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Most recently, I saw this type of criticism at the blog Crime & Federalism in a post by blogger Mike titled “Pope to Jesus: Kiss Off!

There are millions of orphans currently suffering. Many of them will suffer horrible abuse at the hands of foster parents. In other countries, they will be sold into slavery. These children exist, and if someone doesn’t help them, they will suffer. That much is a constant.

Yet, according to the Catholic Church, only marriage between a man and woman is moral because it leads to a married couple having children.

Has Christianity become so perverted that not adopting (having children rather than adopting them is an conscious act) children is more moral than ending human suffering?

What has happened to the teachings of Christ?

***

Children are great. And children suffering is a horrible injustice. A church that truly taught Christ’s message would encourage adoption over procreation.

Yet the Pope is more concerned with adults entering into consensual sexual relations than he is with children being sold into sexual slavery. Yes, when you choose not to adopt, you make it more likely that a child will suffer. You are culpable.

It’s a strange world we live in, when even the Pope has missed the basic message of the New Testament. He’s more worried about gay adults than he is with suffering children.

(The omitted portion in the middle contended that having children is a selfish thing to do.)

I think that people who tend to criticize Catholics and other Christians for concentrating on abortion and same sex marriage while supposedly “ignoring” other problems fail to recognize why it appears that the Church is “preoccupied.” There are strong movements to legitimize both practices (and in the case of abortion, an already successful movement). It is natural for the Church to assemble its forces to counterattack. And given that both sides have mobilized in political and legal circles, it is natural that you would hear the most about these issues.

I suspect that for most such critics, this type of argument is not made to actually further the fight against poverty, or slavery, or whatever other “ignored” issue is pointed out, but to try to shame the Church into abandoning the battlefield on the high-profile issues so the “progressives” can proceed unopposed (good luck with that).

And just who is consumed with these issues, anyway? Stop pushing abortion and gay marriage from the left, and the Christian right will have nothing to push back against. In other words, Christian activism on these issues is largely reactive, not proactive.

Why on earth someone like blogger Mike would assume that because the Church actively fights vociferous proponents of legalizing and legitimizing practices that are immoral in the eyes of the Church, it “doesn’t care” about other injustices? Because he doesn’t see it on the news? There are millions of Christians in this country alone that give their time and money to fight poverty, homelessness, addiction, domestic violence, etc., and more overseas that fight violence, slavery, forced prostitution, and other evils.

A similar, but more thoughtful and less insulting version of the point was made by CNN’s Roland S. Martin (right). Apparently a professing Christian, he posted a column to his website last year titled “Christians: It’s time to take back the faith”:

If abortion and gay marriage are a part of the Christian agenda, I have no issue with that. Those are moral issues that should be of importance to people of the faith, but the agenda should be much, much broader.

Okay, so far, so good.

I’m looking for the day when Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joyce Meyer, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Dr. James Kennedy, Rod Parsley, President Bush’s “Patriot Pastors,” and Rick Warren will sit at the same table as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Cynthia Hale, Eddie L. Long, James Meek, Fred Price, Emmanuel Cleaver, and Floyd Flake to establish a call to arms on racism, AIDS, police brutality, a national health care policy and our sorry education system.

Putting aside the question of what the hell Jackson and Sharpton would do if they couldn’t cry racism all the time — and questioning Martin’s placement of Rick Warren with more conservative figures — I’m trying to imagine the common ground Martin thinks these folks might come to.

Which brings me to the disparate treatment of the Religious Left and Religious Right. But that post is for another day.

Today, Dennis Prager pointed out two significant ways in which Wright is not prophetic. First, the prophets warned against calling good evil and calling evil good – Wright does what the prophets warned against. Second, prophets made their audiences uncomfortable and forced them to examine themselves, while Wright blames others instead of challenging his listeners.

Now, to be fair, the NYT didn’t call Wright a prophet; the article used “prophetic” it as an adjective to describe his style of preaching. And its probably unfair to level these criticisms against Wright generally based on a few sermons, though it is at least fair to say that these specific sermons do not exhibit prophetic behavior.

But there is danger in thinking about Wright as a prophetic figure, even in style. Prophets were always right. Speaking on behalf of God, how could they be anything but right?

Associating prophecy, or even prophetical style, with any preacher risks cloaking him with the absolute correctness of the prophets. Obama may have said he doesn’t agree with everything Wright says, but there will be plenty of people willing to do so, especially if any variation of the word “prophet” is used frequently around Wright.

Dennis talks to one of the world’s most renowned Biblical scholars, Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the early Church and the life of Jesus. His latest book is God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer.

This is really a fascinating hour. Among the professor’s positions I found to be most astounding:

• He finds the state of the world so inconsistent with the existence of a loving God that he turned from evangelical Christian to atheist.
• Life is no more meaningful if there is a creator than if there is not one.

Prager raised one of my favorite arguments, which I’ve heard from him before. That is, mankind would ask why a loving God would allow suffering no matter how little suffering was in the world. Take away suffering from earthquakes, and we would demand an answer from God as to why he allows tornadoes. Take away tornadoes, and we would demand to know why God allows floods. Take away all natural disasters, and we would demand why he allows cancer, then diphtheria, and eventually we’d be demanding to know why he allows the flu, the common cold, bee stings, or even stubbed toes.

There is a place where God removes all suffering, but it’s heaven, not here.

By the way, the podcast omits commercials and the discussion takes about 35 minutes. Tells you how little of the typical talk radio “hour” is really filled by what you’re actually tuning in to hear!