I was visiting with a friend this past week and we got to talking about the worst jobs we’d ever had. Mine was my first job out of high school, when for five years I operated a rattling, banging, prone-to-malfunctioning machine that scanned utility bills. Every day we’d mail out about 30,000 electric bills and every day it was my job to scan the same number of coffee-stained, torn, and otherwise abused receipts the customers had returned. The receipts would shoot past me, one per second, and I would have to tell at a glance if it had been properly scanned and, if not, divert it to the reject stack.
When I landed the job, my grandmother Norma told me that God had provided the job, which caused me not to think very highly of God the entire time I was there. But now I realize the purpose of the job was to teach me the importance of decisiveness. Some people go through life crippled by indecision, but when you have a job that requires you to make 30,000 decisions in 8 hours, you become adept at decision making.
So while I learned to make decisions quickly, it turned out many of the decisions I made were wrong. I had a remarkably high failure rate, and with exquisite timing quit just before I was fired. That turned out to be my best decision of all.
About midway through my scanning career, they brought in an expert to evaluate our performance, and it revealed two things. We were either inclined to accept bad receipts as good, or good receipts as bad. It turned out that I, ever the optimist, had the tendency to accept a bad bill as good. A bad bill would pop up on my screen, I’d give it a quick glance, and say to myself, “It didn’t mean to be bad. Let’s give it another chance.” And I’d send it to the good pile. But one of my co-workers was a fundamental Baptist and he had just the opposite problem. A good bill would pop up on the screen and he would say, “That’s a bad bill,” and send it to the reject pile, even though it was good. You would hear the good bill scream as it was cast into utter darkness.
I now realize that job was a metaphor for religious life. Religion often does one of two things--religion either causes us to see bad, causes us to fixate on failure, causes us to see only guilt and never good, or religion helps us see beauty and goodness, even amidst flaws. This past Friday we celebrated Good Friday, the day Christians celebrate, if that’s the right word, the crucifixion of Jesus. There are many churches who place that horrible, evil event at the center of their life. In the Catholic church of my childhood, the first thing you noticed when you entered the sanctuary was a statue of Jesus on the cross with blood pouring down. Surrounding us were the stations of the cross, depicting in voyeuristic detail the torture and death of Jesus. We were told we were personally responsible for the crucifixion, that our sin caused his death, as if we personally had nailed him to the cross.
More often than not, I left there feeling guilty, remorseful, and diminished, relegated to the reject pile, cast into darkness, with not a glimmer of light or hope. That effect continues to this day, a kind of religious post-traumatic stress disorder. Last week, I was driving our granddaughter Madeline to school, which is just past the Catholic church, and she wanted to know why I took the side streets to her school and just didn’t drive down Main Street. When she’s a little older, I’m going to tell her it’s because whenever I drive past the Catholic church, I feel like Jennie in Forest Gump throwing rocks at her childhood home, and I want to start chucking rocks too.
Fortunately, religion doesn’t have to give us trauma. It can focus on the power of goodness and love. It can orient us toward resurrection, renewal, and possibility. Such an orientation is not blind to evil. In fact, just the opposite. Because it is so thoroughly acquainted with good, it knows evil when it sees it and is better equipped to work against it. If you’ve ever wondered how religious people can be so oblivious to evil, and today I’m thinking especially of Christian Nationalism, it is because those Christians are so enamored with evil, so drawn to it like a moth to light, that it holds them in an otherworldly thrall, so they assume it must be from God. Their whole religion, their whole life, is a celebration of crucifixion, of suffering, of pain. It is the lens through which they view the world. This is why we Quakers train ourselves to see the good, to notice the lovely, to live in Light and be stirred by beauty, so by its contrast we will know evil when we see it and can oppose it.
This past week, the President of the United States directed the attorney general to lay the groundwork for arresting American citizens without due process and imprisoning them in El Salvador. At a press conference with the president of El Salvador, President Trump said, “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns." That is Herod talk, that is Empire talk, and it leads inevitably to crucifixion. And mark my words, there are many Christians who will cheer that on, Christians whose passion is always for punishment and never for grace, never for justice, never for peace.
I am weary of those “Christians” who seem far too enthralled with the crucifixion, and so indifferent to the triumph of good, who care so little for the power of hope, who care so little for resurrection. They know if resurrection were important to God, it would be incumbent upon them to also love justice and that they will not do. They want the threat of hell, the allure of eternal damnation, the power to harm whomever they wish. They are the thieves who come only to kill, steal, and destroy. I realize I am not in charge of who gets to use the name Christian and who does not. That is not my job, nor would I want it. Well, maybe some days I might want it to be. But I wish these folks would pick a different name for themselves, just so the rest of us wouldn’t be so confused when they call themselves Christian.
Here’s what I’m thinking this Easter morning in the year 2025 in America. This is what it has come down to for me, amidst these present cruelties committed by people claiming to be Christian. I don’t think the title “Christian” is something we get to claim for ourselves. If every five minutes someone is telling you they’re Christian, it’s only because there must be some doubt about their identity. The word Christian is not a title one claims for oneself. It is bestowed, not appropriated. It is bestowed by those who have witnessed your compassion, who have seen the love of Jesus in you, who have born witness to the power and presence of love in your life, who have noticed your preference for resurrection not crucifixion.
I had a man say to me last week that when I wrote something for the local paper, I’d get in less trouble if I mentioned I was a Christian and quoted the Bible more. I told him if I had to begin every letter by telling people I was a Christian, it can only mean I have been a poor Christian. It can only mean I have reveled too much in crucifixion and not dedicated my life to resurrection. It can only mean I have preferred the stench of the cross and not the fragrance of new life, that I have looked at bad and called it good, and looked at good and called it bad.
Philip Gulley is the author of Unlearning God: How Unbelieving Helped Me Believe and the popular Harmony series.
Discover my books, stories, and more by visiting Books by Philip Gulley
Contact Philip directly at philiphgulley@gmail.com
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Your words are profound and reverberate through out me. It reminds of the song, "They will know we are Christians by our LOVE."
Ah, to be people an Easter people. People of the resurrection