AMERICA GETS AN "F" FOR THE WRONG THING

America, according to USA Today, gets an “F” for religion. The basis- basically because America sucks at religious jeopardy. I don’t dispute that America is continually a pluralistic society that is anything but primarily faith centered. I also don’t dispute the primary point of the first chunk of the article about how the current global political climate and America’s response to it is complicated by religious ignorance that could be solved by Americans and others doing their religious homework for themselves instead of depending on the media to inform them.

What I dispute is that underlying and implied thought in the title and the rest of the “education” portion of the article that somehow knowing the 10 commandments or defining Ramadan is essentially the definition of someone who gets an “A” in religion. You can even quiz yourself on the sidebar of the same article based on your knowledge of a few basics of mostly the Bible, sprinkled with a few other faith systems. I recently even posted a similar link to a quiz on my own blog about the Bible, which I purposefully titled, “Do you know what Jesus said?” However, knowing it and living it are 2 separate things. Arguably, perhaps the one leads to the other. But not by default.

I wonder how many people in the world think that loving God or being faithful to a religion involves merely the lame memorization of trivial facts that are disassociated from their daily lives and thus proves, that God, faith, and understanding religious systems are truly pointless examples of European based learning tactics. For example: I have not memorized the order of the minor prophets in the later portion of the Old Testament- I fumble around or use the table of contents when I need to find them. GAAAAAAAASP. What a horror as a pastor- it’s amazing God lets me live and my church ever lets me teach or hold a position. I should stop blogging right now and start memorizing before I get fired or the Heavenly realms smite me.

I think America should get an “F” for faith because we have reduced the life of Jesus to a trivia test of what he did in the Garden of Gethsemane instead of our ability to live out the implications of His prayer here today.

RANT OVER. I think.