These issues are "old." The wrestling is not. As I continue to wrestle, I re-post this blog originally written in August 2010 as a response to some "current events" taking place at that time. Upon re-reading, I found that I feel more strongly about everything I wrote in this post than I did even at the time I wrote it. One of the pastors at my church [Brooklyn Tabernacle] that I work very closely with said that one of his goals this year is to help non-Christians view Christians differently. I'm down with that. Read below and you'll see why.
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AUGUST 2010
One of my biggest pet peeves is so-called “churchianity.” I’m sure that
many people have their own definition of this term, but I take it to
mean religiosity without heart. Christian clichés without compassion.
Catch-phrases that are thrown around without a thought as to whether or
not they’re even biblical. Knowing how to orchestrate a conversation,
or a prayer, or a service or a song in a way that might elicit an
emotional reaction but falls short of any real transaction with God.
And if you think that this note is going to be some rant blasting
“fakers” in the church – please. The reason why this is such a pet
peeve of mine is because, more often than not, the offending party is
myself. I’m constantly catching myself falling into the trap of
churchianity – and I at least thank God that He’s helping me to
extricate myself as quickly as possible when I become aware of it. And
it’s because I’m so sensitive to my own hypocrisy that I find myself
being aware when it manifests in those around me and even society in
general. I personally believe that it is one of the most destructive
forces [if not the most destructive] that exist in the Christian world
today – and one of the primary factors that hinder the spread of the
Good News. Brennan Manning once said this:
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians – who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. THAT is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
Now, I’m not an advanced apologist or theologian, nor am I well-versed in the current trends of Christianity in America today. But from my limited amount of knowledge and the people that I’ve had conversations with – Christianity in American today has a horrible reputation. It just does. And the two most common objections that I’ve heard said as to why people have no interest in becoming Christians are: “Christians are narrow-minded, judgmental, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-this, anti-that”…. or…. “it all just seems really fake to me.” Notice that these objections have nothing to do with Jesus. The objections to Christianity are focused on Christians.
This morning, I saw four different posts that set off a wrestling match inside of me about my own Christian walk as it pertains to this issue. I feel compelled to share two of them with you [with the other two to come as part of another note at another time] – not as a means of eliciting guilt or being confrontational – but as a means of allowing you to wrestle along with me and maybe even open up a dialogue of what we can do about it.
FACEBOOK POST #1: Anne Rice Quits Being a Christian
http://life.nationalpost.com/2010/08/05/father-raymond-j-de-souza-anne-rice-wants-christ-without-the-christianity/
Superquick Background: Anne Rice used to write vampire novels. She decided around ten years ago to return to the Catholic faith of her childhood. Last week, she made this statement: ““Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.”
After giving her props for the use of “disputatious,” my immediate first thought was defensive. I mentally gave her a thumbs-down on her theology – after all, one cannot base one’s theological viewpoint on the appearance of others who “claim” to be following that same theology. There are just too many confounding variables that refute that logic – a high percentage of those individuals used as a reference are [statistically speaking] probably not “really” Christians – the fact that Christians still sin all the time as we’re all in different stages of our sanctification process, etc. My second thought was anger and frustration at “those Christians” who were the cause of Ms. Rice deciding to slap the “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous” label on followers of Christ worldwide.
But then my third thought set off some squirming, as God quickly turned my mental finger-pointing back to where it belonged – myself. My walk. My community. Sure, I might not be picketing with “God hates gays” signs or blowing up abortion clinics in the name of Christianity… but what am I doing? If Christian means “follower of Christ,” can I wear that label with any kind of life-proved authority? Am I known more for what I’m against than what I’m for? Am I more concerned with accomplishing tasks than loving people? And if I am… then I’m just as responsible for validating Anne Rice’s decision than those who overtly smear Christ’s name. Don’t get me wrong – her decision is her own and obviously was made for deeper reasons than simply not liking the choices of a few Christians that she knows. She is solely responsible for her own choices and decisions. But it’s just like I tell my REMIXers when we’ve talked about purity. I tell the girls – “look, guys are solely responsible for guarding their eyes and heart against lust. But if you go walking down Fulton Street with 80% of your skin showing – are you making it easy or hard for them to do that?” Same way here – people are solely responsible for their decisions for or against Christ. But as Christians, are our own actions paving the way for someone to come to know God – or are we actually standing in the way of it?
