When Jesus is tried, he is asked about his disciples and his teaching. His answer is: “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together; I have said nothing secretly” (Jn 18:20). The scenes of the Acts of the Apostles take place in the same public arenas, which is why both the trial of Jesus and the testimony of the Apostles become political issues. By opening up an horizon beyond the immediate horizon of the state, they indirectly limit the latter and subject it to an eschatological critique. A king who is not of this world but acts in utter seriously on the public world stage is bound to be involved in the political drama. The only question is, in what sense? Does not Buddha too subject the whole theatre of the world and the state to a similar criticism, but in his case by projecting into onto an apolitical horizon? And as for Judaism and Islam, do they not push the political dimension beyond itself and dramatize it by infusing it with a messianic and eschatological motive power? Christianity stands strangely elusive between these two approaches, or beyond them both; this gives it a highly distinctive dramatic tension which is only inadequately expressed by the word “political”. The Kingdom Christ announces as the fulfillment of history stands at the door; both individual and community have to live with all their attention fixed on it, bending all their spiritual powers toward it, but it is from God that it comes; it does not emerge from within history as the result of human effort…
The life of Jesus — contrary to [some] Jewish hopes, contrary to the messianic models of his time and contrary to the accusation which led to his death sentence — was devoid of any political claim to power, nor did it prematurely institutionalize features belonging to the eschaton. The Christian as such may be utterly deprivatized, commissioned to act publicly as an assessor on the world stage (1 Cor 4:9; Heb 10:33) — and in this sense [she] maybe political: all the same, [her] existence cannot be classified in secular terms, and [she herself] cannot grasp it in its totality, and so the Christian cannot be simply put int o the “political” pigeonhole.
Politics concerns [the Christian]: as a “member” under Christ, the Head, [she] is in profound solidarity with each of the Lord’s least brothers [and sisters] and must realize that [she] has an inescapable responsibility for the conditions under which they live. In this more-than-human, specifically Christian responsibility, which is rooted in Christ’s solidarity with every last sinner and poor [person], there can be no self-complacent community of Christians, no closed Church. The Church is essentially planted in the field of the world to bear her special fruit in it and from it; she is mixed in with the world’s dough to leaven all of it; but just as the Church can only be herself in going beyond herself to the world, so, on the other hand, the world is designed, retrospectively, from the eschaton, to transcend itself in the direction of the Kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:25ff.). At this very point the Church becomes the world’s substantial pledge of hope that bursts all bounds, although her leaven, which continues to ferment in society and presses for worldly power to be used in the service of justice and peace, is powerless in itself. Or, in Paul’s paradox, it is only strong when it is weak (2 Cor 12:10).
The impotence of the Crucified in death, which remains the inner shape of even the most vigorous Christian life, can never be manipulated to “amorize” humankind. The dramatic situation in which the Christian is consciously, and the world and its history are unconsciously, involved goes far beyond the category of politics. It complements the latter with a dimension which, depending on how one looks at it, can be described as ineluctably tragic or utopian (whether in a meaningless or meaningful sense) or as ultimately bringing reconciliation. If the “political” is to claim relevance to the issue of ultimate meaning — and it cannot do so unless it is prepared to give up applying valid norms even within the temporal sphere — it must consent to being taken beyond itself and set in relation to this dramatic dimension of human existence, which attains its highest tension only in the Christian reality.
Category: Church and World (Page 3 of 4)
[This post originally appeared on the Missio Alliance blog two days ago as part of their special Holy Week Series.]
I remember learning as a child in Sunday school about how the Palm Sunday crowd welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with great enthusiasm and anticipation. It never really made much sense to me how they could turn on him so much in just a week’s time, but I was too young to strongly question this. When I got older, I suppose I just stopped thinking about it. All that mattered is that I had been taught “the gospel,” namely, that even though we are fickle sinners just like the people on Palm Sunday, God sent Jesus to die for our sins on the cross. Well, I’ve since discovered that “how they could turn on him” really matters, and so I think it’s worth revisiting what “the crowd” during Holy Week teaches us about this gospel claim.
First, that God sent Jesus:
It is crucial to remember that before sending Jesus, God sent others. There’s a story behind the story. Most importantly for Jewish memory, God sent Moses, through whom God liberated Israel from slavery and gave to them the Law. This was their primal narrative. Life in Egypt was marked by the politics of oppression, much like in Rome. Pharaoh’s gods were at the head of the religious establishment, which was synonymous with economic affluence. Like the ancient Israelites, first-century Jews were subjected to the emperor’s reign of domination and awaited one who would “command peace to the nations” (Zech. 9:10).
