Follow-up

It took a little while, but inspiration finally struck.

Fahrenheit 316

In addition, I've uploaded three other archived stories/articles.

Excert from Every Hour Wounds(2005)
Nida
Blogprov: [psychodoughgirl6]

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Fahrenheit 316

Most times I feel good about the kind of Christian I am. I'm not overly committed or sure of myself, but I do good things, because I think that's what Jesus would have done. And I do my best to ignore the hypocrisy of extremists who thinks threatening people's lives is justified because the targets are considering abortion as a viable option, or that since someone belongs to a different ethnicity and/or faith whose own fanatics are committing atrocities, that makes them obvious (and justifiable) targets of God's wrath.

But sometimes I just can't ignore this shit.

The gist of the article is that a parent, upon hearing that his daughter's class was reading Fahrenheit 451, petitioned the school board to remove the book from the curriculum. If you've read the book, or even heard what it's about, you can appreciate the irony of this. For those who don't, here's the very brief overview: a man whose job is to burn prohibited literature begins to question his purpose when he reads one of the target books.

There is a willing and dangerous naivety at play here. Firstly, the man questions the worth of the book without reading it himself. By doing so, he is alleging that a full and accurate description can be derived from a superficial glance. If the same test were applied to, say The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, one could say it is filled with dangerous ideas of witchcraft, heretical pagan practices and prepubescent delinquency. If applied to the Bible, the focus would surely be laid on the descriptions of incest (incestuous rape, at that), sodomy, and fraternization with prostitutes and loan sharks. These simplifications are completely slanted, but that's the point. The true substance of the story is lost when one focuses on only a few of the details, and the grossly insignificant ones at that.

Secondly, the man goes from half-baked formulation to outright refusal of the material in question. So not only is his view incomplete, but he acts on this information and immediately rejects the book. Without even attempting to get a complete picture, he precludes any dialogue that might redeem the book, or at least illuminate some positive points that exist along with the perceived negative ones. Imagine if your college professor had decided that your thesis was wrong just from reading the first sentence and immediately gave you a failing grade. Despite any kind of information, logic or evidence you might have to support your argument, it gets tossed aside by an unyielding mind. While incomplete assumptions are dangerous enough, close-mindedness can be even more harmful.

And yet, both of these could be forgiven. While I find such opinions deplorable, the thoughts of one individual, even if they were in my family, would not affect me. The ability to have complex ideas is the singular characteristic that sets us apart from all other life. The Bible even references this fact, stating that the Lord created God in his own image (which I interpret to mean not just physically but spiritually and psychologically as well). Free thought should be cherished in all its forms (more on this in a future article maybe). So for this man to attempt to impose his will on others is abhorrent to me. In his case, there was no imposition of ideology over his own. His daughter, displeased with the literature, was given an adequate substitute. No persecution took place (I say this as a preemptive strike against any responses about the "oppression" of Christianity in American public schools). Seeking to end a system that is (perceived as) domineering by replacing it with one that conforms with your own ideals is an exercise in hypocrisy.

So I read the news, about these Christians who can't even see the irony in trying to ban a book about the dangers of censorship. In the past, I would have written this off as being another extremist, a dissimilar individual who had somehow interpreted a gospel that preaches inclusive love and understanding to support their actions of intolerance and ignorance. But more and more I question if what I see truly is the fringe or not. As some of you already know, I'm working as a youth mentor at a Church in Taiwan right now. Most of my duties are limited to teaching English and monitoring the kids, but I also do Saturday morning English lessons for elementary school kids, as well as running team-building games for their youth group. And it's fine. I do good work, some for kids less fortunate than me, and I feel good about it.

But a week ago some visiting pastors from the Taiwan Presbytery regional office came to visit and they pressed me on attending seminary (which, for those who don't know, is essentially grad school for ministers). I gave what I felt were honest answers about my tenuous faith, my desire to initiate a refocusing of ideals within the church, and the need for a massive retooling in the presentation of Christianity in the public domain. But for each of these points I brought up, and the long minutes I spent explaining, defending and shaping these ideas to them, their answer remained the same each time (about every five minutes): go to seminary and you will learn all you need to.

I felt like I was talking to brick walls, confident in their habits despite the increasingly changing world. My first concern was overlooked, and my ideas about reinvention were dismissed. And these were the people who are meant to oversee all the different churches. These ideas were simply my musings on the subjects of Christianity, crafted as presentable as I could on the spot. Yet here too was the same unwillingness to listen to something that differed from guidelines set forth centuries ago for a society that no longer exists.

When did Christianity become a private club? Why is ignorance of the secular world considered a virtue? Why is God's grace inclusive in rhetoric yet exclusive in practice? How is it that I feel like the only Christian who even recognizes these problems, let alone ponders them? I understand the need for tradition and continuity, but to deny the evidence of increasing public indifference and the need for change address these issues would doom our religion to stagnation, a pride of ostriches with their head in the sand, unwilling to see the storm as it approaches.

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