That Fine Balance

Recently, in my class on Bonhoeffer, the professor made a point of stating that Bonhoeffer had said the church should make statements that are relevant today.  The Beatitudes are more than dos and do nots, but need to be contextualized in sermons and statements from the pulpit.  Such thoughts seem to fly in the face of accepted wisdom though.  Nothing seems more unnecessary and irrelevant than one more ill-informed voice whining about the problems of life.  A perusal of Facebook or Twitter proves just how problematic such a desire can be.

Yet Bonhoeffer meant nothing of the sort.  Fortunately I have friends who are far left and far right.  Both sides operate from a world based on fear and scarcity.  The ideologies may not see their partisans offering any hope to the world, but at least they will protect against the clearly evil opposing party.  To this Bonhoeffer is clear that the problems and evils of our society are great; it is solved with humble critiques and not by demagoguery.  It is best to take our template from the sermon on the mount.  It is best to look, really look, at the needs of the victims of society.  How often do we talk as if we know what is best for someone only to do what we want couched in language of compassionate altruism?  When will we learn that we must stand for the manifestation of Christ's kingdom instead of the political mood dressed up in Christian garments?  When we allow the crucified Christ to take not just our sins but our ideologies that get in the way of our obedience?

The world finds an easy target of Christians taking a stand for temporal things that have no bearing on our salvation.  It needs something more.  It needs Christians who see beyond taxes, guns, and superficialities to the needs of real people.  Whatever the pastor or church may say is bound to be deliberately misquoted by those opposed to the Gospel, but the alternative is far worse: a silent church that offers no hope in eternity, no faith in a resurrection  and no love with God and neighbor.  We find the portrayal of the the church as between that of a bad family and a negligent family.  The simple answer is that the church must speak its truth; but in a way that sees not good and evil people, but sinners in need of reconciliation.

What if the church that railed against abortion was the church that provided for the widow and orphan as well?  What if the church that decried gun violence offered a better way than that of the gun?  What if the church saw justice and righteousness as the same thing?  What if we forgave, really forgave, as our Lord Jesus Christ forgave on the cross?  What if we weren't afraid to call sin what it was, but also called grace what it was as well?  What if we sacrificed our political voice for the voice calling out on the hill of the Beatitudes?  The goal of every Christian is to sacrifice being right for being a little Christ.  In this we find that we speak less of the evils of society, but against them all the more.  Yet at the root is the hope that grace will flow down and change a hopeless world into one that can hope again.  It will not be accomplished by politics, economics, or society; but by Christians being unashamed of who they are and humble enough to accept their own call to action.   

We aren't losing because we're irrelevant, we are losing because we are stupid. (Part One: Doctrine)

Recently I made the horrible mistake of reading a meme from Family Guy.  Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, is an avowed atheist; though of the particularly nasty stripe that disparages Christianity.  In the frame, Stewie (the precocious baby) tells Brian (the show's straight-man ... and family dog) that the futuristic utopia they have happened upon is actually an alternate universe in the same time and place.  However, it is an alternate place where Christianity has never happened.

It would be too easy to get into an argument about the faulty reasoning and philosophical problems involved in such propaganda chicanery.  Instead, I would like to focus my guns at Christians.  Here is why: I actually felt bad to be a Christian.  I thought: Is this really how people think of me?  Do my close friends who are atheists really believe I am a malevolent imp; some creature whose only puzzle is whether he is more evil than stupid or vice-versa?  Are we really as bad as all that?

Let us look first at the lowest common denominators.  Flipping on the television or wander into (if you dare) a Christian bookstore; and the case for Christianity is definitely not good.  Perhaps the better proof of this case is just to wander into the "religion" section of a local grocery store.  The books there are self-serving, self-help, easy-cheap-grace tripe of no real value.  They may keep a few people who would wander out of the religion still in the fold, but at what cost?  Joel Osteen's smiling mug or a formulaic Christian fiction book is at best a guilty pleasure; but has more in common with food stolen from a midnight raid on the freezer than actual nourishment.  Much of this, is what C.S. Lewis calls "Christianity and Water."  It is as he says, "the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right—leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption."*  (It must be said that this notion has enjoyed a great segmenting in recent years.  Perhaps I will go into the differences between Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and American Civil Religion in another post, but for now this will suffice for my argument.)

H. Richard Niebuhr points out the problem of this quite well when he declares, "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."☨  This is the kind of check-out counter Christianity that many in the church like to read.  "God likes you just as you are and wants you to be happy," it declares.  If we read "just as you are" as "never having to grow-up" or "being happy" as "being comfortable"; than it may keep in a few, but can hardly stand up to the thrashing that atheism or even real Christianity will bring to bear.  (And trust me, the Holy Spirit can deliver blows to convict the human soul that atheism would find crippling.)

This portrayal of Christianity makes us easy pickings for a world already hostile to the message.  What grace do we have to impart?  What future reconciliation are we to give?  What philosophical questions do we answer?  If we get our theology from the check-out counter, than none at all.  The real atheist should know this is not the Christianity he or she truly must oppose, yet it is the one they do oppose.  Here the open-minded atheist and the devout Christian will find common ground.

