Heretical Parables of Jesus

Jesus went up to the hill to teach the crowds, saying, “Those who keep their faith will lose it, but to those who lose their faith, faith will be given. Again I say to you: All who hide their shame will be laid bare, but to them who are honest, shelter will be provided.”

Then Jesus said to them, “The kingdom of God is like a rock that fell from a great height. The foolish people said, ‘There is a rock! Let us take it home with us.’ However, when they went to retrieve it, they were crushed by the rock’s weight. But when the wise saw the rock they said, ‘There is a great mystery. Let us not approach too close, lest we be killed.’”

Then Jesus turned to his disciples and said, “The kingdom of God is like an American auto-maker. When the economy was strong, the company produced many American cars and made great profits. Seeing the great profits, the workers began to grumble because they were not paid well. The workers formed a union and fought the company for better wages and better pensions. After long negotiations the auto-maker finally compromised and the workers’ union gained great power. When the economy weakened, the company still produced many cars, but it could not make a profit. After too many quarters with no profit and after too many workers were laid off, the auto-maker went bankrupt. Then there were no more workers and no more new cars, no more union and no more company. The bad economy was just too bad, the union’s demands were just too demanding, and the American cars were just not American enough. After all these losses what can be said for the economy? Is it not time for the workers to rise up in revolt?”

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the disciples whispered to each other, “What can this mean? This is surely a hard saying.” Then they turned and walked back to the city confused.

The Church of the Dead

On my way home from class this afternoon, I took time to notice the old graveyard on the left. Surrounded by a simple wrought iron fence, the burying ground (that's what they're called out here) is a small church yard of rolling hills punctuated haphazardly by slim stone grave markers. For the first time in weeks all the snow has finally melted away, revealing the depressingly brown grass beneath. When I had reached the far end, I glanced backwards toward the burying ground and the church steeple caught my eye. Suddenly a thought popped into my head:

Too often the church is a graveyard.

One of the tragic things about the church is that it can be so oriented toward the hereafter that Christians begin to rest-in-peace here in this life. People get saved in the pews and die right there in the sanctuary—and before long the church begins to stink.

In a few of my classes, death comes up frequently in conversation. The idea of living our lives oriented toward death is often tied up with ideas of nihilism and meaninglessness. For thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger, there is something about this crushing reality, when grasped in all its weight and finality, that throws into sharp relief the value and beauty of our present life. Living toward death necessitates creating meaning and saying a bold "Yes!" to the time that we have.

What is odd is that Christianity is also oriented toward death—but too often with the opposite result. Instead of generating a life-affirming "Yes!" to our lives here and now, Christianity too often casts an austere, reprimanding glance toward this life and then stares soberly ahead toward what is yet to come.

Honestly, this sort of attitude makes no sense to me. There is no reason that the anticipation of a grand future has to cast a grim shadow on the present. This life needs to be reclaimed. God has placed us here on this earth in this particular place at this particular time with these particular people for a reason. To neglect this life—with its great blessings as well as its great adversities—is to shrug off our connectedness with God. This life is where we meet our fellow humans in a deep and intimate way. This life is where we do the work of God. This life is where we first truly see God.

God is not the God of corpse-like living, of sitting and rotting in the church pews while the organist's dirge echoes around the sanctuary. God is the God of yes-saying, of vibrant and engaged living here and now. God has given us life—it is our responsibility to live.

Laying Claim to Love

"We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19

That is the first Bible verse I ever memorized. I was about four years old when my Sunday School teacher decided that it was a good time for us to start memorizing Bible verses, and she chose this one. It was perfect because it's short, simple, and it's easy to understand—we are able to love because God loved us first.

For most of my life, I understood that verse to mean that we as Christians are able to love because we received Jesus, who is the ultimate manifestation of God's love. And that shaped how I understood the world. I walked around my school's hallways saddened because I believed that all of my non-Christian friends were not truly able to experience love. "If only they would accept Jesus as their savior," I thought, "then they would finally know what love is really like...."

All of that was a mistake.

For some reason (that I don't completely understand) Christians decided at some point to lay claim to love. They snatched love away from the herd of human emotions, tackled it to the ground, and branded it with a red-hot cross. They claimed love as their own, believing that it was something perfect and holy—and exclusive.

The only problem is that the rest of the world didn't notice. No one realized that love had been stolen and that it now belonged only to a small band of religious fanatics. No one went around looking for it. Everyone just went on loving as they had always done before.

And that's because love didn't go anywhere.

For so much of my life I believed that Christians were better people than everyone else. I thought Christians were more honest, more loving, more hospitable, and more ethical. After all, isn't God sanctifying us now that we know Jesus?

