Do you really believe? [HUGE RANT]

DEFINITION:  When I talk here about “Evangelical Christians”, I am chiefly talking about some people I met at university, at the Christian Union of my own college. Additionally too some people I met at a church I attended in Edinburgh.
Additionally, I am definitely talking about pale-skinned Brits, not for instance, evangelical Christians I have met from other parts of Europe and the world. To be clear other Christians have been bad in other ways, but the ways described in the post belong wholly to pale-skinned Brits.

Well I was just “working along” today (working as I was walking) and the following thoughts occurred to me.  They literally only just occurred to me today so I have not had time to refine crude generalisations, so I am just going to say it all as it occurs to me:

The reason why many European Christians don’t appear to truly believe in the Bible is because of the Englightenment, which (generalisation alert) pitched reason and science against historical belief in God.  In practice, “reason” means being able to argue a point with intellectual sophistication.  It can be a bit pretentious, and never more so than when you see people trying to argue a point that they clearly do not truly understand, with words that they clearly don’t truly understand either.
Now because “reason” is about being able to argue, it is not truly about truth or common-sense, it is actually just a thinly veiled way of being able to worship human intellect.  Thus far the intellectual concept of “reason” has always confused me.  I never quite understood that it was more about how you argue, rather than the demonstrable truth of what you are actually arguing. I have previously written a post talking about “big-word theology”  . Now I understand that what I wrote there alludes to this fact that people have brought this concept of “reason” into theology too. Countless times I have observed that some people behave as if they can casually negate the truth of the Bible, as long as they dress up their argument in sufficiently fancy terminology. And yes, these are specifically Christians that we are talking about, who purport to believe in the Bible, and in the authority of the Bible. They might not agree that that is what they are doing, but to my cynical observation that is exactly what they are doing!

So you see [I’m really going off on a tangent here!] this concept of reason completely contradicts the Bible. As far as the Bible is concerned, truth is truth, no matter how simply it is expressed, no matter who is saying it.

[People have brought that worship of “reason” into theology]
[When “Enlightenment” becomes entitlement]

Anyway back to the subject at hand:
Today it finally dawned on me that it is this “£nglightenment” (yes, that £ sign was initially an accident, but then I kept it because I realised how perfect it was in this context, as this whole issue also segues into capitalism…) is the reason why many European Christians do not believe in the Bible. Perhaps I am actually making two arguments here: Firstly that many European Christians, that is Evangelicals, do not truly believe in the Bible, secondly that this is the case because of the Enlightenment.

Before the Enlightenment, many European believed in God as the default. This is one area that truly needs nuance as there will have been lots of differing beliefs, and paganism, witchcraft, syncretism. At least I hope it is fair to say that the Church would have believed in God, or at least pretended to believe in God, although there would undoubtedly have been a lot of insincerity and hypocrisy, as people are people and always have been.

This blog post is going to show the lapses in my own understanding of the Enlightenment. From what I understand, science became more prominent, and with that arose an understanding that the world could be explained in ways that were different from what the Bible taught, namely via science.  This way of thinking was embraced by intellectuals, who expressed their viewpoints in sophisticated language.  I’m sure it would have seemed shockingly radical at first, but over time it became a mark of intellectualism to reject the Bible and decry it as backwards and primitive.

Education? As someone of African descent and heritage who has grown up in the West, I believe that I have observed something crucial about what it means to be considered educated here in the West.  It seems to carry a connotation of not only understanding the viewpoints of the Enlightenment thinkers but of also accepting these viewpoints to a certain extent. Whereas (generalisation alert) for many Africans that is not the case at all. For many Africans, “being educated” is about going to university and getting your degree. Education in the West also carries connotations of being sophisticated, being cultured, refined – that is, markers of class perhaps because in the West, or at least UK, “education” or going to Oxford and Cambridge as they were the two Unversities available for centuries, perhaps also to Edinburgh University in Scotland – was the preserve of the upper classes.

Once again I apologise for generalisations, but this is how it seems to me: The Enlightenment or science or reason has taught us that science is king, and the world was not created but rather it evolved, consequently the Bible and its claims of a 7-day creation, and  other miracles are all nonsense.
Perhaps as a result of this, Europeans have largely split into 3 groups:
1. Atheists, who like many others would have a strong heritage of Christianity in their background, but who have decided to reject the Bible altogether, and God with it.

2. People who continue to believe all the mystical stuff regardless.  This includes people who are into worship of saints, and burning incense, and who are deeply religious, AND it also includes people who are into paganism and witchcraft etc, astrology, tarot.  These are people who are deeply spiritual and completely unapologetic about it.