The Israelites began to forget where they came from, that they were once slaves in Egypt. They started looking more and more like the Egyptians themselves. After Moses, God also sent the Prophets. They had to issue a warning. Liberation from slavery is a good thing – the most original meaning of the word “salvation” – but it can so easily develop into a new form of tribalism and violence. Their fear and anxiety led them to desire once more the security of Empire. They wanted their own king and kingdom. Before long, this also meant they needed their own slaves. In other words, the formerly oppressed were becoming the oppressors. Israel was being recreated into the image of Egypt:
“[Jerusalem] that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her – but now murderers! Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves as bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them” (Isaiah 1:21b, 23).
Jerusalem was “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34). Making his way to Jerusalem, Jesus knew though that the “chief priests, the elders and the scribes” neither wanted nor understood his sort of peace. This is why “[a]s Jesus drew near and saw Jerusalem, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes’” (Luke 19:41). Unlike Pilate’s triumphal entry on the west side of town, Jesus processes on a donkey, with no army behind him, and no news of conquest. While they’re not sure what to make of this, the people still chant, “Hosanna!” Maybe he really could be their deliverer…
Second, To die for our sin:
During Holy Week, we see in Jerusalem the same social system that was condemned by the prophets, the same one that Jesus confronted, and the same one that killed him. Like the prophets before him, Jesus was engaged in the dangerous business of challenging the Jewish high-priestly collaboration with imperial control. His teachings about the Kingdom of God were perceived as, and in a real sense were, a threat to the political and religious establishment. The day after Jesus’s arrival, he harshly and publically criticizes the temple and its complicity with the system of Roman exploitation in yet another street theater-styled demonstration – by driving out the buyers and sellers. This was an extraordinarily adversarial act.
Palm Sunday signals the beginning of the recurring journey of God’s people from Exodus to Exile – in one week. In first-century Jerusalem, the jobs of the high priest Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate were tricky and difficult. They had to both please Rome and quell the frustration of the Jewish people so as to prevent civil unrest at the same time. Was this the same crowd as before? Some scholars doubt it, but this wouldn’t change the lesson. The crowds did not really understand who Jesus was. They had seen him perform signs and wonders, but his teachings were scandalous. Just like the Israelites wandering in the desert, they were still scared because of their insecure material circumstances and easily swayed by the influence of their society’s scheming leaders.
When we figure out that Jesus is not going to give us what we want, and not in the way that we want it, whether we’re in a position like Pilate or the crowd, we easily turn against him. This “turning against” is the opposite of belief and repentance. It’s that tendency in all of us to let the ego take over, to be driven by fear, shame, and anger, and to close off our hearts. It is because of (“for”) the crowd’s sin of “turning against” him that Jesus dies.
Finally, on the cross:
Caesar, called “a son of the gods,” and “lord,” brings peace through conquest and the cross. Jesus, the Son of God, and Lord, brings peace by bankrupting conquest and the cross. Walter Brueggemann says this about the cross in The Prophetic Imagination:
“The cross is the ultimate metaphor of prophetic criticism because it means the end of the old consciousness that brings death on everyone. The crucifixion articulates God’s odd freedom, his strange justice, and his peculiar power. It is this freedom (read religion of God’s freedom), justice (read economics of sharing), and power (read politics of justice), which break the power of the old age and bring it to death” (p. 99).
Thus, the twofold theme of Holy week is this: radical discipleship in an unjust world means following Jesus 1) to a place of non-violent confrontation with the powers of domination and exploitation, and 2) on a path toward personal transformation through death to self (“deny themselves . . . and follow me.” – Mark 8:34). For “death to self” is basically open-heartedness that extends forgiveness even to enemies, just as Jesus extends it to the rulers and fickle crowd that shouts, “Crucify him!” In truth, we are all like the rulers and the fickle crowd.
In our post-Christian culture especially, but in any culture, the appropriate response to Jesus’s week in Jerusalem is not a proud victory cry that rushes to Easter morning for relief from a guilty-conscience and the fear of punishment. Nor is it for bold propositional assertion about the “truth of our belief.” But this is what we’ve frequently made it. Instead, for Holy Week, the charge to churches is bold embodiment of and deep trust in Jesus’s alternative practice of peace – not Caesar’s – one that is both humble and subversive, that liberates us from anxiety about worldly security and false narratives of certainty and instant gratification.
Only then will we be close to loving our neighbor.
Excerpt from the archive repost on the Internet Monk Blog, in Letter from Birmingham Jail:
In deep disappointment, I have wept over the laxity of the Church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the Church; I love her sacred walls. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when
the Church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But they went on with the conviction that they were a “colony of heaven” and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.
Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the Church as never before. If the Church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the Church has risen to outright disgust.
Maybe again I have been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?
This from Shane Hipps’ latest book Selling Water by the River:
Ironically religious Christianity is often the purveyor of the very beliefs and fears that get in the way of the water.