As far as I can tell, though, Christians don't seem to be much different than anyone else. Sure, Christians are more likely to follow their own moral code (even that isn't the case all the time!), but that's only because other people have their own sets of morals. But as far as most of the basics go—like honesty, loyalty, compassion, and justice—Christians don't seem to be doing much better than anyone else.

This became very apparent to me at work recently. One of my multiple bosses is a Christian who is very up-front about her faith. She is constantly talking in pathetically veiled "Christianese," nearly always speaking in terms of believing and having faith (regardless of what the conversation is about). The only problem is that she is one of the most dishonest, manipulative, two-faced, selfish people I have ever met. Don't get me wrong—she always has good intentions, but it seems that she believes that the end always justifies the means.

On the other side is another one of my bosses, who is a staunch atheist. She is cynical, harshly realistic, and has no intention of believing in a god. But the funny thing is that she is very truthful, fiercly loyal, and exceedingly compassionate. She is the most thoughtfully ethical person I've ever met, always taking time out to evaluate her decisions. For her, the means are at least as important as the end.

I don't think that those are just two freak exceptions. Being Christian or otherwise doesn't seem to have much to do with being loving or truthful or anything else. I've met Christians and Mormons and Buddhists and atheists who are all very moral people. And I've met people from all of those groups who aren't.

It may seem funny that I started talking about love and then jumped straight into ethics, but I really believe that they are one in the same. Love is about much more than a fuzzy feeling inside—it is about giving people the respect and compassion they deserve. So, when Christians tried to claim love as their own private property, they were grabbing at all the other moral virtues as well.

To be honest, I think Christians missed. When they tried to steal love away from everyone else, all they ended up doing was creating a sad counterfeit. Love is not about telling people they are sinners. It is not about serving them in the name of your own agenda. It is not about manipulating others to achieve the ends you believe are right.

Everyone loves because God first loved all of us. God gave his creations the gift of love, so we're all capable of showing love—regardless of where we place our faith.

Gone Baby Gone

As I was reading a book today, I was struck a possibility that I had never considered before: God might be gone.

I don't mean that God mysteriously disappeared or that somehow we misplaced our conception of God. Rather, I mean that God may have become fed up with certain parts of our world and simply withdrew from them. While we were busy preserving our institutions and self-absorbed ideations, God slipped out the back door.

This was not an act of exasperation, where God lost control of the world, threw a tantrum, and walked away from the mess. It was an act of power and an act of judgment. God declared that what we were doing was not okay, so instead of enabling our misdirected ways, God left. And I don't mean that God left the whole world to its own devices. Perhaps God has chosen to leave this misguided church or that corrupt institution, but God was probably intimately involved with some other group of people at the very same time.

And really, I don't mean to assert that God has actually left at all. I just mean that God could have left. And that God still can.

There is no reason for us to assume that God is involved just because a church calls itself Christian or an organization claims to be faith-based. And to a large extent, I think that most of us realize that. I don't know anyone who actually believes that God was involved with David Koresh or with Heaven's Gate. It is pretty apparent that God is not involved with everyone who makes that claim.

However, we tend to abandon that skepticism when it comes to anything familiar. We see churches along the streets of our cities and towns and we just assume that God is active there. Unless we have reason to suspect foul play (or unless we are particularly radical/hardline) we believe that God is there. In fact, it is almost unthinkable that God would abandon the flock--God is faithful, right?

Now, I'm not advocating skepticism toward religious institutions, nor am I trying to malign God's character. It just seems arrogant on our part to assume that God will bless any endeavor we do in God's name. Surely God has the freedom to choose where to be involved and whom to bless.

Since we are seeing problems on a large scale, both in our churches and in our culture, it seems important for us to face the possibility that God may be gone. Perhaps God has moved on past our current traditions and institutions. Perhaps we have wandered off the path. Perhaps we aren't as right as we think. Perhaps we need to examine ourselves critically and ask a hard question: "Has God left us?"

Active Compassion

I work for a non-profit organization that provides permanent housing to homeless people on Skid Row. A woman who is waiting for housing said something to me yesterday that took me by surprise: "You all have beds at night so you're in no rush to find me a place to stay! You know, it's a lot more important to me than it is to you!" My first inclination was to defend our organization and the work we do--we try to house people as fast as possible any time there is a vacancy, but there are just more applicants than rooms. But as soon as I opened my mouth I realized that, regardless of how hard we try to provide housing, she was right.

