Faith of Threats

Wuff! I'm still worked up about the whole health care town hall meeting thing--so worked up, in fact, that I had to spend some time before posting here washing my brain clean with some refreshing youtubes of babies laughing.

Does the trick, generally.

Back to the task at hand: I've been exploring my childhood faith experience, trying to figure out why that conservative evangelical faith began to seem so wrong to me as I grew older. One factor, I've suggested, has to do with the fact that my childhood faith preached love for one's neighbors while relying for its genesis, upkeep, and spread on fearful self-interest. You became a Christian in my faith primarily to avoid the threat of Hell. Avoiding hell remains the core motivation in many of the more popular versions of conservative evangelism.

Although effective in the short term (that is, for people who accept the premises of God, hell, sin, and judgment), I've argued that this faith actually has several negative long-term consequences. First and foremost, it's short-lived. Intense, adrenaline-surge evangelism purchases emotional power at the price of longevity. It burns out, especially as the reality of what it means to be a Christian (not just a momentary decision but a lifetime of commitment) sinks in.

To stave off burnout, fight-or-flight Christianity applies more fire--hellfire, that is, stoking the embers of anxiety 1) about one's eternal fate (Are you sure you've really, truly turned to Christ? Might you just be fooling yourself?), or 2) about the degree to which one is evangelizing (Have you led others to Christ? You know, real Christians share their faith all the time. If you aren't doing that, well... you may want to go back to concern #1...).

The problem with this constant fear-mongering is twofold (at least). First, fear works like an addictive substance. It generates an intense emotional high while deactivating higher brain functions. It's difficult to think clearly or carefully when you're rushing for the fire exit. But what an exquisite feeling it is, the pure certainty of danger, the need for salvation. Such simple, unadulterated emotions are hard to come by for adults. It's not that fear is altogether pleasant, but its ability to reduce the complex world into a straightforward, life-or-death decision can be refreshing. You feel in touch with a reservoir of Truth (I've got to act or I'll die) that mimics the Truth you learn about in Sunday School (God is real, is watching, is here). Thus, you come to link the simple certainty of the hellfire-and-damnation message with the certainty appropriate to Christian faith throughout a lifetime.

The trouble is, the world is complex. Christianity, insofar as it exceeds the temporal bounds of the singular moment of conversion, must therefore also be complex. Certainty about how exactly we as Christians ought to live, how exactly we should act in every situation, just isn't possible. But fight-or-flight faith insists that it's certainty--certain belief--that ensures our salvation. Doubt, which is almost always a byproduct of thought, is therefore verboten. Fight-or-flight evangelism can all to easily lead to a faith defined by a fetish for fearful, insular thoughtlessness.

Second problem: these regular activations of the eternal soul's survival instinct hinder the other-directed life that Christians are supposed to lead. You turn to Christ to get yourself saved (which of course is Christ saving you rather than you saving yourself, etc.). You evangelize not merely because you wish others to be saved, too, but also because evangelizing is proof-in-the-pudding that your salvation is genuine. It's not that evangelists aren't deeply concerned with the eternal destinations of those around them, but this other-concern is nevertheless tied to the self-concern of their own salvation. Would there be as much focus on evangelizing if Jesus had given believers an out-clause? "You may make disciples, but you don't have to."

Or, to return to a question I cited early on in this blog, if heaven and hell were neutralized--if there were no final judgment of the sort spoken of in evangelical discourse, would people still be Christians? Is Jesus worth following apart from His ability to snatch us from the pit?

By the time I was entering high school, these questions had joined others I was having about, say, what happened to people who had never heard the gospel of Christ or how the Bible's words about creation could be reconciled with scientific consensus about the earth's age. Intellectually, I was searching for something more satisfying. Emotionally and spiritually, I was dog-tired of being threatened with the eternal judgment and sick with the thought that a Christian lifestyle required me to introduce others to that threat.

I was needing another way to be a Christian.

More tomorrow,

JF