A Pentecostal Pastor Fights the Enemy in Ukraine

Is religion so pliable that it can be contorted against itself “with a straight face?” That is to say, does the human mind lack the machinery necessary to recognize contradiction in religious matters?  I submit that the answer is yes. This is not necessarily to be “anti-religion;” rather, the implication is that acting from a religious motive ought not to be done without critical self-examination and care. The case of a Christian minister fighting in the Ukrainian army provides a useful case study of the vulnerability.

In 2014, Sergei Reuta “set aside his work as a Pentecostal pastor to put on camouflage and pick up a Kalashnikov rifle.”[1] He treated his decision as a seamless move. “I understand that as a Christian I should defend the land where God put me,” he said in an interview.[2] Actually, his justification sounds more Jewish than Christian. To my knowledge, nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus preach defending land; rather, “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” seems a closer fit to what Jesus might say. Reuta’s distance from Jesus does not stop here. The Ukrainian pastor went on to say, “And I understand there was no escape from armed conflict.”[3] This understanding ignores Jesus’s teaching to do good to those who prosecute you, and, moreover, to turn the other cheek. Holding a rifle, Reuta was not about to do that.

Strangely, the contradiction seems to have eluded the Christian minister. First, he assumes a rationale that is not in the Gospels, and then he contradicts relevant teachings that are in the Scripture. He seems oblivious to this—even stating that the army “is morally strong because of” him and other ministers fighting alongside the other troops.[4] That is to say, not only does he fail to recognize even the possibility that he has been acting contrary to how lambs are to be among wolves—even being a wolf himself—he also claims to be a positive moral role-model. He is two degrees of separation away from being the sort of disciple that Jesus describes as carrying on his work.

I suspect that the underlying culprit here is a short-circuiting in the brain’s thought process, perhaps backed up by pride. In reasoning through his rationale, he missed key checks that might have debunked his conclusion. For example, he omitted relevant preachments from Jesus, likely going instead to the Old Testament. Additionally, I suspect that he assumed that he could not be wrong regarding his conclusion. To the extent that people assume that their religious claims have a sort of de facto validity, our construal of religion itself is blameworthy too. This sort of “anything goes” pertains to political assertions, as evidenced by some of the more implausible conspiracy theories. The human brain appears to have difficulty assessing whether its own theory has crossed the line in terms of being reasonable. The same lapse in the thought process takes place in the religious domain, where the presence of an otherwise-obvious contradiction renders the thought process there particularly flawed. Unfortunately, the assumption of not being capable of being wrong in even a contradictory religious assertion enables the defense mechanism of denial to circumvent any internal check from kicking in.

If my analysis is correct, more attention should be paid to both internal and external checks. Internally, the cognitive lapse and airs of pride would need not only to be kept in mind, but linked with motivation to critique the person’s own conclusion. External critique should come from both coreligionists and people from other religions and non-religionists (as neutral and even oppositional stances can be quite helpful in punching through contradictions standing as though on stilts during a flood). This extra effort is justified on account of the brain’s “looseness” when it comes to religious matters. In fact, even after the proposed assertion seems to survive the fortified efforts to shoot holes in it, making the claim should not be done with the tone of certainty, for it is still possible that the claim survives on the strength of an organizational or societal blind-spot. If this methodology were to become the norm, then religion itself would be recalibrated more in sync with the limitations of the human brain and our presumption of pride.

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1. Andrew E. Kramer, “A Pastor’s Turn Fighting for Ukraine,” The New York Times, December 14, 2014.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

Hardness of Heart vs. Being Unethical: Which Is Less Christian?

In in a religion in which God is love, hardness in place of brotherly love is without any legitimacy whatsoever; it is worse than unethical conduct. This is one way of saying that religion does not reduce to ethics because more important things are involved. This is not to excuse corruption in the Vatican; the hypocrisy alone is repugnant to anyone who takes the clerics in the Curia at their word that they are following Christ in their living out of the Gospel. Even so, going after such hypocrisy without even sympathy for the human nature, which we all share, evokes the Pharisees whom Jesus goes after in the Gospels. A Church run by Pharisees does more than unethical conduct to undercut the faith espoused by Jesus because matters of the heart are more deeply rooted than conduct as far as Jesus’s preaching is concerned.

From the essay on the film, "Monsignor"

Heaven Is For Real: Applying Kierkegaard to a Film

In Heaven Is For Real (2014), a film based on Todd Burpo’s best-selling non-fiction book of the same title, the evangelical Christian minister becomes convinced that his son, Colton, actually visited heaven while in surgery. Todd cannot make his faith-held belief intelligible to even his wife, Sonja. She misunderstands her husband and questions his obsession and even his sanity until Colton tells her something about heaven that applies to her uniquely. Then both parents are uniquely related in an absolute way through faith to the absolute—to the absurd, in Kierkegaard’s parlance. How Todd deals with his realization can be unpacked by applying the work of the nineteenth-century European philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.

