"Christian values" ???

I know that there is an ongoing, centuries-long debate within Christianity about the true meaning and core essence of the Christian faith: is it the belief in the divinity of Jesus as the Son of God or is it the so called "social gospel" of Jesus' message of being "my brother's keeper"?

I got turned off many years ago when I heard a minister in my home town Methodist church say that Albert Schweitzer couldn't go to heaven because he didn't believe that Jesus was divine. Schweitzer, was one of my teen-age heroes who literally lived the social gospel.

He gave up a life of academic scholarship and performance as a classical musician to train as a doctor and then found a medical mission in the heart of Africa, where he devoted the rest of his life to caring for sick people in the deepest, darkest continent. I decided if this church couldn't include Albert Schweitzer because of what I had come to think of as a "technicality," it wasn't the place for me either.

The latest iteration of this argument has now surfaced in the form of an article by an American Family Association columnist, Bryan Fischer, who criticizes the awarding of the Medal of Honor to Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta. The official citation states that Giunta exposed himself to withering enemy fire during a daring effort to engage the enemy and extract his wounded comrades from an ambush.

Fischer's complaint? The Medal of Honor has been "feminized" because it was given for saving lives rather than killing enemies. He wrote: "So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things, so our families can sleep safely at night?"

Fischer was taken to task by his own fellow Christians, including David Gibson, religion editor for "Politics Daily," who wrote:

Indeed, while Fischer's column irked many of his allies, his views are in keeping with a strain of conservative American Christianity that frets about the "feminization" of the faith as evidenced by the widespread emphasis on God's love and mercy rather than his anger and punishment, for example. And some such Christian conservatives are also concerned about efforts to accept gay clergy and to portray Jesus as a passive, wimpy victim rather than a tough-guy martyr like the Messiah portrayed in Mel Gibson's movie, "Passion of the Christ."

"Jesus' act of self-sacrifice would ultimately have been meaningless -- yes, meaningless -- if he had not inflicted a mortal wound on the enemy while giving up his own life," Fischer wrote in his original column on Giunta's Medal of Honor. "The cross represented a cosmic showdown between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and our commanding general claimed the ultimate prize by defeating our unseen enemy and liberating an entire planet from his bondage."

Jesus as "commanding general?" That is not that way I was taught the Christian message in my young years. It was all about love and self-sacrifice. Jesus crucifixion was taught as the ultimate sacrifice of self for the good of all, not as a "cosmic showdown" with the devil. And I would challenge the statement that it would have been meaningless, if he had not defeated the forces of darkness. I haven't noticed any lack of the "forces of darkness" in the world during my 78 years. But I do think that giving up yourself for others is a potent lesson that has endured.

But then maybe my family's slice of Christianity was too much about love and forgiveness instead of hate and vengeance. Even it was too confining for me (as in the exclusion of Schweitzer). So I kept what I think of as the message of love and caring for others and the social gospel -- and left all the theology and trappings behind.

But I guess I didn't completely lose "the Sunday morning habit," as the Unitarians I gravitated to for a while would say. Because it is Sunday morning, and here I am preaching.

Ralph