Yet, are these books really the best-selling?  Well, Gary Chapman's "5 Love Languages" tops Amazon, but "Mere Christianity" is number two.  In fact perusing it yields a baffling result, there is no real theme to what Christians buy.  Classics sit next to flashes-in-the-pan.  Insightful books sit next to fluff.  All this says that American Christianity is conspicuously without doctrine.  Some may say that is a good thing because doctrine is nothing more than nasty rules which hamper God from letting us be unique little snow-flakes.  Yet, looking at the dismal state of affairs of the average American Christian, can we really say it is a worse alternative?

It seems clear that a little doctrine would be nice.  Doctrine allows Christianity to truly compete in the world of ideas.  Doctrine establishes the ground rules for the debate.  We don't have to worry that some foolish hipster or back woods good-ol'-boy or nutty professor with no education and a King James Bible is being given equal weight as St. Augustine, Luther, or N. T. Wright.  In essence, we don't have to worry about flanking maneuvers. We can say this is what we believe.  Of course there will be differences, we aren't giving up on those; but we won't have to allow the minor issues distract from the central messages.  It is a battle which is easier stated as necessary than fought out.  The Reformation and Counter-Reformation offered us a glimpse of how bad things can get; but it is necessary.  I am a Lutheran at a Wesleyan school attending an Anglican or Evangelical Church.  Anglicans, Catholics, and Calvinists sit side by side on my bookshelf.  I agree with some more than others, but the point is that I can see the orthodoxy in them.  We don't have to be clones to be the church.  In fact, I believe that is what God would have of us.

So, it is no wonder that we are easy pickings for Atheists.  They seem to have a better grasp of us than we do.  If you want a good place to start think of Christianity this way:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and born of the Father before all ages. (God of God) light of light, true God of true God. Begotten not made, consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried; and the third day rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, of whose Kingdom there shall be no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is to be adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets. And one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Is there debate in this?  Of course, but it is at the heart true.  It is a unified front.  It will bring together the most disparate groups of Christians.  And if you can't agree on this, perhaps the problem isn't with the church, but with yourself.  Maybe you have been led to believe you do deserve a more personal God who allows you to add and subtract what you want from your faith.  The question then is what do you really believe, Christianity or a very cheap replica picked up at the local supermarket?

MacFarlane may be right about a Christian faith which represses "right thinking" if all he is shown is one which will believe anything at all; but Christian doctrine (real doctrine) is a lot harder to dismiss or disprove.  When it wakes, it will not be so easy to mock as a strawman for an internet meme.

  

* C. S. Lewis (2011-11-22T05:13:54+00:00). Mere Christianity (Kindle Locations 604-605). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

☨ The Kingdom of God in America (1937), New York: Harper and Row, 1959, p. 193

Its been awhile.

Its been awhile, so why start up again?  Why do this thing?  There are deadlines and paperwork still to fill out.  That doesn't even begin to deal with the very real issue of sleep.  Why stay up late and write this?  Simple, this is what I do.  Its what I love to do.  Hopefully, I will keep up with it.

I have been finding, of recent, that my life has lost some semblance of the order which it used to possess.  I do not mean that I am crazy or overcome with doubt, but that in my pursuit of what should be done, I have been negligent in what must be done.  I have been trying far too hard to be humble and in that pursuit, I have lost sight of humility.  I have become, in effect, pointless.  Books I want to read gather on my shelves unread along side books I am supposed to be reading.  Professors ask me to write essays that are supposed to get at the root of me, but they ask me to go too deep on my soul too quickly.  We ask a lot of people in essays describing themselves; but as much as Americans are portrayed as swaggering braggarts, we are really quite self-effacing.  Perhaps most of us Americans have bought into a myth that we are constantly having to write introductory letters to apply for being most awesome in the world?  I still think we are the best, perhaps not so much because of our latest accomplishments, but rather because of our potential.

That seems like the best reason to write a blog: potentiality.  I read over my old blogs (from the site I can't seem to access anymore), and think about how it sounds.  I like that writer.  I like his style and his insights.  It isn't pride to think one is genuinely talented in some field.  I don't really know what it is.  I don't know that author anymore and I want to know him again.  He seemed to say things and talk about things that really matter; and in the end the real American wants to matter and write about things that matter.  I want to be that person.  I don't want to be some person who sits on the sidelines because he thinks he is being too proud if he goes in.  I don't want to be that person whose essays and points are driven by due dates.  I want to be the person who rights about something because it matters.  Life matters.  The stupid stuff one did today matters.  So, while a lot has changed since I wrote last; a lot has stayed the same.  The world still matters.

Yet the one thing I will say is this, I need this.  I didn't know how much I needed it then, but I realize that it is something that has been dreadfully missing in my life.  I miss speaking.  I miss being a participant.  I miss being in the game.  Its been awhile, time to forget about false humility, and get in there and do what I do well.  Its time to write again.