Today, many individuals hold onto their beliefs and grasp them tightly to hold onto the little bit of stability we have left in this world that brings us a little bit of normalcy. According to Pew Research Center, 70.6% of individuals in the United States, myself included, identify and connect our beliefs based on Christianity, a religion based on the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. A religion meant to free many from the bondage and fear has been transformed into a tool to control people to uplift or uphold their own personal vendetta of keeping this nation away from any type of progression, but how has this gone so long unchecked? The reason this has been so prevalent in our society and has gone on for so long is that many Christians have zero knowledge of the bible.
According to a study done by Pew Research Center in 2014, only 35% of Americans actually read scripture every week and 45% either seldom or never read scripture.This means that there is only a small amount of people who attempt an actual understanding of the Bible, and even then that doesn’t help those who don’t understand. Preachers send out a word each Sunday to the mass that they may never understand if it is truly right or if it is unjust and wrong. These people the manipulated words taught to them each Sunday or used as a pawn in political campaigns that have helped fuel our patriarchal society.
Fear-based teaching has been used to misguide people into believing and trusting in the many false beliefs such as racial superiority and oppression based on gender, race or sexual orientation even though when in fact God shows no favoritism and neither should we. Manipulating people with fear by using religion has been woven into our society so deeply that many people believe that using fear is the right way to bring people to God and has even affected the way we vote. Christians are very guilty of cherry-picking the bible and using scripture out of context to justify malicious intent to others, especially recently in the political world. This is why so many candidates such as Donald Trump were able to obtain a seat in political office. His entire platform was fueled by the hatred and fear of several groups of people, when this is all against Gods word: however many people believe this to be justifiable because he claims he is a Christian so they believe he is automatically right.
As a fellow Christian, we are supposed to hold each other accountable for our actions especially the actions we do in Gods name because with everything we do we are not only a representation of ourselves, but of God. Hurting and manipulating individuals isn’t the way God wanted us to treat other people.
