So, for the past few day's I've been crawling into the mind of a particular kind of evangelist, namely the kind whose primary tactic for convincing people to convert to Christianity consists of three basic steps: 1) convince the person that, in the eyes of God, they have sinned; 2) convince the person that, because of that fact, they are doomed to an eternity in Hell; 3) present the person with the Gospel--that news that Jesus (God in the flesh) paid that penalty for everyone if they only turn to him.
This style of evangelism, which I experienced (and practiced) throughout my childhood and which is today exemplified in Ray Comfort's "Way of the Master" system, generates no small amount of resentment in me. I've alleged that this particular narrative suggests that God operates like a mercurial, unstable tyrant, an omnipotent bully who threatens you with Hell for violating the least commandment and then expects a life of gratitude, love, and service for saving you from God's own wrath.
Given the gravity of that charge (my inner Southern Baptist child is quite alarmed that I'd even write such a thing), I wanted to makes sure I gave the strongest, best rebuttal I could think of. In other words, I don't want to create a straw man out of the Way of the Master (WotM), misrepresenting its theology in reductive ways only to crow about how easily I can knock down that misrepresentation.
Thus my three forays into the mind of a WotM: three defenses against the argument I leveled. Briefly, they are as follows: A) God's law is a natural condition of reality, not a random assortment of preferences God conjured on the spot. Breaking that law brings consequences just as surely as stepping off a high-rise building results in a fall. Complaining about the unfairness of Hell is like complaining against the unfairness of gravitation. B) The real focus of the WotM isn't Hell; it's God's love. If you believe that God is God (omnipotent, transcendent, etc.), then you must come to appreciate the magnitude of God's sacrifice in becoming Jesus and dying on the cross for us. To call God petty after that sacrifice... well, that's a whole lot of ingratitude (and gall). C) Hell is unpleasant but necessary. Transcendent moral truths require eternal consequences. If no negative consequences for doing wrong existed, distinctions between right and wrong would disappear. The ethical universe demands ethical laws. And even here--God gives you an out-clause. Are you really going to spit in God's face for letting you off the hook of universal justice?
Those are my hypothetical three counter-arguments against myself. Now, before I respond to them (as myself), I want to make a few disclaimers.
First, there's nothing new under the sun. What I've been doing over the last few days is an exercise in Christian apologetics (from the Greek, apologia, meaning defense or justification). To be blunt, over the two millennia of Christianity, many, many people--thinkers and poets and saints of far greater experience, education, and spirit than I--have engaged in apologetics. Scholars make careers out of studying the history of apologetic thought. Nothing I've come up with here is novel, and it's my own ignorance that prevents me from expressing my attempts at apologetic in modes as sophisticated as, say, Thomas Aquinas.
Second, there's nothing new under the sun--part two. For at least as long as there have been apologetics, there have been critics of the faith. I would be surprised if even my initial critique had not been made many times over--often by Christian thinkers themselves. Again, mea culpa for re-inventing the wheel (it is a blog, after all, and not a research paper).
Finally, I doubt that there's anything, argumentatively speaking, that's new to Ray Comfort and company. While I have theological and ethical problems with his technique, I respect the fact that he's been refining this technique (actually a set of techniques) for many years. He's spoken to thousands of people (more?), engaged in hundreds of in-depth conversations with just about every argument against his technique that you could think up.
Oddly enough, though, his latest apologetical project aims squarely at atheists, particularly militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. His newest book, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Drink exemplifies this direction of his ministry.
I'm fascinated by his website and its techniques (confrontational anti-atheism?), and I'll likely discuss those down the way. But I find it interesting that that in following the anti-atheist apologetic path he side-steps an infra-Christian criticism: namely, that from a Christian perspective "the Way of the Master" has faults.
Comfort has many proteges, among them a lively little podcast/radio show called "Last Words Radio" (LWR). LWR is made up of an affable bunch of folk in California who basically practice the Way of the Master and other open-air preaching techniques and talk about it for an hour or so every Saturday (though they have said that they may be ending the program due to funding difficulties). Their program, which I typically listen to as I work out, features a casual grab-bag of reports from the field, live evangelism segments where a host talks to a "fish" on the phone, and ruminations about evangelism in general.
And often--every week--the hosts marvel at how the biggest source of resistance they face on the street comes not (or not usually) from militant atheists but from "people who claim to be Christian." I wonder if this is the case with Ray Comfort as well. If so, I wonder if he hears anything like my argument. And I wonder how he responds to it and why that response--and the situation that provokes it--isn't more common in his writings.
Which of course makes me wonder in turn: how will I respond to my own counter-arguments?
More tomorrow,
JF
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
A last defense of the WotM
Suppose you argue, as I did, against the evangelistic technique of leading people to Christ by 1) convincing them they've sinned; 2) presenting them with the threat of eternal hell; and 3) sharing with them the way out of Hell: becoming a Christian.
Suppose you reasoned, as I did, that such a technique, while often effective at getting people to convert (who wants to go to Hell, after all?), presents an image of God that's strikingly unlovely. Indeed, it presents God as a kind of divine tyrant who dangles you above the flames of Hell for violating even the least of God's impossible-to-follow-perfectly commandments and then, after snatching you away from that Hell, demands not just servitude but grateful, heart-soul-mind-and-strength love.
I think that's a fairly serious set of allegations to lay at the feet of one of the most widespread evangelizing narratives currently in circulation. It behooves me, therefore, to explore the Case For this Technique (a technique best exemplified in Ray Comfort's system, "The Way of the Master"). To that end I'm trying to make the best, strongest counter-arguments I can make from the perspective of a hypothetical Way of the Master evangelist.
Yesterday, I argued that the Case Against the Technique was unfair in that it shortchanged the reality-shattering love that God (who is infinitely beyond humans) shows to humanity even in reaching out at all, let alone dying for us as we shake our fists in God's face.. The day before, I argued that the Case Against mistakes as human pique or irritability the natural consequences of human sin. God is holy, which doesn't mean self-righteous in the human sense. It means that unholy things (i.e., humans contaminated by sin) cannot exist it God's presence any more than light can escape from a black hole. It's just the Way Things Are.
One last attempt, then [again, I take on the "voice" of a WotM evangelist]:
So you don't like the idea of judgment. You say it makes God petty, like that bossy kid you knew as a child who forced everyone to play tag exactly according to his rules.
But think of this: what's the alternative you're offering? What is life without the judgment of God?
Say someone steals something. Maybe they're caught; maybe they're not. If the thief isn't caught, does it make the act of stealing OK? Bernie Madoff seemed to think so. Or what about adultery? If the cheating spouse isn't caught, is it still cheating? It's like a variation on the tree falling in deserted woods question: what makes wrong things wrong?
One answer, perhaps: human laws, a social and civic network of tacit or explicit guidelines and prohibitions define what's right and wrong, permissible and non-permissible.
But think, in times before the 13th and 14th Amendments, before the Emancipation Proclaimation, before the Civil War, before the abolitionist movement even had much steam--in times when slavery was considered OK, even supported by scripture--was slavery wrong then? Or what about female suffrage? Was it just optional prior to 1920? Or was it always wrong to deny women the right to vote, even when the rest of society (including, it must be said, many women) believed it was proper and right to do so?
The answer, for many Christians, is that a standard of right and wrong exists that transcends specifics of time, place, and culture. Admittedly, there's a great deal in civic morality that is context-specific (e.g., "pay your internet bill on time" makes sense only in societies that have commercial internet). But some things--lying, stealing, murdering, raping--these things are always and in all times/places tinged with un-rightness. Though some acts--like untruthfulness--may be required due to extreme circumstances, these are "necessary evils," and their existence doesn't make lying in general any less wrong. Others acts, like rape, are always wrong--even if no one catches the rapist, and even if the society in question doesn't recognize the wrong as such.
Where does this standard come from if not from society? What does it depend upon if not society? For many Christians, the answer is found in Romans 2:15, where Paul writes that God's transcendent law is written on the human heart, and that every person's conscience bears witness to it. Even someone who has never heard of Christianity has a sense of right and wrong. Insofar as any society is just and fair, it derives its notions of justice and fairness from that inner, God-given standard. God is in this sense the Justice in unjust times, the eternal Demand for Mercy in a merciless world.
So you complain about the judgment of God against wrongdoing. But your own inner sense of right and wrong should tell you that you want--you need--there to be judgment. Wrong things must be judged as such, if not in this world than in the next. Else, where is justice? And no, judgment never feels good when it falls on us rather than working for us; we hate to be caught in a fib or indicted for stealing or viewed as guilty. But I accept that my lies against others would cost me in exchange for considering it good and right for others not to lie to or about me. My expectation of honesty depends upon a knowledge that I would be judged by that standard as well.
But what's the alternative? A cold, dog-eat-dog world of private justice? A world where self-evident truths of life and liberty are fabrications to that can be tossed aside (or legislated out of existence)? Without God-given standards of justice as First Principles (or Ultimate Concerns--whatever), life becomes literally unlivable. Society collapses. Humanity's flame gutters and goes out. Goodness requires standards. Standards require judgment. The only right judgment comes from the Ultimate Judge--and even that judge has provided a way to be declared "not guilty"
More tomorrow!
JF
Suppose you reasoned, as I did, that such a technique, while often effective at getting people to convert (who wants to go to Hell, after all?), presents an image of God that's strikingly unlovely. Indeed, it presents God as a kind of divine tyrant who dangles you above the flames of Hell for violating even the least of God's impossible-to-follow-perfectly commandments and then, after snatching you away from that Hell, demands not just servitude but grateful, heart-soul-mind-and-strength love.
I think that's a fairly serious set of allegations to lay at the feet of one of the most widespread evangelizing narratives currently in circulation. It behooves me, therefore, to explore the Case For this Technique (a technique best exemplified in Ray Comfort's system, "The Way of the Master"). To that end I'm trying to make the best, strongest counter-arguments I can make from the perspective of a hypothetical Way of the Master evangelist.
Yesterday, I argued that the Case Against the Technique was unfair in that it shortchanged the reality-shattering love that God (who is infinitely beyond humans) shows to humanity even in reaching out at all, let alone dying for us as we shake our fists in God's face.. The day before, I argued that the Case Against mistakes as human pique or irritability the natural consequences of human sin. God is holy, which doesn't mean self-righteous in the human sense. It means that unholy things (i.e., humans contaminated by sin) cannot exist it God's presence any more than light can escape from a black hole. It's just the Way Things Are.
One last attempt, then [again, I take on the "voice" of a WotM evangelist]:
So you don't like the idea of judgment. You say it makes God petty, like that bossy kid you knew as a child who forced everyone to play tag exactly according to his rules.
But think of this: what's the alternative you're offering? What is life without the judgment of God?
Say someone steals something. Maybe they're caught; maybe they're not. If the thief isn't caught, does it make the act of stealing OK? Bernie Madoff seemed to think so. Or what about adultery? If the cheating spouse isn't caught, is it still cheating? It's like a variation on the tree falling in deserted woods question: what makes wrong things wrong?
One answer, perhaps: human laws, a social and civic network of tacit or explicit guidelines and prohibitions define what's right and wrong, permissible and non-permissible.
But think, in times before the 13th and 14th Amendments, before the Emancipation Proclaimation, before the Civil War, before the abolitionist movement even had much steam--in times when slavery was considered OK, even supported by scripture--was slavery wrong then? Or what about female suffrage? Was it just optional prior to 1920? Or was it always wrong to deny women the right to vote, even when the rest of society (including, it must be said, many women) believed it was proper and right to do so?
The answer, for many Christians, is that a standard of right and wrong exists that transcends specifics of time, place, and culture. Admittedly, there's a great deal in civic morality that is context-specific (e.g., "pay your internet bill on time" makes sense only in societies that have commercial internet). But some things--lying, stealing, murdering, raping--these things are always and in all times/places tinged with un-rightness. Though some acts--like untruthfulness--may be required due to extreme circumstances, these are "necessary evils," and their existence doesn't make lying in general any less wrong. Others acts, like rape, are always wrong--even if no one catches the rapist, and even if the society in question doesn't recognize the wrong as such.
Where does this standard come from if not from society? What does it depend upon if not society? For many Christians, the answer is found in Romans 2:15, where Paul writes that God's transcendent law is written on the human heart, and that every person's conscience bears witness to it. Even someone who has never heard of Christianity has a sense of right and wrong. Insofar as any society is just and fair, it derives its notions of justice and fairness from that inner, God-given standard. God is in this sense the Justice in unjust times, the eternal Demand for Mercy in a merciless world.
So you complain about the judgment of God against wrongdoing. But your own inner sense of right and wrong should tell you that you want--you need--there to be judgment. Wrong things must be judged as such, if not in this world than in the next. Else, where is justice? And no, judgment never feels good when it falls on us rather than working for us; we hate to be caught in a fib or indicted for stealing or viewed as guilty. But I accept that my lies against others would cost me in exchange for considering it good and right for others not to lie to or about me. My expectation of honesty depends upon a knowledge that I would be judged by that standard as well.
But what's the alternative? A cold, dog-eat-dog world of private justice? A world where self-evident truths of life and liberty are fabrications to that can be tossed aside (or legislated out of existence)? Without God-given standards of justice as First Principles (or Ultimate Concerns--whatever), life becomes literally unlivable. Society collapses. Humanity's flame gutters and goes out. Goodness requires standards. Standards require judgment. The only right judgment comes from the Ultimate Judge--and even that judge has provided a way to be declared "not guilty"
More tomorrow!
JF
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Another Defense of the Way of the Master
In an effort to be dialectical about my criticisms of a particular style of evangelism (exemplified in Ray Comfort's "Way of the Master"), I'm putting myself in the shoes of a pro-Way-of-the-Master evangelist. That is, I'm thinking of possible responses to or rebuttals of my initial criticism of the theology/psychology underlying the Way of the Master.
To whit: I argued that focusing the evangelistic conversation entirely on humanity's wretchedness, damnation, and need for salvation, highlighting the imminent threat of hellfire, makes God into a kind of divine tyrant. God threatens humanity with eternal damnation for even the slightest infraction, at any point in a human life--and then expects total love, devotion, and gratefulness for saving people from God's own wrath. This is the action of an abusive spouse or totalitarian dictator, not of a benevolent God.
My initial rebuttal (yesterday) suggested that the God-as-tyrant argument inappropriately assigns human psychology to God. God's holiness--God's intolerance for human sin--is not a psychological quirk, like a germaphobe fussing at a messy counter. Rather, God's holiness is a natural law, like gravitation or electromagnetism; it's a neutral and necessary condition of existence. God is God; humans aren't. To gripe about this makes about as much sense as complaining that eyesight requires light or that animals need oxygen in order to live.
Let me try a different argument today. Namely, that the God-as-tyrant argument underestimates--offensively so--the magnitude of God's love and Christ's sacrifice.
[In the voice of an evangelist responding to a critic]: It's easy to get stuck in the whole idea of divine judgment and hellfire. "Isn't God petty for not overlooking my sin?" That whole argument misses the point: God is willing, eager even, to wipe away your sins. God is so eager to reconcile all people to God that God sent Jesus--dear to him as a beloved son, intimate as God's own self--to suffer and die in our place.
Think about that. In becoming human, God came down to our level, submitting to mortality, to pain, to rejection and loneliness--to the very worst that human existence has to offer. God gave up a measure of what it means to be the deity in order to live with us. For Jesus to suffer and die as He did--that suffering and dying, horrible as it would be for any human--means so much more because it was God doing it. Jesus allowed it to be done to Himself, taking all of humanity's punishment on Himself, when (as the old hymn says) he could have called ten thousand angels at any moment, repairing His human body instantly and vaporizing the nails, the crown of thorns, the whips, and the spear. But he did not. He suffered. He died. The Nicene Creed says "he descended into Hell" for the space of three days--God in Hell, God suffering Hellfire instead of us!
All of these unGodlike acts God did, all for our sake. Jesus substituted Himself for us. And the miracle here is that all we have to do is turn from the myth of our own self-righteousness, believing and trusting in the love behind that sacrifice, and poof! We are as innocent in God's eyes as Christ was. Gravity reverses. We see without light. Natural law shatters in the face of that Grandest of Sacrifices.
So, you see, to question that love, to call that world-changing act of self-sacrifice a petty tyranny--that's exactly like spitting contemptuously in the face of a paramedic who's given you lifesaving CPR.
Or, more exactly: Cornelius Van Til, the great apologist of the early 20th century, once told of watching a tiny child, barely a toddler, on a train. The child's father, hearing her cry, had lifted her up and seated her on his knee. The toddler turned and, in a fit of tantrummy frustration, smacked his face with her little hand.
This scene, Van Til, suggested, reflects our relationship with God. The condition of existence makes us humans helpless infants--less, far less, actually--compared to the infinite majesty of God. That God deigns to bend to our level, lifting us up so we can perceive God's face--this itself is a miracle. And then, for us to respond by slapping his face! Calling his gesture of love and atonement (literally at-one-ment) the work of a dictator!
The point, Van Til continues, is that it is only by God's grace and power that we can reach his face to slap it. God's love exposes Godself to our human contempt--all in the hope that we might respond in love rather than in rebellion.
[back to my own voice]: I'll try one more rebuttal tomorrow.
JF
To whit: I argued that focusing the evangelistic conversation entirely on humanity's wretchedness, damnation, and need for salvation, highlighting the imminent threat of hellfire, makes God into a kind of divine tyrant. God threatens humanity with eternal damnation for even the slightest infraction, at any point in a human life--and then expects total love, devotion, and gratefulness for saving people from God's own wrath. This is the action of an abusive spouse or totalitarian dictator, not of a benevolent God.