Beliefs are an important part of any religion. What we believe matters, but not for the reasons we may assume. Our beliefs (or lack of beliefs) do not qualify or disqualify us from the river. Instead, they determine how clearly we will see the river, which is always running just beneath our noses. Some beliefs clear the way and give us high visibility, while others create a thick fog. The distance between the river and us never actually changes. What changes is how well we can see and accept it.
The “water” reference in the above quote and throughout the whole book is a metaphor for many things — God, the “source,” “life,” healing, truth or the salvation we all seek — and the one that guides us there is Jesus, but religious Christianity often gets in the way. Hipps is not playing the “gospel vs. religion” game though that’s so popular with neo-reformed folks; nor is he even siding with the “spiritual but not religious.” He continues:
I am convinced that many of the barriers to the water created by religious Christianity share a common source – the ways we have been told to understand and interpret the Bible.
The Bible contains sixty-six books, in dozens of literary genres, written by nearly as many authors, in multiple languages, over several thousand years. The Bible is not merely a book, but an extensive library capable of conveying wide and brilliant truths. The Bible is like a piano with a vast range of notes and capable of playing an endless array of songs.
In the last few centuries, Christian institutions have narrowed the range of notes it plays, resulting in a simple song easily learned and repeated. But through time, repetition, makes any song, no matter how beautiful, lose its edge and interest.
The fresh becomes familiar and what was once powerful become predictable. Familiarity breeds predictability, and this leads to boredom.
Today, we are in danger of believing that nothing new can come from the pages of this ancient book.
But the notes that have been neglected are waiting to resound with songs that still surprise. Strings long silent are now eager to sing . . . [A]n effort [is needed] to let sound these neglected notes, to strike the dust from those strings and let a new song rise.
A song big enough for a complex world.
A song that wakes the weary from their boredom and sleep.
I agree with Hipps here, and I believe this new song can and should be sounded. With regard to the church-world relationship and better engagement with society, however, I also think that we need to mine for songs to sound in culture and in life that corroborate the Bible — not just that stem from it. And I’m sure Hipps would only say the same thing. We need to look outside the Bible simply because the Bible is no longer as widely revered as it used to be. Unfortunate as this may be, it’s a reality with which Christians must do a better job dealing. There’s no “going back” on this front.
As such, we have to ask, what are the “sacred texts” about “water” that God has given us to discover beyond the holy writ? Where and what are the sacred places and practices outside of our sanctuaries? Whether and how we answer these questions is likely to significantly influence the future of Christian churches in North America, for good or ill.
Related articles
- Five Cool Things Fundies Should Know About Christianity. (weoccupyjesus.org)
- The Journey Class: animateFAITH series for September 1: Shane Hipps on Salvation (arborlawnumc.typepad.com)
- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2013/10/02/what-the-church-can-learn-about-millennials-from-small-batch-distilleries/
- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2013/10/04/no-the-writers-of-the-bible-did-not-expect-it-to-be-taken-literally-questions-that-haunt/
Reflecting more on the issue of apologetics, both in terms of its effectiveness and faithfulness or lack thereof, I came across this book recently by way of David Fitch’s recommendation: The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context by Myron Bradley Penner. It is endorsed, among others, by Carl Raschke, John Franke, Douglas Harink and Robert MacSwain, all of whom are significant voices responding to “church and world” questions today.
Below is a description of the book:
The modern apologetic enterprise, according to Myron Penner, is no longer valid. It tends toward an unbiblical and unchristian form of Christian witness and does not have the ability to attest truthfully to Christ in our postmodern context. In fact, Christians need an entirely new way of conceiving the apologetic task.
This provocative text critiques modern apologetic efforts and offers a concept of faithful Christian witness that is characterized by love and grounded in God’s revelation. Penner seeks to reorient the discussion of Christian belief, change a well-entrenched vocabulary that no longer works, and contextualize the enterprise of apologetics for a postmodern generation.
Peter Enns interviewed Penner, who is an Anglican priest and has his PhD from University of Edinburgh, just before the book was published earlier this summer. Here are some of Penner’s remarks:
By postmodern I mean the awareness of the contingency or the problematic nature of the so-called modern project . . . And I wrote the book because that’s where I am at. I no longer see how modern apologetics (and by that I mean the attempt to give reasons for Christian belief that are objective, universal, and neutral) is really all that helpful – for me or anyone else.
Penner then goes on to explain and qualify that he is not against “mere apologetics.” (Neither am I.) Rather, he’s criticizing a very specific kind of “secular reasoning” that is employed by modern Christians to bolster the allusion of certainty and objectivity (and innocence?) in matters of faith. Lastly, Penner speaks of the “rhetorical violence” of the “apologetics industry” and calls for an alternative “politics of witness”:
First, apologetic violence happens at the personal level when apologetic arguments are used to treat people badly. Arguments don’t just “prove.” They may perform a wide variety of functions and can be used to do a lot more than advance a conclusion. When they are used to demean, ridicule, show-up, or hurt another person in any way, I call that a form of violence.
