Last Friday, after I turned past the regular "Everyone hates McGowan and the student senate" section (you know, the one right next to the report which tells us campus security earned their pay by ticketing everyone without a Southern sticker on their car), I came across the editorial "Christians bow to dead being," and my heart sank a little. Now I know Josh and know he's a good guy. And the following will not be a personal attack on him but merely a rebuttal to his argument.

It is true, God's name has been used for many injustices in history (the Crusades spring to mind), but so have many other concepts and beliefs in history, beliefs that most of us are familiar with. Like capitalism. Like democracy. Like liberty. In the name of capitalism, thousands of families across the United States starved in the late eighteen hundreds as wages were constantly slashed by corporate owners in order to preserve their profit margin (even today, "minimum" wage is only $5.15 an hour). In the name of democracy, thousands of Native Americans were displaced from their homes at gunpoint, had their main source of food and materials killed to the point of extinction and had their culture generally exterminated in order to make way for a free and democratic society to colonize these lands. In the name of liberty, hundreds of Asian Americans were herded into Californian concentration camps during World War II to protect the American people from the Asian threat over the Pacific (it didn't matter that most of these families had been here for generations). If given half a chance, humanity will use any excuse it can to commit atrocities: God, liberty, video games, skin color, women... It's not a problem with the ideal, it's something in the human heart, which Christianity addresses.

Now, as far as the definition of a "true" Christian, that's an easy one: Jesus. However he acted, that's how a Christian is supposed to act. Whatever he said not to do, we're not to do it. Jesus is the definition of a Christian in any society at any time. The whole concept of Christianity is not so much about seeing the metaphorical streets of gold when we die (although a perk) as it is making life bearable for one another and everyone around. Again, the problem lies not within the ideal, but within us as human beings. We're not perfect like he was and don't claim to be. We all fall short of God's glory. When we are "saved," some magic light doesn't wash over us and make us blameless on the spot. It's something we have to constantly work at. And admittedly, there are those who label themselves "Christian" only because they go to church for an hour a week. Being a Christian is not a Sunday thing, it's an everyday thing. But, in anything, you'll find hypocrites   doctors, teachers, policemen, etc. Do the actions we've heard of a few color our perceptions of the whole in these professions? Don't let the few speak for Christians as a whole, either.

Josh had the guts to stand up for what he believed in. Now let's see how many of us Christians have it in us to do the same, in a manner befitting he whom we serve.

Jerry Jones

Junior English Major