Occasionally I’m reminded of the mythic attitudes of draconian Christian leaders who make outrageous statements like, “You don’t pray enough,” or “women can’t preach,” or “You can’t wear those clothes here,” or “Some ‘races’ are better than others,” and “antidepressants are of the devil.” I mean, where do such relationally divisive attitudes come from? And when I say “mythic,” I really mean, we hear of these attitudes, but rarely do I personally encounter them.
“You don’t pray enough” – who does? Genuine faith is not about how much we pray, but prayer is still a great indicator of how healthy our faith is. When someone says, “You don’t pray enough,” they are boiling down your problem to something you have caused, when realistically there are always a myriad of potential reasons our faith may be struggling. Grief is just one tremendously valid reason. Surely when we hone in on one thing to the exclusion of all the others we miss the others; we miss the greater portion of truth; we miss the mark, and yes, we sin.
“Women can’t preach,” a person says. What, not even the woman who preaches like Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) or Barbara Brown Taylor or Dr Brenda Salter McNeil? What does different anatomy have to do with the doing of a particular task? It just seems so nonsensical when there are many voices, male and female, who God made to be heard. Surely we set ourselves up to miss out when we exclude 50% of the population, cart blanche. We should’ve learned long ago that blanket rules really don’t work in every situation (or even most situations).
“You can’t wear those clothes here.” Of course, we are not talking about someone walking into church wearing only lingerie or a thong. It’s like me toying with the idea of going shopping in my pyjamas — (which I would love to do one day). That’s not what we’re talking about. We are talking about the finer points of special even unspoken rules that are made to exclude people based purely out of what they wear or don’t wear or how they wear it. Nit-picking like this is unbecoming. But it’s the same issue if you insist people wear a particular thing to make them look more cool. Skinny jeans and Converse shoes. The latest hairstyle. Hats. “Put a little make up on...” or, “No you don’t!” There are so many extraneous things that aren’t worth talking about. They take the focus off the more important things. The more important things are about spiritual life and death, releasing people from oppression of spirit, social justice, the least of these.
“Some ‘races’ are better than others,” is said beneath the veneer of a lot of humanity, and it is birthed in dangerous ignorance and paucity of empathy. When any human being sees itself as superior to another human being that human being is its own god. He or she is blind, entrapped in the most heinous disability — the inability to love their neighbour. There are many who say they are followers of Jesus who think like this, and perhaps this is one example where Jesus might say in the end, “Get away from me you evildoers” (see Matthew 7:15-20). Of course, the same may be said about those who reject people on account of their same-sex attraction, bi-sexuality, transgenderism, and their lifestyles to these ends, etc. The bigoted are captive to their own spiritual self-elevation.
“Antidepressants are of the devil.” Like the above statements, these are not only silly statements, they are downright dangerous. You mean to say that your spiritual opinion is more important than a medical practitioner’s — one who has given 7-10 years of their smart-brained life to the study of objective medical science? Who owns more truth on this particular stage? I’m going with the physician, the doctor who has the greater portion of society’s trust. Here, we can attest that God owns all the truth, all the wisdom, even the secular wisdom. As someone with a Bachelor of Science I know God owns the science. To say such a broad sweeping statement, that certain pharmaceutical preparations are evil, is tantamount to absurdity. Such beliefs are fit for conspiracy theorists, not doctors of the church. I praise the Lord for the many pastors and leaders in the church who have partaken of these pharmaceutical preparations and are advocates for the therapy they give. I am one.
~
To the opposite degree, the church can often feel uncomfortable about its own reputation. In our craven desire to be contemporary, we can easily give up the eternal gift we have to give in the name of the Lord for a pot of lentil soup.
Controversial Lutheran minister, Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “You have to be really deeply rooted in tradition in order to innovate with integrity.” Did you hear Bolz-Weber there? Two things in tension: tradition with innovation. Tradition without innovation seems tired, and we know that not all church traditions are healthy traditions. So traditions need to be challenged. And innovation without tradition seems tacky and plastic. People see right through it. Rachel Held Evans herself said, when talking about how inauthentic consumerism is in the church, and how much of a turn-off it really is, “... we have very finely tuned BS meters, right? ... We are not looking for a hipper Christianity; we are looking for a truer Christianity.”
Our faith must lead us to what Barbara Brown Taylor would say, “a certainty with great big cracks in it.” The ignorance must continue to fall away in all of us. The only viable certainty is truth, and that quest is inevitably elusive unless, by intention, we look relentlessly for where we’re wrong. Only when we are open to the lies we covet ourselves, within the cloak of pride that keeps us insulated from the coldness of the truth, will Jesus open our mind’s eye to the truth. Anything less is not good enough for Jesus. Gee, doesn’t that sound like legalism? But note this: it is not legalism if it’s about moral doing versus just doing. Jesus seeks to transform us morally; to make us vessels where the living God inhabits, purging us from being mere activity creatures. There is no piety in activity, but only in asceticism — quite literally activity’s opposite. And yet we cannot build God’s kingdom without some highly focused activity. We will find we are doing the work of building God’s kingdom through the very things that Jesus transforms us through.
We will meet and encounter the authentic Jesus where two or three are gathered in his name, where we serve the least of these, where we congregate with the maimed and depressed, with those who genuinely comprise the ripe fields for the plucking; those who know they need Jesus. They are out there! Even though we may tell ourselves that everyone is on the take.
Let us trust Jesus as we embark on a journey into our world that suffers for the lack of Jesus, who, would only prosper for the gentle touch of his Spirit through those of us who would embody him within our skin. All we need to remember is that we touch lives in Jesus name one life at a time. Let us reject every thought that we need to build massive churches. To be part of one miracle in one’s lifetime is enough, and yet do we think that God will stop at just one miracle? No, God will give us many more opportunities, if only it isn’t a massive church or Twitter following we’re seeking to build, or books to author, or doctorates achieved, or litany of speaking engagements and other accomplishments that we have done. We must all learn to embody the life of John the Baptist, who strived to become lesser so Jesus could be greater.
Let’s become lesser together, so Jesus can be greater in our midst. Let’s become unknown so Jesus can be famous. And let’s not get hung up on extraneous issues that lead people away from the Kingdom and not into it.
Transformation awaits even as we’re tempted to settle for a faker faith that will only set us apart fromGod’s work. It’s one or the other. We cannot have both.
Transformation awaits those of us who are open and more fully engaged in following Jesus. There is a chasm between those who believe in Jesus and those who follow Jesus. Those who follow Jesus are not afraid to lose what they cannot keep in order to gain what they cannot lose, to use the famed Jim Eliot (1927–1956) phrase. We must learn to spend our lives for the sake of Jesus alone.
Photo by Philipp Pilz on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.