The Lies We Tell Ourselves....... The things we tell ourselves as Americans about our own history are quite interesting. We use one narrative....that we are a Christian nation, which is not true, nor was it ever a fact (see previous posts). We tell ourselves that the bad behavior of our ancestors was some how justified and godly and right. For instance, we say that slavery was good because we brought Africans here to teach them about Christ, and this somehow justified our abuse and enslavement. We took Native American lands because they were not using them, and we needed to force them to share. In return we gave them our Bible and our religion under the guise of civilizing them. In the end it was ok to shuffle them onto reservations, starve and kill them....all in the name of the greater good. The biggest lie is perhaps that because we are such a great Christian nation, that God will excuse our sins, our actions, and our ideas, because He needs us to carry the Gospel. Well, we long ago stopped doing that in any meaningful way, choosing rather to spread Americanism as our religion. Japan is our best example. When it was defeated in WWII, Douglas McArthur called for 5,000 Christian missionaries to bring Christ to our defeated enemy. We failed to rise to the occasion, so the Japanese turned to what they perceived to be our god....materialism. They were probably most perceptive in reading us so accurately. The American Christian hermeneutic has never been to look at people through the lens of love and compassion. Instead, we use the lens of justification for our good deeds as though the good always out ways the bad. Bad behavior reaps its own reward.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 11:00:35 +0000
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