Benjamin Franklin famously said that there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. If Franklin were resurrected from his grave in Philadelphia and took one look at the political and religious climate of the United States, he would have added a third: A member of the media will make an asinine statement about religion.
Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist of George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and a current Political Analyst at ABC News, tweeted this monstrosity:
I am Catholic. Being Christian is a state of being. Practicing love. Some of the most Christian folks i know in life are atheists.
— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) July 16, 2017
For a self-professed Catholic, Dowd’s tweet successfully minimizes one of the central tenets of Christian theology: the belief in G-d that subsequently rationalizes the existence of His son Jesus Christ. Being Jewish, I do not agree with Christian theology on the topic of Jesus being the Mosiah or that he could possibly be the son of G-d. However, Judaism and Christianity share the belief that G-d is The Lord, the Creator of the Universe, and that He exists to ensure a moral order amongst ourselves and our communities. While the Jewish identity is further complicated by the Jewish people being an ethno-religious people from the land of Judea, those who would identify as Christians would logically adopt the truth in G-d’s existence and in His greatness. This should be self-explanatory.
Atheism, however, does not believe in the Judeo-Christian G-d that Jews and Christians spend countless hours in synagogue and in church praising. This makes Dowd’s tweet immensely problematic because it calls the following question: How can one identify as being Christian while also not believing in the Judeo-Christian G-d? This demonstrates either intellectual dishonesty or a complete bastardization of what Christian theology represents.
The Resurgent‘s Peter Heck also makes this point in ripping Dowd’s idiotic tweet:
If I was attempting to guess what Dowd was trying to get at, it was this: “some of the most loving people I know aren’t Christians; they’re atheists.” But even that is intellectually vapid from a truly Biblical perspective. Dowd commits the worldly error of confusing “being friendly” with “love.”
But a Christian understands (or at least should) that apart from offering the redemptive promise of salvation through Christ alone, there is no love. If I bind up your wounds, give you food, chat sweetly with you as we journey through life together, but I never urge you to turn around from the path you are walking which I know leads to a pit of eternal despair, I do not “love” you.
If this worldly fraternity is the only type of “love” that Dowd knows, then he simply doesn’t know Christ. For the sake of what remains of his own reputation and credibility, I would implore Matthew to remedy that glaring void before issuing any more Twitter pontifications about the faith he so apparently misunderstands.
Leave it to media hacks to butcher religious principles for their predominantly leftist audience.