My initial rebuttal (yesterday) suggested that the God-as-tyrant argument inappropriately assigns human psychology to God. God's holiness--God's intolerance for human sin--is not a psychological quirk, like a germaphobe fussing at a messy counter. Rather, God's holiness is a natural law, like gravitation or electromagnetism; it's a neutral and necessary condition of existence. God is God; humans aren't. To gripe about this makes about as much sense as complaining that eyesight requires light or that animals need oxygen in order to live.
Let me try a different argument today. Namely, that the God-as-tyrant argument underestimates--offensively so--the magnitude of God's love and Christ's sacrifice.
[In the voice of an evangelist responding to a critic]: It's easy to get stuck in the whole idea of divine judgment and hellfire. "Isn't God petty for not overlooking my sin?" That whole argument misses the point: God is willing, eager even, to wipe away your sins. God is so eager to reconcile all people to God that God sent Jesus--dear to him as a beloved son, intimate as God's own self--to suffer and die in our place.
Think about that. In becoming human, God came down to our level, submitting to mortality, to pain, to rejection and loneliness--to the very worst that human existence has to offer. God gave up a measure of what it means to be the deity in order to live with us. For Jesus to suffer and die as He did--that suffering and dying, horrible as it would be for any human--means so much more because it was God doing it. Jesus allowed it to be done to Himself, taking all of humanity's punishment on Himself, when (as the old hymn says) he could have called ten thousand angels at any moment, repairing His human body instantly and vaporizing the nails, the crown of thorns, the whips, and the spear. But he did not. He suffered. He died. The Nicene Creed says "he descended into Hell" for the space of three days--God in Hell, God suffering Hellfire instead of us!
All of these unGodlike acts God did, all for our sake. Jesus substituted Himself for us. And the miracle here is that all we have to do is turn from the myth of our own self-righteousness, believing and trusting in the love behind that sacrifice, and poof! We are as innocent in God's eyes as Christ was. Gravity reverses. We see without light. Natural law shatters in the face of that Grandest of Sacrifices.
So, you see, to question that love, to call that world-changing act of self-sacrifice a petty tyranny--that's exactly like spitting contemptuously in the face of a paramedic who's given you lifesaving CPR.
Or, more exactly: Cornelius Van Til, the great apologist of the early 20th century, once told of watching a tiny child, barely a toddler, on a train. The child's father, hearing her cry, had lifted her up and seated her on his knee. The toddler turned and, in a fit of tantrummy frustration, smacked his face with her little hand.
This scene, Van Til, suggested, reflects our relationship with God. The condition of existence makes us humans helpless infants--less, far less, actually--compared to the infinite majesty of God. That God deigns to bend to our level, lifting us up so we can perceive God's face--this itself is a miracle. And then, for us to respond by slapping his face! Calling his gesture of love and atonement (literally at-one-ment) the work of a dictator!
The point, Van Til continues, is that it is only by God's grace and power that we can reach his face to slap it. God's love exposes Godself to our human contempt--all in the hope that we might respond in love rather than in rebellion.
[back to my own voice]: I'll try one more rebuttal tomorrow.
JF
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Counter-Case
One of the most valuable classes I took in high school was debate in Shawnee High School in 1991-2. It wasn't a class I chose; to schedule me in Honors Biology, I had to take whatever elective was offered. Debate it was, with Sharon Davis. Now, I was never a great debater (to this day I have difficulty coming up with cogent arguments when I'm flustered), but the intellectual exercises I had to undertake in that class benefit me to this day. Specifically--given any debate topic (or, rather, resolution, such as "Resolved: Human engineering is morally justified") we were required to research, construct, and argue thoughtful, well-supported, and above all compelling cases both for the resolution (the affirmative case) and against it (the negative case).
It's difficult to overstate the worth of learning to occupy a point of view or argumentative stance utterly at odds with your own. It teaches you perspective, seeing that, no matter how dedicated you may be to your point of view, it is possible in most cases to construct a coherent argument for the opposite view. It forces you to to see your own beliefs from an antagonistic point of view, to examine and account for weaknesses in your own rationale, and to anticipate and respond to probable attacks against your case.
Most of all, though, it grants a degree of intellectual empathy, reminding me that my opponent's passion and methods have a rationale behind them just as mine do. Such empathy does not necessarily mean that I will agree with my opponent, nor does it imply that the debate can be shelved. But it does grant a degree of humility and respect as one criticizes the deeply held views or practices of a neighbor.
In this spirit, then, I want to take the other side of a perspective that I critiqued rather harshly yesterday: namely the "Way of the Master" style of evangelism that stresses to the non-believer the need for salvation by confronting them with the imminent, uncompromising, and eternal judgment of God. You--all humans--are guilty in the eyes of the Holy God, having broken one or all of his divine commandments. As such, you will be rightfully sentenced to the punishment God establishes for all such convicts: an eternity in Hell. But God's love offers you a way out: Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, who offers to substitute his own innocent life for you, taking your punishment for you. Your belief in and commitment to Christ will save you from divine judgment.
I characterized this narrative as troublesome in that its presentation of God as a kind of all-powerful abuser or tyrant, threatening out-of-proportion punishment for even the tiniest infraction one minute and then mercifully withholding that punishment--even though you deserve it--the next.
How might an evangelist who uses this technique respond? Here's my stab at one response: Basically (now imagining myself as such an evangelist, speaking to a critic)--you're over-extending the analogy of the judge and the courtroom. Seeing God as a judge in a courtroom gives us a concrete way of picturing abstract concepts, but like any analogy, it has some flaws.
The biggest one? In human courts of law in the US, the judge is herself separate from and subject to the body of rules she interprets to adjudicate guilt or innocence. Moreover, the law itself is understood to be an attempt at the ideal of justice rather than identical to justice itself. Human laws are human creations. As such, they are fallible and mutable. A judge may, in rare cases, decide that a particular law, rather than the defendant, is unjust and order that the law be changed or invalidated.
The situation is different with God. Unlike a human judge, God is identical to the Law; God, by virtue of God's very deity, is Godself the standard of all moral and ethical perfection. God defines what justice is, thus God's law is perfect, immutable and infallible.
It can seem horribly unfair, from a human perspective, to be subject to that divine law. We have the ability to imagine, after all, a world in which we rather than God set standards for morality and fairness. But just because we can imagine an alternative set of rules does not make the actually extant standard any less compelling.
Think of it this way: to complain at the consequences for rebelling against God's holy law is like complaining at the consequences for rebelling against a natural law like gravity or the need for respiration. "That gravity! What a dictator! All I did was walk out of a second-story window--just a step! Just once! And now I've broken my leg and have to wear a cast for the next six weeks. That's totally out of proportion." Sure, you can imagine a world in which you gravity doesn't exist or is weaker or more permissive. But that doesn't make gravity any less real, and railing against it doesn't change a thing. No one forced you to take a step out of a second-story window, after all.
Another point: it's easy to curse gravity when we're smarting from the consequences of ignoring it. But in such moments of pique we can too often forget that our lives depend upon the reliable, all-encompassing operation of gravity. How chaotic would it be if each individual could declare when and how gravity applies for everyone else? "The city of Los Angeles floated away into space, killing all of its citizens, because Joe Schmoe in Toledo, OH, decided to turn off gravity on the West coast."
Similarly, a world without a natural moral standard of justice would be unthinkable, a world of all against all, where--on a personal whim--I could declare it "just" for me to take all of your possessions, beat you up, or even kill you. Those things are wrong, however, not because I personally think they're wrong but because God's law, which is written on our hearts, declares it to be so.
Again, it can seem terribly, existentially unfair to humans that they are subject to natural laws. But them's the breaks. Creating home-made natural laws or standards just doesn't work.
More tomorrow,
JF
It's difficult to overstate the worth of learning to occupy a point of view or argumentative stance utterly at odds with your own. It teaches you perspective, seeing that, no matter how dedicated you may be to your point of view, it is possible in most cases to construct a coherent argument for the opposite view. It forces you to to see your own beliefs from an antagonistic point of view, to examine and account for weaknesses in your own rationale, and to anticipate and respond to probable attacks against your case.
Most of all, though, it grants a degree of intellectual empathy, reminding me that my opponent's passion and methods have a rationale behind them just as mine do. Such empathy does not necessarily mean that I will agree with my opponent, nor does it imply that the debate can be shelved. But it does grant a degree of humility and respect as one criticizes the deeply held views or practices of a neighbor.
In this spirit, then, I want to take the other side of a perspective that I critiqued rather harshly yesterday: namely the "Way of the Master" style of evangelism that stresses to the non-believer the need for salvation by confronting them with the imminent, uncompromising, and eternal judgment of God. You--all humans--are guilty in the eyes of the Holy God, having broken one or all of his divine commandments. As such, you will be rightfully sentenced to the punishment God establishes for all such convicts: an eternity in Hell. But God's love offers you a way out: Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, who offers to substitute his own innocent life for you, taking your punishment for you. Your belief in and commitment to Christ will save you from divine judgment.
I characterized this narrative as troublesome in that its presentation of God as a kind of all-powerful abuser or tyrant, threatening out-of-proportion punishment for even the tiniest infraction one minute and then mercifully withholding that punishment--even though you deserve it--the next.
How might an evangelist who uses this technique respond? Here's my stab at one response: Basically (now imagining myself as such an evangelist, speaking to a critic)--you're over-extending the analogy of the judge and the courtroom. Seeing God as a judge in a courtroom gives us a concrete way of picturing abstract concepts, but like any analogy, it has some flaws.
The biggest one? In human courts of law in the US, the judge is herself separate from and subject to the body of rules she interprets to adjudicate guilt or innocence. Moreover, the law itself is understood to be an attempt at the ideal of justice rather than identical to justice itself. Human laws are human creations. As such, they are fallible and mutable. A judge may, in rare cases, decide that a particular law, rather than the defendant, is unjust and order that the law be changed or invalidated.
The situation is different with God. Unlike a human judge, God is identical to the Law; God, by virtue of God's very deity, is Godself the standard of all moral and ethical perfection. God defines what justice is, thus God's law is perfect, immutable and infallible.
It can seem horribly unfair, from a human perspective, to be subject to that divine law. We have the ability to imagine, after all, a world in which we rather than God set standards for morality and fairness. But just because we can imagine an alternative set of rules does not make the actually extant standard any less compelling.
Think of it this way: to complain at the consequences for rebelling against God's holy law is like complaining at the consequences for rebelling against a natural law like gravity or the need for respiration. "That gravity! What a dictator! All I did was walk out of a second-story window--just a step! Just once! And now I've broken my leg and have to wear a cast for the next six weeks. That's totally out of proportion." Sure, you can imagine a world in which you gravity doesn't exist or is weaker or more permissive. But that doesn't make gravity any less real, and railing against it doesn't change a thing. No one forced you to take a step out of a second-story window, after all.
Another point: it's easy to curse gravity when we're smarting from the consequences of ignoring it. But in such moments of pique we can too often forget that our lives depend upon the reliable, all-encompassing operation of gravity. How chaotic would it be if each individual could declare when and how gravity applies for everyone else? "The city of Los Angeles floated away into space, killing all of its citizens, because Joe Schmoe in Toledo, OH, decided to turn off gravity on the West coast."
Similarly, a world without a natural moral standard of justice would be unthinkable, a world of all against all, where--on a personal whim--I could declare it "just" for me to take all of your possessions, beat you up, or even kill you. Those things are wrong, however, not because I personally think they're wrong but because God's law, which is written on our hearts, declares it to be so.
Again, it can seem terribly, existentially unfair to humans that they are subject to natural laws. But them's the breaks. Creating home-made natural laws or standards just doesn't work.
More tomorrow,
JF
Monday, July 27, 2009
Still not Ranting, but Some Resentment Expressed Nevertheless
Boy, you take one step back from the verge of a self-righteous rant, and suddenly the precipice just doesn't seem as inviting. The rant I was going to dive into yesterday, of course, was a hypothetical response to a particular brand of evangelism that seems popular today, a brand popularized by Australian evangelist Ray Comfort (along with former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron and radio/TV personality Todd Friel, whose show Wretched can be watched here).
Comfort calls his style "The Way of the Master" since he sees it as the evangelistic style most closely patterned after the example of Christ. Briefly, the Way of the Master uses impromptu, one-on-one encounters between an evangelist and a stranger (often called a "fish"--as in "fishing for men"--by some of Comfort's followers). "Hooking" the fish with some kind of lead-in, which could be anything from a provocative question ("If you had only three minutes to live, what would you do?") to a novelty prop, such as the "one million dollar bill"--actually a Bible tract shaped like an oversized bill with President Obama's face on it-- that the evangelist offers as a prize to whomever can prove that they are a "good" person (though you may want to consider this story I found prior to purchasing these bills).
And the "good person test" forms the crux of the Way of the Master approach. The evangelist gets the fish to declare whether or not she is a good person. Then (really, no matter what she says), the evangelist leads the fish through four or five of the Ten Commandments (typically, lying, stealing, adultery/lust, and blasphemy/using God's name in vain). When the fish inevitably admits that she's lied (stolen, lusted, etc.) at least once in her life, the evangelist confronts her with the awful truth: that she would, if she were to face God now, be judged guilty and sentenced to Hell. Having led the fish to a realization of her own wretchedness before God, her imminent damnation, the evangelist follows up with the Good News (i.e., Christ's substitutionary atonement, the availability of repentance and salvation, etc.).
I've spent a lot of time on this blog so far outlining some problems I have with this style of evangelism, which (in less formal ways) defined many of the styles to which I was exposed growing up in the Southern Baptist Church. Indeed, I've developed an active distaste for fear-based evangelism. Why? Because the God it presents isn't someone I'd care to know. One minute (in the context of the Way of the Master narrative) He's holy and utterly righteous, the Uncompromising Judge that will rightfully condemn you to an eternity in Hell for even one lie. The next minute--namely the minute you have a panic attack about the idea of burning for eternity--He swoops in as the Ultimate Lover who sacrificed Himself for your sins.
The Way of the Master depends upon the fish making a decision for Christ out of grateful relief that God saved her... from Himself.
Imagine if a person were to act this way: threatening you with severe (to say nothing of everlasting) bodily harm for even a minor infraction one minute and then magnanimously saying, "That's OK. I've beaten myself up in your place, and if you dedicate yourself to me, I'll let my self-pummeling serve as a substitution. If you choose not to turn to serve and love me, though--POW! But it's your free choice."
Add to this scenario a set of followers, each of whom has taken the guy's deal, who are simply confounded that you would have any sort of problem with this setup. "How can you be so ungrateful?" they ask, "You're the one who violated his laws. He's absolutely right to judge you guilty; you deserve the hurt that's coming to you. We all do. But he's so merciful that he'll not beat you up at all if only you'd repent of your rebellious ways."
I hate to draw this comparison--it's crude as all get-out--but doesn't that mentality seem an awful lot like Stockholm Syndrome? Or, even cruder, battered spouse syndrome? "He's so good to me. He doesn't beat me up even when I deserve it." I've often had the sneaking suspicion that, in their heart of hearts, fight-or-flight Christians would commit deicide--just snap and kill the God of that story--if they thought they could get away with it. Certainly I attribute much of the resentment I feel toward certain strands of evangelicalism to a lingering distaste for that narrative.
In any case the God of fight-or-flight evangelism is not a God I care to worship. Worse, recall the lesson from Good Goats: we become like the God we worship. God, please save me from being like the guy in that story.
But perhaps I'm being overly reductive. I'll try to deal with some of the obvious counter-arguments to the criticism I've laid out here tomorrow.
Comfort calls his style "The Way of the Master" since he sees it as the evangelistic style most closely patterned after the example of Christ. Briefly, the Way of the Master uses impromptu, one-on-one encounters between an evangelist and a stranger (often called a "fish"--as in "fishing for men"--by some of Comfort's followers). "Hooking" the fish with some kind of lead-in, which could be anything from a provocative question ("If you had only three minutes to live, what would you do?") to a novelty prop, such as the "one million dollar bill"--actually a Bible tract shaped like an oversized bill with President Obama's face on it-- that the evangelist offers as a prize to whomever can prove that they are a "good" person (though you may want to consider this story I found prior to purchasing these bills).
And the "good person test" forms the crux of the Way of the Master approach. The evangelist gets the fish to declare whether or not she is a good person. Then (really, no matter what she says), the evangelist leads the fish through four or five of the Ten Commandments (typically, lying, stealing, adultery/lust, and blasphemy/using God's name in vain). When the fish inevitably admits that she's lied (stolen, lusted, etc.) at least once in her life, the evangelist confronts her with the awful truth: that she would, if she were to face God now, be judged guilty and sentenced to Hell. Having led the fish to a realization of her own wretchedness before God, her imminent damnation, the evangelist follows up with the Good News (i.e., Christ's substitutionary atonement, the availability of repentance and salvation, etc.).
I've spent a lot of time on this blog so far outlining some problems I have with this style of evangelism, which (in less formal ways) defined many of the styles to which I was exposed growing up in the Southern Baptist Church. Indeed, I've developed an active distaste for fear-based evangelism. Why? Because the God it presents isn't someone I'd care to know. One minute (in the context of the Way of the Master narrative) He's holy and utterly righteous, the Uncompromising Judge that will rightfully condemn you to an eternity in Hell for even one lie. The next minute--namely the minute you have a panic attack about the idea of burning for eternity--He swoops in as the Ultimate Lover who sacrificed Himself for your sins.
The Way of the Master depends upon the fish making a decision for Christ out of grateful relief that God saved her... from Himself.
Imagine if a person were to act this way: threatening you with severe (to say nothing of everlasting) bodily harm for even a minor infraction one minute and then magnanimously saying, "That's OK. I've beaten myself up in your place, and if you dedicate yourself to me, I'll let my self-pummeling serve as a substitution. If you choose not to turn to serve and love me, though--POW! But it's your free choice."