FACEBOOK POST #2: Proposition 8
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/us/05prop.html
Superquick Background: In 2008, California passed [with 52% of the vote] Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage, declaring that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Last week, a federal judge in California [Vaughn R. Walker] overturned Prop 8 citing that it was unconstitutional because it discriminates against gay men and women. Appeals are now in progress.
First of all, everyone relax. For whatever reason, I’ve found that bringing up the issue of homosexuality in a Christian setting often elicits the same reaction as someone saying “bomb” on an airplane – but I don’t intend to have a theological discussion on this issue at present. What got me wrestling this morning wasn’t so much the theological implications of Prop 8, but rather how the Christian community is reacting to Prop 8. A number of my Facebook friends – both gay and straight, Christian and non-Christian – posted different articles, thoughts, statuses [stati?] regarding this issue – and I applaud that. I applaud discussing, sharing, voicing opinions over difficult issues rather than burying our heads in the sand and pretending they don’t exist. I looked specifically through the posts by my Christian friends, and noticed that some of them were well-written and thoughtful, while others were, honestly, downright offensive. And the thought came to me – if I were LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] and I read some of these FB postings… would they point me to Christ or make me want to have nothing to do with Him?
Now, before any uproar ensues and the can of worms explodes all over our computer screens, let me make a couple of statements. First, as stated before, I’m wrestling with these issues. I don’t know all the answers – I’m simply being honest enough to ask the questions. And my question really is: how should we, as the Christian community, be reacting to this latest political development in a way that would honor and glorify God?
Well… let’s think Biblically here. When asked what the greatest commandment of all was, Jesus replied as follows: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” [Matthew 22:37-40]. And elsewhere in Scripture [John 14:15], Jesus says that a sign that shows that we love Him is our obedience to His commands. So in EVERYTHING that we do, we have two commands – to love God [and one way we do that is through upholding His law], and love other people.
So what does that mean? Well…
1) If we uphold God’s law, but neglect loving other people as we do it – we’re wrong.
2) If we love other people but neglect to keep the commands that God’s given us – we’re wrong.
People always used to use WWJD [What Would Jesus Do?] as one of those Christian catch-phrases, and I would laugh because my answer to that question was always “I have no idea.” Jesus was constantly doing things that people would have found unpredictable – I mean, come on, an adulterous woman is thrown down at his feet by a crowd bent on stoning her… WWJD? Well, of course, He’d bend down and start writing on the ground with a stick.
Yeah. That was gonna be my NEXT guess.
If I were going to redefine that phrase to make it a little easier to work with, I’d probably opt for “What WOULDN’T Jesus Do?” Adulterous woman example? What WOULDN’T Jesus do? Well, He definitely wouldn’t pick up a stone and hurl it at her. He definitely wouldn’t just gloss over her sin and tell her to continue on doing whatever she felt like. See how much easier this is?
But, as I close [lol], I’m trying to somehow apply this principle to this current debate over Prop 8. What Would Jesus Do? I honestly don’t know. But I’m pretty sure at least what He wouldn’t do – I don’t think He’d be posting messages with slurs towards LGBTs. I’m pretty sure that He wouldn’t dismiss any mention of human rights with “whatever, they’re just sinners.” I also don’t think that He’d be applauding it – because He cannot deny what His own Word says about marriage. But neither do I think He’d be silent – the Jesus that I read about in my Bible was VERY much an activist. The only thing that I do know is that He would uphold truth with the utmost love. And, regardless of how we as Christians choose to respond to this new development – if we want to continue to CALL ourselves Christians – we had better be choosing to do the same.
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians – who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. THAT is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
Now, I’m not an advanced apologist or theologian, nor am I well-versed in the current trends of Christianity in America today. But from my limited amount of knowledge and the people that I’ve had conversations with – Christianity in American today has a horrible reputation. It just does. And the two most common objections that I’ve heard said as to why people have no interest in becoming Christians are: “Christians are narrow-minded, judgmental, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-this, anti-that”…. or…. “it all just seems really fake to me.” Notice that these objections have nothing to do with Jesus. The objections to Christianity are focused on Christians.
