Hate

I Hate Ryan

Okay, I don't really hate Ryan. The title just fits the theme of this issue. A few weeks ago, tabletop fliers and chalk signs began appearing around campus with the mysterious message, "Do you agree with Ryan?" A buzz of conversation started around the university, coming from people wondering what these signs could mean.

Theories ranged from a clever marketing scheme to a possible WRC anti-protest. The following week, the agenda behind the mysterious signs was revealed. A variety of Christian groups on the university campus were joining forces to promote "Ryan Week," a week designed to spark discussion about Jesus Christ and Christianity.

A friend of mine, having taken the "Ask me about Ryan" T-shirt promotion hook, line and sinker, asked a girl wearing one what it was about. He was told that Ryan had "a direct link with God." Obviously missing the point, (considering Jesus is humanity's closest thing to a direct link, according to the Christian faith) this girl represents a problematic occurrence within the bounds of Christianity: people who really don't know what they are talking about. Mike Alverts, the event coordinator and a staff member of Campus Crusade, told the Emerald that "the overall purpose is to create a discussion about who Jesus is on campus." But how much of the group's agenda was the exchange of information to facilitate a better understanding between diverse outlooks?

Somehow I'm a little skeptical about this being much of an open forum for discussion. I really don't see anyone sitting at the Campus Crusade booth talking with a non-Christian passerby saying, "You know what, you just might be right." Instead it seems much more likely the campaign was a veiled attempt to bring more sheep into the flock.

Again, I want to reiterate that I do not hate Ryan, nor do I have a problem with his chosen beliefs. However, someone crosses the line in my book when he or she tells other people that they should believe what as he or she does. I have even less respect for someone who allows another person to tell him or her what he or she should believe.

What I really hate is a person who must look to others to decide what they should do. I hate the "What would they think of me if I did X?" attitude and the "lemming" mentality this breeds. I hate when people are too irresolute to take responsibility for their own actions and won't judge for themselves what is appropriate behavior. I hate it when someone acts as though he or she is an expert on human behavior and when asked says, "I read it in a book."

These concepts are much further reaching than how Christianity presents itself to outsiders - I've seen people do the same thing with other topics. I'm sure that we've all listened to a friend that's become an expert on psychology because he or she read a book by C.J. Jung, or who just finished Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and is suddenly an authority on Quantum Physics. But religious groups, the largest group in our country being Christianity, take this "knowledge" one step farther than that friend that just gets their physics facts screwed up. They proclaim you must live your life according to the principles in their book. By now I'm sure that you could guess that the "one source" in Christianity that I'm referring to is the Bible. Yet the Bible is a decent book, which I have no direct problem with, and contains some stories as interesting as any Hollywood movie. I start to have reservations about someone's understanding of a topic when he or she stands up and says something to the extent of "I believe in X is wrong," and cites one source as proof of this truth. Anyone who made it to the end of high school knows that a paper that relies on one solitary source ends up with a C grade at best.

The problem I have when discussing the spiritual workings of our universe with most Christians is that they tend to rely excessively, and almost exclusively, on the Bible. (I say most because I have, from time to time, met Christians who are open-minded and will discuss the religion outside the context of the teachings of the church; but these people are generally well-read and fall outside the boundaries of church doctrine to begin with.) Arguments presented by most Christians ultimately fall back to quoting passages from the Bible. (After a while you can hear that Bible quote coming as you would an ambulance coming to the rescue of an injured child.) If not, it's generally something from a pamphlet or book published by a church organization or something they heard from the mouth of their pastor: again accepting something that they were told, often without question.

The next time you find yourself in "discussion" with someone proclaiming to be a Christian, ask them to tell you about the Spanish Inquisitions, or the Crusades, or about how Christian splinter groups, such as the Cathars or the Gnostics, were treated by past Christians. Expect that the majority to look at you with a blank stare.

The fact is that most Christians have have not been given a proper history of the religion. The "Holy Wars" and past discriminations are often dismissed as being part of the Christianity of the past and do not reflect the values of today's Christians. This is a very dangerous mentality.

For Christians to claim that these events have no relevance to today's Christian movement would be like Germany saying that gassing six million Jews was a minor historical event, or America claiming that slavery has had no effect on its contemporary racial relations. Just because a Christian will not kill you today because of your failure to profess his or her beliefs doesn't mean that there is not a strain of coercion still running through Christianity's conversion methods.

Christians don't want you to join their leagues just because they like you. (Not that you're not a smashing fellow/damsel.) Most truly believe that your immortal soul is on the line and they feel it is their duty to "save" you. There is a two-fold effect of this. First, by joining you are reinforcing their beliefs because, in a way, joining means that they have won the debate. Second, they strengthen their membership when you concede to their ways, making them that much more confident that they are correct, with or without sufficient evidence to prove their point.

I am not saying that Christianity has the correct or incorrect view of the spiritual workings of the universe. (To say that I know the truth behind this enigma would be false, if not hypocritical. I've always believed that a man or woman who thinks he or she knows the truth, truly does not.) But the reliance on one text is not good, further considering it is a reliance on one primary translation of a text.

As most of us know, the King James Version of the Bible is the translation accepted as the standard for English-speaking Christians. This version of the Bible, presented to King James in 1611, relied heavily on previous translations and Greek texts, some sections coming from various languages. (Revelations is particularly troublesome, being mostly translated from Latin Vulgate, except for the last six chapters, which were translated from Koine Greek.) The point here is that the King James Bible is a reworking of a variety of texts coming from a variety of languages. Anyone who has taken a foreign literature class knows that when reading a piece that has been translated into English, you read more than one copy of the text in order to get a better understanding of what is being said.

Besides this, there are many people who have sincerely looked to try and figure out the nature of God and written volumes about what they saw. Why is one Book held with so much esteem and the last 1,700 odd years of thought on the subject is dismissed by Christians as sub-par? Hegel notoriously thought that God was Absolute Mind. Descartes is famous for asserting that there must be a cause for everything, and that God's act of creation must therefore be the originally cause of man's existence. Spinoza argued that the infinite is God, that this infinity is perfect and that the world as it is, is therefore exactly as God would have it (and has created it) to be. Kant convinced the world of philosophy that causality was all right and it became okay to believe in God again. But it was also clarified that God cannot be known as such, because things that are known are always experienced according to the forms of time and space and causality. God, being beyond such things, does not conform to these forms and remains unknowable.

It would serve any Christian well, who might still be reading this, to look into the thoughts and ideas of these people, as well as other men and women who have tried to comprehend the idea of God. You might just find yourself that much closer to the Old Fellow in the end. Oh yeah, and stop worrying about what others think so much. (We all do it, whether or not we like it.)

I've pretty much said my bit concerning this topic. Now it wouldn't surprise me to find a Christian or two coming after me wanting to debate and "prove" me wrong. I'll warn you all in advance: don't waste your breath. I've grappled with Christian acquaintances for years, never really found common ground, and don't have the time or interest anymore. The most you'll get out of me is a "Good day" and I walk on by: and maybe a "Bless you" if you happen to sneeze.

Ben Nahorney, a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator, was a Religious Studies major prior to realizing it that it wasn't going to pay very well.