What a night. First an amazing Daily Show and now Colbert has given me a reason to blog. Anyone who knows some about Stephen Colbert will know that he is a person of Christian faith. A devout Catholic Colbert once told The New York Times:
"I love my Church, and I’m a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals, who were very devout. I was raised to believe that you could question the Church and still be a Catholic. What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That’s totally different from the Word, the blood, the body and the Christ. His kingdom is not of this earth."
I look forward to the day when someone writes a serious and deep biography (I would prefer an autobiography) of him. He had a pretty rough go growing up. Raised by devout and deeply intellectual parents, when he was 10-years-old his father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash. The rest of his siblings were already away from home by then so it was just him and his mother from that point on. He relates that he was beaten up fairly regularly and turned to humour in the midst of all this. Later in university he found himself in a place where he had lost his faith. A story in Parade magazine says:
"Soon after graduation, he was living in Chicago—an earnest young actor with a full beard and a proclivity for dressing in black. He also had lost his faith. “I was very depressed about it,” he says. “I wanted the idea that I would see my father and brothers again, and it was heartbreaking to think that that wouldn’t happen.”
Then, one icy winter day, as Colbert walked down a street in Chicago, a Gideon handed him a Bible. “It was so cold, I had to crack the pages,” he recalls. “I flipped it open, and it had a list of things to read about if you were feeling different ways. Under ‘Anxiety,’ it said ‘Matthew V,’ the Sermon on the Mount.” He paraphrases: “‘Who among you by worrying can change a hair on his head?’ It spoke to me.”
At any rate back to tonight’s episode. Colbert is satirizing the current criticism of Obama and his tolerance of Islam as well as suspicians that he is a closet Muslim despite his numerous direct statements that he is not. At one point as he is offering Obama advice on how to appear more Christian he suggest praying harder and then specifically says "Like Matthew 5:47 says pray hard or go home" with a nice big graphic that simply read Matthew 5:47.
Colbert is not the kind of person to do anything thoughtlessly in his show. He knows very well that his audience is going to look the verse up. When you look it up you find the following:
"And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?"
This is a stark condemnation of the hate and intolerance that is developing in the United States about the mosque planned near the World Trade Center site in New York City. It becomes even more powerful when read in the context of the verses around it so I will you with them, Matthew 5:43-48:
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Harnessing Chaos 