Mr. Cranick made a decision - a decision to spend his $75 on something other than fire protection - and thereby was making a choice to accept the risk that goes with it. He had no moral, legal, ethical or Christian claim on the services of the fire department because of choices that he himself made. Jesus once told a parable about 10 virgins attending a wedding feast, five of whom failed to replenish the oil in their lamps when they had the chance. The bridegroom came when they were out frantically searching for oil, and by the time they made it back to the party, the door was shut tight. The bridegroom - the Christ figure in the story - refused to open the door, saying “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you” (Matthew 25:13)…. In this case, critics of the fire department are confused both about right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability.
On the one hand, it’s “just” a house that burned down in rural Tennessee. On the other, it’s come to represent everything that’s wrong with the Religious Right and Social Conservatives, who seem content equating “the common good” with “Socialism”. The reality that firefighters stood by and watched Gene Cranick’s house burn to the ground while they possessed the means to stop the blaze is odious and offensive enough. That there are those out there self-righteous enough to blame Cranick for his own predicament…and use Christianity to justify their inhuman dismissal of the Cranick’s family’s suffering…is something that make me sick. If this is Christianity, then I’m the Queen of England.
The idea of “a la carte government” is disturbing enough (if police protection was subscription-based, could police stand idly by while a family was raped, brutalized, and murdered?). That a man’s house would be allowed to burn to the ground because he’d forgotten to pay a $75 fee represents the moral bankruptcy of so much of Conservatives and the Religious Right. It’s also done a helluva job of exposing the hateful bigotry of those self-superior “Christians” like Bryan Fischer, who believe that Cranick has only himself to blame.
I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one’s own family or one’s nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.
- The Dalai Lama
The problem with heartless zealots like Fischer is that he completely rejects the concept of universal responsibility, the idea that we’re all in this together, and that we have a responsibility to one another. If Fischer is to be believed, then there is no reason for Christians, or anyone else to donate time and money to charity. When you live in a world predicated on the idea of Social Darwinism, you accept the idea that people are poor, sick, and infirm because either a) they choose to be, or b) they’re too lazy and/or stupid to do anything about it. Those who prosper do so because of their moral superiority and a stronger will to succeed. If people like Cranick suffer, it’s because of their own shortcomings…and they have only themselves to blame.
I’m not a Christian, but I was raised Lutheran…and I don’t remember ever reading the words “I got mine. You can damn well get your own” in ANY of the Bibles I’ve ever perused. The Jesus Christ I learned about was all about compassion and caring for those in need. His teachings were about kindness and treating others as you would wish to be treated. I don’t recall ever reading anything that could even remotely justify the Social Darwinism that seems to be at the core of Fischer’s inhuman, un-Christian personal theology. Fischer’s abhorrence of a “weakened, feminized version of Christianity” manages to reject a goodly portion of the teachings of the same Jesus Christ he purports to revere.
It’s not Christianity I fear. It’s Christians that terrify me.
Perhaps I’m on an island here, but when your personal theology is based on “muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability”, what you’ve done is chosen to ignore some very basic Christian teachings. Not that individual responsibility and accountability are necessarily bad things…but neither do they give you license to justify refusing to assist a person in legitimate and dire need of assistance. Means-based compassion is one of the worst bastardizations of the teachings of Jesus Christ imaginable.
Or do you REALLY believe that Jesus would have allowed the Cranick’s house to burn to the ground merely to make a point. Nice parable, eh?