Second, apologetic violence can also happen at the social level when Christian apologetic practice merely reinforces and defends a given set of power relations operative within an unjust social structure. We then overlook real people and proclaim to them the “truths” of the gospel packaged in “universal” concepts and categories (as well as practices) to which they cannot relate in any personal way and which have often played some role in their mistreatment or exploitation.
An apologetic argument for Christian truths in those situations will be received as an implicit justification for the wrong that has been done the established powers. This is perhaps an even more insidious form of apologetic violence because it is generally invisible. It permeates our everyday practices and beliefs, and lurks just below the surface.
The point I want to make about apologetic violence is that when it happens at one or both of the above levels, then it is not the Gospel that is being defended or advanced.
Q: Explain what you mean in your last chapter about “The Politics of Witness.”
Following up on the second kind of apologetic violence – the social kind – it becomes possible to see how Christian witness (and apologetics) is also political.
The kind of politics operative here is what I call a deep politics, however, for I am not talking about leveraging power within some structure of governance. I am speaking at a more profound level of the relations that exist between persons that constitute them as a people—the level at which values and purposes give rise to explicit political structures that govern the relations between persons and how they conduct their common life together. Deep politics concerns public power and power relations between private persons.
So when I say the Christian witness is political, I mean the concern about ideological or systemic apologetic violence connects Christian witness to the issues of deep politics. Against modern apologetics, a postmodern prophetic witness acknowledges that there is no space outside political power in which we can persuade people. The deep politics of modernity allows modern apologetics to imagine itself as operating apolitically, as dealing only with the rational justifications.
Basically, I think Penner is making the same argument I was intending to put forth about ExploreGod but in a different and possibly more persuasive way. I look forward to reading this book.
Related articles
- Some thoughts on “Explore God”: Affluence, Answer-Christianity and Evangelism Anxiety (wawalker.com)
This recent news clip testifies to the hype surrounding a movement in Austin known as “Explore God.” If you live in the area, you might have seen some of the billboards that look like this:
I actually learned about Explore God a year ago. The website had already been built, and much of the basic content was available then as well. At the time, it hadn’t garnered much attention. Clearly things have changed, since last I heard some 350 churches are now on board, and many of them will be dedicating a sermon series to the subject. I know several of the churches partnering with the movement pretty well. There’s going to be weekly events at Gateway Church beginning in September on Monday nights addressing “7 Big Questions” that I will consider below.
Below I’ve included two of the negative comments though that were made on this KXAN website about the newsclip. I don’t put them here because I agree with them necessarily but because I think they uncover a certain sentiment that has perhaps not been taken into full consideration by ExploreGod organizers and supporters:
“It doesn’t matter how many “likes” your FB page gets if the underlying theology is shallow and doesn’t honestly deal with the real questions.”
“What the world needs is less fundamentalist garbage in slick marketing packages. There is a reason that American so-called “Christianity” is in steep decline. It’s a bankrupt, un-Christ-like philosophy that serves only to suck up the love energy that could have been used to solve some of the very real problems that we have in America– Like materialism for instance, i.e. the American so-called Christian church’s real first love.”
While not as hostile and reactionary as these two, and while I certainly don’t think ExploreGod is “fundamentalist garbage,” after digging a little deeper, my initial reaction to ExploreGod was one of relative ambivalence. It’s not that I don’t want it to be successful. I hope much good comes from it, and I believe some good definitely will come. So also, I am not “against” ExploreGod. As someone who is very interested in exploring God myself, however, I do feel compelled to name its shortcomings. Despite its design, tech and promotional savviness, the intellectual content of the site fails to engage in serious theological inquiry. And by “serious,” I don’t mean high-level academic theological thinking. I mean honest thinking. I will explain more below.
I also tend to be very suspicious of Christian outreach marketing attempts in general, especially if they are backed by a lot of money. One can quickly detect the slickness of this operation. It is clearly a well-resourced project. This doesn’t automatically make it bad, but already I fear it has too much privilege and affluence attached to it.
As already mentioned, most of the content on the site is professional and substantive. A broad range of topics are addressed and “explored” — but this is exactly where I start to have more questions. The mission of the organization seems to me to be somewhat confused. The news clip above explains that the program is targeting both “believers” and “non-believers,” and I think this might be part of the problem. I have distaste for the very distinction between “belief” and “non-belief” as a signifier of faith membership in the first place, but nevermind that for the moment.