Even though all of us in the organization really care about the homeless, at the end of the day we get to leave Skid Row and go home to our own beds. As I drive home each day, she's waiting in line trying to get into one of the shelters. While I'm eating my salmon and asparagus in lemon butter for dinner, she's eating the shelter's cafeteria food. Every night while I sleep in my own room, she's grateful to be sleeping in the shelter again. After I leave work, her problems don't even cross my mind.

I'm not saying that I should constantly be worried about everyone's problems. There is nothing I can do to magically transform Skid Row. There is nothing we can do to house everyone instantly. But that woman was right--it means a lot more to her than it does to me. And that's shameful. I should care just as much as she does.

It got me thinking that we (Americans, Christians, humans) need to have a greater sense of urgency--truly active compassion--for the problems we see around us. It is so easy to give 47¢ to the homeless guy on the corner and then walk into Gap and drop $100 on a sweet pair of jeans and a sweater. We feel good that we made a contribution to someone who needed it, but it isn't good enough to care about someone for thirty seconds only to revert back to our self-centered consumerism. Compassion and action need to consume us to the same extent that poverty and problems consume the lives of those who are less fortunate.

"You know, it's a lot more important to me than it is to you." Of course that's going to be the case--the person who needs help is going to value it more than the helper--but it shouldn't be so lopsided. We shouldn't give so apathetically to someone who's crying out in need. It should be embarrassing to us that our cities can't provide enough beds for the homeless, let alone the psychiatric and counseling services they need. It should be embarrassing that we get distracted so easily and we forget about the poverty in our backyards. It should be embarrassing that sometimes we don't even notice. We need to exhibit active compassion toward others--we should care about others' problems enough to do something about them.

From My Theological Journal VIII

The following is an excerpt from a journal I kept during my senior year of college. This entry arose from some of my readings in Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination:

Early Morning February 5, 2007

... We are too numb to shiver. Although this is true of American society at large, this is most shameful for Christians. We are too numb to the pain and trouble around us to take any notice, much less to lend a helping hand. But what is this trouble that we continuously overlook? There are the most obvious—social injustices like poverty, racism, inadequate community support, and even things like gay rights—but there are others that are just as important that are not so obvious. These less obvious ones include the misuse of the gospel, the inadequacy of the current church structure, the apathy and severe lack of love in the church, the hatred and fear that are fostered by the church, and unilateralism and intolerance that are rooted in the church. We are so used to these things that we do not even recognize them as problems. In some cases, we actually have appropriated them into the “gospel” and see them as part of “true Christianity.” Our numbness has grown so deep that we fail to react to the troubles on even the most basic of levels. We do not recognize the cold enough even to shiver, much less to build a fire.

I need to take time to explore these issues—both social and religious—so that I can more effectively campaign against them. Brueggemann urges me to imagine how things could be different, how things should look in the future. He calls me to be poetry in the midst of prose, to stand up to the status quo and call it out on its misbehavior—not as an enemy, but as a dear friend. The church is going down in flames and it is my job to talk about the elephant in the room, to help people come to grips with reality, and to move forward to an “alternative consciousness.”

From My Theological Journal VII

The following is another entry from an old journal I kept on my computer. This one is a little harsh, but there's no sense in watering it down now:

December 30, 2006

Sometimes I feel like this is the message that Christians give out to the world:

“For Christians so hated the world that they took God’s only Son so that only they might believe in him, and so that the world would perish and that only they would have eternal life.”

Yeah, I know this is pretty pessimistic, but too often I feel that it’s the attitude Christians are perceived to have. There is certainly a lofty sense of exclusivity that many Christians have and they couple that with a super-pious condemnation of everything they see as unclean, creating a deadly combination. And that combination is deadly for Christianity. We are killing the relevance of our faith, our ability to speak faithfully about our God, and our ability to bring him to the world that he so loves. Our piety and judgment, though usually well intended, are out of control—they have become virtuous in and of themselves and are in danger of being divorced from any connection with God. If we were truly connected with God, we would not be so standoffish and condemning—instead, we would exhibit the radically forgiving and accepting love of Jesus Christ. And that is in no way wishy-washy. It is acting as God would have us do. Our mark as believers is our love. But who on the outside would ever construe our hateful, self-righteous behavior as love?

From My Theological Journal IV

This is an entry in a journal I kept during the fall of my senior year in college. However incomplete and deficient it may be, hopefully it is at least interesting:

Early morning November 4, 2006

I was just reading an article on theooze.com about a pastor who invited his neighbors to church on Easter. Many of them came and as he stood to preach he realized what an odd feeling it was to preach to the people with whom he hung out with on a regular basis in a normal, egalitarian way. He made a few comments about how the time he spends with them in the neighborhood is just as important as having them come to church. This made me start thinking about my experiences bringing my friends to church. And I was shocked by the first thing that popped into my head—I was always embarrassed to have them come.

