I think Matt's right, but I don't think he goes far enough.
These people have talked to me many times. (I live in the Bible belt.) What I have learned is that they are genuinely and sincerely concerned for what they consider to be the Number One Priority. It's not my state of well being here. Because I'm just dust or will be. It doesn't matter if I have a good job, health care, or the right to vote. Those things are nice and all, but they pale in comparison to the possibility of me enduring an eternity in hell. 72 years versus Eternity.
If you truly believe that only those who accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior will be saved from eternal hell, then the moral thing to do is save as many people as you can. (Diversity is, then, literally damning.)
More moderate Christians of my acquaintance believe that God is smart enough to figure out who's good and who's bad across religious lines. He'll send the nice Hindus to heaven along with the do-good atheists. But the extremists don't believe that God is that smart, forgiving, whatever. So the big social injustice is (to them) being denied the right of heaven by being denied the word.
In that sense, I see these people (some of them anyway) as deeply moral, but wrong. The big change isn't social justice as part of religion, it's what God means and what God will or won't do in the afterlife and therefore what social justice means. I think of all the missionaries in history and they're mostly (as I remember it) truly believing also that God will damn any but the chosen. So, prayer in school is good. More money for missions connected to faithbased whatever is good. Secular missons are bad. Etc.
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| 2004 | 1 |
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