Christian Conservatives, and God as a Buzzword

     I should clarify to start that this is an autopsy of a very specific kind of Christian, and for that reason I want to establish a rhetorical difference between the conservative Christian and the demographic / political bloc of the "Christian Conservative." You can believe in conservative economic and social values while being a true, thoughtful Christian. The Christian Conservative, in the way that they will be referred to in this post, consciously or not, conflates Christianity and Conservatism: the type to say that their politicians are acting in God's will, or whose sermons refer to Christian values and Conservative values totally interchangeably. An example: If you think we should support our police, this is not you. If you frequently say things like "God bless our police," this is probably you. Is that established? Cool.

    I saw a clip on Twitter today (a mistake, I know) that got me thinking. It was a video of a little girl just saying, "I'm a boy." The parent's response fascinated me.

    "You're not a boy. Don't ever say that again. You're a girl. You understand me? Jesus made you a girl, so you're a girl. It's what you're meant to be and what you'll only ever be."

    It was that one line. "Jesus made you a girl." The intense vitriol a mother was showing her own child aside, what got me was just how incredibly incorrect it was. Jesus didn't make her a girl, I thought. Jesus didn't make anyone. God the Father did. They are both God, yes, but the Father alone is the Creator. How do you not know that?

    This is semantics, yes, but it made me realize something about Christian Conservatives that I hadn't really realized up until now: None of them actually seem to think about Christianity. They don't even seem to have a basic grasp of theology, not just for incuriosity, but even in the most surface level meaning of the words they're saying. The question then transforms from "what is their interpretation of God" into "what does a conservative even mean when they talk about God?"

    Think about how she invoked His name in that sentence. You should be done by now, because there's nothing to actually think about. "Jesus made you a girl" holds no greater significance or depth than "You are a girl." In this usage, "Jesus" refers not to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died for our sins, but to nothing at all. Not even an appeal to some ethereal "natural order" or just a vague reference to morality. The problem with finding the Christian Conservative definition of God, in this usage, is that there really isn't one at all. "God" is not God, but a completely meaningless buzzword.

    The language of religion, in this context, ceases to hold actual religious meaning, and instead becomes a function. An expletive. A tool of emphasis. It occupies the sentence in the same way an underline or an italicization or a tone of voice does. Its inclusion is secondary and transitionary into the actual point of a sentence, not a subject in itself.

    When a they tell you to repent, are they actually inviting you to confession? When they say that God hates you, are they actually saying the path you're on is against the wishes of your creator, to the point where He who possesses infinite love, infinite kindness, and infinite knowledge, would hold personal loathing towards you? When they say they will pray for you, if they actually do so, do they genuinely long for God to forgive and love you? The answer is very clearly "No." They are insults. They think about what it means as much as what you think a swear word means when you stub your toe.

    In writing, I've struggled to find the "Why." More specifically, I've struggled to define the theology of the Christian Conservative in a way that doesn't condemn another Christian's faith. Who am I, after all, sinful mortal that I am, to say who knows God most and least? I am a strong believer in freedom of religion in part for this reason. If I condemn them for the sureness with which they use the Lord's name without thinking, is it not hypocritical if I also say, with absolute certainty, that their worship is misplaced?

    However, if I never condemn someone for their religion, then should I not disavow Jim Jones, or religious terrorists, or those who use their power in a Church for abuse? There are faiths which, genuine or not, do incredible harm and denigrate the Lord. Moreover, it's impossible to say that I'm staunch in my interpretation of God if I refuse to condemn anyone for beliefs I see as completely wrong and immoral. I've condemned their view of God already, it's unavoidable given the subject and the acts which I consider so offensive. I am ready to define the "Why," and I am ready to be unapologetic about it.

    The Christian Conservative doesn't think about God. I don't say this with joy or catharsis or hate. It's just the observable truth. I've attended their rituals and Bible studies, and they're empty of actual interpretation. What other conclusion is there to draw? When a Christian can't define the Trinity, but invokes it in their prayers; when they take communion not as an appreciation of the sacrifice of His body and blood, but as a hollow and literal reenactment of an event in the Bible; when they can't understand the significance or historical context of different translations; when baptism is literally just the cleansing of sinful nature, and not any metaphorical submergence in God's forgiveness or the washing away of past wrongs; when all of these things are true, which I've observed to be the case, there isn't any other conclusion to draw. It's religion as pageantry.

    This faith views Christian values and Conservative values as interchangeable. Not because they are, but because Christian values do not actually exist in the Christian Conservative doctrine. There is, in truth, nothing to be learned from the Bible in this respect: every belief is absorbed through cultural osmosis and justified afterwards by God. Students of this belief don't learn from the Bible, but from having the Bible explained to them by someone else. It's a religion where everything from morals to God is taken as a given, assumed to be of a nature which aligns to their belief, rather than actually investigated and interpreted.

    Intellectually speaking, then, God remains completely undefined. God is not the Trinity, or Jesus Christ, or the creator and moral center of the universe. Rather, the only thing God is is "Is." With such an anti-ontological approach, and such a lack of defined morals or properties, God, much like as He is invoked in their language, plays a purely functional role. For the religion to work, God must exist, and for the teachings to be valid, God must agree with them. God ceases to become the moral center, from which morals are learned and taught, and instead becomes the justification for morality, wherein He is assigned as the reason for the belief after the belief is already formed. God, then, both linguistically and theologically, becomes a buzzword: a word, not even a thing, with no true meaning invoked only when necessary to justify a claim.

    It goes without saying that this is atrocious, condemnable, and unholy. It is, as labelled in the book of John, "that spirit of antichrist." God is not something which is to simply be taken and plastered on top of your worldview: He is our creator, our teacher, and the way by which we attain virtue and holiness. To invoke God so meaninglessly and carelessly, to see Him as merely the function of your morals, is absolute blasphemy. It's true that we may never understand God, and yet to use Him in such a way is one thing that we can, without any doubt, understand as objectively incorrect and unchristian.

    The example which I cited earlier of the mom chastising her child is the symptom of an incredible evil taking the face of Christianity. When they claim "Jesus made you a girl," that "God blesses our troops and police," that "Donald Trump is an agent of the Lord," they are blaspheming in a way far, far worse than simple cursing, or even than anti-theists mocking God and His followers. They use the name of God as the Trojan horse for beliefs which are antithetical to the teachings of Christ. 

    And yet, their belief, while horribly misplaced, is genuine. I do believe in talking to these people and trying to get them to understand the actual word of God. Normally I'm against evangelizing, but these are people who clearly want to follow God, often to their own detriment. I hate their beliefs and teachings, but I don't hate them at all. I should only hope, then, that as many of them as possible realize what they've become a part of.

    Thank you for reading. I apologize for the meandering. I hope you have a wonderful day. God bless you.