This morning, I saw four different posts that set off a wrestling match inside of me about my own Christian walk as it pertains to this issue. I feel compelled to share two of them with you [with the other two to come as part of another note at another time] – not as a means of eliciting guilt or being confrontational – but as a means of allowing you to wrestle along with me and maybe even open up a dialogue of what we can do about it.
FACEBOOK POST #1: Anne Rice Quits Being a Christian
http://life.nationalpost.com/2010/08/05/father-raymond-j-de-souza-anne-rice-wants-christ-without-the-christianity/
Superquick Background: Anne Rice used to write vampire novels. She decided around ten years ago to return to the Catholic faith of her childhood. Last week, she made this statement: ““Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.”
After giving her props for the use of “disputatious,” my immediate first thought was defensive. I mentally gave her a thumbs-down on her theology – after all, one cannot base one’s theological viewpoint on the appearance of others who “claim” to be following that same theology. There are just too many confounding variables that refute that logic – a high percentage of those individuals used as a reference are [statistically speaking] probably not “really” Christians – the fact that Christians still sin all the time as we’re all in different stages of our sanctification process, etc. My second thought was anger and frustration at “those Christians” who were the cause of Ms. Rice deciding to slap the “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous” label on followers of Christ worldwide.
But then my third thought set off some squirming, as God quickly turned my mental finger-pointing back to where it belonged – myself. My walk. My community. Sure, I might not be picketing with “God hates gays” signs or blowing up abortion clinics in the name of Christianity… but what am I doing? If Christian means “follower of Christ,” can I wear that label with any kind of life-proved authority? Am I known more for what I’m against than what I’m for? Am I more concerned with accomplishing tasks than loving people? And if I am… then I’m just as responsible for validating Anne Rice’s decision than those who overtly smear Christ’s name. Don’t get me wrong – her decision is her own and obviously was made for deeper reasons than simply not liking the choices of a few Christians that she knows. She is solely responsible for her own choices and decisions. But it’s just like I tell my REMIXers when we’ve talked about purity. I tell the girls – “look, guys are solely responsible for guarding their eyes and heart against lust. But if you go walking down Fulton Street with 80% of your skin showing – are you making it easy or hard for them to do that?” Same way here – people are solely responsible for their decisions for or against Christ. But as Christians, are our own actions paving the way for someone to come to know God – or are we actually standing in the way of it?
FACEBOOK POST #2: Proposition 8
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/us/05prop.html
Superquick Background: In 2008, California passed [with 52% of the vote] Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage, declaring that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Last week, a federal judge in California [Vaughn R. Walker] overturned Prop 8 citing that it was unconstitutional because it discriminates against gay men and women. Appeals are now in progress.
First of all, everyone relax. For whatever reason, I’ve found that bringing up the issue of homosexuality in a Christian setting often elicits the same reaction as someone saying “bomb” on an airplane – but I don’t intend to have a theological discussion on this issue at present. What got me wrestling this morning wasn’t so much the theological implications of Prop 8, but rather how the Christian community is reacting to Prop 8. A number of my Facebook friends – both gay and straight, Christian and non-Christian – posted different articles, thoughts, statuses [stati?] regarding this issue – and I applaud that. I applaud discussing, sharing, voicing opinions over difficult issues rather than burying our heads in the sand and pretending they don’t exist. I looked specifically through the posts by my Christian friends, and noticed that some of them were well-written and thoughtful, while others were, honestly, downright offensive. And the thought came to me – if I were LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] and I read some of these FB postings… would they point me to Christ or make me want to have nothing to do with Him?
Now, before any uproar ensues and the can of worms explodes all over our computer screens, let me make a couple of statements. First, as stated before, I’m wrestling with these issues. I don’t know all the answers – I’m simply being honest enough to ask the questions. And my question really is: how should we, as the Christian community, be reacting to this latest political development in a way that would honor and glorify God?
