The Greatest of These Is... Guilt?

  It's been said that guilt is not a good motivator.  But that hasn't stopped the church from dishing out unhealthy doses of it every week.  In the most common setting, I think it is usually an unfortunate by-product of the noble efforts of every well-meaning spiritual cheerleader, from pastors to Sunday School teachers to summer youth camp speakers.  But in the worst case scenario it is piled on intentionally to elicit desired behaviors, from tithing to daily devotions to regular church attendance - to taking a turn in the church nursery.

  A young friend stopped over a couple of days ago for a visit and he got talking about the previous twelve years of spiritual defeat that he had experienced starting at age 14 when a youth leader challenged everyone to sign on to a 30-day Adventure that would include a daily quiet time of Bible reading, prayer, and journalling.  He never got past day 4, and if you missed a day you had to start over, so he dreaded each Sunday's meeting when the successful few would be awarded a pop tart or a music CD while he received a challenge to start over and do better.  He never did better, and he's had trouble motivating himself to read the Bible ever since.

  Obviously, his mentor didn't mean to cause him a lifetime of defeat; it was just a nasty consequence of an under-developed and adolescent spiritual appetite found wanting in a zealous spiritual environment.  He lately reviewed one of his journals from those days and found several entries that ended with a sleepy scribble off the edge of the page where he had fallen asleep while journalling.  Defeat after defeat.  Guilt.

  I think this guilt that so widely pervades the realm of Christian experience is a result of a works-based gospel.  Salvation is supposed to bring freedom, but then it is followed by this burden of holiness.  Though intended to be an encouragement toward a closer relationship with God, the Sunday sermon ends up being a challenge for us to pull ourselves up by our own boot straps - in five easy steps that spell an acronym.

  I think the church needs a reboot to a grace-based gospel.  An author and online pastor, John Fischer, says that "When you get close to God you don't become more spiritual, you become more loving."  Love is the outgrowth of our own gracious redemption.

  The true test of spirituality is not in your quiet time or your devotional life, it is in your loving behavior.  Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord, and He never mentioned it without connecting the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor.  The apostle Paul even consolidated them, skipping the first and going directly to the second when he said, "The ENTIRE law is summed up in ONE command, love your neighbor as yourself."(Gal. 5:14)  He somehow left out daily devotions and a whole bunch of other stuff.

  I've often asserted that the first commandment is fulfilled through the second.  In other words, we demonstrate our love for God by loving our fellowman.  We may develop a closer relationship with the Lord through Bible reading and prayer, but we carry it out by expressing the love of Christ to others.

  The fruit of a dedicated life may not be in how many Bible verses we can quote, but in how many of our friends and neighbors are having a better life because of us.

  So being spiritual can be as simple as carrying the groceries in for the neighbor lady.  But if you miss that opportunity, don't feel guilty about it; you might get to help another time; there are a million ways to express the love of God in the world.  

  Don't let me or any preacher guilt you into anything - not even about being more loving.  If you are more loving next week, that will be good.  And if you are not, your salvation is not in danger.  God still loves you.  You can't be bad enough for God to stop loving you, so relax.  And if you want to read the Bible, do it.  And if not, don't.  You're not any farther away from heaven when there is dust on your Bible.  Not only that, but you would probably be much more spiritual if you'd spend your tithe on new tires for your poor neighbor's car than to give it to the church.

  "For we are saved by grace through faith... it is the gift of God, not of works (behavior) lest anyone should boast."(Eph.2:8-9)  Augustine once said, "Love God... then do as you please."  I would adjust that to say, "Demonstrate your love for God by loving your neighbor... and then do as you please."  So there's no long list of things you must do to be more holy, only the law of love.

  The next time your spiritual coach makes you feel defeated or guilty, go out and buy your own pop tarts.  You will always deserve it.  And then if you want to be spiritual, share them with some other undeserving soul.

  "Now these three remain: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love." (I Cor. 13:13)  According to this, our love is even greater than our faith in God.  Wow.

  What makes you feel guilty or defeated in your spiritual walk?  Where does this guilt come from, and how can you stop it?

  

The Emerging Purism

  I think I'm becoming something of a Christian purist, but it's not happening over night.  My friends and I are attempting to peel off the barnacles of dogma and orthodoxy that have attached themselves to the hull of the S.S. Gospel over the centuries, relentlessly slowing the ship until it is almost dead in the water.  We're finding that the underlying vessel is nearly unrecognizable to the religious bystander.  Most everybody knows that there's something there, but it hasn't been seen in years, so nobody even knows what it looks like anymore-- and that's where much of our challenge lies.  What are the true essentials to our faith?

  There's a field of theological thought and practice called "Jesus Only".  This is a long-standing detachment of pilgrims who have long known that the religious system we know today is not the essential faith that God had in mind when the Church began at Pentecost.  150 years ago, the Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard, said, "Christendom has done away with Christianity without quite being aware of it."  For about 1,700 years this ship has been sailing under the flag of Christ while concealing the dozens of other flags to which it maintains allegiances-- flags of politics, denominations, various theologies, traditions, dogmas and so on.

  Okay, so I have badly mixed my metaphors:  Is it flags or barnacles?  Well, I guess it's both. The barnacles might be the traditions and practices which have attached themselves to the gospel but have ended up detracting from it.  The flags are the collusive loyalties to which the church has aligned itself which betray it's true allegiance to the gospel of Christ.

