By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
A column from the British newspaper The Guardian recently was brought to my attention. It was entitled “Christianity, when properly understood, is a religion of losers.”
There were two themes that seemed most likely to me at first glance: either Nietzsche’s depiction of Christianity as a religion that grew because it offered soft individuals, lacking in vigor and competence, a worldview that elevated their inadequacies into virtues; or the vision of Christianity as an instrument to achieve social justice for the downtrodden and exploited, one form or another of the Social Gospel. It turned out to be neither.
What I found, in the article by Giles Fraser, was not exactly at odds with either of the above propositions, but something from a different angle. His proposition is that Christianity offers an answer to those whose lives seem empty and filled with failure, assuring them “that they are loved and wanted simply because of who they are and not because of what they ‘achieve’ in terms of worldly success. The Resurrection,” Fraser continues, “is not a conjuring trick with bones. It is a revelation that love is stronger than death, that human worth is not indexed to worldly success.”
Nothing to object to there: Christianity’s appeal to the masses is rooted, at least in part, in its reassurance that the trials and tribulations, the failures and disappointments of this life will not last forever, that, in the words of the old Baltimore Catechism, “God made us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life and to be happy with Him forever in the next”; that those who accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and follow His teachings will spend an eternity with Him in the place Jesus called “Paradise” to the Good Thief on the cross.
I would add yet another angle: Christianity offers hope to those tempted with despondency when they compare themselves to those who live their lives in pursuit of wealth, power, and sensual pleasures. By the standards of this world, the people whose lives are chronicled in the celebrity magazines and Forbes Life are the “winners.” In comparison to them, a woman like Mother Teresa is a loser. As are men and women who keep their marriage vows in the face of temptations to do otherwise; also businessmen who refuse to compromise their ethical standards in the name of the “bottom line.”
The world teaches us to look out for “number one,” to seek self-fulfillment and personal gratification above all else; that to deny oneself is to be a chump.
We are not talking, now, about those who become rich and powerful through honest work and effort, and then often give generously to the poor. There are the rich and there are the rich. The movies are not the real world, but all of us have come across in our lives individuals who are different only in degree from “Tom Hagen,” the character played by Robert Duvall in The Godfather. Remember the scene where he arranges the killing of a Las Vegas prostitute in order to blackmail a politician from Nevada, assuring the politician with a shrug that her death can be covered up because “no one knows this girl; she has no family; she will never be missed.”
The Duvall character has chosen evil as a path to power and riches. And the odds are that he will enjoy those riches. Often enough to matter, crime does pay.
“Tom Hagen” represents not just mobsters, but also financial gurus who profit from cheating investors out of their life savings, drug dealers who accumulate great wealth by deliberately destroying the lives of naive teenagers, political wheelers and dealers who sexually exploit young men and women and then defame them to avoid scandal — anyone who deliberately, with full consent of the will, chooses to pursue self-interest at the expense of great harm to others.
Those who do such things do not always get their comeuppance in this life. They often accumulate great fortunes and political power as a result of their decision to not live their lives as Jesus taught. They are often lionized in the media. They live their lives going from multimillion-dollar Manhattan condos to Caribbean hideaways, enjoying lives seemingly much more rewarding than the “little people,” the “losers” who play by the rules and seek the betterment of their family, friends, and the community at large.
What Christianity offers is the promise that justice will be done; that those who choose virtue will be rewarded. I won’t go so far as St. Thomas Aquinas, who allegedly wrote (I can’t find the passage) that one of the great rewards of Heaven will be the satisfaction we will get from witnessing evildoers suffering the pains of Hell.
But Jesus assures us that goodness and compassion will be rewarded by God; that His winnowing hand will separate the wheat from the chaff in the world to come; that we are not chumps to sacrifice personal pleasures and self-interest to do what is right.
It is not that we should assume that God will punish the rich and powerful. In the Parable of Lazarus and Dives, Dives is punished in the hereafter, not because he achieved worldly success, but because of his self-centeredness. We are out of bounds if we assume that God will put every rich person in the same category as Dives.
It should be self-evident: a rich man using his fortune to help the community is doing far more good for his fellow men and women than a grumbling and peevish poor person who would steal your overcoat, if he thought he could get away with it. The poor are not always virtuous.
The promise of Christianity is that those who have achieved great worldly success and a life of sensual pleasures through greed, dishonesty, and a disregard for the interests of their fellow men and women, will find the tables turned when they meet their Maker; and that the honest, fair, and compassionate “chumps” and “losers” they stepped on in order to rise to the top will get justice in the end. Virtue will be rewarded. Or, as Giles Fraser puts it in his article, “This is the site of real triumph, the moment of success. Failure is redeemed. Hallelujah.”
That is what the Beatitudes are all about: The meek will inherit the Earth; those who hunger and thirst for justice’s sake will be filled; the merciful will be shown mercy; those who are insulted (maybe even called losers) because of their devotion to Jesus’ teachings and doing what is right will get their reward in Heaven.
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