When people find out I’m a Christian, there is a certain set of assumptions they have about me, not really good ones, either. I’m being stereotyped, and it wouldn’t bother me except what such a reaction means about the state of Christianity in this country. People who look down on others, but do so only by trivializing their own faults and magnifying their neighbors’, who in no way measure up to their own sense of moral outrage. Crazy eyed fanatics who threaten hell upon readers of children’s books, those who know nothing of science saying that it doesn’t mean anything to them. Those who think they understand a book written thousands of years ago, when they know so little of history, and how things change, how we do not follow such statutes like stoning someone for not keeping the sabbath.

America is full of those of lukewarm faith, who rather than changing themselves, wish to impose their own world order upon those who largely are better than they. Yes, better: I recall what the Nazarene said to those who held the cards in that society: look, the sinners and publicans go before you into heaven. Those of you who think you are on such high ground, thanking God that you are not like the one next to you: when he thumps his chest and asks for forgiveness, it is he, not you, who will be justified. No, I myself am no holier than you, but that: do you comprehend what kind of understanding this is? I am almost ashamed to call myself a Christian, sometimes, and the reason has nothing to do with Christ. We will one day find out that for all our knowledge, how utterly wrong we were. Some of us realize this.