It’s not that I was embarrassed of my faith or of the fact that I went to church, but the experience was so awkward. Because it was always new to them I was always explaining things to them and letting them know what they should expect and what to do in different circumstances. That is to be expected, but there was more than that…. The problem was that I was always embarrassed about something. Inevitably someone would say something or do something that I would feel the need to apologize for or explain away. The preacher would always make some off-color comment or the worship team would play bad songs or the one person that I did not want my friend to have meet would be waiting for me in the parking lot. And it’s not just that one thing went wrong—it was always a disaster of a Sunday. Sure, you say, it was Murphy’s Law in action. The problem is that I don’t think that it was a fluke. It wasn’t just that one Sunday that was terrible—most Sundays were terrible and would have been embarrassing if I had had a friend with me.

I guess what I’m saying is that for most of my life I’ve found church irrelevant and old fashioned. And it’s not like I went to a conservative, backwater church either—no, the churches I’ve attended have always been decently progressive. They always utilized technology, were up on recent trends, and did their best to be relevant and seeker-sensitive. My next thought is obviously influenced heavily by Bonhoeffer, but I’m starting to be afraid that it’s the truth. The reason church seemed irrelevant is because it was. The way that we conduct church (whether we realize it or not) is based on the assumption that most people are religious or would be religious given the chance. The liturgical church service that brings people together in a building where they are led in singing and are preached at first came into existence once Christianity became the status quo. It wasn’t until Christianity was common and even assumed that we had “church” as we now describe it. And it was a decent model for hundreds and hundreds of years—until sometime around the twentieth century.

As society became increasingly secular during the twentieth century, it became more acceptable not to attend church or be religious. It was in the 1970s with the seeker-sensitive movement that the church first began to realize that it was being detached from society. All of the sudden, the church had to pull itself together and pay attention to what the culture was saying and doing—all of the sudden, the church was forced to compete with the culture. Unfortunately, as society has been becoming more and more secular, the church has been straining to make the old model fit something it wasn’t made to fit. It is not the church’s fault that the current model isn’t working—it wasn’t designed for this.

The underlying assumption of the current church model is something similar to what Bonhoeffer calls the “religious a priori” of humanity—I’ll call it the Christian a priori. The current model functions best when it is built-in as a part of society. It works best when it doesn’t have to fight for people’s attention, when people attend because they are already Christians. The current model was not made for evangelism—why would a non-Christian show up at a gathering that is meant for and directed at Christians? It is intended to edify and to grow up Christians, and it functions best in this way.

The current church model is based on the Christian a priori because that is how Western society has been for hundreds of years. Everyone was Christian in the Christian society, but that no longer holds true. For many years now, society has been loosening its grip on the Christian a priori and is in the process of letting go altogether. Meanwhile the church is still functioning under the Christian a priori model where people come to church and meet with God there. Eventually, this model will fail completely. What is difficult, though, is that the church feels that abandoning the current model is a form of compromise—as if altering the model is giving in to the culture.

The truth is, however, that church has not always looked the way it does now. It did not always function under the Christian a priori. There was a day when individual churches were just small gatherings in homes. Church was personal. It didn’t compete with the culture to try to be relevant—it was relevant because it was an intimate part of people’s lives. It didn’t consist of a building and a worship team and senior pastor. Church was not a building or a time of gathering—church was the group of people itself. Church did not occur only at a specific time and place. The people themselves were the church—when they went to work, when they went shopping, when they were sleeping, when they were eating. The underlying assumption for the structure of the church was that the people of the church needed God and they needed each other—and church was how both needs were met. Church was relationships. The web of believers who shared their lives together were the church. It was all about sharing—sharing Christ, food, trials, excitement, pity, drinks, time. In this model, bringing someone to church is easy—it is just introducing someone to your friends and family. This model of church assumes nothing about anyone’s beliefs—it just acknowledges everyone’s needs.

From My Theological Journal III

Here is another entry from a journal I kept on my computer last year:

November 2, 2006

Right now I should be writing my paper for Johannine Writings, but I need a break. While I was in the bathroom, I had a thought (who knows how many great ideas throughout history have occurred in the bathroom?). I see a problem with the way contemporary Christian thought is proceeding. We are right in doing theology in the context of the church and for the sake of the church, but I’m not sure we are completely on target. We tend to focus on ecclesiology (which is good considering the contemporary church is in a state of crisis), but what I see an over-abundance of is ecclesiology supported by theology. Instead, it seems like we should be doing theology that results in ecclesiology. I know that the difference between the two is minute (and that perhaps there may be no difference at all), but I feel like we should be doing things differently.

