Straw Man Jesus
Billie Hoard

A straw man argument is a logical fallacy in which someone substitutes their opponents actual argument with a much weaker version, then disproves the weaker version (the straw man) and claims to have disproved the overall position. The straw man fallacy is especially irritating because it tends to occur more as propaganda than in actual arguments between two people. Because people usually know what their own arguments are, it is very hard to successfully deploy a straw man argument in a private one-on-one discussion; it inevitably runs into "well, sure you have disproved that argument but that wasn't what I was saying". The really pernicious use of a straw man argument is when it is deployed while arguing to an audience--which is probably why it has become so common online. If you tear apart an argument your interlocutor was never making and then proceed to announce your victory over their position, you clearly will not have swayed them but you may succeed in convincing those who are following the debate that you have won. This is true whether you deployed the straw man argument intentionally--arguing in bad faith and hoping more to convince than to work towards truth--or unintentionally--sincerely (but mistakenly) believing that the argument you took down was the best your interlocutor has to offer. So that is a straw man: an easily undermined argument in favor of a conclusion for which far more robust arguments exist.
Given the obvious fact that Christianity is a far lager and more diverse phenomenon than is white American Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism, it always comes as something of a surprise to me when #Exvangelicals (the online community which has been built by and for Ex-Evangelicals 1) insist that their rejection of Fundamentalist (or sometimes conservative Evangelicalism) somehow disproves all of Christianity. As David Bentley Hart and others have pointed out, the vision of Christianity over which the New Atheists are forever trumpeting their victory, is very much a straw man version of Christianity. Even more, the god whom they claim to have disproved is very much a god of straw, in the context of Christianity, the Jesus they reject is a straw man Jesus.
All of this does not (and I want this to be clearly understood) mean that those who accept these arguments are operating in bad faith. On the contrary I lay the blame here not at the feet of the New Atheists but at the feet of the self-identified Christians who have built a religion around the worship of straw-God and straw-man-Jesus. I have found that post-evangelicals are frequently bemused but the fact that the virulent atheists and the virulent fundamentalists we end up at odds with online seem to agree with one another. I have had atheists yell at me for believing in the wrong version of Christianity and insisting on the sort of bizarrely literalist interpretations of religious texts which they would never apply to any other historical document. I cannot, in good faith, accuse the New Atheists of arguing in bad faith because the straw man God they delight in disproving is very much worshiped by a great number of fundamentalist and conservative white American Evangelical Christians. 2
I also need to stipulate that the straw-man-ness of the Christianity promulgated by these fundamentalists and conservative white American Evangelicals does not mean that their beliefs are insincere. To the contrary, I am convinced that the vast majority of them hold to their religion in good faith. But a sincerely held wrong belief is no less dangerous (and in some ways I hope to address, significantly more dangerous) than one maintained in bad faith. The really insidious effect of this fundamentalist religion of the straw-man-Jesus which I want to focus on for the remainder of this piece derives from the fact that this idolatry really believes itself to be Christian.
"I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too," said Eustace. "Little swine."
"No, he didn't," said Lucy. "And don't be horrible. They're still here. In fact, you can see them from here. And I've tried and tried to make friends with them but it's no use."
"Friends with them! cried Eustace. "If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving!"
"Oh stop it Eustace," said Lucy. Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps you could do something with them."
"I have no great love for Dwarfs today," said Tirian. "Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this."
Our heroes find the dwarfs sitting in a tight circle and believing, despite the fact that they are in a lovely wide-open field, that they are held prisoner in a stable. Tirian and the rest try their best but the Dwarfs remain in their circle defiantly insisting on their own misery and captivity. Eventually Aslan, the real Aslan, shows up and Lucy tries again.
"Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you--will you--do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses they all said: "Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs."
"You see," said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out."
The story really is tragic but I think that one crucial element of it is terribly overlooked. The Dwarfs are not excluded; they are included in the new, real Narnia. True, what was done to them has made them--for the time being and maybe (let us hope and pray not) forever--unable to participate but they are not barred from flourishing. As Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain "The Gates of Hell are locked on the inside." Within the Narnia canon we never find out the final fate of the Dwarfs, Lewis leaves open both the possibility that they will remain forever locked in the stable-prison of their own minds, or that they may in time, wake up to reality and move joyfully "further up and further in" where the inside is always bigger than the outside and joy cascades upon joy. This great sin must be laid once more at the feet of the straw-man Jesus of white American Evangelicalism, that it has inflicted a wound, a trauma of the sort that cannot be healed until healing is sought.
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