We are all hypocrites, every last one of us. Every person in every country of the world has been guilty of not following his or her word. This is human nature - nothing more and nothing less. However, hypocrisy can take a violent spin toward becoming
overwhelmingly negative. One of the worst offenders is not a person, but rather a country.That country is America. We are one of the most religiously unvarying
countries on Earth. About 86 percent of the people in our country call themselves Christian - sounds like a lot when you compare that to Israel, where only 75 percent of the population calls itself Jewish. However, only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments. That means that less than half of the people in this nation that call themselves Christians can even name the majority of the Ten Commandments. Slightly less than 50 percent of us cannot name one of the four authors of the Gospels. Also, 13 percent of our country believes that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. The problem lies not with the lack of diversity of religion in this country, but with the fact that we call ourselves Christians and don't act like it. We don't even know the religion we call our own. For a country that is overwhelmingly openly Christian, we are not very Christian in our deeds.Despite Jesus' call to love our neighbors as ourselves, we are terrible
at doing so. Two years ago, our nation ranked second to last among industrialized nations in government foreign aid. At 18 percent, we have the most children living in poverty among all developed nations.
We come nearly last in childhood nutrition, infant mortality rate and access to preschool. In the particular areas that Jesus
chose to concentrate on, our supposedly Christian nation is one of the worst. In the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summarized his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they'd fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger and visited the prisoner. How can a faithful nation mix up one of the most important messages
Jesus gave?We have the power to help our situation, but our refusal to raise taxes to help those less fortunate is proof that we are not taking these profound messages to heart. The Christian Coalition - one of the most influential religious lobbies
in the country and a favorite of President Bush - claimed that its top legislative priority in 2004 was "making permanent President Bush's 2001 federal tax cuts." This sounds contrary to the advice Jesus
gave to the rich man when the rich man asked how he could get into heaven. Jesus told him to sell what he had, give the money to the poor and follow him.How about "thou shalt not murder?" Again, we are big, fat hypocrites. We are the most violent COLUMNcountry on Earth, with a murder rate a staggering five times higher than our European friends. We are also the only Western democracy that still executes its prisoners, and for some reason, we do it mostly in the states where Christianity is most prevalent.Even our nation's stance on the environment should be troubling to true followers of Jesus' message.
It is easy for one to assert that the Bible mandates taking care of the world around us, just as Noah did. Perhaps he was the world's first Green. The problem is that Jesus and his teachings have been hijacked by a Christian right seeking to use them for power. The power of this faction of conservatives rests almost squarely on its proclamation that it is correct on all religious issues and made so boldly that we have been convinced that it knows what it's talking about.We have become too greedy and self-centered to realize the person
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next door is struggling to put food on the table. How this could happen in a nation that claims to follow the teachings of Christ is a mystery to me. Maybe when Jesus
said neighbor, he didn't mean the poor, sick, helpless, gays or animals.