Add to this scenario a set of followers, each of whom has taken the guy's deal, who are simply confounded that you would have any sort of problem with this setup. "How can you be so ungrateful?" they ask, "You're the one who violated his laws. He's absolutely right to judge you guilty; you deserve the hurt that's coming to you. We all do. But he's so merciful that he'll not beat you up at all if only you'd repent of your rebellious ways."
I hate to draw this comparison--it's crude as all get-out--but doesn't that mentality seem an awful lot like Stockholm Syndrome? Or, even cruder, battered spouse syndrome? "He's so good to me. He doesn't beat me up even when I deserve it." I've often had the sneaking suspicion that, in their heart of hearts, fight-or-flight Christians would commit deicide--just snap and kill the God of that story--if they thought they could get away with it. Certainly I attribute much of the resentment I feel toward certain strands of evangelicalism to a lingering distaste for that narrative.
In any case the God of fight-or-flight evangelism is not a God I care to worship. Worse, recall the lesson from Good Goats: we become like the God we worship. God, please save me from being like the guy in that story.
But perhaps I'm being overly reductive. I'll try to deal with some of the obvious counter-arguments to the criticism I've laid out here tomorrow.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Of Baptism and French Toast (Not the rant I thought I'd write)
It's a good thing for the Spirit to throw cold water now and then on a righteous rant. Here I was, all prepped to spew out a long-withheld response to the "hell-first" style of evangelism--and then I went to church.
To explain--I'm a member of a Methodist church attached to my university. This morning, however, I visited my city's First United Methodist Church downtown. Susie, a friend of mine from the University UMC, had just finished seminary, gotten her probationary orders, and been appointed to the FUMC. Today was her first sermon in that church, so I went to support her.
The church is huge (which is not all that unusual) and packed with people (which is pretty unusual for a Methodist church). Every church has ushers, but this was the first time I've seen ushers actually, well, ushing; I walked into the service during the first hymn and saw no where to sit. An usher grimly pointed the lone remaining space on a nearby pew, and I sat down. A woman beside me shared her hymnal as we sang.
Four pastors sat at the front of the auditorium, including my friend. I believe four is a record for me; I thought my church was extravagant with three.
After the hymn, the head pastor came forward and gave a short talk about Baptism.
Now--for those who don't know, United Methodists typically baptize infants, a practice considered anathema by Baptists (Southern and otherwise). For Methodists (and here I simplify theology for the sake of saving time) such baptism signifies God's welcome into his communal body.
These baptismal moments are among my very favorite church experiences. The parent or parents, accompanied by friends and family, approach the front of the sanctuary, where the pastor(s) gather. The lead pastor takes the infant, cradles it, asks the infant's name, and then poses a question to the parents: will you raise this child in the full knowledge of Christ's love? The parents signify their assent. Then the pastor asks the same of the church as a whole. We give our assent. Then the pastor dips her hand into a basin of water (the baptismal fount) and lightly wets the head, declaring that this infant is baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And then--the best part--the pastor, still cradling the infant, walks into the congregation, up and down the aisles, as the congregation sings a welcoming song. "This is your family," he tells the infant. "This is your sister," he tells the congregation.
Love it. At my church, which is full of younger couples, I am blessed to see many such infant baptisms.
It is quite rare, however, to see an adult baptism. And to my surprise this morning, there at the front of the sanctuary was a tall man standing before the pastors as they gathered around the baptismal fount.
The lead pastor raised his hands... and gave a short lesson on Methodist theology.
"You may not know this," he said (and I paraphrase), "but Methodists do not re-baptize people. Other faiths do, but we do not. Why? Because we see baptism as God's work, God's grace in action. And to re-baptize someone would, we feel, suggest that God's work was insufficient to begin with and must be re-done. This we do not believe. God's baptism is God's baptism.
"But we do occasionally celebrate a renewal of baptism. Jim here [I'm making up his name] has been a part of our church for a while. He came from the Southern Baptist tradition, and he's felt the need now to renew his baptism here. When Jim came to me this week wanting to be re-baptized, I had to tell him, 'Sorry, we don't do that.' He said, 'OK, so what shall we do?' Well, since this morning we welcomed into the church several people by baptism [a Taiwanese woman and her two children--I wish I had seen that!], I thought this would be a good day for Jim to have a renewal.
"So, Jim," and at this point the pastor stepped forward with a bowl of water (not from the fount), "here is water to remind you of your baptism. Feel it for yourself." Jim dipped his fingers into the bowl. "Now, if you would, make the sign of the cross on your head." Jim did so. All four pastors laid a hand on him.
"Be reminded, Jim," said the pastor, "that you are claimed by a Love that will not let you go, that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ."
And there it is: the heart of my faith, the love that claims us before we know it and beyond our ability to return it.
I knew then I couldn't spend time today on a rant. This simple service--so like Southern Baptist or other evangelical rituals in some ways, so different in others--reminded me why I'm a Methodist. There was no mention of hell, of punishment, of a need for certainty or anxiety. The fear and urgency of fight-or-flight evangelism was entirely absent. But there was conviction--deep conviction--of God's powerful, eternal love for us. Baptism--the welcome of God--is God's Act, a forever act, never in need of repetition. We may be reminded of it, but the original watermark--no matter where or how it was originally given--is indelibly God's.
Susie's sermon, too, was a blessing. She preached on Christ's feeding the 5,000 (John 6). Specifically, she preached on the leftovers. Thoughtful and humorous, personal and scriptural, Susie reflected on God's care for filling us up and God's care in collecting the the uneaten pieces. French toast, she reminded us, was originally made from leftover bread. Its name in French, pain perdu, literally means "Lost Bread." "Not to get too theological," she joked, "but it is the bread that once was lost and now is saved."
As with bread, so with people. She told of this church's ministry to female ex-convicts, people so often considered left over and left out. She told of her own journey, realizing at age 40 that she needed to be doing something else, something in the ministry. God, she said, pulled together the leftover pieces of her life and helped her to be where she is today--preaching in front of a congregation, renewing and reminding us of the all-powerful love that serves as the heartbeat of our church.
Apologies if you were expecting the rant. Perhaps tomorrow. But a blessing like this morning crowds out negativity.
JF
To explain--I'm a member of a Methodist church attached to my university. This morning, however, I visited my city's First United Methodist Church downtown. Susie, a friend of mine from the University UMC, had just finished seminary, gotten her probationary orders, and been appointed to the FUMC. Today was her first sermon in that church, so I went to support her.
The church is huge (which is not all that unusual) and packed with people (which is pretty unusual for a Methodist church). Every church has ushers, but this was the first time I've seen ushers actually, well, ushing; I walked into the service during the first hymn and saw no where to sit. An usher grimly pointed the lone remaining space on a nearby pew, and I sat down. A woman beside me shared her hymnal as we sang.
Four pastors sat at the front of the auditorium, including my friend. I believe four is a record for me; I thought my church was extravagant with three.
After the hymn, the head pastor came forward and gave a short talk about Baptism.
Now--for those who don't know, United Methodists typically baptize infants, a practice considered anathema by Baptists (Southern and otherwise). For Methodists (and here I simplify theology for the sake of saving time) such baptism signifies God's welcome into his communal body.
These baptismal moments are among my very favorite church experiences. The parent or parents, accompanied by friends and family, approach the front of the sanctuary, where the pastor(s) gather. The lead pastor takes the infant, cradles it, asks the infant's name, and then poses a question to the parents: will you raise this child in the full knowledge of Christ's love? The parents signify their assent. Then the pastor asks the same of the church as a whole. We give our assent. Then the pastor dips her hand into a basin of water (the baptismal fount) and lightly wets the head, declaring that this infant is baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And then--the best part--the pastor, still cradling the infant, walks into the congregation, up and down the aisles, as the congregation sings a welcoming song. "This is your family," he tells the infant. "This is your sister," he tells the congregation.
Love it. At my church, which is full of younger couples, I am blessed to see many such infant baptisms.
It is quite rare, however, to see an adult baptism. And to my surprise this morning, there at the front of the sanctuary was a tall man standing before the pastors as they gathered around the baptismal fount.
The lead pastor raised his hands... and gave a short lesson on Methodist theology.
"You may not know this," he said (and I paraphrase), "but Methodists do not re-baptize people. Other faiths do, but we do not. Why? Because we see baptism as God's work, God's grace in action. And to re-baptize someone would, we feel, suggest that God's work was insufficient to begin with and must be re-done. This we do not believe. God's baptism is God's baptism.
"But we do occasionally celebrate a renewal of baptism. Jim here [I'm making up his name] has been a part of our church for a while. He came from the Southern Baptist tradition, and he's felt the need now to renew his baptism here. When Jim came to me this week wanting to be re-baptized, I had to tell him, 'Sorry, we don't do that.' He said, 'OK, so what shall we do?' Well, since this morning we welcomed into the church several people by baptism [a Taiwanese woman and her two children--I wish I had seen that!], I thought this would be a good day for Jim to have a renewal.
"So, Jim," and at this point the pastor stepped forward with a bowl of water (not from the fount), "here is water to remind you of your baptism. Feel it for yourself." Jim dipped his fingers into the bowl. "Now, if you would, make the sign of the cross on your head." Jim did so. All four pastors laid a hand on him.
"Be reminded, Jim," said the pastor, "that you are claimed by a Love that will not let you go, that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ."
And there it is: the heart of my faith, the love that claims us before we know it and beyond our ability to return it.
I knew then I couldn't spend time today on a rant. This simple service--so like Southern Baptist or other evangelical rituals in some ways, so different in others--reminded me why I'm a Methodist. There was no mention of hell, of punishment, of a need for certainty or anxiety. The fear and urgency of fight-or-flight evangelism was entirely absent. But there was conviction--deep conviction--of God's powerful, eternal love for us. Baptism--the welcome of God--is God's Act, a forever act, never in need of repetition. We may be reminded of it, but the original watermark--no matter where or how it was originally given--is indelibly God's.
Susie's sermon, too, was a blessing. She preached on Christ's feeding the 5,000 (John 6). Specifically, she preached on the leftovers. Thoughtful and humorous, personal and scriptural, Susie reflected on God's care for filling us up and God's care in collecting the the uneaten pieces. French toast, she reminded us, was originally made from leftover bread. Its name in French, pain perdu, literally means "Lost Bread." "Not to get too theological," she joked, "but it is the bread that once was lost and now is saved."
As with bread, so with people. She told of this church's ministry to female ex-convicts, people so often considered left over and left out. She told of her own journey, realizing at age 40 that she needed to be doing something else, something in the ministry. God, she said, pulled together the leftover pieces of her life and helped her to be where she is today--preaching in front of a congregation, renewing and reminding us of the all-powerful love that serves as the heartbeat of our church.
Apologies if you were expecting the rant. Perhaps tomorrow. But a blessing like this morning crowds out negativity.
JF
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Evangelical Responses to the Holiness/Love Paradox
To review: the fight-or-flight evangelism pitch--a main weapon in the evangelical arsenal of outreach techniques--goes basically like this:
Step one: convince the person that they have sinned (i.e., violated at some time or another the Laws of God). [Technically, some evangelicals will clarify, it's the Holy Spirit that does the convicting here. The evangelist just creates the proper atmosphere for the Spirit to do its divine work.]
Step two: convince the person that their sin--no matter how big or small, no matter how frequent or infrequent--condemns them to an eternity in Hell because God is utterly holy. It's here that extreme descriptions/depictions of hell might come into play (evangelicals are divided as to the utility of such depictions).
Step three: share with them the avoid-this-horrible-fate opportunity that is Jesus. (i.e., God, not wanting you to suffer in Hell forever, sent his son, who was wholly innocent of sin, to suffer and die in your place.)
Step four: convince them to believe in (and, depending on the exact theology, ask for/accept) that salvation, generally through prayer.
Step five: Oh, yes--remind them that in doing so they've made what amounts to an eternal covenant with the living God, and that, as a saved person, they will spend the rest of their lives in service to him. This may entail church membership, baptism, daily Bible reading, evangelism, etc. But, even though human effort doesn't save, the lack of any effort or commitment to Christ post-salvation isn't interpreted as a good sign...
What's the problem? I look back on my younger years and realize that for a very long time, I had little to no problem with this narrative. It's just the Way Things Are. To think otherwise would be to engage in Doubt, which (a la the tenets of fight-or-flight Christianity) signifies a lack of certainty, which in turn bespeaks a faith deficit, which in turn may indicate that you aren't saved after all. Best not to think about it.
As I grew older and met people who didn't go to church, however, people who haven't been brought up in the faith, I came to see how certain elements of this narrative can seem contradictory, even nonsensical. Specifically: the eternity-in-hell element (God's holiness/righteousness) seems to jar with the God-is-love element.
Now, such confusion is nothing new to dedicated evangelists. They're used to hearing and fielding incredulity at the thought that God (who is loving) will judge people forever. I've heard any number of rationales that such evangelists use to explain this incredulity as well as various evangelistic techniques to get past it. Among these rationales/techniques:
People have a wrong idea about love: the world, goes this rationale, defines love as "total acceptance." But that isn't love. How do you convince an unsaved person of this? Use an analogy: If we were to see parents who said "OK, whatever" to anything their children do, refusing to punish or set boundaries, we'd call that irresponsibility, not love. God loves us enough, goes this logic, to give us free will and to experience the consequences of our choices. He loves us enough to let us choose heaven or hell.
People fear a judging creator, preferring a self-made God: Inevitably, evangelical sermons about the intransigence of people to the gospel will lament that in these postmodern times, people place such a value on "tolerance" that any sort of moral or ethical discrimination becomes unthinkable. People think that they are the ultimate authorities on right and wrong, rejecting God's authority. It's no wonder, then, that they have trouble with God's eternal standard. The thing to do, then, is to present them with some "moral absolutes" situations--Was the Holocaust wrong? Is murder wrong? Rape? Child abuse? ("You wouldn't want Hitler to go to heaven, would you?" I've heard several evangelists ask). By securing an "of course those acts are wrong" from people, the evangelist can then draw them into a realization that these are wrong because God said so. Moral absolutes=God=righteousness of judgment=need for salvation.
People refuse to see the love inherent in Christ's sacrifice: That is, people who think that the heaven/hell/salvation set up isn't loving need to think more about just how loving it is that God in his mercy deigned to incarnate himself and die in our place. Here the courtroom analogy often comes into play: "So--you're in court, and the judge has rendered a verdict: guilty. The sentence is Hell. But suddenly, someone, an innocent man, stands up and offers to take your place, to accept your sentence for you. How does this make you feel?"
There are other rationales and techniques for diffusing people's reticence to accept the gospel, but these three are some of the more common. The problem is--the logic behind these three avoids rather than confronts the very real tension between holiness and love in the main evangelical gospel pitch.
Indeed, there are times when I listen to very well-intended, gentle Christians make these sincere arguments, and my blood just boils.
I gotta give a "now wait a minute" speech.
That tomorrow.
JF
Step one: convince the person that they have sinned (i.e., violated at some time or another the Laws of God). [Technically, some evangelicals will clarify, it's the Holy Spirit that does the convicting here. The evangelist just creates the proper atmosphere for the Spirit to do its divine work.]
Step two: convince the person that their sin--no matter how big or small, no matter how frequent or infrequent--condemns them to an eternity in Hell because God is utterly holy. It's here that extreme descriptions/depictions of hell might come into play (evangelicals are divided as to the utility of such depictions).
Step three: share with them the avoid-this-horrible-fate opportunity that is Jesus. (i.e., God, not wanting you to suffer in Hell forever, sent his son, who was wholly innocent of sin, to suffer and die in your place.)
Step four: convince them to believe in (and, depending on the exact theology, ask for/accept) that salvation, generally through prayer.
Step five: Oh, yes--remind them that in doing so they've made what amounts to an eternal covenant with the living God, and that, as a saved person, they will spend the rest of their lives in service to him. This may entail church membership, baptism, daily Bible reading, evangelism, etc. But, even though human effort doesn't save, the lack of any effort or commitment to Christ post-salvation isn't interpreted as a good sign...
What's the problem? I look back on my younger years and realize that for a very long time, I had little to no problem with this narrative. It's just the Way Things Are. To think otherwise would be to engage in Doubt, which (a la the tenets of fight-or-flight Christianity) signifies a lack of certainty, which in turn bespeaks a faith deficit, which in turn may indicate that you aren't saved after all. Best not to think about it.
As I grew older and met people who didn't go to church, however, people who haven't been brought up in the faith, I came to see how certain elements of this narrative can seem contradictory, even nonsensical. Specifically: the eternity-in-hell element (God's holiness/righteousness) seems to jar with the God-is-love element.
Now, such confusion is nothing new to dedicated evangelists. They're used to hearing and fielding incredulity at the thought that God (who is loving) will judge people forever. I've heard any number of rationales that such evangelists use to explain this incredulity as well as various evangelistic techniques to get past it. Among these rationales/techniques:
People have a wrong idea about love: the world, goes this rationale, defines love as "total acceptance." But that isn't love. How do you convince an unsaved person of this? Use an analogy: If we were to see parents who said "OK, whatever" to anything their children do, refusing to punish or set boundaries, we'd call that irresponsibility, not love. God loves us enough, goes this logic, to give us free will and to experience the consequences of our choices. He loves us enough to let us choose heaven or hell.
People fear a judging creator, preferring a self-made God: Inevitably, evangelical sermons about the intransigence of people to the gospel will lament that in these postmodern times, people place such a value on "tolerance" that any sort of moral or ethical discrimination becomes unthinkable. People think that they are the ultimate authorities on right and wrong, rejecting God's authority. It's no wonder, then, that they have trouble with God's eternal standard. The thing to do, then, is to present them with some "moral absolutes" situations--Was the Holocaust wrong? Is murder wrong? Rape? Child abuse? ("You wouldn't want Hitler to go to heaven, would you?" I've heard several evangelists ask). By securing an "of course those acts are wrong" from people, the evangelist can then draw them into a realization that these are wrong because God said so. Moral absolutes=God=righteousness of judgment=need for salvation.