  As an up-and-coming purist believer, here are some of the compromising alliances that I've dislodged and discarded so far:

• Church attendance.      --the purist says, "I am the church... well, part of it anyway."
• Commitment to a local assembly.       --"Now I can be committed to my neighbors."
• Tithing.        --"I live a life of generosity, managing the %100 that belongs to God."       (Some say that tithers are cheating God by approximately %90.)
• Legalism, The Law.    --"The work of Christ is Freedom."     (Gal. 5:1) 
• Alignment with the more Christian Republican party (in the North. Democrats in the South)
• Militarism, nationalism.    --"I am loyal to a greater Kingdom."
• The Sunday uniform of proper apparel (obviously, because I'm not attending)
• The doctrinal registry of who is "in" and who is "out".         --"I leave that up to the Lord."
• Accepted Christian behavior.     --"Love God, and do what you want." -(St Augustine)
• Condemnation of sinners, including gays, divorcees, etc.  --"I follow Jesus' 3rd Great Commandment: 'Do not judge'."
• Hierarchy.       --"As a member of the Body, I am answerable directly to the Head, which is Christ.  There are no ranks or levels in between."
• LIstening to sermons.          --"I don't need to be fed, I need to love.  That's all."
• Contributing to the upkeep of a church building.      --"Starving children need it more."
• The Pastor.                 --"We are all priests and minister to each other."
• Worship time.     --"Life is worship.  Serving the needy is true worship.  Millions of believers the world over never attend a worship service; look at the Chinese."
• Guilt, Condemnation.      --Avoiding legalists, condemning people, and oppressive religious environments has helped liberate. "There is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 8:1

   It's not comprehensive, but it's a pretty long list, isn't it?  That should be a revelation in itself that there is a whole lot of non-essential foreign matter attached to this Ship.  So what's left for the purist believer?  It's the same thing it was at the start, and here it is:

• Love the Lord and your neighbors.  Express it any way you want to.  Be like Jesus, who didn't waste time in the company of the religious when he could be hanging out with the irreligious.

Wow, that's a really short list.  And the true purist will work hard to keep it that way.



The number of purist believers is rapidly growing in America.  How many do you know?

Poop in the Brownies

"When there's poop in the brownies, you throw out the brownies", stated my young friend who had recently left the institutional church in favor of a house group that was meeting in the neighborhood.  I think he was referring to the hypocrisy, the harmful hierarchy, and over-bearing controllers who had caused him a lot of pain while he was working as a youth pastor there.

He is skeptical of hopefuls who try to point out all the good that the church is doing in the world, supposedly off-setting all the evil that the church is doing in the world.  Their mantra seems to be the quip, "The church is a whore, but she is my mother" attributed to Saint Augustine, which implies that there should be some loyalty to the church despite her habitual spiritual prostitution (the poop in the brownies).  My friend would agree with only half of Augustine's statement, saying yes, the church is a whore, but no, she is not my mother!  He sees nothing good to be credited to her.

My view is a little less sweeping but no more hopeful.  While I do acknowledge, with my friend, that there is a lot of bad in the system, I also have experienced a lot of good that has been accomplished within the system, so I would not be so eager to throw out the whole thing.  That said, I don't see any solution for the bad that is entrenched in the institution;  I don't think, for example, that over-bearing controllers can ever be successfully removed from the system, and with that in mind, the only solution is exile for those who can't tolerate the abuses of those ungodly bullies.  Further, there are destructive doctrines and orthodoxies that I don't see changing any time soon.

On the other hand, I have seen great things accomplished in spite of the poop.  I have been a part of neighborhood outreaches, humanitarian initiatives, and global missions that have had tremendous redeeming value in the world.

So is there a lot of poop in the system?  Yes, but some of those problems can be found wherever you go.  Shoot, even in small house meetings you can find domineering personalities and questionable theologies.  So I'm not ready to throw out the brownies.  However, whenever and wherever there are realities that render the system either useless or harmful, we each have a choice as to how much of our energy and life force we will continue to invest in the program, whether it's small or large.

In my case, having become hopeless that there will ever be significant improvement in the systems, I have pretty much thrown out my local assembly and my denomination.  The poop has become so pervasive that there is little redeeming value in either, other than the sanctuary they provide for a homogeneous group of faithful followers.  But I am not ready to say that there aren't many many good congregations and possibly a few evangelical denominations that maintain a viable presence in the spiritual world.  So I'm not throwing out all the brownies-- just certain ones.
I guess I would say that Saint Augustine does not speak for me-- or for my young friend and a million other disenchanteds-- when he suggests any sort of loyalty to a sinful mother church.
One more important observation should be mentioned before ending this blog:  My young disenfranchised friend and I represent a growing multitude of believers who are exiled from the religious institution for an assortment of reasons.  It would not be wise for leaders of churches and denominations to dismiss this movement as rebellious and insignificant.  They do so to their own eventual self-destruction.  To shore up the walls of the fortress by re-asserting traditional doctrines and orthodoxies is to accelerate the eventual but certain fall of the empire.
The best way to maintain the viability of the establishment is to listen to the people, especially the dissidents, and make appropriate changes, no matter how drastic, to keep it  relevant (get rid of the poop).
Good luck with that. 


Philosopher, Stephen Law, speaks for me when he says (however crudely), "we should be cultivating an alertness for bullshit... My guess is that it is bullshit that will ultimately bring about the end of civilization."
And so it may well be with the religious empire.