God the Politician?

As entertaining as reading the discussion on God-awful (ha ha) christian flick ‘God’s not Dead’ is, it has also revealed two strange traits. Of course, the proponents for a film like GND can be expected to be rather fervent believers, so we get a natural pre-selection of commenters on that side of the spectrum.

Firstly, the most common retort to any criticism is ‘Why do you hate god’? Yeah, right. I never said their comments were smart.

But, strangely, whenever a discussion gets anywhere, it’s interrupted by a particularly puzzling non-sequitur from a religious person: “Oh, that’s a typically liberal view” – as if that means anything. I don’t get it. Is God supposed to have a political agenda? Are politically liberal Christians not religious? Is the validity of a religious argument decided by the political views of the one who brings it up?

I know that it helps believing in authority to accept the idea of Gods, and therefore a conservative mindset (not to mention inductive reasoning) makes it more likely that you are religious. Yet, if Jesus existed as described by the Bible, he is a radical leftist: a peacenik (‘turn the other cheek’) who wants you to give your second coat to the destitute and who is against big money (money lenders, i.e. banks).

So if God did exist and took political sides, it’d be bad news for the conservatives.

Can’t these people read?