People refuse to see the love inherent in Christ's sacrifice: That is, people who think that the heaven/hell/salvation set up isn't loving need to think more about just how loving it is that God in his mercy deigned to incarnate himself and die in our place. Here the courtroom analogy often comes into play: "So--you're in court, and the judge has rendered a verdict: guilty. The sentence is Hell. But suddenly, someone, an innocent man, stands up and offers to take your place, to accept your sentence for you. How does this make you feel?"
There are other rationales and techniques for diffusing people's reticence to accept the gospel, but these three are some of the more common. The problem is--the logic behind these three avoids rather than confronts the very real tension between holiness and love in the main evangelical gospel pitch.
Indeed, there are times when I listen to very well-intended, gentle Christians make these sincere arguments, and my blood just boils.
I gotta give a "now wait a minute" speech.
That tomorrow.
JF
Friday, July 24, 2009
The Dual/Dueling Attributes of God: Holiness and Love
Yesterday I contrasted an image of God defined by unconditional love (from Good Goats) with an image of God defined by uncompromising moral standards promoted by Ray Comfort's 'Way of the Master." I risk breaking one of my own rules of writing about evangelical folk--don't shortchange their sophistication--if I don't point out that most evangelicals are explicitly aware of the the dual (dueling?) images of God as utterly loving and as utterly holy.
I just now ran into a good example of this, reading John W. Sire's latest (4th) edition of The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog (Downer's Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004). In relating the Christian worldview--Christian theism, as he labels it--Sire gives a quick outline of a Christian (actually, evangelical Christian) view of God. Namely, he asserts that God's goodness--the primary attribute of God--plays out in his love on the one hand and in his holiness on the other (28-29).
What Sire in this volume does not acknowledge, however, is that these two concepts seem in tension with each other. As a relational attitude, for instance, love suggests an impulse toward togetherness, intimacy, an impulse understood to work against or through barriers to that intimacy. A parent (ideally) loves his daughter even if she tells a lie. Romeo loves Juliet despite the fact that their families try to kill each other. God so loved the world that God incarnated as Jesus to suffer and die on the cross.
To be sure, human love has limits. Betrayals, insults, or even just mundane passage of time can dim or overpower the impulse toward togetherness and mutual well-being. But here God's--well, God-ness, God's deity comes into play. God, in the faith I was brought up in, loves no matter what; God is not willing that any should perish (and any means all). What can separate us from the love of God? asks Paul rhetorically. Nothing. No power on heaven or earth. We may sin. We may disappoint God. We may even make God angry, but--and on this my Southern Baptist upbringing was clear--God's offer of repentance is always available.
[A quick story from my childhood repository of sermon illustrations: A man lived a long life full of terrible evil. He lied, he cheated, he hurt others, he did just about anything evil there was to do. The moment before he died of old age, he cried out to God in his heart, "Oh, Lord Jesus, save me, a sinner. I believe wholly in you." And then he passed away. Now, this deathbed conversion caused some degree of consternation in Heaven. Various angelic lawyers insisted that, if anyone deserved Hell, it was this man. They pointed out that it was unfair in the extreme to let him off the hook, so to speak, after a lifetime of vicious evil just for a thirty-second conversion at the last moment. "I mean," one said, "just how much leeway do we want to give such a person?" At that point, Christ stood up, and the heavenly conference room fell silent. "We give him this much leeway," Jesus said, and extended his arms wide, creating the shape of the cross on which he died for all. Point of the story? Baptists believe in deathbed conversions. ]
So that's the God-as-Divine-Love side. The Holy God side, however, stresses the fact that God is, well, God. He is holy--literally set apart. His standards (or rather the standard that is God) are uncompromising, universal, and impossible for humans to live by perfectly. All have sinned, we are taught, and fall short of the glory of God (it's one of the Old Standard verses evangelicals memorize). Moreover, the holiness/unholiness line is absolute. One sin--no matter how small--renders you just as unholy as any other. Recall the Way of The Master--even a single white lie as a child makes you, in God's eyes, a liar.
The rationale? God, being utterly holy, can't stand unholiness. Or, as evangelicals would likely prefer it put, nothing tainted with unholiness can stand God. Thus Hell, in some kinder-gentler formations, becomes a place of eternal separation from God; that separation--plus the too-late knowledge of the intimacy you as a human could have had with God--is the real "pain and suffering" of Hell. Other evangelicals, uncomfortable with this soft formulation, insist upon the physical torment.
Either way, though, Hell serves a necessary adjunct to and expression of God's holiness.
The tension for secular folk comes when they realize that, at the end of the day, holiness in this configuration serves as a limit on a supposedly infinite love. God loves you, but that love is bounded by God's holiness. The loving invitation of Christ operates only as long as your physical life on earth, and then--poof!--the holiness takes over. For eternity. Beyond the span of a human life God will not (cannot?) go.
I should stress that I don't suggest that evangelicals are unaware of this tension, quite the contrary. I will suggest, however, that the fight-or-flight evangelism I've been writing about, the evangelism that stresses avoiding hell, downplays or outright covers up this tension. Indeed, this is one of the primary thoughtstops that evangelicalism tacitly imposes: that inquiring too deeply into the tension between holy judgment and unconditional love is itself a sign of disrespect toward God. "Hell only seems unfair to you because you judge with your human standards. God's standards are better." Or: "Job asked a question much like this. You know what God told him? 'Did you create the world and all its creatures? Who are you to judge the mind of God?'"
But there's the problem--the Way of the Master (which serves as a particularly well-articulated set of evangelism techniques) explicitly invites people to use their own standards, to put themselves in God's courtroom and guess what God will do.
When Way of the Master folk lead people through the "good person test" and arrive at the punchline,"Given that you're a lying, thieving, adulterous blasphemer, would God judge you innocent or guilty?" the other person will almost inevitably raise some protest. They might say, "Well, guilty, but I still don't think he'd send me to hell." Or they might even say, "Innocent, because--yes, I've lied a few times over the course of my life, but for the most part I've tried to be honest. And I think God will know that."
The Way of the Master evangelist inevitably has to correct this human view with God's: "Well, actually, you would be guilty and you will be going to Hell."
This standard is unsatisfying because, as it's presented, God's standard is less fair, less loving, than a human imagining of unconditional love and goodness. I almost get the feeling, in some of the conversations I've heard, that the evangelists wish that God were more like what secular folk imagine, i.e., able to forgive minor infractions in the context of a lifetime of basic goodness. That God isn't like that, that God is utterly holy, plants a seed of resentment.
More tomorrow,
JF
I just now ran into a good example of this, reading John W. Sire's latest (4th) edition of The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog (Downer's Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004). In relating the Christian worldview--Christian theism, as he labels it--Sire gives a quick outline of a Christian (actually, evangelical Christian) view of God. Namely, he asserts that God's goodness--the primary attribute of God--plays out in his love on the one hand and in his holiness on the other (28-29).
What Sire in this volume does not acknowledge, however, is that these two concepts seem in tension with each other. As a relational attitude, for instance, love suggests an impulse toward togetherness, intimacy, an impulse understood to work against or through barriers to that intimacy. A parent (ideally) loves his daughter even if she tells a lie. Romeo loves Juliet despite the fact that their families try to kill each other. God so loved the world that God incarnated as Jesus to suffer and die on the cross.
To be sure, human love has limits. Betrayals, insults, or even just mundane passage of time can dim or overpower the impulse toward togetherness and mutual well-being. But here God's--well, God-ness, God's deity comes into play. God, in the faith I was brought up in, loves no matter what; God is not willing that any should perish (and any means all). What can separate us from the love of God? asks Paul rhetorically. Nothing. No power on heaven or earth. We may sin. We may disappoint God. We may even make God angry, but--and on this my Southern Baptist upbringing was clear--God's offer of repentance is always available.
[A quick story from my childhood repository of sermon illustrations: A man lived a long life full of terrible evil. He lied, he cheated, he hurt others, he did just about anything evil there was to do. The moment before he died of old age, he cried out to God in his heart, "Oh, Lord Jesus, save me, a sinner. I believe wholly in you." And then he passed away. Now, this deathbed conversion caused some degree of consternation in Heaven. Various angelic lawyers insisted that, if anyone deserved Hell, it was this man. They pointed out that it was unfair in the extreme to let him off the hook, so to speak, after a lifetime of vicious evil just for a thirty-second conversion at the last moment. "I mean," one said, "just how much leeway do we want to give such a person?" At that point, Christ stood up, and the heavenly conference room fell silent. "We give him this much leeway," Jesus said, and extended his arms wide, creating the shape of the cross on which he died for all. Point of the story? Baptists believe in deathbed conversions. ]
So that's the God-as-Divine-Love side. The Holy God side, however, stresses the fact that God is, well, God. He is holy--literally set apart. His standards (or rather the standard that is God) are uncompromising, universal, and impossible for humans to live by perfectly. All have sinned, we are taught, and fall short of the glory of God (it's one of the Old Standard verses evangelicals memorize). Moreover, the holiness/unholiness line is absolute. One sin--no matter how small--renders you just as unholy as any other. Recall the Way of The Master--even a single white lie as a child makes you, in God's eyes, a liar.
The rationale? God, being utterly holy, can't stand unholiness. Or, as evangelicals would likely prefer it put, nothing tainted with unholiness can stand God. Thus Hell, in some kinder-gentler formations, becomes a place of eternal separation from God; that separation--plus the too-late knowledge of the intimacy you as a human could have had with God--is the real "pain and suffering" of Hell. Other evangelicals, uncomfortable with this soft formulation, insist upon the physical torment.
Either way, though, Hell serves a necessary adjunct to and expression of God's holiness.
The tension for secular folk comes when they realize that, at the end of the day, holiness in this configuration serves as a limit on a supposedly infinite love. God loves you, but that love is bounded by God's holiness. The loving invitation of Christ operates only as long as your physical life on earth, and then--poof!--the holiness takes over. For eternity. Beyond the span of a human life God will not (cannot?) go.
I should stress that I don't suggest that evangelicals are unaware of this tension, quite the contrary. I will suggest, however, that the fight-or-flight evangelism I've been writing about, the evangelism that stresses avoiding hell, downplays or outright covers up this tension. Indeed, this is one of the primary thoughtstops that evangelicalism tacitly imposes: that inquiring too deeply into the tension between holy judgment and unconditional love is itself a sign of disrespect toward God. "Hell only seems unfair to you because you judge with your human standards. God's standards are better." Or: "Job asked a question much like this. You know what God told him? 'Did you create the world and all its creatures? Who are you to judge the mind of God?'"
But there's the problem--the Way of the Master (which serves as a particularly well-articulated set of evangelism techniques) explicitly invites people to use their own standards, to put themselves in God's courtroom and guess what God will do.
When Way of the Master folk lead people through the "good person test" and arrive at the punchline,"Given that you're a lying, thieving, adulterous blasphemer, would God judge you innocent or guilty?" the other person will almost inevitably raise some protest. They might say, "Well, guilty, but I still don't think he'd send me to hell." Or they might even say, "Innocent, because--yes, I've lied a few times over the course of my life, but for the most part I've tried to be honest. And I think God will know that."
The Way of the Master evangelist inevitably has to correct this human view with God's: "Well, actually, you would be guilty and you will be going to Hell."
This standard is unsatisfying because, as it's presented, God's standard is less fair, less loving, than a human imagining of unconditional love and goodness. I almost get the feeling, in some of the conversations I've heard, that the evangelists wish that God were more like what secular folk imagine, i.e., able to forgive minor infractions in the context of a lifetime of basic goodness. That God isn't like that, that God is utterly holy, plants a seed of resentment.
More tomorrow,
JF
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Good Goats and the Way of the Master
One of my father's favorite books--and now one of mine--is Good Goats: Healing our Image of God by Dennis Linn (co-authored with his family). It's a thin, large paperback that resembles a children's book, complete with simple illustrations. But the theology behind it really captures some of my own thoughts and feelings about God.
Linn's basic thesis is that we come to resemble the God we worship. If we imagine God as a stern, distant judge who is forever ready and willing to find our faults (but who, lucky for us, is juuuust merciful enough to let the sacrifice of his son make up for it), then in all likelihood we too will become stern, distant, and judgmental in our relationships to others. That kind of God, Linn suggests, makes our faith unpalatable both to ourselves and to others.
As a counter-example (which I'm paraphrasing--get the book to read the original account), he describes an experience where he (in his professional role as a counselor) was talking to a mother who had lost her adult son. The mother was worried that the son, who had lived a life of unhealthy addictions and rebellion, was burning in hell.
Linn asked the mother to close her eyes and imagine that her son was there in the room before her. She did so. "Now," said Linn, "what do you most want to do right now with your son before you? What do you want to say?" The mother replied that, more than anything, she'd like to wrap her arms around her son and tell him how much she loved him--this despite all the hurt she'd gone through because of his choices. Gently, Linn suggested that surely God's love for her son exceeded even hers, and that she could--with full confidence in that divine love--imagine Jesus wrapping his arms around her son and saying "I love you."
His point: if we believe in a loving God, then surely we must imagine that God as loving us at least as much as the person in the world who loves us the most. This is not to say that love implies easy acceptance; it's not a doormat love. Just as love between people here on earth must occasionally involve creating hard boundaries, so to do I think that God allows people to choose separation. But a family cutting off ties with an addict relative who would otherwise manipulate or rob them is by no means comparable to a God who would condemn a person to eternal hell for their sins.
I get impatient with Christian proselytics that uphold "God is love" alongside "You're destined for hell." As an example--one among a host--take the "Way of the Master" techniques developed by evangelist Ron Comfort. I expect to spend a lot of time here and in my research analyzing Comfort's distinctive outreach techniques, but for now let me sketch out his basic approach. Comfort believes that most conversions in churches to day are false in that they do not involve true repentance. True repentance comes, Comfort argues, when an unsaved person becomes convinced and convicted that they are in fact wretched in the eyes of the Lord, destined to be judged guilty when held up to God's standard.
Comfort's evangelistic technique (the eponymous "way of the master") is to engage a person in a conversation that leads to some variation of the question, "Do you think you're a good person?" If the person says yes (or anything but "absolutely not"), Comfort invites them to test their goodness by comparison with the ten commandments. The conversation goes something like this:
"Have you ever told a lie? Even once, at any point in your life?"
Yes.
"What do you call a person who tells a lie?"
A liar.
"OK. Have you ever stolen anything?"
Yes, when I was a child.
"OK, so what do you call someone who steals?"
[Typically the person will say "A stealer," and Comfort will gently suggest "thief" as a better term].
"Have you ever used the name of the Lord in vain, like 'OMG' or something?"
Yes.
"You know, that's blasphemy, using God's holy name as a curse word, and God takes that sin very seriously. One more question: have you ever looked at someone with lust in your heart?"
Yes.
"You know, Jesus said that if you look at someone you aren't married to with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery in your heart. So--by your own admission, you're a lying, thieving, blaspheming adulterer. If you were to die right now and stand before God in his heavenly court of law, would you be judged innocent or guilty?"
Guilty, I guess.
And from there (provided they haven't started to argue with him or walk away), Comfort takes them through his understanding of the Gospel--repent of sins, believe in Christ, etc.
This is fight-or-flight evangelism at its finest. Convince the person that they are in immediate danger of the fires of hell and then give them the get-out-of-hell free card that is Christianity (Ray Comfort's brand of Christianity, mind you. There's another strand of evangelicalism that vehemently believes that preaching repentance as a component of salvation is heretical. See here, for example).
Again, from Comfort's perspective, life really is an emergency situation. Death could come at any moment. Or Jesus could return in the twinkling of an eye. Either way, judgment is upon us. A fight-or-flight response is therefore appropriate.
I have grave doubts, though, about how well the courtroom-judgment analogy in this context works in fostering a long-term relationship with the living, loving God. Rather than "the beginning of a beautiful friendship," the way of the master seems more like a shotgun marriage between the neophyte believer and the very-easily-pissed-off deity.
More tomorrow,
JF
Linn's basic thesis is that we come to resemble the God we worship. If we imagine God as a stern, distant judge who is forever ready and willing to find our faults (but who, lucky for us, is juuuust merciful enough to let the sacrifice of his son make up for it), then in all likelihood we too will become stern, distant, and judgmental in our relationships to others. That kind of God, Linn suggests, makes our faith unpalatable both to ourselves and to others.
As a counter-example (which I'm paraphrasing--get the book to read the original account), he describes an experience where he (in his professional role as a counselor) was talking to a mother who had lost her adult son. The mother was worried that the son, who had lived a life of unhealthy addictions and rebellion, was burning in hell.
Linn asked the mother to close her eyes and imagine that her son was there in the room before her. She did so. "Now," said Linn, "what do you most want to do right now with your son before you? What do you want to say?" The mother replied that, more than anything, she'd like to wrap her arms around her son and tell him how much she loved him--this despite all the hurt she'd gone through because of his choices. Gently, Linn suggested that surely God's love for her son exceeded even hers, and that she could--with full confidence in that divine love--imagine Jesus wrapping his arms around her son and saying "I love you."
His point: if we believe in a loving God, then surely we must imagine that God as loving us at least as much as the person in the world who loves us the most. This is not to say that love implies easy acceptance; it's not a doormat love. Just as love between people here on earth must occasionally involve creating hard boundaries, so to do I think that God allows people to choose separation. But a family cutting off ties with an addict relative who would otherwise manipulate or rob them is by no means comparable to a God who would condemn a person to eternal hell for their sins.