3. You know as I am writing this, it occurs to me that theology as an intellectual discipline shares many things in common, common histories, with Enlightenment thinking that eventually devolved into atheistic thought, whereas this “theology ” has had a strong influence on evangelical thought. The Enlightenment thinkers, philosophers and theologians were often all exactly the same people, or if not they went to the same colleges, or coffee houses, they hung out together, they argued with one another, they influenced one another.  So atheism and theology are actually quite similar in some ways, and I have observed that they share a broad moral framework that unsurprisingly seems to be grounded in Judaeo-Christian concepts of good and evil.  Many of these Enlightenment thinkers would not even have considered themselves atheists as such, at least as we consider the term today. Anyway the third branch of people within this simplistic framework are those who have somehow tried to bridge the gap between faith and reason. You know, I’m sure I have previously come across a such a book title  as “applying reason to faith”.

What I am going to say next is probably the biggest generalisation of all in this entire post, and I have to admit that I have no evidence for it, except anecdotal. But I was also thinking today that many European Christians are driven by a strong belief in their ethnic superiority. AKA “white” (pink) supremacy. I was thinking to myself that if these people want to believe in reason so badly, why do they continue to hold on to the faith at all?  It seemed to me that “white” (pink) supremacy could be an answer to that, as the European cultural heritage of the Bible that spans back hundreds of years to some extent allows them to assert their superiority in the eyes of a God that they don’t really believe in other than to the extent that He allows them to assert their ethnic superiority.

Anyway, the idea I am going to put forward is this:  to square their faith with the concept of Enlightenment “reason”, many Evangelical Christians have jettisoned the more supernatural aspects of faith.
They don’t really believe in miracles, except perhaps in a metaphorical, abstract way. They don’t really believe that the world was created in seven days. They pay lip service to prayer, but in practice they don’t actually invest themselves in prayer. They definitely do not believe in speaking in tongues. They don’t believe that God still works supernaturally – if He ever did. Some of them don’t even believe that Jesus rose from the dead, where the literal, bodily resurrection of Christ is literally the linchpin of the entire Christian faith!  Their faith seems to be characterised more by what they don’t believe than what they do believe.
And yet they shout so loudly! They insist that they are utterly committed to the Word of God, and wholly directed by the Word of God, and theirs is the only correct way of understanding God and His Word. You know, I have been so confused, trying to make sense of them and their claims, and square those claims with what is in the Bible.  Honestly, it does not measure up. AT ALL.  I now realise that this is all pretty intense religious gaslighting. Oh yes that reminds me. Despite going on and on and on and on about how they are committed to the Bible, they don’t truly read it. They  don’t immerse their hearts in the Word of God. They don’t understand it. Really. They don’t “own” it to the extent that it does not live in their hearts. As Jesus says “If you abide in Me, and my words abide in you, then you will bear much fruit.” Well we can see that the words of Jesus clearly do not abide in them because they do not bear any fruit.

You know, I am an African, and you know, there is yet to be an African “Enlightenment”. Despite growing up in the West I still have sufficiently strong African influence to have zero problem with the supernatural. I believe in it all!  I also believe that some Africans overemphasise these things in the faith. But all the same, I believe in miracles, in angels and demons, in God’s supernatural power, in raising the dead, in God creating the world in seven days, everything.

Now let us go back to the point about pink supremacy. I apologise in advance for the spirit of sarcasm that I can feel come over me as I think through my following points!
Once again generalising, it seems to me that many Caucasian Evangelical Christians somehow think that the reason that I am a Christian is somehow because of them, or somehow tied to them, or somehow related to a need to win their validation. It seems that because they are convinced of their own superiority, and because they think that God and the Bible exist to prove their superiority, they assume that I also think that, and that by merely being a Christian, that is a way I tacitly acknowledge their superiority. Yeah, there is undoubtedly nuance I could pull out of this, but to my cynical perspective, that is how these people think.

So as a consequence of thinking that, many of these people apparently assume that as an African Christian, I am sitting here waiting for them to tell me what to think. However, how can I put this as gently as possible?  I am not. I emphatically am not. Remember that I have absolutely no problem believing the Bible? And I do believe it. All of it. Absolutely all of it!  Even if I did endorse your faith, my dear evangelical brothers and sisters, (which I emphatically do not) why would I be looking at you when I could be looking directly into the Bible itself?!

So there is a huge painful disconnect between what Evangelical Christians apparently assume I think, about myself, about them – and then what I actually do think.
Far from waiting for your divine pearls of wisdom, the brutal truth is that I have no respect for any of you. How can I make this clear to you?  I don’t give so much as a damn about your “Enlightenment”. I am not saying that I don’t respect science, because I do, but the “Reason” thing? Using sophisticated words to make false things correct and vice versa?  No way.  A Bible verse springs to mind: Isaiah 5v20 : “Woe to those who call evil good…that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”
How can you possibly bring the glorious, eternal words of the Almighty God under pseudo-wisdom and its ramblings?  By submitting the Word of God for human pseudo-wisdom, then you are “putting darkness for light”. And you are also making the Word of God into a lie, when you sit there and boldly claim that none of it is true. Romans 1v25: “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” We always think that this verse refers to non-Christians, but I put it to you that this exactly describes the attitude of Evangelical Christians. Respect you?!  Seriously, I think you’re all mad.