While the mission claims to simply be about “starting a good conversation,” that is not the impression I get after looking at many of the videos and articles. Yes, there is an effort to begin the conversation in this tone, but eventually that obviously changes. Instead, I get the feeling ExploreGod wants to “give us the right answers” and convince us of their truth. There are over-prescribed end-points for the discussion. The issue I have with ExploreGod then is this: Theirs is not actually so much an attempt to Explore God. Rather, it’s predominantly an effort directed at justifying a priori (already held) Christian beliefs about God. In other words, it’s a video and blog catalog of evangelical Christian apologetics — that is, a defense of the faith. This is not the same thing as an exploration.
When I survey the material on the website, I’m mostly challenged not to explore but to evaluate: Is this persuasive or not? Is there enough evidence? etc. Moreover, the questions are predetermined. This is severely limiting. The entire project is based on the presupposition that it understands what questions people are asking about God, and how they’re asking them. My first accusation is that ExploreGod hasn’t really listened, and therefore does not understand society’s questions about God.
Now, as a student and professor of theology, ethics and philosophy, I recognize that I might be different from many of my evangelical sisters and brothers. I confess Christ, but I’m also a spiritual seeker. This means that no matter what I believe right now — and I’ve dedicated much of my life to testing what I believe — because I desire to know the truth, I must be open to changing my views, and I also must be willing to consider the best arguments against my views. In my estimation so far, despite the good intentions and the quality of content, ExploreGod falls well short of this standard, and therefore my second accusation of ExploreGod is that of false advertising. It would better be called “Come and listen to us talk about why our beliefs are justified afterall.”
In the city of Austin, unless the goal is simply to get the attention of those who might have questions but are already relatively immersed and comfortable in nominal, Western, evangelical, middle-to-upper class Christian culture (i.e., the Bible belt), this movement will not by and large reach a new audience of seekers or de-churched people. The Enlightenment-based reasoning it uses, its mission and its belief statement remain thoroughly entrenched in a modern worldview, and is therefore, I thirdly accuse, failing to speak to a post-modern, post-Christian society. For more on what I mean by modern vs. post-modern, see theologian and Truett Seminary professor Roger Olson‘s two recent blog posts. Here’s a sample:
Modernity, stemming from the Enlightenment and scientific revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, became so pervasive and influenced so many aspects of social and individual life that it changed reality as we (at least in the so-called West) perceive it. Most people are unaware of that. It’s like a fish is unaware of water. Even committed Christians are largely unaware of how modernity shapes their understanding of the Bible and Christianity.
Olson goes on to discuss seven other marks of modernity. The two that relate most to the ExploreGod mindset are the first that Olson mentions:
1. At the root of everything modern, it seems to me, is Immanuel Kant’s imperative “Sapere aude!”—“think for yourself!” In other words, the mature individual ought to believe only what is convincing to his or her own mind and not allow external authorities to determine what to believe just because they hold positions of authority.
2. [T]he modern blik includes belief that “knowledge” is “justified true belief” and that “justified true” means rationally certain beyond reasonable doubt.
ExploreGod’s faith statement affirms the “innerancy of Scripture,” which ironically is a completely modern development. Here is a list of the major questions ExploreGod asks in this modern form:
- Does Life Have a Purpose?
- Is There a God?
- Why is There Pain and Suffering in the World?
- Is Christianity Too Narrow?
- Is Jesus Really God?
- Is The Bible Reliable?
- Can I Know God Personally?
I’ve watched all the videos related to each of these questions, and some of them are great; so are some of the discussion questions that go along with them. In addition, I should say that I do not think these seven questions are unimportant. What I suspect though is that they are not the questions most God explorers in Austin or in any other culturally progressive city in North America are asking today. These kind of questions remind me a lot of the flavor of Christianity that went up against the American Atheist Society Convention in Austin this past spring. Most fundamentally, it’s ahistorical, unsocially conscious “answer-Christianity” — addicted to what Peter Rollins identifies as certainty and satisfaction. Basically, ExploreGod says 1) see the arguments (which we are sure are convincing) and 2) decide for yourself.
If as an outsider I were going to ask seven questions about the Christian faith, they might be somewhat different from these (see, for example, this talk.) For the purposes of this post, however, I’ll stick with the given questions — because the biggest problem is not the questions themselves (about God, Jesus, suffering, Bible, etc. — these topics definitely matter), but, to repeat, the way the questions are posed. These questions are asked in such a way that presumes they can be answered. They are loaded for bait-and-switch. While it might sound surprising given that I am a Christian, I actually do not think a single one of these questions can be satisfactorily “answered.” ExploreGod’s attempts to answer them employ forced logic more so than intensely honest scrutiny (e.g., too many appeals to the authority of apologists like C.S. Lewis, who, great as he was, has decreasing relevance and ability to speak to our context today).