I get impatient with Christian proselytics that uphold "God is love" alongside "You're destined for hell." As an example--one among a host--take the "Way of the Master" techniques developed by evangelist Ron Comfort. I expect to spend a lot of time here and in my research analyzing Comfort's distinctive outreach techniques, but for now let me sketch out his basic approach. Comfort believes that most conversions in churches to day are false in that they do not involve true repentance. True repentance comes, Comfort argues, when an unsaved person becomes convinced and convicted that they are in fact wretched in the eyes of the Lord, destined to be judged guilty when held up to God's standard.
Comfort's evangelistic technique (the eponymous "way of the master") is to engage a person in a conversation that leads to some variation of the question, "Do you think you're a good person?" If the person says yes (or anything but "absolutely not"), Comfort invites them to test their goodness by comparison with the ten commandments. The conversation goes something like this:
"Have you ever told a lie? Even once, at any point in your life?"
Yes.
"What do you call a person who tells a lie?"
A liar.
"OK. Have you ever stolen anything?"
Yes, when I was a child.
"OK, so what do you call someone who steals?"
[Typically the person will say "A stealer," and Comfort will gently suggest "thief" as a better term].
"Have you ever used the name of the Lord in vain, like 'OMG' or something?"
Yes.
"You know, that's blasphemy, using God's holy name as a curse word, and God takes that sin very seriously. One more question: have you ever looked at someone with lust in your heart?"
Yes.
"You know, Jesus said that if you look at someone you aren't married to with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery in your heart. So--by your own admission, you're a lying, thieving, blaspheming adulterer. If you were to die right now and stand before God in his heavenly court of law, would you be judged innocent or guilty?"
Guilty, I guess.
And from there (provided they haven't started to argue with him or walk away), Comfort takes them through his understanding of the Gospel--repent of sins, believe in Christ, etc.
This is fight-or-flight evangelism at its finest. Convince the person that they are in immediate danger of the fires of hell and then give them the get-out-of-hell free card that is Christianity (Ray Comfort's brand of Christianity, mind you. There's another strand of evangelicalism that vehemently believes that preaching repentance as a component of salvation is heretical. See here, for example).
Again, from Comfort's perspective, life really is an emergency situation. Death could come at any moment. Or Jesus could return in the twinkling of an eye. Either way, judgment is upon us. A fight-or-flight response is therefore appropriate.
I have grave doubts, though, about how well the courtroom-judgment analogy in this context works in fostering a long-term relationship with the living, loving God. Rather than "the beginning of a beautiful friendship," the way of the master seems more like a shotgun marriage between the neophyte believer and the very-easily-pissed-off deity.
More tomorrow,
JF
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Balance, Exhaustion, Resentment
Wuff. Fighting off a sore throat today, so please bear with me.
I've been working through how I experienced my childhood faith (Southern Baptist) as a kind of "fight or flight" Christianity. That is, my faith was to a large extent based in and sustained by a fear of hell and divine judgment. I've criticized that kind of faith for its tendency to foster anti-intellectualism, defensiveness, and--for lack of a better term--exhaustion.
The reason adrenaline surges in the physical world don't last long is that they wear down the body. People who live lives characterized by frequent-to-constant adrenaline rushes--folk in combat zones, people in abusive relationships, people with anxiety disorders, etc.--are at risk for developing all sorts of physical and psychological problems (from heart disease to post-traumatic stress disorder) as their bodies and minds suffer from the the constant biochemical strain.
I think something similar happens to people exposed to constant spiritual stress. If your faith depends upon an ever-active fear of hell, if your faith practice involves frequent confrontations with that soul-threatening possibility, what are the consequences?
Ideally, and this is what I think most evangelicals would argue should happen, the fear that originally prompted you to walk down the aisle and get saved moves aside, grows smaller to make room for the in-breathing of the Holy Spirit. You still have fear--as in awe-filled appreciation of hell's reality, God's judgment, and Christ's sacrifice--but this fear gets put into perspective by the overwhelming loving-kindness of God for God's creatures and by the "peace that passes understanding." You don't live a fight-or-flight Christianity. As you grow in faith, you learn to trust in God's promises, to recognize that God's care for you isn't dependent upon your feelings of a moment. Evangelistic fear, then, ideally leads to a life of humility balanced with faith, not a life of cringing or paralysis.
To be honest, I grew up knowing many, many evangelical Christians who were old in the faith and who lived something akin to this ideal situation. They believed in and reminded others of the reality of eternal judgment, but this reality didn't cast a pall over their lives or their faith. Let me say that I have a great deal of respect for that configuration of faith. Their example continues to guide me today, tripping me up in the most productive ways lest I be too cavalier in dismissing the very idea of divine judgment.
Be that as it may, though, I have to balance my experience with such evangelical saints with my experience of secular friends and acquaintances who have retreated from or avoided church. Such people reacted differently to the fight-or-flight evangelism. Somehow the balance between fear and comfort that others find eluded them. For many, church became little more than a guilt/obligation bank to which they were forced to return weekly to refill their spirits with reminders about how wretched they were. They just burned out on spiritual anxiety, cut down on their church attendance, and found--surprise, surprise--that life could be much more pleasant without all that anxiety.
For others--and it pains me to say this--the God of fight-or-flight evangelism just seemed too much like an abusive parent or lover.
This is one of the most pervasive and unacknowledged set of mixed messages that evangelicalism (Christianity in general, actually) fosters: on the one hand, we are to picture God via family metaphors--God the father, Christ our brother, or even Christ the groom for the bride of the church. On the other hand, though, we are taught that God utterly transcends human relationships, that God disrupts or overturns familial ties ("if any man does not forsake his father and mother for my sake..."). Now, I don't mean to denigrate paradox per se; my own faith embraces multiple paradoxes (e.g., God as three-in-one).
The problem here is that Christians can be awfully opportunistic in terms of when and how they use family-God or transcendent-God in outreach and apologetics. God is family when the evangelistic pitch is about God's love. But when you talk about God's judgment, God conveniently ceases to be family and becomes transcendent.
Unsaved Person (UP): "If God is a loving father" [and here we should remind ourselves that many, many people in the world do not experience their fathers as present or loving] "then why would he judge me worthy of an eternity in the fire?"
Christian (C): "Well, you have to understand. God is holy and perfect. Imperfection cannot stand before him. We don't have the right as humans to judge God's standard because God is the standard."
UP: "Now wait a minute. Is he a father or is he an omnipotent deity with no tolerance for imperfection?"
C: "Yes."
UP: "Uh-uh. Listen: My dad loves me. I know that no matter what I do, even if I hurt him personally, he'll keep loving me. He may be driven to cut off ties with me. He may even be angry at me. But he would never say, 'You should spend the rest of forever in unimaginable, unending pain.' How--by any definition--is that loving?"
C: "There you go, using human standards again..."
UP: "Yeah? Well how come my human standards of love are so much more loving than your God's standards?"
And here's the impasse. In the how-to-evangelize literature I've absorbed, in the sample evangelizing conversations I've heard (there are tons on iTunes), evangelicals have a really hard time addressing that question in a deep way. To reiterate it: how is it loving for God to endorse an individual's burning in hell for all eternity? How is it possible to imagine a God who would do that as someone we are to love and adore?
[For that matter, the UP might demand to know how it's possible for an all-powerful God to allow suffering here on earth. It's the classic question of theodicy--how can God be all-powerful and all-good when evil exists? Responding to that challenge, evangelicalism offers several pat explanations, mostly dealing with original sin and the fallen world. I see many problems with that kind of answer, but I'm going to bracket dealing with those for now--total cop out!--to deal with the eternity-in-hell version.]
Exploring the common evangelical attempts to address the loving God/eternal hell paradox to the satisfaction of unbelievers will be tomorrow's task.
JF
I've been working through how I experienced my childhood faith (Southern Baptist) as a kind of "fight or flight" Christianity. That is, my faith was to a large extent based in and sustained by a fear of hell and divine judgment. I've criticized that kind of faith for its tendency to foster anti-intellectualism, defensiveness, and--for lack of a better term--exhaustion.
The reason adrenaline surges in the physical world don't last long is that they wear down the body. People who live lives characterized by frequent-to-constant adrenaline rushes--folk in combat zones, people in abusive relationships, people with anxiety disorders, etc.--are at risk for developing all sorts of physical and psychological problems (from heart disease to post-traumatic stress disorder) as their bodies and minds suffer from the the constant biochemical strain.
I think something similar happens to people exposed to constant spiritual stress. If your faith depends upon an ever-active fear of hell, if your faith practice involves frequent confrontations with that soul-threatening possibility, what are the consequences?
Ideally, and this is what I think most evangelicals would argue should happen, the fear that originally prompted you to walk down the aisle and get saved moves aside, grows smaller to make room for the in-breathing of the Holy Spirit. You still have fear--as in awe-filled appreciation of hell's reality, God's judgment, and Christ's sacrifice--but this fear gets put into perspective by the overwhelming loving-kindness of God for God's creatures and by the "peace that passes understanding." You don't live a fight-or-flight Christianity. As you grow in faith, you learn to trust in God's promises, to recognize that God's care for you isn't dependent upon your feelings of a moment. Evangelistic fear, then, ideally leads to a life of humility balanced with faith, not a life of cringing or paralysis.
To be honest, I grew up knowing many, many evangelical Christians who were old in the faith and who lived something akin to this ideal situation. They believed in and reminded others of the reality of eternal judgment, but this reality didn't cast a pall over their lives or their faith. Let me say that I have a great deal of respect for that configuration of faith. Their example continues to guide me today, tripping me up in the most productive ways lest I be too cavalier in dismissing the very idea of divine judgment.
Be that as it may, though, I have to balance my experience with such evangelical saints with my experience of secular friends and acquaintances who have retreated from or avoided church. Such people reacted differently to the fight-or-flight evangelism. Somehow the balance between fear and comfort that others find eluded them. For many, church became little more than a guilt/obligation bank to which they were forced to return weekly to refill their spirits with reminders about how wretched they were. They just burned out on spiritual anxiety, cut down on their church attendance, and found--surprise, surprise--that life could be much more pleasant without all that anxiety.
For others--and it pains me to say this--the God of fight-or-flight evangelism just seemed too much like an abusive parent or lover.
This is one of the most pervasive and unacknowledged set of mixed messages that evangelicalism (Christianity in general, actually) fosters: on the one hand, we are to picture God via family metaphors--God the father, Christ our brother, or even Christ the groom for the bride of the church. On the other hand, though, we are taught that God utterly transcends human relationships, that God disrupts or overturns familial ties ("if any man does not forsake his father and mother for my sake..."). Now, I don't mean to denigrate paradox per se; my own faith embraces multiple paradoxes (e.g., God as three-in-one).
The problem here is that Christians can be awfully opportunistic in terms of when and how they use family-God or transcendent-God in outreach and apologetics. God is family when the evangelistic pitch is about God's love. But when you talk about God's judgment, God conveniently ceases to be family and becomes transcendent.
Unsaved Person (UP): "If God is a loving father" [and here we should remind ourselves that many, many people in the world do not experience their fathers as present or loving] "then why would he judge me worthy of an eternity in the fire?"
Christian (C): "Well, you have to understand. God is holy and perfect. Imperfection cannot stand before him. We don't have the right as humans to judge God's standard because God is the standard."
UP: "Now wait a minute. Is he a father or is he an omnipotent deity with no tolerance for imperfection?"
C: "Yes."
UP: "Uh-uh. Listen: My dad loves me. I know that no matter what I do, even if I hurt him personally, he'll keep loving me. He may be driven to cut off ties with me. He may even be angry at me. But he would never say, 'You should spend the rest of forever in unimaginable, unending pain.' How--by any definition--is that loving?"
C: "There you go, using human standards again..."
UP: "Yeah? Well how come my human standards of love are so much more loving than your God's standards?"
And here's the impasse. In the how-to-evangelize literature I've absorbed, in the sample evangelizing conversations I've heard (there are tons on iTunes), evangelicals have a really hard time addressing that question in a deep way. To reiterate it: how is it loving for God to endorse an individual's burning in hell for all eternity? How is it possible to imagine a God who would do that as someone we are to love and adore?
[For that matter, the UP might demand to know how it's possible for an all-powerful God to allow suffering here on earth. It's the classic question of theodicy--how can God be all-powerful and all-good when evil exists? Responding to that challenge, evangelicalism offers several pat explanations, mostly dealing with original sin and the fallen world. I see many problems with that kind of answer, but I'm going to bracket dealing with those for now--total cop out!--to deal with the eternity-in-hell version.]
Exploring the common evangelical attempts to address the loving God/eternal hell paradox to the satisfaction of unbelievers will be tomorrow's task.
JF
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Altar Call
Yesterday I characterized fight-or-flight evangelism ("Be saved or spend eternity in hell!") as fragile in that, like any adrenaline rush, it fades too easily into a crash. To stave off the crash, then, fight-or-flight evangelism fosters a fight-or-flight Christianity, a faith that relies on occasional infusions of brand new anxieties. Was my conversion authentic? Am I bearing fruit? Am I (still) 100% certain about my eternal home? Am I evangelizing enough?
The conservative evangelical culture of my childhood (Southern Baptist) turned just about every worship event--services, vacation bible schools, summer bible camps, youth trips, revivals--into events aimed to activate those concerns about one's immortal soul. You knew, going to this or that special event, that you were more than likely going to hear a version of the same pitch--won't you dedicate your life to Christ today, before it's too late?
Now, I have nothing against calls to become a Christian. But what's the effect of issuing that call again and again to people who are already Christians?
Consider the revival altar call as a genre. The audience has just spent the last hour (at least) singing hymns, hearing special music, standing and sitting on command, praying communally, and listening two a (hopefully) talented, charismatic speaker in whom they (hopefully) have invested trust and authority confront them with Hard Biblical Truths about the final judgment or the reality of humanity's sin. Now, at the end of the service, the last hymn of invitation plays, something like "Just As I Am," "I Surrender All," or "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."
These hymns, the message, the altar call--all of these are familiar. If you've gone to church for any length of time (as most people who attend local revivals do), you've experienced them before. You link the invitation hymns--their pleading words, their mournful tunes--with the ghosts of altar calls past. You know that these songs, in this context, mean Something Holy Will Happen. The air is charged with expectation.
The pastor motions for the singing to stop while the music plays underneath. "Now, I want every head bowed, every eye closed," says the pastor. "I just know that someone right here in this room is feeling the spirit move. Maybe you've come to this church for the first time tonight, and something in the message or in the music caught your conscience. Maybe you want to know more about this God who loved the world so much that he sent his son to die.
"Or maybe you've been a member of this church for a while. Maybe you've thought you were a Christian because you've been going to this church every Sunday. Oh, you remember making a decision long ago, but you forgot what that was about. You suspect you've let your faith become a habit. You worry that maybe just maybe spirit of God was never in you, and you've been trying to fill it up with Sunday school and potlucks. Oh, my friend, if this is you, I pray for you. I worry about you. I think you realize now that if Jesus came tonight, he would say 'Depart from me; I never knew you.'
"You see, it doesn't matter how involved you are in a church. It doesn't matter how good you are to your neighbors. It doesn't matter how many songs you sing or how many Bible verses you memorize because if you die without Christ in your heart, you die in your sins and are destined for Hell.
"If this is you--if you fear you may be one of those in-name-only Christians, I want you to raise your hand." Pause. You feel the urge to look up, peek around, but guilt keeps your eyes closed and head bowed. You perhaps hear some scattered sniffling and sobbing.
Then the pastor, having surveyed the congregation, says, "Thank you. You may put your hands down. I see the spirit has been at work already in some of you. Now, as we sing the last verse again, I would ask that if you raised your hand just now, that you would come forward and make the decision you've been putting off."
Then the congregation starts singing the hymn again, and people make their way out of the pews and down the aisles. Typically (at least, if the altar call is successful), you end up singing the whole hymn over again as more and more people come forward.
Of course I've just made up this speech from bits of memories of countless invitations. Real speeches vary, usually spotlighting several possible kinds of audience members (e.g., people who are saved but who need to rededicate themselves to Christ). And it may be that the pastor's description accurately and honestly describes someone's present experience. But often--I'm tempted to guess from my own experience, more often--the pastor's speech functions as an invitation to be anxious about your own salvation. The Person Who Thought They Were Saved But Weren't is a well-known tale told by pastors. The altar call speech at revival time generally invites you to identify with the unhappy protagonist of that tale.
Indeed, the effect of having your faith commitments questioned deeply by your pastor is akin to having your self-confidence called into question by your psychiatrist ("Are you sure you're ready to ask for a raise at work? Perhaps you just think you deserve one. Maybe you should think long and hard about how effective of a worker you really are."). Asked in high-stakes contexts and when posed to you by authority figures whose opinion you value, the question of certainty itself calls certainty into question.
Maybe I am one of those name-only Christians. Maybe I'm not really saved. I mean, do I feel saved right now? Oh, I'm nervous! Is that nervousness the Holy Spirit moving me to raise my hand? I don't want to; I don't think I need to. But if I really didn't need to, wouldn't I not feel so nervous? I should go down the aisle. Better safe than sorry.
Born out of fear, fight-or-flight Christianity finds itself vulnerable to anxiety-based pitches. It is always open to the invitation to doubt. More than that, fight-or-flight Christianity needs those infusions of fear to keep that high going.
More tomorrow,
JF
The conservative evangelical culture of my childhood (Southern Baptist) turned just about every worship event--services, vacation bible schools, summer bible camps, youth trips, revivals--into events aimed to activate those concerns about one's immortal soul. You knew, going to this or that special event, that you were more than likely going to hear a version of the same pitch--won't you dedicate your life to Christ today, before it's too late?
Now, I have nothing against calls to become a Christian. But what's the effect of issuing that call again and again to people who are already Christians?
Consider the revival altar call as a genre. The audience has just spent the last hour (at least) singing hymns, hearing special music, standing and sitting on command, praying communally, and listening two a (hopefully) talented, charismatic speaker in whom they (hopefully) have invested trust and authority confront them with Hard Biblical Truths about the final judgment or the reality of humanity's sin. Now, at the end of the service, the last hymn of invitation plays, something like "Just As I Am," "I Surrender All," or "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."
