Wednesday, September 24, 2003
(1:35 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Heaven and Slavery
Slacktivist has an interesting theory on how American Christianity became so excessively focussed on the "sweet by and by." Although this theory may very well hold in the American case, I'd be interested to see if the mainstream in Christianity has ever been more about social justice than about heavenly reward.
Perhaps our modern goggles, fogged over with visions of heaven, prevent us from seeing (through the goggles) the focus on social justice in early Christianity, preferring instead to emphasize those parts of the historical record that match our theory and practice. To extend this metaphor further, perhaps as we swim in the great swimming pool of history, holding our breath as we attempt to get to the bottom of the essence of Christianity (which is the bottom of the pool), our diving mask (not goggles, but the kind that is just a big oblong window that fits over both eyes and the nose) is becoming fogged up by the breath we're exhaling through our nostrils, which in this case corresponds to our modern view of religion as a way of getting into heaven rather than of making a better earth. Were we to pull away the diving mask, we would find that the waters of history would rush in, burning our eyes with the chlorine.
I just know Thomas Friedman is going to rip off this metaphor for his next column.
