Conservatives: Straining Out a Gnat and Swallowing a Camel

I have adapted this essay from one that will appear on my website soon, but have changed it to expand upon the religious message for this blog. My website is devoted to science, not to religion.

Conservatives are missing the point not only of what is important in the world but even what Jesus said. They are focusing their attention on things that are not important and are ignoring major problems that will destroy our nation and world if left unsolved. I focus on the first of these “camels” in this essay.

In Jesus’ day the Pharisees were a religious group that closely resembled the conservatives of today. They focused their righteous zeal on obeying minor Biblical laws in exquisite detail, while ignoring the important things. For example, they figured out intricate rules for how to tithe not just their income but also the herbs that grew in their gardens. Jesus denounced them in one of the angriest speeches in recorded history, preserved in the twenty-third chapter of the gospel of Matthew. He said to them, “You tithe mint and dill and cumin, while ignoring the weightier matters of the law.” He summarized their brand of religion by saying that they were “straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.” Besides being a masterful bit of humor, this statement made it clear that religious conservatives, then as now, pay attention to small things that are not a problem—you could eat quite a few gnats without noticing them—and ignore major problems. Nor did they do so at random; conservatives, then as now, gave the most attention to the rules that would give their religious hierarchy the most power, and ignored all the principles that would empower and bless the poor and downtrodden, and save the Earth.

One example of modern conservatives straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel is the crusade of Sally Kern, an Oklahoma state representative, against gay rights. She gave a speech that was secretly recorded and a few minutes of which have spread around the internet, in which she compared gays to a spreading cancer and said that they were more dangerous than terrorists. It is not my intention to criticize her in detail, because I am no expert on the issue of gay rights.

The point I want to make here is that Sally Kern was straining out a gnat. There is no evidence that gays and lesbians are ruining society. Sally Kern, like anybody else, has the right to consider their actions to be wrong, but that is not the same thing as saying that they are destroying the country. I know some gay men, and they have never tried to recruit me to their ranks. They consider themselves to be born gay, and therefore they do not believe in recruitment. They just want people to leave them alone and give them the rights of American citizens. Did homosexuality cause Mesopotamia to fall? Persia? Rome? The British Empire?

Meanwhile, conservatives like Sally Kern are swallowing a camel. Gay rights will not destroy America, but our ecological problems may destroy us. Take, for example, the loss of our topsoil through wind and water erosion. This is a problem conservatives ignore. But it will, not many decades from now, undermine our ability to raise food.

Moreover, the sin of ruining the environment was one of the principal reasons, according to the Bible, that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah fell to the Assyrians and Babylonians. In the laws of Moses, the Israelites were commanded to let their land lie fallow every seven years, and to recover from the strain of agriculture. This law has been known as the Sabbath of the Fields. There is no evidence that the Israelites ever obeyed this law. According to tradition, the Israelite nation persisted for 490 years; therefore they owed the land 70 years. Near the end of the second book of Chronicles, the writer drew a clear connection between Judah’s failure to keep the Sabbath of the Fields and their downfall. The writer said, “And so the land enjoyed its rest.” The Israelite homeland lay fallow for 70 years.

The Bible clearly indicates that failure to take care of the land can cause a country to collapse, just as an individual can be hurt if a camel sits on him. There is no such statement about homosexuality—the gnat in the cup—causing a nation to fall. Why don’t modern conservatives decry the way America is destroying God’s creation, instead of spending all their time attacking gays?

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