These hymns, the message, the altar call--all of these are familiar. If you've gone to church for any length of time (as most people who attend local revivals do), you've experienced them before. You link the invitation hymns--their pleading words, their mournful tunes--with the ghosts of altar calls past. You know that these songs, in this context, mean Something Holy Will Happen. The air is charged with expectation.
The pastor motions for the singing to stop while the music plays underneath. "Now, I want every head bowed, every eye closed," says the pastor. "I just know that someone right here in this room is feeling the spirit move. Maybe you've come to this church for the first time tonight, and something in the message or in the music caught your conscience. Maybe you want to know more about this God who loved the world so much that he sent his son to die.
"Or maybe you've been a member of this church for a while. Maybe you've thought you were a Christian because you've been going to this church every Sunday. Oh, you remember making a decision long ago, but you forgot what that was about. You suspect you've let your faith become a habit. You worry that maybe just maybe spirit of God was never in you, and you've been trying to fill it up with Sunday school and potlucks. Oh, my friend, if this is you, I pray for you. I worry about you. I think you realize now that if Jesus came tonight, he would say 'Depart from me; I never knew you.'
"You see, it doesn't matter how involved you are in a church. It doesn't matter how good you are to your neighbors. It doesn't matter how many songs you sing or how many Bible verses you memorize because if you die without Christ in your heart, you die in your sins and are destined for Hell.
"If this is you--if you fear you may be one of those in-name-only Christians, I want you to raise your hand." Pause. You feel the urge to look up, peek around, but guilt keeps your eyes closed and head bowed. You perhaps hear some scattered sniffling and sobbing.
Then the pastor, having surveyed the congregation, says, "Thank you. You may put your hands down. I see the spirit has been at work already in some of you. Now, as we sing the last verse again, I would ask that if you raised your hand just now, that you would come forward and make the decision you've been putting off."
Then the congregation starts singing the hymn again, and people make their way out of the pews and down the aisles. Typically (at least, if the altar call is successful), you end up singing the whole hymn over again as more and more people come forward.
Of course I've just made up this speech from bits of memories of countless invitations. Real speeches vary, usually spotlighting several possible kinds of audience members (e.g., people who are saved but who need to rededicate themselves to Christ). And it may be that the pastor's description accurately and honestly describes someone's present experience. But often--I'm tempted to guess from my own experience, more often--the pastor's speech functions as an invitation to be anxious about your own salvation. The Person Who Thought They Were Saved But Weren't is a well-known tale told by pastors. The altar call speech at revival time generally invites you to identify with the unhappy protagonist of that tale.
Indeed, the effect of having your faith commitments questioned deeply by your pastor is akin to having your self-confidence called into question by your psychiatrist ("Are you sure you're ready to ask for a raise at work? Perhaps you just think you deserve one. Maybe you should think long and hard about how effective of a worker you really are."). Asked in high-stakes contexts and when posed to you by authority figures whose opinion you value, the question of certainty itself calls certainty into question.
Maybe I am one of those name-only Christians. Maybe I'm not really saved. I mean, do I feel saved right now? Oh, I'm nervous! Is that nervousness the Holy Spirit moving me to raise my hand? I don't want to; I don't think I need to. But if I really didn't need to, wouldn't I not feel so nervous? I should go down the aisle. Better safe than sorry.
Born out of fear, fight-or-flight Christianity finds itself vulnerable to anxiety-based pitches. It is always open to the invitation to doubt. More than that, fight-or-flight Christianity needs those infusions of fear to keep that high going.
More tomorrow,
JF
Monday, July 20, 2009
Fight-or-Flight Christianity--Fragility
If you're just joining me, I'm working through (mainly for myself) the details of "fight or flight" as an apt descriptor for certain evangelistic styles and the faith they inspire. By fight-or-flight evangelism, I mean the high-fear/low-thought, "scare 'em into heaven" tactic that urges the unsaved to convert on the basis of their desire to avoid hell. The tactic generally manifests as some form of the question, "If you were to die tonight, are you 100% sure that you'd wake up in heaven rather than hell?"
My argument for the past week or so has been that this evangelistic style, while often quite effective, can too easily foster a faith that is nothing more than an activated instinct for self-preservation, a fight-or-flight Christianity. I've suggested that this kind of faith tends to muffle our abilities to think critically and to ramp up an obsession over defining and patrolling ever more exacting borders between orthodox and unorthodox faith.
In other words, we can become anti-intellectual and belligerently defensive about matters of faith and doctrine. Every theological question, every encounter with someone who believes differently than we do becomes a stressful, (after)life-or-death referendum about our own, individual salvation.
Perhaps my biggest criticism of fight-or-flight Christianity, though, is that, as a belief system, it lacks staying power. Adrenaline rushes are, by nature, generally short; biological organisms simply can't maintain the high-tension, lift-a-car-off-of-a-toddler high of a fight-or-flight response for long. Emotional highs of any sort (rage, bliss, lust, what have you) typically don't last for long. An emotional outburst one evening can turn into a what-was-I-thinking regret the morning after.
Fight-or-flight evangelism cashes in on the motive power of such highs while, I fear, underestimating the morning-after crash that can follow them. True, at most evangelical events designed around creating the emotional high necessary for fight-or-flight salvation, the church (or whomever) has people or programs in place to foster the neophyte Christian (i.e., incorporate them into the life of a faith community).
Nevertheless, the clear priority for most forms of evangelical outreach is the Moment of Decision, not the morning after. Evangelical testimonies (a performance genre all their own that I intend to discuss in detail later) rarely if ever highlight the long, hard process of growing in faith. Instead such testimonies tend to take the form "Here's how I was before being saved. Here--in greatest detail--is the dramatic story of my decision for Christ. And here's how my life has been different since then." The focus is on the decision, the instant of belief in the saving Person of Christ and (depending on your soteriology) repentance (turning away from sin toward God).
Now, I have nothing against recalling one's conversion as a singular, highly emotional event. I recall my own decision as such. But, in my experience, being a Christian is less about the one massive decision I made at age 8 and more about the countless smaller decisions I make every day at age 33. Indeed, I'd say I had about as much understanding of what life-long faith is really about at age 8 as most preteens have about what it's like to be a parent.
Christianity is a life-long commitment, a discipline of heart-mind-spirit that's supposed to encompass all aspects of life. How sensible is it, then, to encourage people--particularly teenagers--to make that commitment suddenly and in an altered state of consciousness? Outside of romantic comedy plots, we would never endorse a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married, to buy a house, or to have a baby. These are, ideally, weighty decisions arrived at carefully and thoughtfully. Surely we would consider it odd if someone said, "Well, I bought a puppy because I was convinced that I would spend an eternity in Hell if I didn't get a puppy."
Should Christianity really be that different? Shouldn't lifelong Christianity be at least as momentous a decision as securing a home loan?
I wonder sometimes if people don't hear more warnings about the dangers of impulse shopping (You could get scammed! You might not want the product tomorrow! You may not have the money to buy it or keep it!) than they do about the fine print of living a life for Christ.
Evangelical sermons and books often begin with a lament about the shrinking numbers of church-going people in the US. Indeed, a goodly portion of evangelical discourse is devoted to the problem of the disappearing Body of Christ in the US (see David Kinneman and Gabe Lyons's book, UnChristian for an example of this genre). What's going wrong, they ask?
You can read Kinnemann and Lyon's answers for yourself. For my money, I have to wonder if evangelicalism's focus on the "impulse-buy" of Christ, an impulse buy pitched, moreover, with overtones of threat, contributes to the morning-after resentment of an increasingly non-church-going culture. Fight-or-flight Christianity, powerful as it is in its moments of strength, simply doesn't last long enough. The memory of even the most vivid hellfire-and-damnation sermon fades with time.
Surely faith--and therefore evangelism--can consist of more than the threat of hell.
More tomorrow,
JF
My argument for the past week or so has been that this evangelistic style, while often quite effective, can too easily foster a faith that is nothing more than an activated instinct for self-preservation, a fight-or-flight Christianity. I've suggested that this kind of faith tends to muffle our abilities to think critically and to ramp up an obsession over defining and patrolling ever more exacting borders between orthodox and unorthodox faith.
In other words, we can become anti-intellectual and belligerently defensive about matters of faith and doctrine. Every theological question, every encounter with someone who believes differently than we do becomes a stressful, (after)life-or-death referendum about our own, individual salvation.
Perhaps my biggest criticism of fight-or-flight Christianity, though, is that, as a belief system, it lacks staying power. Adrenaline rushes are, by nature, generally short; biological organisms simply can't maintain the high-tension, lift-a-car-off-of-a-toddler high of a fight-or-flight response for long. Emotional highs of any sort (rage, bliss, lust, what have you) typically don't last for long. An emotional outburst one evening can turn into a what-was-I-thinking regret the morning after.
Fight-or-flight evangelism cashes in on the motive power of such highs while, I fear, underestimating the morning-after crash that can follow them. True, at most evangelical events designed around creating the emotional high necessary for fight-or-flight salvation, the church (or whomever) has people or programs in place to foster the neophyte Christian (i.e., incorporate them into the life of a faith community).
Nevertheless, the clear priority for most forms of evangelical outreach is the Moment of Decision, not the morning after. Evangelical testimonies (a performance genre all their own that I intend to discuss in detail later) rarely if ever highlight the long, hard process of growing in faith. Instead such testimonies tend to take the form "Here's how I was before being saved. Here--in greatest detail--is the dramatic story of my decision for Christ. And here's how my life has been different since then." The focus is on the decision, the instant of belief in the saving Person of Christ and (depending on your soteriology) repentance (turning away from sin toward God).
Now, I have nothing against recalling one's conversion as a singular, highly emotional event. I recall my own decision as such. But, in my experience, being a Christian is less about the one massive decision I made at age 8 and more about the countless smaller decisions I make every day at age 33. Indeed, I'd say I had about as much understanding of what life-long faith is really about at age 8 as most preteens have about what it's like to be a parent.
Christianity is a life-long commitment, a discipline of heart-mind-spirit that's supposed to encompass all aspects of life. How sensible is it, then, to encourage people--particularly teenagers--to make that commitment suddenly and in an altered state of consciousness? Outside of romantic comedy plots, we would never endorse a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married, to buy a house, or to have a baby. These are, ideally, weighty decisions arrived at carefully and thoughtfully. Surely we would consider it odd if someone said, "Well, I bought a puppy because I was convinced that I would spend an eternity in Hell if I didn't get a puppy."
Should Christianity really be that different? Shouldn't lifelong Christianity be at least as momentous a decision as securing a home loan?
I wonder sometimes if people don't hear more warnings about the dangers of impulse shopping (You could get scammed! You might not want the product tomorrow! You may not have the money to buy it or keep it!) than they do about the fine print of living a life for Christ.
Evangelical sermons and books often begin with a lament about the shrinking numbers of church-going people in the US. Indeed, a goodly portion of evangelical discourse is devoted to the problem of the disappearing Body of Christ in the US (see David Kinneman and Gabe Lyons's book, UnChristian for an example of this genre). What's going wrong, they ask?
You can read Kinnemann and Lyon's answers for yourself. For my money, I have to wonder if evangelicalism's focus on the "impulse-buy" of Christ, an impulse buy pitched, moreover, with overtones of threat, contributes to the morning-after resentment of an increasingly non-church-going culture. Fight-or-flight Christianity, powerful as it is in its moments of strength, simply doesn't last long enough. The memory of even the most vivid hellfire-and-damnation sermon fades with time.
Surely faith--and therefore evangelism--can consist of more than the threat of hell.
More tomorrow,
JF
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Fight-or-Flight Christianity--Heretic Patrols
My father once preached on John 13:35: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (NRSV). "This is a dangerous verse," my father warned, "because here Jesus gives to the non-Christian world---'by this everyone will know'--the ability to judge us Christians. Here is the world's criteria: do we who claim to be Christian, in the eyes of the world, have love for one another? When the world looks at us, our attitudes, our actions, do they see love?"
I've always treasured this insight from my father. It reminds me of one of the first lessons I learned about theatre: the audience gets to judge what you put on stage. It doesn't matter if you as an actor intended to portray this or that emotion truthfully, thought for sure that you said this or that line audibly, or really wanted to convey this or that bit of action clearly. The audience decides whether the emotion is truthful, the line audible, or the action clear. It's a hard lesson to learn, this necessary act of submitting private standards to the audience's public reception.
Similarly, it's sobering to consider that, according to this scripture, our self-image or best intentions matter less than the world's perception when it comes to the issue of loving one another. Thus, our faith demands that we ask not only do I have love toward one another but also does everyone see this love? Is the way I treat my Christian sisters and brothers (to say nothing of my neighbors more generally) a witness to my love for them?
I pose this question in relation to the second unhappy side-effect of "fight-or-flight Christianity"--the tendencies of a faith life born in the emergency question, "Do you want to follow Jesus or burn in Hell forever?" I wrote yesterday that this high-adrenaline, life-or-death faith can too often result in an I-can't-think-about-that-or-I'll-burn resistance to deep or critical thought, a Denkverbot ("thoughtblock") on certain aspects of faith.
The Denkverbot represents the "flight" aspect of fight-or-flight Christianity--the pure avoidance of questions or viewpoints that might threaten certainty.. But emergency Christianity can, I think, just as often react with belligerent confrontation, turning and confronting perceived threats forcefully, fists up, guns a-blazing, and ready to kill or be killed.
If your faith is, from the get-go, primarily a matter of avoiding hell and getting to heaven--and about being utterly certain that you've done so prior to your ultimate fate--then understandably, you're going to spend the bulk of your mental and spiritual energy clarifying exactly what you believe about heaven, hell, and salvation. And, in one of those truisms that's actually true, humans tend to achieve definitional clarity about what they do believe by identifying exactly what it is they don't believe.
In other words, Christians develop a sense of what's orthodox by labeling, searching out, and strongly rejecting what's heterodox or heretical. For evangelicals, this might consist of deciding what the "Bible-believing Christian" really is via confrontation with other evangelicals who believe differently.
The "Battle over the Bible" in the Southern Baptist Church about the nature of Biblical inspiration is one example. Others off the top of my head:
Which Bible version is authoritative?
What role women should have in the church?
Is glossolalia (speaking in tongues--the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit") required or even allowed in worship?
Does salvation require simple profession of belief or repentance plus profession?
Which is correct--baptism by immersion or baptism by sprinkling?
And on into infinity.
Now, my beef here isn't about the fact that Christians disagree or even that they discover and develop different doctrines from and within conversations with each other. I'm more concerned with the tenor of these conversations, which all too often can turn quite nasty. Indeed, many secular observers of evangelical and fundamentalist culture note that often evangelicals reserve their harshest rhetoric not for obvious cultural enemies like atheists but for other churches, other Christians, who have come to slightly different conclusions than they.
Even when they appear minor or arcane to outsiders (ever try explaining the distinctions between various pre- and post-millennialists to someone unfamiliar with evangelicalism?), such disagreements can acquire church- or even denomination-splitting force. In Protestantism especially, heresy-hunting fads often presage schisms.
Of course, the act of heretic-finding, doctrine-defining, and church-splitting is as old as Christianity itself. Evangelicalism has no monopoly on harsh distinctions. But then--to return to my opening--what must the world think of Christians when it sees us making those hard-line distinctions? I sometimes wonder if the greatest challenge facing the Church is finding new and more loving ways for its members to disagree with each other.
I'm fascinated in the process by which a disagreement escalates from "we can agree to disagree" to "I can't consider you a Christian if you believe that." At what point does someone with a different opinion become a heretic? I'm not sure, but I suspect faith disagreements take a step towards schism once they become tinged with the certainty-anxiety surrounding hell/heaven/salvation. A conversation between a Calvinist and an Armenian can be cordial until one or both believe that only Calvinists or only Armenians get to heaven.
To the extent that fight-or-flight Christianity tinges all aspects of faith with the are-you-certain-you-aren't-going-to-hell question, it can too easily exacerbate inevitable differences of opinion among Christians.
More tomorrow,
JF
I've always treasured this insight from my father. It reminds me of one of the first lessons I learned about theatre: the audience gets to judge what you put on stage. It doesn't matter if you as an actor intended to portray this or that emotion truthfully, thought for sure that you said this or that line audibly, or really wanted to convey this or that bit of action clearly. The audience decides whether the emotion is truthful, the line audible, or the action clear. It's a hard lesson to learn, this necessary act of submitting private standards to the audience's public reception.
Similarly, it's sobering to consider that, according to this scripture, our self-image or best intentions matter less than the world's perception when it comes to the issue of loving one another. Thus, our faith demands that we ask not only do I have love toward one another but also does everyone see this love? Is the way I treat my Christian sisters and brothers (to say nothing of my neighbors more generally) a witness to my love for them?
I pose this question in relation to the second unhappy side-effect of "fight-or-flight Christianity"--the tendencies of a faith life born in the emergency question, "Do you want to follow Jesus or burn in Hell forever?" I wrote yesterday that this high-adrenaline, life-or-death faith can too often result in an I-can't-think-about-that-or-I'll-burn resistance to deep or critical thought, a Denkverbot ("thoughtblock") on certain aspects of faith.
The Denkverbot represents the "flight" aspect of fight-or-flight Christianity--the pure avoidance of questions or viewpoints that might threaten certainty.. But emergency Christianity can, I think, just as often react with belligerent confrontation, turning and confronting perceived threats forcefully, fists up, guns a-blazing, and ready to kill or be killed.
