Gideon's Bible at him and told him to check out an underlined verse. The verse was John 3:16. Clinton read it and looked back at him with an expression something like "yeah, everyone knows that one." Begala responded, "if Jesus can sum up salvation in one sentence, then you can certainly sum up your platform." The Clinton campaign and administration set a trend Americans now expect...if you can't say it one sentence, it might not be worth listening to. C.S. Lewis had a similar opinion of philosophy, commenting that if its not well summarized, it may be too complicated for its own good.

There are some ridiculous suppositions in American Christianity that are simply perpetuated concepts rooted in America's ideology of success, morality, and polished perfection. These are the principles which can be easily identified, but are often dismissed as "secular simplification that takes no account for the depth and complexity of Christianity." The defense of "you just don't understand its complexities" is just a knee jerk reaction by the ignorant and continues to tear a wider rift between the American Church and society.

So what are some of these suppositions? How about this equation:

control = wisdom

So often American Christians, in far more complex terms, make condescending assumptions asserting wisdom and maturity resides in people with control of their lives. Having a well kept house, with a barefoot wife and well dressed husband is the manifestation of spiritual wisdom. It confuses society though, because no one ever reconciles how this concept works when a mega church pastor does drugs and has sex with a male prostitute. They just throw the guy in "rehab" and tell people to stay on their side of the rift, because the Christian side is far to complex for them to understand. The irony is no one is offended by the recovering drug addict who tells people he needs Jesus to keep from killing himself.

Or how about these statements which are often bookends of long tirades of pulpit prosecution...

"I, myself am a terrible sinner"

Yeah, its pretty much a quote from the book of Romans, but don't you sometimes want to ask the person directly after saying this..."THEN WHY ARE YOU STANDING AT A PULPIT PREPARING TO SPEND 40 MINUTES TELLING ME HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE?"

Someone just needs to tell society they are right, these equations are not lining up. The best thing to do is listen to the sound bites of Jesus' philosophy and draw your own conclusions, because odds are the guy yelling at you on TV might end up going to jail and having his theme park go bankrupt.








***If you aren't familiar with the references to the pastors who "have gay affairs or go to jail", they are references to evangelical celebrity pastors Ted Haggard and Jim Bakker respectively. The concept of this website is to build bridges through critical thinking about the systems of American Christianity, and is not of the arrogance that these men are to be shamed and worthy cruel critique. On the contrary, they chose to be in the spotlight and as a result it seems appropriate to make examples of their tragedies, highlighting the impossible pressure from themselves and from the evangelical right of the past 25 years. These complexities collapse and as a result leave these mens lives and the lives around them shattered, which is tragic and wrong. The thesis is they would be avoided with deconstruction of the contradictions followed by acceptance of the human condition, rather than perpetuation of the impossible standards they were asked to meet by rejecting them.***