"Marjorie Taylor Green gets Christianity all wrong in her
hostility toward immigrants.
By Leonard Pitts | The Miami Herald
| May 1, 2022, 4:00 a.m.
“I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in ...”
— Matthew 25:43
A few words on creating God.
Last week, Right Wing Watch, the liberal watchdog group,
flagged online video of a recent interview with Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene by one Michael Voris of Church
Militant, a far-right Catholic organization. In it, the
Republican congresswoman, whose website touts her “strong
Christian faith,” unburdens herself of an opinion that
is, to put it mildly, startling.
“Satan’s controlling the church,” she says. “The church
is not doing its job. And it’s not adhering to the
teachings of Christ. And it’s not adhering to what the
word of God says we’re supposed to do and how we’re
supposed to live.”
Maybe you wonder what precipitated such harsh criticism.
Was it some act of fiscal malfeasance? Some new scandal
of pedophile priests?
Actually, Greene’s ire was stirred by the idea of
Catholic bishops rendering aid to undocumented immigrants
on the Southern border. “Oh, we have to love these people
and take care of these migrants,” she says in a mocking
singsong. “Yes, we’re supposed to love one another, but
their definition of what ‘love one another’ means means
destroying our laws. ... The true meaning of loving one
another ... means that you also have to uphold the law.”
It’s a bizarre exegesis supported by no Bible. To the
contrary, Greene’s take invalidates generations of
Christian activism, thousands of believers — Martin
Luther King is only the most prominent — arrested in
every cause from racial equality to climate change to
nuclear arms to the death penalty. Further, it ignores
that the very founder of the faith was a refugee who was
later executed — spoiler alert: it didn’t stick — for
supposedly breaking the law.
The congresswoman’s misapplication of the faith she
claims to uphold ought not surprise anyone. The Bible
says God created mankind “in his own image.” But many
alleged conservatives invert that. They create the deity
in their image, a God who thinks and acts like them, who
bears their limitations and biases, their solipsism and
illogicality, their mendacity and abiding fear.
And they hold to that false deity with ferocious vigor.
Author Eddy Harris once described a conversation with a
white woman in Mississippi whose mother belonged to a
whites-only church in the 1960s. The older woman was
asked whether Jesus would have allowed African Americans
to worship in his church. “Of course he would have,” she
said, “but Jesus would have been wrong.”
In other words, asked to choose between the prime
directive of her faith — “Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind
... love your neighbor as yourself” — and the miserly
nature of her own heart, she chose the latter. As does
Greene. As do millions of other putative Christians on a
daily basis.
It’s not hard to understand why they create God in their
own image. If God is just like you, it makes life a lot
easier. If God is just like you, you already are
everything you need to be. So there’s no cause to work,
challenge, stretch or pray yourself into becoming a
better, humbler, gentler, kinder, more liberal and
generous soul. You don’t have to care about the plight of
the stranger, the hungry, the broken, the unhoused, the
immigrant at the border. If God is just like you, you can
be self satisfied and judgmental instead.
Why not? If God is just like you, you are, by definition,
correct in all your biases and fears.
But what if God is not?"
***
Hear, hear...
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