The full essay is at “Heaven Is For Real”

Faith Leadership Over Ethical Leadership

Leadership under religious auspices can be distinguished from ethical leadership. The shift from ethical to religious principles is more involved than merely swapping one kind for another. The dynamics pertaining to faith are distinct. Kierkegaard makes this point very well in his text, Fear and Trembling. In short, an individual of faith must go it alone when the paradox of faith violates ethical principles.

The full essay is at “Faith Leadership and Ethical Leadership”

Pope Francis Goes on the Offensive against Conservatives: Credible Christian Leadership?

Credibility is absolutely essential to viable leadership, whether in religion, politics, or business. A leader who undercuts one of his or her promises effectively expunges it of any worth and is essentially a “lame-duck” leader thereafter unless he or she puts difficult effort into becoming worthy of being trusted again. It does not take long for followers to get the message if one of them who relied on the promise is punished for doing so. Chairman Mao is infamous for having made such a promise in the Hundred Flowers movement. Unfortunately, he killed many Chinese who relied on Mao’s word. A similar dynamic, though much less extreme, occurred just after a synod in 2014 called by Pope Francis, who in this respect can be likened to Mao. Fortunately for the Catholic pope, his own religion offers him a way out.

In the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which began in May 1956 under Mao Zedong, the Chinese government permitted, and even encouraged, intellectuals greater freedom of thought and speech. Mao used a famous line from Chinese classical history as the campaign’s slogan. “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend.”[1] It was not long, however, until Mao came down harshly against those intellectuals who had used their new freedom to criticize the Communist Party. Had another opening been made and free discourse encouraged, doubtless few intellectuals would have been critical of the party under Mao.

Similarly, Pope Francis presided over a synod of bishops on whether the Roman Catholic Church should relax its stances on divorced and gay Catholics. Debate at the 2014 meetings was indeed open, with both liberal and conservative bishops making their arguments. The pope came out in favor of allowing divorced and remarried church members to receive Communion and of welcoming gay Catholics back. Among the more vocal conservative bishops was Cardinal Raymond Burke. He was instrumental in watering down the synod’s concluding summary statement. Before the synod, the pope had removed him from a position that had given him substantial influence in appointing new American bishops. In the wake of the synod, the pope removed Burke from being the head of the Vatican’s highest judicial authority, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura; the Cardinal found himself appointed instead to the ceremonial position of chaplain for the Knights of Malta, a charity group.[2]

The problem with the demotion is that the pope had called another synod for 2015 in which the bishops will make final recommendations on the same topics. Any conservative bishop wanting to climb the Vatican hierarchy would of course remember Burke’s fate and either adopt the Pope’s reforms or remain silent at the second synod. In other words, Francis undercut his own claim that the bishops should feel free to express whatever view they have rather than be sycophantic.

In Kantian terms, the demotion makes the pope’s maxim of tolerance self-contradictory, and thus the demotion is unethical. To be sure, religion does not reduce to ethics, and the history of religion is replete with gravely unethical acts. Theologically, both the pope and Burke could truly reform their Church by applying benevolentia universalis (universal benevolence, or neighbor-love) to the other. Pray for those who persecute you. Do not do anything that would cause your brother or sister to stumble. Practice agape, which is self-emptying love. Presumably a person’s ideology is among the first things to be poured out. Viewing the matter of Church reform as a distant second to the spiritual value of aiding those persons who attempt to prevent your ideology from becoming actualized is, I submit, more important than whether a religious is a reformer or a conserver.

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1. Enclyclopedia Britannica, Hundred Flowers Campaign." (Accessed November 8, 2014).
2. Jim Yardley, "Pope Demotes U.S. Cardinal Critical of his Reform Agenda," The New York Times, November 8, 2014.

Gandhi's Philosophy of Nonviolent Defiance

Film is indeed an art form, but the medium can also function as a teacher in how it conveys values and wisdom. Both of these features of film are salient in Gandhi (1982), whose director, Richard Attenborough, says in his audio commentary that the film has done much keep Gandhi’s philosophy alive in the world. In using the film’s star protagonist to explain what is behind his approach, viewers become, in effect, students. The strength of film here lies in its use of both audio and visual means to engrave the lessons in memories. In Gandhi, the main concept to be explained and illustrated is nonviolent active non-cooperation or defiance of unjust laws or regimes.

The full essay is at “Gandhi”

Religion and Business Clash at a Church’s Food Pantry

The sacred and the profane are like oil and water—oil for anointing and water for cleaning. The viability or value of the sacred does not depend on denigrating that which is exogenous to it. In other words, praising the sacred does not require trashing the world. Being in the world but not of it does not imply that the world is necessarily bad. From this perspective, the sacred and profane can both be viewed as viable in their own rights, respectively. The inevitable distance that distinguishes them so starkly is breached only with great difficulty, even if pressed out of sheer practicality. For example, a theological interpretation undergirding a religious organization’s food pantry can clash with a business calculus such as would be held by an auditor pouring over the numbers and procedures. As theology and business enjoy their own, sui generis (i.e., of its own genus or type) bases of justifications or rationales, unraveling a clash can be notoriously difficult for want of a common denominator.

The full essay is at "Religion and Business Clash."