by Bert Meinders

Created on: November 06, 2011   Last Updated: November 07, 2011

In his novel "The Face Maker", Richard Gordon wrote that a doctor, on being told that his elder son was going to be a missionary, suspected him of "mistaking a natural smugness for piety". I know the type; I may even be related to some of them, as many of my late father's kin (whom I never met as most of them had died before I got to Holland) were Calvinists. According to him, they were also inclined to shirk their duty to love their neighbours as they loved themselves, by the simple expedient of not loving themselves. And yet, they were adamant that they were Christians. They went religiously to church every Sunday morning, and most Sunday evenings, and disapproved of whatever and whomever the Dominee told them to disapprove of.

There are others I know who do not drink alcohol or smoke tobacco (or any other substance), say "darn"or "heck" when hurt or startled, listen regularly to Radio Rhema, and beat their children on the slightest pretext, with improvised weapons, as a substitute for proper discipline.

Christian political parties, that is to say overtly and ostentatiously Christian parties, are usually reactionary, resident in the nineteenth century at heart, and usually convinced that the habits and customs of affluent Western nations are God's Kingdom on Earth. Mainstream churches, it seems, had in the 1950s through to the 1980s an institutional culture of exploiting and abusing the captive and the vulnerable. A home for "fallen women" in Ireland, run by nuns, was a profitable business worked by slaves in violation of the laws of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church. In many countries, and in protestant as well as catholic churches, priests and monks in charge of boys were often pederasts, who knew that the worst that could happen to them was discovery and transfer to another parish. Orphans were routinely starved of love and sometimes of food as well. It was not only within churches of course. Many state-run institutions also mistreated the people in their power.

Christians, true Christians, do not behave like the abovementioned sinners.

Christianity begins with the Christ. Jesus of Nazareth, artisan builder and itinerant teacher, preacher and philanthropist. To know him, a good understanding of the four Gospels is a minimum prerequisite. So, read the Bible. Any reputable translation will do, especially one with generous footnotes. Read the Gospels of course, and also the rest of the collection.

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