To further explain my disappointment with these seven questions, I’ll take the example of “Is Christianity too narrow?”, which I find to be the most awkward of them all. An ExploreGod video that speaks to this topic can be found here.
Symbol of the major religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)In its defense, the ExploreGod website goes out of its way you might say to give pretty thorough and yet concise summaries of the core tenants of other major world religions and even some of their key distintives. There is an entry about the Koran, for instance. The problem is that once the differences are rightly acknowledged, literally all the world religions are then judged on the basis of a Christian (mis)interpretation of their purposes.
So, even though Buddhists, for example — and we could include many other world religions except for probably Islam — are not consciously trying to escape the judgment of a wrathful God for their sins or longing for a Savior due to their guilt, we forget this little detail and accuse them of trying to “earn salvation by their own effort.” Of course, Buddhists would probably agree with many aspects of the Christian understanding of sin. Sin is plainly evident, depending on we define it (ignorance or blame). The difference comes with the Buddhist belief about the supposed consequences and remedy for that sin, which has nothing to do, for them, with merit. But what ExploreGod does is basically to equate all other world religions with “salvation by works,” or, 16th Century Roman Catholicism. In doing so, ExploreGod betrays its captivity to a Reformation-based understanding of salvation and Christianity — an understanding that I’ve called into question on this blog before.
There is a genuine attempt by ExploreGod to fairly explain major differences between the world religions, and I gladly admit that they more or less successfully do this. But it’s as if they completely ignore what their very own descriptions show by proceeding with a sweeping Christian (mis)interpretation of the significance of these same differences.
The real difference between ExploreGod’s version of Christianity and Buddhism is not that Christians believe in salvation by grace while Buddhists belief in salvation by meditation. It is instead that ExploreGod-Christianity believes we need to be saved from God’s judgement for our sin, while Buddhists believe they need to be free from desire that causes suffering. These are two completely different notions of, not how to be saved, but salvation itself. Thus, contrary to popular Protestant evangelical opinion, the essential difference between Christianity and most other religions is not between “works” and “grace” as ExploreGod would have it.
It’s a lot like the video that went viral a while back about Jesus vs. Religion. Evangelical Christians like to think Jesus and religion are antithetical to each other — I think they are in some ways — but the religion that says “salvation by grace” is still a religion. It’s a religion that pits right belief against right living.
What is, however, a more significant difference between Christianity and other religions, is the doctrine of the Incarnation and Jesus’s divinity, which ExploreGod also points out. The only weakness is with what they say this doctrine means. Basically, its meaning gets reduced back to the false dichotomy of works and grace above. I’ve written about this as well, but the main idea is that Christianity is not primarily characterized by access to salvation from hell and redirection into heaven after we die. Nor is it simply that plus living like Jesus until then out of gratitude. Rather, it’s about a God who comes to us as a human being exemplifying and enabling a transformed life and world (the Kingdom of God). This isn’t proclaimed in the other world religions — at least not in the same way if at all. Forgiveness of sin is part of the story, but so is liberation, new identity, ethics and community. This vision is not nearly as incompatible with Buddhism, even if there are still some incommensurable differences. Rather, I would say it believes and promises much more than Buddhism. Christianity hopes in God for historical and political redemption in addition to personal, and not just freedom from the slavery of desire that causes suffering as in Buddhism — though I would argue this freedom can be part of the Christian story as well.
Believing that only Christians can be saved renders most people condemned, and this produces an intense amount of evangelism anxiety. I do not think this is what Jesus intended for us. Furthermore, this anxiety is only compounded by a contemporary situation in which the institutional Christian church continues to lose its hold on and place of privilege in the dominant American culture.
I think there are basically two ways out of evangelism anxiety. First, you could become a Calvinist (i.e., God has predetermined everything, so there’s no need to worry anymore). And actually I don’t think this one ultimately gets rid of anxiety — it’s just a good suppressant. Alternatively, however, and more intriguingly, we can move beyond belief-centered Christianity. (Just notice I said move beyond, not throw away.) So there’s nothing wrong with evangelism, but evangelism means making disciples and inviting people into the risky, beautiful and adventurous obedience of a Christian life. ExploreGod is not focused on making disciples. If it were, I think we would see a lot more questions about social justice, ecological sustainability and spiritual formation instead of a premeditated set of reasons for belief. (To be fair, I did find at least one good ExploreGod article on what it means to follow Jesus here, which incidentally happens to have been written by a Truett Seminary professor as well).
As Kierkegaard says, this intellectualist approach, which thinks “Christianity is an objective doctrine and it makes no difference how it is served, . . . has abolished Christianity.”