If your faith is, from the get-go, primarily a matter of avoiding hell and getting to heaven--and about being utterly certain that you've done so prior to your ultimate fate--then understandably, you're going to spend the bulk of your mental and spiritual energy clarifying exactly what you believe about heaven, hell, and salvation. And, in one of those truisms that's actually true, humans tend to achieve definitional clarity about what they do believe by identifying exactly what it is they don't believe.
In other words, Christians develop a sense of what's orthodox by labeling, searching out, and strongly rejecting what's heterodox or heretical. For evangelicals, this might consist of deciding what the "Bible-believing Christian" really is via confrontation with other evangelicals who believe differently.
The "Battle over the Bible" in the Southern Baptist Church about the nature of Biblical inspiration is one example. Others off the top of my head:
Which Bible version is authoritative?
What role women should have in the church?
Is glossolalia (speaking in tongues--the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit") required or even allowed in worship?
Does salvation require simple profession of belief or repentance plus profession?
Which is correct--baptism by immersion or baptism by sprinkling?
And on into infinity.
Now, my beef here isn't about the fact that Christians disagree or even that they discover and develop different doctrines from and within conversations with each other. I'm more concerned with the tenor of these conversations, which all too often can turn quite nasty. Indeed, many secular observers of evangelical and fundamentalist culture note that often evangelicals reserve their harshest rhetoric not for obvious cultural enemies like atheists but for other churches, other Christians, who have come to slightly different conclusions than they.
Even when they appear minor or arcane to outsiders (ever try explaining the distinctions between various pre- and post-millennialists to someone unfamiliar with evangelicalism?), such disagreements can acquire church- or even denomination-splitting force. In Protestantism especially, heresy-hunting fads often presage schisms.
Of course, the act of heretic-finding, doctrine-defining, and church-splitting is as old as Christianity itself. Evangelicalism has no monopoly on harsh distinctions. But then--to return to my opening--what must the world think of Christians when it sees us making those hard-line distinctions? I sometimes wonder if the greatest challenge facing the Church is finding new and more loving ways for its members to disagree with each other.
I'm fascinated in the process by which a disagreement escalates from "we can agree to disagree" to "I can't consider you a Christian if you believe that." At what point does someone with a different opinion become a heretic? I'm not sure, but I suspect faith disagreements take a step towards schism once they become tinged with the certainty-anxiety surrounding hell/heaven/salvation. A conversation between a Calvinist and an Armenian can be cordial until one or both believe that only Calvinists or only Armenians get to heaven.
To the extent that fight-or-flight Christianity tinges all aspects of faith with the are-you-certain-you-aren't-going-to-hell question, it can too easily exacerbate inevitable differences of opinion among Christians.
More tomorrow,
JF
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Fight-or-Flight Christianity--Denkverbot
I blaze no new trails by noting that fear can make people do ugly things, especially when the fear in question relates to matters of life and death. Think of news stories about panicked stampedes in cases of fire or other emergencies, where a significant number of casualties occur not from the direct cause of the panic but from the mob reaction--people trampled, crushed, and pushed down in the mad rush to escape.
Fight-or-flight mode doesn't really lend itself to acts of thoughtful generosity or self-sacrifice. I think it odd, then, that conservative evangelicalism so often seeks to win people to Christ by appealing to their sense of afterlife self-preservation, activating a kind of eternal fight-or-flight mode--and then expects those won-through-fear converts to live lives of holy servanthood.
Fight-or-flight evangelism--come to Jesus or burn in hell--can too often foster a fight-or-flight Christianity. Like the biological reaction, spiritual fight-or-flightiness encourages certain patterns of thought and behavior while shutting down others. I suggest that particular elements of fight-or-flight mentalities (I'll discuss three) do active harm to the witness of Christ in the world
The first element of FoF Christianity I call Denkverbot, which is German (and German is best for generating vocabulary mashups) for "thought-forbid" or stopthought (I get the term from the work of Slavoj Zizek, who uses it somewhat differently than I do here).
Basically, people in fight-or-flight mode aren't thinking as deeply or as carefully about themselves and their environment as they might otherwise. Obviously, this makes sense in certain situations. If you encounter a threat--an enraged grizzly bear in your path, a rabid raccoon in your driveway, an irritated wasp buzzing in your car as you drive--your body helps you focus on those mental reactions most likely to help you meet or flee that threat. You aren't likely to pause in front of, say, the roaring grizzly to ponder the deeper ecological ramifications of a man-eating bear. You'll be running. Or screaming. Or something.
Similarly, a fight-or-flight Christianity short-circuits higher thinking functions, especially when those higher thinking functions threaten to throw a harsh light on the foundations of fear-driven faith. What if it turns out that hell is not a literal place for the unsaved? What if heaven is a metaphor for the kingdom of Christ we are to create here on earth? What if Christ's resurrection didn't literally happen?
Now, I don't necessarily endorse any of these possibilities. I bring them up to reflect on the fact that, as a youngster, I found questions like these not just intriguing or difficult but actively threatening. They threatened the foundations on which my life-faith, my world view (from another German mash-up, weltanschauung) was built. Rather than taking on the challenge of thinking through such difficult questions, fight-or-flight Christianity can too often simply censor them.
I see this Denkverbot at work when I encounter variations of the belief that faith is best when faith is simple. For example, I sometimes hear evangelical pastors boast about how they've never gone to seminary, never learned Greek or Hebrew or theology--they just read the Bible. Indeed, I've noticed a weird love-hate relationship between evangelicals and higher education more generally.
On the one hand, evangelicals are often happy to tout the intellectual accomplishments (books, degrees, academic positions) of many of their spokespeople (it's Doctor Dobson to you). But this respect for education co-exists with a widespread suspicion about college and university experiences. Colleges, universities, and even seminaries often get portrayed as brainwashing centers intent upon purging young Christians of any sense of faith or commitment.
You can even find a cottage industry of Christian college prep materials and meetings (see here, for instance). These are aimed not at helping students succeed in college but at giving them intellectual inoculations against the non-Christian (or, they would say, anti-Christian) worldviews they are likely to encounter. They can get Biblical certainties to shield them against, say, Biology (evolution!), Geology (billions-of-years-old-earth!), or--well--practically any humanities course (multiculturalism! postmodernism! feminism! homosexuality!). These and other college subjects, such Christian-prep courses warn, are threatening. They can create thought-quakes that introduce doubt into That Which Is Not To Be Doubted.
What's sad about this evangelical Denkverbot is that Christianity historically (and presently) can boast a rich, varied, and challenging intellectual existence. I mentioned in a previous post Mark Noll's 1994 book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In that work, which he frames as a friendly critique (he identifies as an evangelical), he notes the all-too-common tendency for evangelicalism to valorize not thinking in deep, critical, or systematic ways about matters of faith and culture. It's not that evangelicals are constitutionally dimwitted. But the triumph of a simple-is-best Bible-only-ism has drastically narrowed the range of questions that evangelicals may legitimately ask, the realms of inquiry that evangelicals may legitimately explore.
It's like an artist deciding that she may only paint daisies with watercolors. There's nothing wrong with watercolor daisy paintings, but "daisies-only" is an awfully limited idea of what art has been and can be.
More on other facets of Fight-or-Flight Christianity tomorrow.
JF
Fight-or-flight mode doesn't really lend itself to acts of thoughtful generosity or self-sacrifice. I think it odd, then, that conservative evangelicalism so often seeks to win people to Christ by appealing to their sense of afterlife self-preservation, activating a kind of eternal fight-or-flight mode--and then expects those won-through-fear converts to live lives of holy servanthood.
Fight-or-flight evangelism--come to Jesus or burn in hell--can too often foster a fight-or-flight Christianity. Like the biological reaction, spiritual fight-or-flightiness encourages certain patterns of thought and behavior while shutting down others. I suggest that particular elements of fight-or-flight mentalities (I'll discuss three) do active harm to the witness of Christ in the world
The first element of FoF Christianity I call Denkverbot, which is German (and German is best for generating vocabulary mashups) for "thought-forbid" or stopthought (I get the term from the work of Slavoj Zizek, who uses it somewhat differently than I do here).
Basically, people in fight-or-flight mode aren't thinking as deeply or as carefully about themselves and their environment as they might otherwise. Obviously, this makes sense in certain situations. If you encounter a threat--an enraged grizzly bear in your path, a rabid raccoon in your driveway, an irritated wasp buzzing in your car as you drive--your body helps you focus on those mental reactions most likely to help you meet or flee that threat. You aren't likely to pause in front of, say, the roaring grizzly to ponder the deeper ecological ramifications of a man-eating bear. You'll be running. Or screaming. Or something.
Similarly, a fight-or-flight Christianity short-circuits higher thinking functions, especially when those higher thinking functions threaten to throw a harsh light on the foundations of fear-driven faith. What if it turns out that hell is not a literal place for the unsaved? What if heaven is a metaphor for the kingdom of Christ we are to create here on earth? What if Christ's resurrection didn't literally happen?
Now, I don't necessarily endorse any of these possibilities. I bring them up to reflect on the fact that, as a youngster, I found questions like these not just intriguing or difficult but actively threatening. They threatened the foundations on which my life-faith, my world view (from another German mash-up, weltanschauung) was built. Rather than taking on the challenge of thinking through such difficult questions, fight-or-flight Christianity can too often simply censor them.
I see this Denkverbot at work when I encounter variations of the belief that faith is best when faith is simple. For example, I sometimes hear evangelical pastors boast about how they've never gone to seminary, never learned Greek or Hebrew or theology--they just read the Bible. Indeed, I've noticed a weird love-hate relationship between evangelicals and higher education more generally.
On the one hand, evangelicals are often happy to tout the intellectual accomplishments (books, degrees, academic positions) of many of their spokespeople (it's Doctor Dobson to you). But this respect for education co-exists with a widespread suspicion about college and university experiences. Colleges, universities, and even seminaries often get portrayed as brainwashing centers intent upon purging young Christians of any sense of faith or commitment.
You can even find a cottage industry of Christian college prep materials and meetings (see here, for instance). These are aimed not at helping students succeed in college but at giving them intellectual inoculations against the non-Christian (or, they would say, anti-Christian) worldviews they are likely to encounter. They can get Biblical certainties to shield them against, say, Biology (evolution!), Geology (billions-of-years-old-earth!), or--well--practically any humanities course (multiculturalism! postmodernism! feminism! homosexuality!). These and other college subjects, such Christian-prep courses warn, are threatening. They can create thought-quakes that introduce doubt into That Which Is Not To Be Doubted.
What's sad about this evangelical Denkverbot is that Christianity historically (and presently) can boast a rich, varied, and challenging intellectual existence. I mentioned in a previous post Mark Noll's 1994 book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In that work, which he frames as a friendly critique (he identifies as an evangelical), he notes the all-too-common tendency for evangelicalism to valorize not thinking in deep, critical, or systematic ways about matters of faith and culture. It's not that evangelicals are constitutionally dimwitted. But the triumph of a simple-is-best Bible-only-ism has drastically narrowed the range of questions that evangelicals may legitimately ask, the realms of inquiry that evangelicals may legitimately explore.
It's like an artist deciding that she may only paint daisies with watercolors. There's nothing wrong with watercolor daisy paintings, but "daisies-only" is an awfully limited idea of what art has been and can be.
More on other facets of Fight-or-Flight Christianity tomorrow.
JF
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Underside of Self-Centered Certainty
Thus continues my attempt to tease out for myself the differences between the certainty-anxiety combo I was exposed to as a youngster from what I think is a more productive, mature idea of faith. Yesterday I wrote about how that Southern Baptist version of faith-as-certainty can all too easily slide into a zone of self-centeredness. The hymn goes, "Oh, how I love Jesus/because He first loved me." But really, given the undercurrent of threat that saturated so much evangelical rhetoric, I wondered if "Oh how I love Jesus/because I don't want to burn" wouldn't have been more accurate.
I don't like the idea of Christianity's being presented as a get-out-of-Hell-free card, even such a presentation is only the initial pitch ("Better scared into heaven than comforted into hell," goes the logic). And yes, fear is often an effective short-term motivator. But the activated instinct for self-preservation generates a massive well of psychic gravity, warping other considerations, other elements of the Christian life. In my experience, this fear-distortion creates some unfortunate side-effects, particularly in terms of the Christian's relationship to others.
True confessions time: I remember once (well, several times) when in the course of explaining to some acquaintance the realities of heaven and hell I would meet with a "that's nice for you, but I just don't believe that" response on their part. Stymied at their apathy/agnosticism--how could someone not believe in, let alone not care about, hell?--I would more often than not retreat to a self-righteous, condescending-slow-head-shake: "Well, I'd hate to be you on Judgment Day. Guess we'll find out which of us is right then."
What happened there? I remember reflecting on those moments after they happened, knowing (with all the knowledge I then had) that I was right--I was going to heaven and they were going to hell. But still I knew that somehow I had committed a wrong, that something in my spirit had gone awry. I was supposed to be reaching out with love, leading this person to recognize their peril and act to let Christ save them. But I had ended in a place of pride.
More than pride--wounded pride. I was hurt that this person did not see the world the way I did, that they declined to take my word for the Realities Unseen that awaited them. I was certain, dammit! Didn't they see that? Did they think I was crazy or something? Didn't they know how hard it was for shy, nerdy me to expose myself like that?
And, going deeper, I recognized to my chagrin that part of my disappointment had to do with the fact that I couldn't count them on my list when I ascended to the pearly gates. Remember the Two Questions? I imagined God quizzing me in the afterlife: "Is your name in the Book of Life, John?" Yes, Lord. "Good. Now--second question: whom have you brought into heaven with you?" Well... I tried with ___, but he said no. "Hm. That's... disappointing. Come into heaven, I guess, my barely-adequate servant..."
Ugh. Like an Amway salesman who has to scratch a neighbor's name off his list of recruits after an unsuccessful pitch. To my credit, I suppose, I tried to militate against that notch-in-my-belt mentality by focusing intently on how much I wanted the person in heaven with me, how sad I would be (if one can be sad in heaven--I was vague on that) if they weren't with me in Eternal Bliss. And I did honestly want to share my Power-Droid-strewn heaven with everyone. Still, though: questions like "How many people have you led to the Lord this week?" are what passes for ice-breaking in some Southern Baptist circles. I wanted at least to have double-digits.
Beyond wounded pride and unsuccessful recruitment, though, I was threatened by this other person's unbelief. The knowledge of heaven and hell that formed the pretext for my faith was not mere trivia; it was the very matter that made up my worldview (that's a huge term, worldview--weltanschauung, and I'll be blogging a lot on that later).
I structured my existence--or a great deal of it, at least--around an active belief in the Final Judgment. Many's the morning when I would wake up, crane my neck up at my window, push aside the blinds, and try to catch a glimpse of open sky to see if it were ripped open. Whenever someone we knew died, I would always ask if that person had gone to heaven or hell. In times of fear (read: waking up from a particularly blood-curdling nightmare, certain I was about to be eaten by some slavering horror), I drew strength from the certainty that an eternal paradise awaited me.
For someone not to believe that--casually, calmly--shook me, made my certainty seem stilted and, well, a little crazy by comparison. It introduced the possibility that, in fact, the foundations of my worldview weren't actually necessary for everyone. And if that was the case, were they still actually foundations? Most of the time I didn't have to worry about that; I was lucky enough (if that's the word) to be surrounded most of the time by people who shared and fostered my worldview.
But evangelism requires outreach to those who are lost ("It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick..."). That meant that I was impelled to seek out and interact with people who did not necessarily share my worldview. But while the evangelical tricks and tactics for sharing faith I had learned functioned admirably to confirm to other evangelicals the basics of their worldview, I had surprisingly little to help me deal with someone who simply didn't buy the whole heaven/hell/Christ thing.
And so I resorted to the ugliness of pride: Just wait until my God comes back. Then you'll know. When you're burning up.
This kind of evangelistic ugliness, I'm convinced, is the flip side of evangelistic certainty, and it takes a variety of forms.
More tomorrow.
JF
I don't like the idea of Christianity's being presented as a get-out-of-Hell-free card, even such a presentation is only the initial pitch ("Better scared into heaven than comforted into hell," goes the logic). And yes, fear is often an effective short-term motivator. But the activated instinct for self-preservation generates a massive well of psychic gravity, warping other considerations, other elements of the Christian life. In my experience, this fear-distortion creates some unfortunate side-effects, particularly in terms of the Christian's relationship to others.
True confessions time: I remember once (well, several times) when in the course of explaining to some acquaintance the realities of heaven and hell I would meet with a "that's nice for you, but I just don't believe that" response on their part. Stymied at their apathy/agnosticism--how could someone not believe in, let alone not care about, hell?--I would more often than not retreat to a self-righteous, condescending-slow-head-shake: "Well, I'd hate to be you on Judgment Day. Guess we'll find out which of us is right then."
What happened there? I remember reflecting on those moments after they happened, knowing (with all the knowledge I then had) that I was right--I was going to heaven and they were going to hell. But still I knew that somehow I had committed a wrong, that something in my spirit had gone awry. I was supposed to be reaching out with love, leading this person to recognize their peril and act to let Christ save them. But I had ended in a place of pride.
More than pride--wounded pride. I was hurt that this person did not see the world the way I did, that they declined to take my word for the Realities Unseen that awaited them. I was certain, dammit! Didn't they see that? Did they think I was crazy or something? Didn't they know how hard it was for shy, nerdy me to expose myself like that?
And, going deeper, I recognized to my chagrin that part of my disappointment had to do with the fact that I couldn't count them on my list when I ascended to the pearly gates. Remember the Two Questions? I imagined God quizzing me in the afterlife: "Is your name in the Book of Life, John?" Yes, Lord. "Good. Now--second question: whom have you brought into heaven with you?" Well... I tried with ___, but he said no. "Hm. That's... disappointing. Come into heaven, I guess, my barely-adequate servant..."