Well… let’s think Biblically here. When asked what the greatest commandment of all was, Jesus replied as follows: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” [Matthew 22:37-40]. And elsewhere in Scripture [John 14:15], Jesus says that a sign that shows that we love Him is our obedience to His commands. So in EVERYTHING that we do, we have two commands – to love God [and one way we do that is through upholding His law], and love other people.
So what does that mean? Well…
1) If we uphold God’s law, but neglect loving other people as we do it – we’re wrong.
2) If we love other people but neglect to keep the commands that God’s given us – we’re wrong.
People always used to use WWJD [What Would Jesus Do?] as one of those Christian catch-phrases, and I would laugh because my answer to that question was always “I have no idea.” Jesus was constantly doing things that people would have found unpredictable – I mean, come on, an adulterous woman is thrown down at his feet by a crowd bent on stoning her… WWJD? Well, of course, He’d bend down and start writing on the ground with a stick.
Yeah. That was gonna be my NEXT guess.
If I were going to redefine that phrase to make it a little easier to work with, I’d probably opt for “What WOULDN’T Jesus Do?” Adulterous woman example? What WOULDN’T Jesus do? Well, He definitely wouldn’t pick up a stone and hurl it at her. He definitely wouldn’t just gloss over her sin and tell her to continue on doing whatever she felt like. See how much easier this is?
But, as I close [lol], I’m trying to somehow apply this principle to this current debate over Prop 8. What Would Jesus Do? I honestly don’t know. But I’m pretty sure at least what He wouldn’t do – I don’t think He’d be posting messages with slurs towards LGBTs. I’m pretty sure that He wouldn’t dismiss any mention of human rights with “whatever, they’re just sinners.” I also don’t think that He’d be applauding it – because He cannot deny what His own Word says about marriage. But neither do I think He’d be silent – the Jesus that I read about in my Bible was VERY much an activist. The only thing that I do know is that He would uphold truth with the utmost love. And, regardless of how we as Christians choose to respond to this new development – if we want to continue to CALL ourselves Christians – we had better be choosing to do the same.
Great, great post Amy. Incidientally, the Lord has been taking me through a similar journey. I think sometimes as Christians we can become way too pure in our own eyes to a point where we become "earthly no good". What is wrong with loving people to the Lord without compromising. It's very possible to be committed to the Lord, to be obedient and still doing it in a way that draws man unto Him. I think people confuse love, grace and kindness with being "Christianlite" and that is so far from the truth. I just recently got this revelation (because I was as guilty as they come) when the Lord began to really highlight my frailties. It was just what the doctor ordered because it greatly helped to curb my self righteousness disease and being way too pure in my own eyes. Secondly, He revealed to me that I did not understand grace. I had rejected many a times the message on grace because I felt that people took grace foregranted and used it as an excuse to do as they pleased (the nerve of me who made me judge?). Unfortunately, my lack of understanding or my interpretation triggered a "doing to get" also known as putting oneself on a performance treadmill. In a nutshell it became an impediment in my walk. I had the new testament faith with an old testament view. I would subconsciously try to earn God's love and so it went. Now mind you, the yard stick I used to judge other people is the same yard stick I used to judge myself. I was my own worst critic. God had to teach me to be kinder to myself, to be more forgiving to myself and it's only then that I was able to extend grace to others. It had to start with me. It was such a major breakthrough and helped in fostering better relationships with others (Christians and unbelievers alike). That said, I don't claim to have arrived yet. I am still learning and still growing and leave myself open to be led by THE HOLY SPIRIT and not by man or what makes sense to me. Like you said Jesus was unpredictable. You could not put Him in a box and I would go on a limb and say neither can God be boxed in. " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. I think the key is to sometimes speak less and listen more (to God's voice that is). Yesterday's devotional really encouraged me and reemphasized this notion of speaking less. It said "God's voice demands the silence of the soul. Only in the quiet of the spirit could Isaac hear the garments of his God brush by him." I will be holding on to these words and learning to be quiet and to" be still and know that He is God".. I am desperate to be led by Him!! Every step of the way!!
ReplyDeleteThe beauty of this journey is that it's a wayfaring of a lifetime. God will always reveal, convict and teach for as long as we are open.
I enjoyed your post immensely!! Keep writing and continue to walk with that humility and teachable spirit!! Your heart will be full!!