I can’t believe I’m linking approving to Little Green Footballs but honestly, here:
The Judeo-Christian tradition is clear that we must accept individual responsibility for our own decisions and actions. He who sows to the flesh, we are told, will from the flesh reap corruption. The law of sowing and reaping is a non-repealable law of nature and nature’s God. …
This story illustrates the fundamental difference between a sappy, secularist worldview, which unfortunately too many Christians have adopted, and the mature, robust Judeo-Christian worldview which made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. The secularist wants to excuse and even reward irresponsibility, which eventually makes everybody less safe and less prosperous. A Christian worldview rewards responsibility and stresses individual responsibility and accountability, which in the end makes everybody more safe and more prosperous.
I’m going with mature, robust Christianity on this one.
Not just Christianity. ROBUST Christianity. Christianity with muscles. Christianity that drives a truck. Christianity that kicks your ass. Christianity that drinks Schlitz. Christianity that fucks your sister. Christianity that roots for the Yankees. Christianity that slaps its cock on the table. Christianity that listens to the Rolling Stones 24 hours a day. Christianity that tells that guy beaten up by the side of the road to quit waiting for some Samaritan, get his ass up and start walking, bloody compound fractures be damned. Christianity like that.
I’m about done with every moment of weakness, every bit of bad fortune that happens to someone who isn’t a closeted Republican caught with a rent boy, being blamed on an insufficiently mean disposition and substandard desire to live better. For serious, these people spend more time figuring out ways to excuse themselves from giving a shit than they do actually giving a shit, and what about that is exactly responsible or, to use their phrasing, Christian? No wonder nobody helps anybody else in this country anymore; with all the time expended avoiding caring, there’s barely enough left for brushing our teeth.
Let’s be very clear about this: At some point in your life you are going to get knocked on your ass harder than you ever thought you could get knocked or your ass could take. You are going to be flat on your back, and your only hope at that point will be that someone is out there who can and will help you. A friend. A family member. A cop. A lawyer. An agency. A goddamn firefighter with a goddamn fire hose. Your only hope will be that your desperate call into the black will be heard by someone, anyone, who can and will fix what is broken.
And at that point, that point when you’re standing next to your life watching it burn to the ground, all this rhetoric we throw around all day every day in this country about responsibility and hard choices and boostraps will ring hollow in your head. All the things you’ve told your own self about misfortune not being random, about enough planning being able to overcome any eventuality, about how you’ve saved and studied and worked and tried so, so hard to stay on the straight and narrow, all that will fall away.
You’ll be left with the echo of your own voice saying, over and over again, “Help me. Please.” And I hope, hope, hope for your sake that the Christianity you’re met with then is less than robust.
A.