An Alternative: Belong, Behave, Believe
So is there a better way to explore God, or am I just a cynical critic? I mentioned Peter Rollins earlier. Pete is almost certainly not an orthodox Christian. I still say that I am, so we have our differences. He helped me tremendously though when he wrote a book called The Fidelity of Betrayal, in which he made a case for the formation of “Churches Beyond Belief.”
In his recent blog post on a related subject, Robin Perry cites the following quote that partly summarizes what I am trying to say here:
‘[T]he life of the church is its witness. The witness of the church is its life. The question of authentic witness is the question of authentic community’ (Norman Kraus).
This ideal church goes beyond belief by recognizing that what people believe about God exactly is not what matters most — which is not to say it doesn’t matter. Reading the signs of our postmodern, post-Christian times — a time after too many genocides and suicide bombings in the name of certainty of belief — what matters more is whether we create communities of acceptance love that are honest about brokenness and that cultivate good living, where in the process we might come to believe. The approach of ExploreGod is unfortunately the exact opposite: get people to consider belief, and then maybe they’ll come to belong/behave. The nature of those seven questions above assumes that if people are convinced of the truth, they will become Christians. In contrast, I’m convinced that today and in our context we should start by inviting people to be compelled by a Christian way of life, to step into it, try it on, and then, perhaps, to “believe” in it.
The church of tomorrow is not likely to grow by way of billboards or big promotional programs, I contend — though this is not to assert that all things like this are intrinsically bad. Rather, the church in 21st century must embrace a new minority status of post-Christendom humility and grassroots economic integrity. In order to do this, churches will also need to explore God more so through aesthetics, story and drama. This would still be a very relational and personal, conversational faith as ExploreGod would have it. But the answers will be lived and seen more so than discussed and defended. I wonder how these 350 churches could have used this same money to make a public statement in Austin about a Christian way of life more so than to proclaim the truth of Christian belief?
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American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth. You have to expose, and confront, the great disconnection between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people, and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good, but it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all.
Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.
- What is Environment Ethics (csuitementor.wordpress.com)
- Christians who claim they are persecuted should “grow up”, says former Archbishop Rowan Williams (independent.co.uk)
- Rowan Williams: ‘Persecuted’ Christians Must ‘Grow Up’ (bilerico.com)
- Difficult to hear, but instructive for Faithful Peoples’ Participation in the Public Sector (chaplaintomdoc.wordpress.com)
Seal of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The church constantly has to integrate new wisdom, new science, new information into the Gospel if she is going to communicate it to contemporary people and to people of other cultures. Unfortunately, those of little faith tend to identify the values of the Gospel with particular structures or symbols. Then if the symbol is modified, like turning the altar around or receiving communion in the hand, they think the values of the Gospel are being rejected. People have to grow beyond this over-identification. Ancient symbols can sometimes prevent the value of the Gospel from being fully transmitted in new circumstances. Even words develop opposite meanings over time. Would we say that Jesus was not in continuity with Moses and the prophets? They bore witness to him on the mountain. Yet he was completely free about following their tradition. He paid no attention to the rabbinical practice of preaching only in synagogues and only with regard to scripture.
[However,] in the parable of the sower Jesus seems to be referring to his own preaching. Some of the seed, he says, falls on the footpath, that is, on the hard path, the path that goes through the field but that has no give, no flexibility, and is almost as hard as concrete . . . there is no chance of this seed bearing fruit because it can’t get through the concrete. The concrete represents the mythic membership level of consciousness and the worldviews in which people live with unquestioning presuppositions and preconceived ideas: the world of racism, sexism, prejudice, and every kind of bias. — Thomas Keating, Reawakenings
The over-identification of structures or symbols with the gospel is indeed a problem, but I often see in myself and in others an over-identification with certain leaders, churches, experiences and even language itself as well. All of these conduits for transmitting the message must be constantly relativized. Theologically speaking, old forms like Thomism, Calvinism or traditional American evangelicalism, for instance, might also serve to substantially limit the gospel message today.
Moreover, what Keating calls “mythic membership level of consciousness” is similar to Niebuhr’s characterization of “henotheism” in the previous post. It seems appropriate then to broaden the definition of this inferior kind of faith to include these other types of prejudices along the lines of identity politics — politics from the standpoint of both the oppressor and the oppressed. Obviously, the two are not equal, but as closed-society faith forms, they are both insufficiently commensurate with the gospel or true faith.
I found the following selection from Simon Critchley‘s recent op-ed in the New York Times entitled “the Gospel According to ‘Me'” to be a particularly acute diagnosis of some popular spiritualities today (read it all here):
In the gospel of authenticity, well-being has become the primary goal of human life. Rather than being the by-product of some collective project, some upbuilding of the New Jerusalem, well-being is an end in itself. The stroke of genius in the ideology of authenticity is that it doesn’t really require a belief in anything, and certainly not a belief in anything that might transcend the serene and contented living of one’s authentic life and baseline well-being. In this, one can claim to be beyond dogma.
