The above billboard can be found on I-35 near Emporia, Kansas. Whenever I drive home to New Mexico I'm able to see it, along with the giant cross in Groom, Texas.
'Give in or burn in Hell' is hardly a message of love, but to me the problem with the message is even deeper than its lack of grace. While no doubt those who suscribe to this message - whether they are extremists like Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka or more moderate examples of the revivalist tradition - are very sincere, even in their concern for 'the fallen,' this concern is marked, even overshadowed by a smug sense of self-righteousness, self-satisfaction that the one being concerned for the 'lost' is not lost, but one of the elect, or saved.
The Left Behind book series is a good example of this. The books are really just sanctified voyeurism, a look at what will happen after Jesus rescues us to our reward, and the dirty sinners finally get what's coming to them. The billboard shown above allows whoever put it up to think, "Well, I've done my duty," after which he or she can get back to cheering on the Apocalypse, impatiently waiting for all the sinners of the world to start their regretting.
This, to me, is exactly what's wrong with Erick Erickson's nonsense about 'a saving faith in Jesus Christ' being the missing element, the ingredient that would have ensured that the massacre in Tucson never happened. For Erickson, the issue isn't about being like Jesus or living according to what Jesus taught. Instead, he sees it as a Manichaean dualism between good and evil. Those who have the 'saving faith in Jesus' thing are good, those who don't are evil. Those who do don't go around murdering people, those who don't - who are necessarily influenced if not possessed by demons - murder at every chance they get.
Most importantly, Erickson's message is that Loughner's rampage was the predictable, even necessary result of people (liberals) watering down the message of the Bible. Once true belief is disrupted, people go on shooting sprees, and society deserves it. Even the victims probably do, at least on a case-by-case basis. I'm sure Erickson would need to know the churchgoing habits of everyone that was shot in order to make a right judgment.
There's no room for love in Erickson's theology, not love like we see in Jesus's life and teaching. There's no love for the other, for the enemy, for the stranger. No love so great that one would willingly march to one's death for the sake of those not yet born as well as those committing the murder. There's just bare intellectualism, a stark cognitive choice between right and wrong, with nothing but harsh judgment reserved for those who choose wrongly.
I do, at least, agree with Erickson that what we need in this country is more Jesus. For starters, I suspect that if more people tried to live the way Jesus did, it wouldn't be easier to obtain automatic weapons than competent psychological care.
* 20-21If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both. (1 John 4:20-21, The Message)
