Palin, Christians and the vanishing common culture

Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us we pray. Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Hear the good news: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God’s love toward us. In the Name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven.

From my church bulletin this morning: the confession and pardon.

I am ever amazed that something that I and hundreds of millions of Americans know so well, in the marrow of our bones as it were, should be totally unknown to so many others. I am speaking now to the issue of sin and repentance for Christians. I was thinking of this especially as it applies to Sarah Palin and her family.

I cannot count the number of times I have read articles in the MSM or on blogs that have accused Christians of using double standards when faced with – for example – Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. They assume that since Christians consider sex outside of marriage a sin (yes, we really do) we would react as … what? Take her out and stone her? There are people out there not confined to mental hospitals, with access to computers and the internet, who refer to evangelical Christians as American Taliban. And that’s what the Taliban does. The less rabid earnestly believe that Christians ostracize, shun, or otherwise turn away from girls who conceive children before marriage. Perhaps they get their version of Christianity from reading “The Scarlet Letter.” Still others may have associated Christianity with the images they see portrayed in movies of Christians as narrow minded bigots who preach hatred when not busy lusting after their neighbors wives.

It was not always this way. This country was never universally Christian; there have always been people of different faiths and no faith at all, but there has always been an understanding of Christianity simply because Christians represented the majority. But something happened, or was made to happen. And it has created a separate culture, ignorant of the roots from which it sprang.

Which brings me to the question of why they think that way? Have they no friends who are Christians? Did they not grow up with Christians? Why are they so ignorant of Christianity’s core values? What do they think that Jesus means to Christians?

The irreligious Left has lost contact and understanding of one of the most deeply rooted memes of Western civilization imbedded in the Christian religion: sin and forgiveness. To the irreligious, Jesus’ role in Christianity has been torn from its roots as the atonement of our sins. Instead he has been re-created as a figure somehow connected to Christmas (playing second fiddle to Santa) or at most a role model of some kind – an alternative to say, Britney Spears, Hannah Montana or Barack Obama.

What’s curious is that people who believe in their bones that they understand our culture should be so ignorant of a particularly widespread and deep rooted aspect of that culture and exhibit that ignorance on such a wide and obvious scale. For those people, Christianity, real Christianity, is territory that reminds them of old maps which show unexplored areas with the words “Here Be Dragons.”