Ugh. Like an Amway salesman who has to scratch a neighbor's name off his list of recruits after an unsuccessful pitch. To my credit, I suppose, I tried to militate against that notch-in-my-belt mentality by focusing intently on how much I wanted the person in heaven with me, how sad I would be (if one can be sad in heaven--I was vague on that) if they weren't with me in Eternal Bliss. And I did honestly want to share my Power-Droid-strewn heaven with everyone. Still, though: questions like "How many people have you led to the Lord this week?" are what passes for ice-breaking in some Southern Baptist circles. I wanted at least to have double-digits.
Beyond wounded pride and unsuccessful recruitment, though, I was threatened by this other person's unbelief. The knowledge of heaven and hell that formed the pretext for my faith was not mere trivia; it was the very matter that made up my worldview (that's a huge term, worldview--weltanschauung, and I'll be blogging a lot on that later).
I structured my existence--or a great deal of it, at least--around an active belief in the Final Judgment. Many's the morning when I would wake up, crane my neck up at my window, push aside the blinds, and try to catch a glimpse of open sky to see if it were ripped open. Whenever someone we knew died, I would always ask if that person had gone to heaven or hell. In times of fear (read: waking up from a particularly blood-curdling nightmare, certain I was about to be eaten by some slavering horror), I drew strength from the certainty that an eternal paradise awaited me.
For someone not to believe that--casually, calmly--shook me, made my certainty seem stilted and, well, a little crazy by comparison. It introduced the possibility that, in fact, the foundations of my worldview weren't actually necessary for everyone. And if that was the case, were they still actually foundations? Most of the time I didn't have to worry about that; I was lucky enough (if that's the word) to be surrounded most of the time by people who shared and fostered my worldview.
But evangelism requires outreach to those who are lost ("It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick..."). That meant that I was impelled to seek out and interact with people who did not necessarily share my worldview. But while the evangelical tricks and tactics for sharing faith I had learned functioned admirably to confirm to other evangelicals the basics of their worldview, I had surprisingly little to help me deal with someone who simply didn't buy the whole heaven/hell/Christ thing.
And so I resorted to the ugliness of pride: Just wait until my God comes back. Then you'll know. When you're burning up.
This kind of evangelistic ugliness, I'm convinced, is the flip side of evangelistic certainty, and it takes a variety of forms.
More tomorrow.
JF
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Self-Centered Certainty
So if I'm not against fear and trembling in faith altogether--if in fact I advocate a measure of destabilization and I've-not-gotten-this-yet in my faith practice--then what's my beef with the certainty/anxiety taught so consistently throughout my Southern Baptist childhood?
I should reiterate, before I switch to rant mode, that the negative aspects of the equation "faith=certainty and anxiety" function as tendencies rather than necessary attributes of conservative evangelical faith. They are pitfalls, excesses to which the faith I learned as a child and which I detect in much evangelical discourse currently are particularly vulnerable. Nor are these tendencies dark secrets whose existence evangelicals deny or hide. Like any mature discipline, evangelicalism itself boasts many thinkers and critics with a good grasp of evangelicalism's own limitations and weaknesses (see, for instance, Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind).
From my perspective, though, the primary flaw in the Falls Creek/Southern Baptist/Two Main Questions mode of certain-anxious faith involves its self-centeredness. As I mentioned in a previous post, it can seem sometimes like Christ is worth knowing (or buying into) for the material benefits He grants you. Know Christ and get out of Hell.
I will admit that such a pitch has the appeal of being quite effective. Heck, it worked in my case. If you're convinced (as I was) about the horrors of a literal hell, you'll want to do what you can to avoid it. The mass conversions ("decisions," as Southern Baptists call them) at Falls Creek and other such revivals testifies to the power of fear as a motivator.
But the self-preservation instinct's potency can be dangerous. The same impulse to save ourselves by believing in Christ at a revival is in other contexts the fight-or-flight mentality that shoves aside, tramples, and passes by those who otherwise need our help. The example of Jesus--if it's anything--is an example of someone willing to live against the grain of the pure self-preservation instinct. It rubs me wrong to have a brute desire not to burn at the core of my Christianity.
To paraphrase John 15:13, Jesus says that greater love has no one than this: that he or she lay down his/her life for others.
I'm reminded of a well-known parable (I've heard it attributed to St. Teresa, a 16th century nun) who imagined encountering a person carrying a bucket of water in one hand and a burning torch in the other. Inquiring as to what the person was doing, the traveler answered, "I'm going put out the fires of hell with this water, and I'm going to burn up the clouds of heaven with this torch. Then we'll see who the real Christians are."
So much of evangelicalism's main rhetorical tactic--the threat of hell--depends upon activating an instinct for self-preservation that I wonder what would remain of the faith if the afterlife factor were neutralized. Would Christianity be nearly so attractive to evangelicals if they didn't need it to avoid the Eternal Fire?
I'll get into this sometime down the way, but plenty of Christians have come to a place where they simply don't see how a literal place of eternal torment can function with a faith in the omnipotent, benevolent God. Hell becomes (in some interpretations) a place of instant and total annihilation rather than eternal torment (how often, such interpreters ask, do you throw something into a fire with the idea that it will burn forever and never be consumed?). In other lines of thinking, hell is not literal at all but a metaphor for present suffering or alienation from God.
For many conservative evangelicals, such a notion of a non-literal hell constitutes pure heresy. Take away Hell, they suggest, and apostasy and agnosticism or atheism is inevitable. Evangelical Christianity collapses without the certainty/terror of Eternal, Punishing Fire. And that's tragic, because--as any evangelical Christian will readily attest--Christianity is so much more than a tale of How I Avoided Eternal Fire. The certainty of hell, the fear of it, the centrality of it in evangelical Christianity tends to wipe out all other considerations, including and especially our Prime Consideration of Love for the Other.
A more disturbing thought experiment: imagine word came down from heaven of a New Deal: any Christian can trade places with an otherwise doomed non-Christian, going to hell in place of that person. Who would take that deal?
In all honesty, I can't say I would.
"Greater love has no one than this: that he (or she) lays down his/her life for another."
What if the "life" that Christ expects us to "lay down" is not (or not only) our present, material life on earth but our eternal life? I don't literally mean "you have to be tortured if you really love others" (though is this not literally what Jesus himself did?).
Rather, I wonder if Christian love requires us to come to a place where we relinquish our anxiety over our own eternal fate in the name of being Christ for other people. What is Christianity without the certainxiety of hell?
Healthier? More Christ-like?
More tomorrow.
JF
I should reiterate, before I switch to rant mode, that the negative aspects of the equation "faith=certainty and anxiety" function as tendencies rather than necessary attributes of conservative evangelical faith. They are pitfalls, excesses to which the faith I learned as a child and which I detect in much evangelical discourse currently are particularly vulnerable. Nor are these tendencies dark secrets whose existence evangelicals deny or hide. Like any mature discipline, evangelicalism itself boasts many thinkers and critics with a good grasp of evangelicalism's own limitations and weaknesses (see, for instance, Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind).
From my perspective, though, the primary flaw in the Falls Creek/Southern Baptist/Two Main Questions mode of certain-anxious faith involves its self-centeredness. As I mentioned in a previous post, it can seem sometimes like Christ is worth knowing (or buying into) for the material benefits He grants you. Know Christ and get out of Hell.
I will admit that such a pitch has the appeal of being quite effective. Heck, it worked in my case. If you're convinced (as I was) about the horrors of a literal hell, you'll want to do what you can to avoid it. The mass conversions ("decisions," as Southern Baptists call them) at Falls Creek and other such revivals testifies to the power of fear as a motivator.
But the self-preservation instinct's potency can be dangerous. The same impulse to save ourselves by believing in Christ at a revival is in other contexts the fight-or-flight mentality that shoves aside, tramples, and passes by those who otherwise need our help. The example of Jesus--if it's anything--is an example of someone willing to live against the grain of the pure self-preservation instinct. It rubs me wrong to have a brute desire not to burn at the core of my Christianity.
To paraphrase John 15:13, Jesus says that greater love has no one than this: that he or she lay down his/her life for others.
I'm reminded of a well-known parable (I've heard it attributed to St. Teresa, a 16th century nun) who imagined encountering a person carrying a bucket of water in one hand and a burning torch in the other. Inquiring as to what the person was doing, the traveler answered, "I'm going put out the fires of hell with this water, and I'm going to burn up the clouds of heaven with this torch. Then we'll see who the real Christians are."
So much of evangelicalism's main rhetorical tactic--the threat of hell--depends upon activating an instinct for self-preservation that I wonder what would remain of the faith if the afterlife factor were neutralized. Would Christianity be nearly so attractive to evangelicals if they didn't need it to avoid the Eternal Fire?
I'll get into this sometime down the way, but plenty of Christians have come to a place where they simply don't see how a literal place of eternal torment can function with a faith in the omnipotent, benevolent God. Hell becomes (in some interpretations) a place of instant and total annihilation rather than eternal torment (how often, such interpreters ask, do you throw something into a fire with the idea that it will burn forever and never be consumed?). In other lines of thinking, hell is not literal at all but a metaphor for present suffering or alienation from God.
For many conservative evangelicals, such a notion of a non-literal hell constitutes pure heresy. Take away Hell, they suggest, and apostasy and agnosticism or atheism is inevitable. Evangelical Christianity collapses without the certainty/terror of Eternal, Punishing Fire. And that's tragic, because--as any evangelical Christian will readily attest--Christianity is so much more than a tale of How I Avoided Eternal Fire. The certainty of hell, the fear of it, the centrality of it in evangelical Christianity tends to wipe out all other considerations, including and especially our Prime Consideration of Love for the Other.
A more disturbing thought experiment: imagine word came down from heaven of a New Deal: any Christian can trade places with an otherwise doomed non-Christian, going to hell in place of that person. Who would take that deal?
In all honesty, I can't say I would.
"Greater love has no one than this: that he (or she) lays down his/her life for another."
What if the "life" that Christ expects us to "lay down" is not (or not only) our present, material life on earth but our eternal life? I don't literally mean "you have to be tortured if you really love others" (though is this not literally what Jesus himself did?).
Rather, I wonder if Christian love requires us to come to a place where we relinquish our anxiety over our own eternal fate in the name of being Christ for other people. What is Christianity without the certainxiety of hell?
Healthier? More Christ-like?
More tomorrow.
JF
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
About that Fear and Trembling...
Yesterday, I alleged that underneath the conservative-evangelical surface of absolute certainty lies a mass of anxiety--mainly a never-to-be-completely-extinguished worry about whether or not one will be cast into hell for eternity. It's this fear/faith combo, I suggested, that keeps evangelicals going to church, walking tearfully down the aisles, evangelizing on the street and in their lives, and basically involved in their faith life.
Cathartic as it was for me to get all that out, it's all a bit too simplistic. I admit that I have a great deal of bitterness toward elements of my Southern Baptist upbringing. But I give the wrong impression if I suggest that evangelicalism is nothing but a dance of dogmatic certainty and agonizing fear.
Two quick side notes to yesterday's rant, then:
First, most evangelicals I knew and know don't think of their faith life as a miserable experience. Nor do they fit the progressive-secular stereotype of benighted dupe, naively following the awful dictates of a cultish ruler. I've highlighted some of the more painful or embarrassing moments from my childhood faith, but in truth there were many more times where my faith was a source of strength and comfort to me.
For all its faults, my church taught me the value of Ultimate Concerns. That is, I learned from an early age that there were dimensions of existence (ethical, spiritual, etc.) that transcended the immediate/material. I learned that part of seeing and evaluating the here and now--Where am I? Who am I? What should I be doing? How shall I live?--was putting the present into the perspective of eternity.
While my vision of that "eternity" has changed significantly, I still try to put the immediate into conversation with the transcendent. Sometimes that conversation moves me, makes me act in ways I otherwise wouldn't. Sometimes it keeps me from acting. Sometimes it simply gives me a sense of not being alone, a hunch that--as bad as things may be right now--they are small in the context of the Ultimate. My faith moves me beyond myself.
For the record: I don't necessarily think that Christianity or even religion in general is the only way to come to appreciate Ultimate Concerns. An atheist working for prisoners' rights, for example, may do so in the name of an abstraction--an Ultimate Concern--like Justice or Human Rights. Nor do I think that every expression of religion or faith necessarily leads to what I would consider a healthy conception of (or relationship to) Ultimate Concerns. The task of discriminating between healthy and unhealthy Ultimate Concerns is, well, a whole other ethical/theological/metaphysical conversation...
Second, I actually do believe in working out one's faith with fear and trembling.
Quick fact about me--one of my pastimes is listening to fundamentalist and conservative sermons on particular topics (evolution, gays, etc.). I just heard one last night about "Why Men Choose Evolution." (I'll try to get the link soon). The pastor's argument was that people choose evolution over young-earth creationism because they are so uncomfortable with a God who judges--a God who would kick humanity out of Eden, a God who would flood the earth for humanity's sins, a God who will come again in Final Judgment of all humanity.
He's right. I am uncomfortable with that kind of God. It does not follow, contrary to what this pastor argued, that I therefore prefer a God who makes no judgment, who has no standards, or who never expects anything of me beyond who I presently am.
A classic (read: nearly cliched) definition of a pastor's role is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted." I like the notion of faith and ministry as prods, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comforted. I would agree with my conservative evangelical sisters and brothers that there's something wrong with a faith that does nothing more than confirm, conform, and comfort.
There's a time for "the peace that passes understanding," and there's a time for being brought up short--convicted, unsettled, de-stabilized--by a holy nudge. I try to keep in mind C. S. Lewis's characters' warnings about Aslan the lion-that-is-allegorically-Jesus: He's not a tame lion.
Thus, I try to recognize and incorporate into my faith practice a degree of uncertainty about who God is and what I should do in light of that knowledge. I'm convinced by the example of Jesus in the gospels (and elsewhere) that one of God's favorite tropes is the surprise--Jesus doing something or acting in a way that disrupts or overturns conventions and certainties, especially certainties that derive from an orthodox faith or a literal reading of scripture. I no longer try to imagine exactly what the afterlife will be like, but I suspect much of it will be a kind of surprise.
So. Fear and trembling, uncertainty and belief--all of these remain vital parts of my faith. What, then, is my problem with the certainxiety of my childhood faith?
More on that tomorrow.
JF
Cathartic as it was for me to get all that out, it's all a bit too simplistic. I admit that I have a great deal of bitterness toward elements of my Southern Baptist upbringing. But I give the wrong impression if I suggest that evangelicalism is nothing but a dance of dogmatic certainty and agonizing fear.
Two quick side notes to yesterday's rant, then:
First, most evangelicals I knew and know don't think of their faith life as a miserable experience. Nor do they fit the progressive-secular stereotype of benighted dupe, naively following the awful dictates of a cultish ruler. I've highlighted some of the more painful or embarrassing moments from my childhood faith, but in truth there were many more times where my faith was a source of strength and comfort to me.
For all its faults, my church taught me the value of Ultimate Concerns. That is, I learned from an early age that there were dimensions of existence (ethical, spiritual, etc.) that transcended the immediate/material. I learned that part of seeing and evaluating the here and now--Where am I? Who am I? What should I be doing? How shall I live?--was putting the present into the perspective of eternity.
While my vision of that "eternity" has changed significantly, I still try to put the immediate into conversation with the transcendent. Sometimes that conversation moves me, makes me act in ways I otherwise wouldn't. Sometimes it keeps me from acting. Sometimes it simply gives me a sense of not being alone, a hunch that--as bad as things may be right now--they are small in the context of the Ultimate. My faith moves me beyond myself.
For the record: I don't necessarily think that Christianity or even religion in general is the only way to come to appreciate Ultimate Concerns. An atheist working for prisoners' rights, for example, may do so in the name of an abstraction--an Ultimate Concern--like Justice or Human Rights. Nor do I think that every expression of religion or faith necessarily leads to what I would consider a healthy conception of (or relationship to) Ultimate Concerns. The task of discriminating between healthy and unhealthy Ultimate Concerns is, well, a whole other ethical/theological/metaphysical conversation...
Second, I actually do believe in working out one's faith with fear and trembling.
Quick fact about me--one of my pastimes is listening to fundamentalist and conservative sermons on particular topics (evolution, gays, etc.). I just heard one last night about "Why Men Choose Evolution." (I'll try to get the link soon). The pastor's argument was that people choose evolution over young-earth creationism because they are so uncomfortable with a God who judges--a God who would kick humanity out of Eden, a God who would flood the earth for humanity's sins, a God who will come again in Final Judgment of all humanity.
He's right. I am uncomfortable with that kind of God. It does not follow, contrary to what this pastor argued, that I therefore prefer a God who makes no judgment, who has no standards, or who never expects anything of me beyond who I presently am.
A classic (read: nearly cliched) definition of a pastor's role is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted." I like the notion of faith and ministry as prods, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comforted. I would agree with my conservative evangelical sisters and brothers that there's something wrong with a faith that does nothing more than confirm, conform, and comfort.
There's a time for "the peace that passes understanding," and there's a time for being brought up short--convicted, unsettled, de-stabilized--by a holy nudge. I try to keep in mind C. S. Lewis's characters' warnings about Aslan the lion-that-is-allegorically-Jesus: He's not a tame lion.
Thus, I try to recognize and incorporate into my faith practice a degree of uncertainty about who God is and what I should do in light of that knowledge. I'm convinced by the example of Jesus in the gospels (and elsewhere) that one of God's favorite tropes is the surprise--Jesus doing something or acting in a way that disrupts or overturns conventions and certainties, especially certainties that derive from an orthodox faith or a literal reading of scripture. I no longer try to imagine exactly what the afterlife will be like, but I suspect much of it will be a kind of surprise.
So. Fear and trembling, uncertainty and belief--all of these remain vital parts of my faith. What, then, is my problem with the certainxiety of my childhood faith?
More on that tomorrow.
JF
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