Cultural Genocide for Jesus

Being close to Gainesville in the fall is never an easy thing. Not only does the town become overrun by thousands of new, expensive-car-owning, cell-phone-yakking, text-messaging-while-driving, semi-literate undergraduates, but it's also football season. I guess if you're one of those Gator fans who bleeds orange and blue it's a good thing, but since my alma mater stopped playing college football in 1956, I just never got into the whole rah-rah school spirit thing. And when I find myself stuck in an endless traffic jam surrounded by the faithful members of the Gator Nation, let's just say my sympathies aren't with them.

What's even worse is the ridiculously high pedestal upon which quarterback Tim Tebow has been placed. The fact that he won last year's Heisman Trophy has pretty much elevated him to god-like status in the Gator Nation, and I suppose that's all well and good. Unless he learns how to play quarterback between now and graduation, he's not going to light up the NFL, so he might as well enjoy it while he can.

But what really infuriates me is the fact that this young man is endlessly lauded by sportscasters and other molders of public sentiment for the fact that he travels around the world doing missionary work with his father. From the average American, christo-fascist, cultural imperialist viewpoint this is great stuff I suppose. I mean, he plays football, and he brings Jesus to people -- whether they actually want Jesus or not. Christians refer to this as "spreading the gospel". I disagree.

Theology aside for a moment, let's reflect a bit upon the role that wealth plays in human relationships. Let's say you're a poor villager in the third world nation of Tooweaktostan. When I say "poor", I mean really poor -- as in living in a hovel and not having anything -- rather than the American definition of poor (roof over your head, car with spinny rims, cell phone, TV and air conditioning, plus food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, earned income tax credits, and a big Obama for President sign on the front lawn). Suddenly these strange foreigners walk into your village, and offer to help you out. They bring food and medicine, they build you better buildings to live in, and they want to be your friend. Since you have no education to speak of and don't really understand much about how the world works, who are you to argue (or perhaps more importantly, know any better)? Besides, they also have things you need to survive, like food and medicine and the ability and means to build shelter. But there's a price for their friendship and charity. They've got this religion they're rather fond of, and they're really eager to make it your religion too. Whether or not it screws up your culture, rewrites your values system, or does some kind of long-term damage (like inciting your neighbors in the next village to kill you for forsaking your native faith) is totally irrelevant, as we all know that there's only one "real god" out there, and naturally it's the "god" of the Christians. It's good for you -- in fact it'll save your "soul" -- and it insures that more missionaries will come with more stuff in the future.

This attitude toward missionary work confuses me. After all, we'll work to preserve dying languages, protect cultural artifacts, and support independence movements of small ethnic groups who want to run their own flag up their own flagpole. If we're not careful, we'll wind up in a shooting war over whether or not South Ossetia and Abkhazia belong to Georgia or Russia. We're constantly deluged with reminders to respect cultural diversity, and large numbers of Americans may even buy into the argument that Islam itself really isn't an evangelical faith that calls for the world to be subjugated in the name of Allah ... it's just being abused by a small minority of fanatical hotheads who are giving it a bad reputation. To sum it all up, in most areas of human interaction taking advantage of the poor and ignorant to promote your own best interests is seen to be unethical and perhaps even immoral.

But once again, Christianity gets a free pass and is exempt from rational examination or critical inquiry. As long as we're spreading the gospel, it's all OK. And history lends great support to the value of missionary work. In Europe, spreading the gospel contributed greatly to a particularly bloody period known as the Dark Ages. It destroyed the lives and cultures of countless native peoples of North, Central and South America. In Asia, it adds more fuel to a brightly burning fire -- helping even more people die at the hands of others who pray to a different imaginary man in the sky. And in Africa, evangelism and other forms of western cultural imperialism have rendered a continent rich in natural resources and native cultural traditions an impoverished, politically fragmented mess. But who cares? As long as they go to heaven when they die, it was worth it.

So the next time you hear some half-witted football commentator droning on about how wonderful it is that Tim Tebow does missionary work, please ask yourself this question: How would you like people from a distant land coming into your community, lauding their wealth and power over you, and telling you how to live? How would you like being told that your belief system is wrong, and being force-fed a new one that reflects the world view of the outsiders?

Because that, gentle reader, is what missionary work really is: cultural genocide for Jesus.