Whereas the American dream used to be tied to external reality — say, America as the place where one can openly practice any religion, America as a safe haven from political oppression or America as the land of opportunity where one need not struggle as hard as one’s parents — now, the dream is one of pure psychological transformation.
This is the phenomenon that one might call, with an appreciative nod to Nietzsche, passive nihilism. Authenticity is its dominant contemporary expression. In a seemingly meaningless, inauthentic world awash in nonstop media reports of war, violence and inequality, we close our eyes and turn ourselves into islands. We may even say a little prayer to an obscure but benign Eastern goddess and feel some weak spiritual energy connecting everything as we listen to some tastefully selected ambient music. Authenticity, needing no reference to anything outside itself, is an evacuation of history. The power of now.
Here Thomas Merton writes several decades earlier in a way that I think illumines a Christian response:
All over the face of the earth the avarice and lust of [people] breed unceasing division among them, and the wounds that tear [them] from union with one another widen and open out into huge wars. Murder, massacres, revolution, hatred, the slaughter and torture of the bodies and souls of [human beings], the destruction of cities by fire, the starvation of millions, the annihilation of populations and finally the cosmic inhumanity of atomic war: Christ is massacred in his members, torn limb from limb; God is murdered in [humanity].
From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of God who delivered himself to the cross and suffered the pathological cruelty of his own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death God opened their eyes to the reality of love which overcomes hatred and destroys death.
Humanistic love will not serve. As long as we believe that we hate no one, that we are merciful, that we are kind by our very nature, we deceive ourselves; our hatred is merely smoldering under the gray ashes of complacent optimism. We are apparently at peace with everyone because we think we are worthy.
To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.
Soren Kierkegaard studying (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reinhold Niebuhr (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In his book, The Nature and Destiny of [Humanity], Reinhold Niebuhr distinguishes between three different kinds of religious “identity” and “purpose” (my words). I see them closely corresponding to Soren Kierkegaard‘s three stages of life: the aesthetic, the ethical-moral, and the religious.
In the first place, there is the sensual life of indulgent self-interest. And lest we be too hard on this group, it should be acknolwedged that the “aesthetic” life can be quite civil and friendly. I think about the relative peace enjoyed by those who benefit, for example, from pax romana, or presently, pax america — that is, the economic and political stability established as a result of imperialism. It is a climate in which we are more or less free to pursue our own ambitions and dreams without too much interference, as long as we don’t harm anyone else and obey the law.
A second mode of existence is one that recognizes and strives to adhere to a higher moral law. Today we might actually reverse the Kierkegaardian language and call this mode the “religious” life. The religious life can be very good, and deeply prophetic. While it risks a great deal of self-righteousness, it also has the capacity to speak truth to power, criticize injustice and inspire generosity. This mode looks out for the disenfranchised. The trouble is that it can tend to miss the “log in its own eye.”
Thirdly, there is what Niebuhr calls the messianic consciousness, which is the properly Christian one for him. The key lesson from messianism is that we cannot achieve justice or be righteous on our own no matter how hard we try. Sin and egoism have so enslaved us as to make our good deeds no more than “filthy rags” before God’s throne, as Scripture says. Only a sinless, suffering servant can bring about the full redemption and peace we all long for…
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My friend Bo Sanders over at Homebrewed Christianity has become fond of talking about three different kinds of churches: the therapeutic, messianic and prophetic (he claims to get this from Cornell West and Slavoj Zizek). What’s so interesting to me, and what might already be clear, is the way that the messianic and the prophetic are switched so as to alter the Niebuhrian logic. On this reading, the prophetic is preferable to and “higher” than the messianic, because the messianic is cynically interpreted to be escapist and other-worldly — i.e., God cleaning up the mess for us, and our responsibility is proportionally shrunk as long as we’re counted among the “saved.”
Now, I think it’s possible to see that both series of depictions are getting at essentially the same thing, but each with slightly greater respective emphasis on one of two necessary components to the life of the church: namely, the messianic (merciful) and the prophetic (just). Jewish liberation theologian Marc Ellis was the person who first made the point to me about the problem with sheer messianism. Of course, the naive Christian in me at the time wanted to challenge him by replying with the weaknesses of strict propheticism, some of which have already been highlighted above. But actually I believe now that Ellis was right.
This is because Ellis also discusses the concept of revolutionary forgiveness. This is an especially useful motif with regard to political, ethnic and national reconciliation, but surely it can apply to interpersonal relationships as well. By this phrase, Ellis means first that no one gets to claim innocence for themselves. Once all parties agree to this, then there can be some healing and transformation toward a better future, and — I would venture to say — toward salvation itself, which is always messianic and prophetic.
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