Offense and Defense

 

Ok everyone, here is another actual question I have on my theology blog instead of just an opinion or something I have learned.  It has to do with “isms,” and when legitimate religion turns into a problem “ism,” and a sort of idolatry problem.  That was what happened with Catholicism on such a mass scale that the Reformation happened and some Christians started a new branch of Christianity without ever looking back.  The religion had folded in on itself and people were no longer freely worshipping God but entangled by idolatry and self-justification of all sorts. Much later on, in our country, some geniuses eventually coined the term “fundamentalism,” and suggested that the same thing was happening with Protestantism, only it was the skeletal basics of Christianity that had become the new distraction from God himself.  

 

I personally, in both cases, think that the fact that actual Jesus is involved and is prayed to in each belief system, offers supernatural protection from total loss, and that it is most likely that the religion itself and especially God’s goodness will still win out and benefit individuals and society. However, it is a very interesting topic, and bad stuff does happen in God’s name all the time from all of it.  It is a very common type of “taking God’s name in vain,” though most people associate that with more instant sins of saying G- dm and OMG.  

 

So anyway, this brings me to my theological question, which is whether than can be something like “Jesus-ism” or God-ism, as well, where an actual truth-based relationship with God can also become some kind of barrier to health and life.  And I think maybe the answer is possibly, in some ways, but mostly that is the point of why you worship God with no other Gods before him, is because he has the infinitude to absorb worship without anything bouncing back to harm people.  So that if you can weave through those other corruptible mazes, you do hit something that delivers and by nature and definition protects you from the Ism Idolatries.

 

This is also why I don’t support witch hunts against fundamentalists.  It is just too likely that despite any amount of intellectual or cultural poverty, some of those prayers will be real and answered in ways that tap into all the resources and truth that exist.