In the movie, Boy
Erased (2018), the director of a church’s conversion therapy program
invites the immediate family members of one gay boy to hit him with a bible to
drive out the underlying demon. The boy subsequently commits suicide. Lest this
notion of using violence to remove a sin in the twenty-first century is assumed
to lie in the realm of fiction, John Smyth, an Anglican, was accused in 2017
“of subjecting at least 22 teenage boys to savage beatings in his garden shed”
at “an elite Christian camp for boys. His intent was “purging them of perceived
sins such as masturbation and pride”[1]
A Christian charity group oversaw the camp, yet I contend that the camp was not
Christian.
The Latin root of charity is
caritas, which means human love raised up to loving God, which as Augustine
writes, is love. Whereas human love of God is caritas, God’s love is agape, which is self-emptying love. Some
theologians have claimed that humans are capable of this selfless love, but
Augustine says the taint of original sin is too great for divine love. John
Smyth is a poster child for Augustine’s point, even though he doubtlessly
thought that he was being pious in purging sins in others (it is doubtful that
he savagely beat himself to purge his own sins).
If God is full or perfect
being as Aquinas and Leibniz assert in their respective writings, then sin
represents less than full or perfect being. Smyth’s claim then is that beating
someone is a way of adding more existence to the person, which I submit does
not make sense. Moreover, the beatings violate Jesus’ teaching, let the person
without sin throw the first stone. Also, being focused on purging the sins of
other people overlooks the plank in one’s own eye. Is masturbation such an
awful sin, if the instinctual behavior is indeed sin (rather than a matter for
biology). So Smyth was not acting as a follower of Christ, and thus as a
Christian, even if he believed that Jesus is the Son of God and Savior.
Nevertheless, the Prosperity
Gospel holds that a Christian having true belief (i.e., that Jesus is the
Savoir) will receive not only soteriological benefits, but also earthly wealth
from God. This relatively recent belief comes from Judaism, in which Yahweh
promises to make Israel prosperous if it keeps to the covenant. At least
through the first millennium of Christianity, the dominant theological attitude
toward earthly wealth was negative.[2]
The Prosperity Gospel could only take on after centuries in which a pro-wealth
paradigm dominated Christianity. At any rate, Smyth’s abhorrent attitude and
behavior suggests that having true belief counts for naught if the Christian is
acting contrary to Jesus’ preachments and example. This suggests that the
person who does not help a detractor or foe when he or she is in need is not a
Christian even if the true belief is intact. Allowing help to flow over old and
even new wounds, essentially relativizing them, is two degrees of separation
from violently going after sins of others.
[1]
Ceylon Yoginsu, “Doubt Cast on When the Archbishop Knew of Abuse,” The New York Times, October 15, 2017.
[2]
Skip Worden, Godliness
and Greed: Shifting Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth (Lanham,
MD: Lexington, 2010). As this text is an academic treatise, and thus difficult
for non-theologians and expensive, the same idea is in the nonfiction book, God’s
Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and
Wealth, available at Amazon.
