What would non-dominant christianity be like?

There’s this christian blogger I follow now and then, and she posted about forgiving somebody. One of the comments really caught my eye:

…All that said I will not argue against your need to forgive her. I admit forgiveness is a Christian value that I struggle with understanding, but frankly, I don’t need to understand it to respect it.

The more I think about this the more I think “How cool is that!”

Then I think, “Why do you think that’s cool?” and I compare it to discussions I’ve seen of the same topic on other christian blogs, which are discussions I don’t find cool at all; they usually involve a lot of back-and-forth about whether/when a person is forgivable, and whether christianity really requires forgiveness, and lots of inside baseball about what one pope or another said and theory of just war, and perhaps a few passages from the Screwtape Letters, and christians have done way worse than the person in question and why doesn’t the opposing brand of christianity take this issue seriously and tl:dr. That’s what these discussions turn into in areas where christianity is assumed to be the only religion that matters and the arbiter of right conduct. Who gets to define this religion and how they justify their definition become the most important issues.

I’ve decided that what I love about the blog comment is this; it’s someone looking at christianity from the outside, as just another religion. People holding it will do funny things sometimes, but that’s their prerogative. If they want to go round forgiving folk, whatevs. They don’t have to justify being christian, or thinking that forgiveness is one of their religious duties.

A lot of online christians worry about what will happen when christianity loses its stranglehold on the culture and becomes just another religion. I’m a total optimist, so I’m hoping this is an example of what will happen.

Related Post

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.