After all, the contemporary church is great at defining itself in terms of being traditional, restorational, purpose-driven, missional, seeker-sensitive, organic, emerging, and countless other things, but we severely lack an understanding of who God is and especially of how God relates to our contemporary, post-modern, secular world. I have to wonder if we could come to a deep understanding of who God is and how he relates to us and then use that understanding as the basis for our ecclesiology. Instead of worrying so much about how to make the church relevant to society, I feel like we should come to a better understanding of how God relates to us (Christian and non-Christian alike). In the current emerging church movement, we seem to be trying to understand God in terms of our society (“What does a post-modern God look like?”). Doesn’t it make just as much (if not more) sense to try to understand our society in terms of God? To be honest, I have no idea what this looks like or how it could be done, but I have an inclination that focusing on God more than the methodology or circumstance is important….

* * * *

I just ran across a scrap of paper that I jotted two things down on a couple of weeks ago. They pertain to Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, with which I am still becoming acquainted:

“Risk making faith/theology subject to no authority/guidelines: all within oneself”

“[His writings are] Encouraging because I realize that my uncertainty is not only acceptable, but perhaps good. I’ve been swamped down by the feeling of needing to heed to evangelical orthodoxy. Things are figured out for me … but what if I don’t agree?”

From My Theological Journal I

During the first semester of my senior year at Pepperdine (last fall) I began recording some of my thoughts about God, church, etc. on my computer. Over the next while I will be posting those entries here:

Early morning October 17, 2006

Relativism. Somehow this thing, relativism, has become the enemy of the modern church. Our leaders see it as an evil, as evidence of the moral decline of society. It is what is wrong with our world, it is what has ruined it. Relativism is the cause of the evil that we see today—if only we could return to the days when everyone knew God as king and Jesus as savior. Except that what our leaders forget is that there never was such a time. Before relativism it was modernity. Before modernity it was enlightenment. Before that it was humanism and mysticism and superstition and paganism. There never was a perfect time, a golden age of Christianity. Relativism is not the evil that is bound to eat up all of Christianity—it is the contemporary culture within which we must make Christianity understandable.

In our increasingly relativistic society the absolutes which the church holds to are being laughed at and rejected and beaten down. People find silly the notion that some antiquated institution might hold the wholeness of truth, even if science and reason suggest otherwise. Why would someone join this silly antiquated church and be forced to say certain prayers, kneel a certain way, have absolutes shoved down their throat in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion, when she can just as easily go to Starbucks, give a small tip to the hard-working barista, have a good conversation, all while enjoying her tall half-caf caramel macchiato with fresh whipped cream? After all, Starbucks lends her status, a chance to be benevolent, a place to socialize, an interesting thought or two and something that she can’t get at most churches—a cup of gourmet coffee made just how she likes it.

The church has lost its relevance to our culture. It talks about morality and family values that are set in stone and any differing idea is heresy. It gives warm, empty welcomes followed by a hailstorm of brimstone and a firm warning against all the liberals. And above all, the church is sure to remind you that it is the truth. The church sees itself as the cure for relativism, but I can pretty well guarantee that a relativistic, post-modern culture is not going to be won over by a clunky institution declaring that it is absolutely right and absolutely better.

The church is faced with a dilemma—it can either hold onto dogma and a false sense of control while it dies off along with its few remaining members, or it can embrace honesty, humbly reexamining its identity, at the risk of being vulnerably authentic.

The problem with the current state of the church is that it has sacrificed honesty for the sake of a sense of control. With dogma and firmly placed absolutes, the church retains a vestige of the power it once possessed because at least it can still definitively and haughtily point out where others stumble. Dogma lends the church a sense of stability and even of self-righteousness because it knows with absolute certainty that it is holding firmly to the truth. But, sadly, it has ceased to be honest with itself and with the world. It has forgotten the virtues of reflection and self-evaluation. It has forgotten that it is made up not of angels but of sinners—it has forgotten that it has the potential to be wrong.

To be relevant to the culture, we must live in the culture and engage its questions. We must be willing to admit that, as humans, we cannot be absolutely certain that we are right. We must acknowledge that Christians do not have a superior degree of understanding or perception, but that we all have the same starting point. We are no better, no smarter, no more holy than anyone else. If we are willing to admit that we are fallible, we can finally begin to converse with a culture that can’t stand philosophical arrogance. And if we can begin the conversation, we can find ourselves again and we can find a new relevance.