Additionally, you really need to understand this:  I am not a Christian because of you.  My life is not oriented around winning your approval. Whatever you believe or choose not to believe has absolutely zero bearing on my own faith.  I am really writing this for the benefit of people who would interact with me and my writings online from this attitude of kindly helping me from a presumed position of superiority, apparently thinking I automatically look up to you because of your ethnicity.  To be brutally candid I find you deeply patronising, and I wish you would stop. My faith is all about the Bible, and no matter how much you might deceive yourselves, absolutely nothing about the Bible promotes or endorses the idea of inherent Caucasian or European superiority.  Hello?!!!!!

Oh yeah, this is a big point that occurred to me earlier:
In everything that they have jettisoned in their pursuit of “Reason”, they have also abandoned Christlike character. Historically, a genuine pursuit of Christlike character has been a feature of at least enough people in Western Christianity, for it to shape society in certain laws and concepts that we now take for granted. Like respecting all human rights, the dignity of women, theoretically not allowing rich people to get away with crimes. But I personally have not experienced any deep level of Christian integrity from the Evangelical Christians I have had the misfortune of having to interact with.  So as an African I am looking at these people who have thrown out everything of worth about their faith, and I cannot even begin to express the level of disdain that I feel for them in that they flatter themselves that I am looking up to them,  when I am pursuing Christ and His ways with literally everything I possibly can, while they apparently are not pursuing Him at all.

You know, many Europeans are really proud of the Enlightenment, and European advancement in Science, and everything it has brought to the world. What I am going to spell out, though, demonstrates why the Bible is not “primitive” and backward. Look at the dark side of all the advances that science has brought to the world. Think of the way the world is warming up through global warming, which has come about as a direct result of the Industrial Revolution. Think of the volume of plastic in our oceans.  Think of the destruction that is wrought on the world by social media. All of these things can be traced directly to European scientific progress. None of these things seem very “enlightened” to me.  Here is the thing, it is not that science itself is bad, of course. Science is just a blind tool. And you know what?  It is a huge gift that God has given to the world, via Europeans, and I think that Europeans rightly have a lot to be proud of regarding this.  Obviously as a result of scientific understanding there have been so many positive agricultural developments, medical discoveries and breakthroughs, and I am typing this out on a computer just now. However, in abandoning God wholescale, Europeans (including Evangelical Christians) also seem to have thrown away the concepts of judgement and wisdom and prudence which would have helped the world to have managed this huge gift of science, which is why this gift of science has ultimately turned out to be so destructive. So you see the Bible is not backward. Rather the Bible and its wisdom are what have kept us tethered to life itself and now that we’ve thrown it all away sure and certain death is fast hurtling towards our entire planet.  It’s literally like that Ancient Greek myth of hubris, when someone stole fire from the gods, and then eventually caused destruction to the world – or whatever the exact details are. The human pursuit of scientific progress is making that fable seem like a literal prophecy, which is coming true before our very eyes. (Ah yes, that was it – Prometheus was the stealer of fire.)

But yet there is still hope. As Christians we all have to go back to the pure Word of God, and elevate the Word of God above everything – above human intellect, above Reason, above science, above everything. And then we have to trust in the raw, power of God – as the Bible teaches. Now is not the time to start spelling out whatever you might or might not believe about what the Bible teaches. We literally have to believe in everything the Bible says, because we literally have no other hope from anywhere else just now! Least of all from “Science”. And then we have to pray to our God in the most desperate and “primitive” way we can find. And the good thing is that God is as merciful as He has always been. No matter how we may have mocked Him by flaunting our “scientific” knowledge in His face, as if He was not the One to give it to us in the first place, He is ready and willing to forgive us. You know what?  Perhaps even with our prayers, global warming will bring a premature end to the world, but ultimately we were all going to leave this planet one way or the other anyway, but we can all yet be saved in the far more fundamental sense of winning eternal life through Christ.

—–
Anger?
You know, after writing this post there is absolutely no doubt that I have expressed deep anger and bottomless disdain towards – the same old usual suspects. However, if I am to be candid, this anger is now just a habit. Where I have been writing this blog over the last few years, the anger expressed here was, initially, largely an expression of processing the things that I experienced, and confusion in trying to understand it all, as similar things happened again and again and again. And also an expression of ongoing frustration at this seemingly unending nonsense in my life. Now though I believe that I do understand how to prevent it happening again.  Now I can finally put aside my anger and embrace forgiveness for all these people, and seek to see them for who they truly are, and who God tells me that they are: precious people made in His glorious image, even if seriously misguided. And you know what?  I also need to repent of my own attitude in that I ever let my anger get the better of me regarding them. I do now know enough to walk away from this anger, I just need to make it habitual.
Once again, I would really like to thank whoever may be praying for me. If indeed there is anyone out there praying for me, besides Jesus, I am so grateful, honestly, I can barely state it enough.  And to Jesus Yourself, Lord You know I am always grateful to You. Thank You so much for Your unfailing grace and kindness towards me!  Please also teach me to show that same grace and kindness towards others, Amen!