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