It was also a bit ironic that I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we choose to practice our personal morality publicly, i.e., how we engage with those who don’t share our values – do we boycott their stores,  workplaces, products (e.g., movies), museums, and other venues to show them how much we disapprove of … whatever? Do we keep them out of our lives, and away from our children? Or do we find some other way to actually engage them as fellow human beings? (I can’t get Shylock’s speech from The Merchant of Venice out of my head, either: “…If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?”)

The New Testament reading this morning was from Corinthians, where Paul tells them that they are Christ’s ambassadors.  As Christ’s ambassadors, we are living in a foreign land.  Are we engaging constructively with this  foreign land’s rulers and citizens, or are we merely picketers and protesters, carrying our signs at a distance and avoiding dialogue or real contact?

And whom are we serving? Are we desirous of engaging with others in such a way that Christ, through His Holy Spirit, might effect change in their lives? Or are we simply wanting the world to know our own personal piety and moral disapprobation of its ways? I realize the truth is often somewhere between those two things, but how often is it the easier thing to simply let the world know how upset we are with something … and let it go at that? Going off feeling good that we’ve certainly made our disapproval clear.

And how did Christ Himself engage with sinners and others? I don’t find him boycotting anything, let alone shying away from being in close contact with those “castoffs” of society/religion — nor Paul, or the other apostles. Christ was most exercised over the professional religious of His time, more so than anyone else. He clearly was not surprised at what the world, and we humans, are … John even remarks on that. And Paul remarks elsewhere that the world (and the spirit of this world) is what it is, and always has been: standing in rebellion against its Creator. That will not change. How, on the other hand, will we be a catalyst for spiritual change, touching people, perhaps just one person at a time? Will we actually touch them — like Christ and the leper in last Sunday’s reading! — reaching through the taboos to touch them as a fellow beloved creation of our Creator? Or will we always cross over to the other side of the road, letting them remain a pariah and “unclean” so as not to “defile” our own moral sensibilities?  Can we become someone’s friend, or at least listen to their story long enough that we both recognize our common humanity? and our shared need for Christ?

Actually, isn’t that what Ash Wednesday is about, too? In answer to the irony of the ashes on our forehead and today’s Gospel reading, my priest remarked that, actually, we ought not be ashamed of one day a year declaring to the world that we are penitants and sinners, who are simply showing our recognition of that fact and our gratitude to our loving God and heavenly Father. End of statement. In that, we are also declaring our fellow humanity to those around us, and that we are not better or worse, just saved and now able to change into what we were originally intended to be.

By the time I got to college, and had not only met quite a few people who had only experienced this kind of evangelism, and I had also read the Gospels many times over, I’d begun to realize that this wasn’t in most cases how Christ himself related to people.   He did not insist on accompanying a healing with a sermon, for example, or make it a quid pro quo for being fed.  In fact, most of what is recorded about him is what he did for others, and when he did teach, he often had to explain it afterwards to his disciples.  At times he even told them quite clearly that he spoke in parables so that the crowds would not easily understand his points… not at all the way we are taught to preach these days, to say the least.  Instead, we’re admonished to tailor our ideas, words, way of talking, everything in short, to our audience.  Keep It Simple Stupid.

Then I read Lao Tzu and his “Book of the Way”, which reads incredibly like the accounts of how Jesus taught, and I realized that Jesus was far more “eastern” than “western” in his approach to explaining truth.  He was much more interested in pointing people towards something, and piquing their curiosity, than in trying to put together several volumes of systematic theology.  And if they didn’t “get” it right away, that was ok.

So I also began to reread Paul’s letters to understand better how he did it.  He was the go-to guy I’d been told.  And I found, surprisingly, that if you read his letters carefully you find that yes, he preached a lot, but what he himself holds up as those things that convinced people that what he was saying was true were his life and Christ working through him — in his weakness.  Again, not at all what we’ve been led to believe.  In fact, I’ve heard sermons preached on his discourse on the Aeropagus that say it was his weakest address ever!  So much for reasoned, intellectual defenses of the faith! even though I use them all the time myself.

Nowadays, as I’m particularly challenged to figure out how to reach out to the educated-in-Christianity agnostics and atheists and Buddhists and “innoculated” Christians around me, I’m finding that for all the talk that’s been going on in my lifetime, it has become incredibly, unbelievably cheap.  So cheap, in fact, that no one any longer pays it any mind.

So you might ask, along with me, what does get through the clutter and cynicism and those jaded by hypocrisy (perceived or real).  Well, it’s the same thing that Christ and Paul exemplified: living out your faith in front of the world, and talking when necessary.  To take the hackneyed quote from St. Francis, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.”

The thing is, it works.  It just takes time, and patience, and humility and consistency — things most of us aren’t willing to allow into our lives – and believing that God will show people something about Himself we can’t convincingly tell them about.  To quote someone else, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery.  It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”  (Cardinal Emanuel Suhard, 1947)

The bottom line is, just like our kids, people need to see God’s Truth in our lives, and then we have to trust that they will actually want to, and will in fact, meet Christ through us.  Just as Christ told his disciples that they had in fact seen the Father through him.  Then, we can talk more about what it actually all means to become a follower and disciple of Jesus — a lifelong process in itself.  I have always loved the story of Philip and Nathanael, and how Philip — and then Jesus — cut through his cynicism by just saying, “Come and meet this guy!”  Actually, the Samaritan woman said much the same thing.

Trust flows out of relationship, and both lead to the ability to believe.  And, in the end, knowing the One in Whom we trust will anchor us, even if points of theology are blown to smithereens.  So let’s let the One we have come to know and love — and trust — live His life through us, so that others can meet him as well… living more, and talking somewhat less.

Next time I’ll talk about what I believe the Good News is.  Now there’s a story worth telling!  : )

In practice, however, this is not how Christians, or churches, normally approach it.  The Eucharist is almost universally treated as something much more serious than “just a memorial” service, where not only don’t we wish to dishonor the dead (albeit Christ is alive!), but where people are actually enjoined from taking it unless they’re bona fide believers and are warned against not taking it seriously (what does that mean??).  Nor do Christ, or Paul — or Sara Miles –talk about it as if it’s just a memorial service.   It is something much more than that… but what?

A simple memorial service would lead one to assume there is also no power.  But why, then, would Paul have warned the Corinthians about taking it unworthily (1 Cor. 11:27ff), and say that “some [of you] have even died”?  Going even further, if we wish to be Biblical literalists — as do many of my brethren — why do we take issue with Christ when he said, “This is my body and blood”?  And Paul says the same thing.

I don’t think that we can have our cake and eat it, too.  Either the Eucharist is a sacrament (an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace), with life-giving power, as Christ, Paul and all of the church fathers — East and West — have said it is, or it is simply a ritual we go through to remember something, or someone, and nothing else.  And if it is simply a memorial, then why is it so sacred and limited only to believers?  Why hold on to this particular small part of tradition, and not all of it?  And can’t others join with us in remembering something of importance, like Christ’s death, even if they’re not “believers”?  After all, don’t many people think of him as a great teacher?

My second question, however, is, I feel, more disturbing, and shows how this talk of a memorial is simply another idea I see currently being taken to its logical extreme.  If we say the Eucharist (can we please call it that, instead of “communion”?) — if we say it is only a memorial, and yet have historically proscribed or warned non-believers from participating, and even warned our fellow believers not to take it “unworthily”, where does this lead us?

People like Sara Miles are saying that the Eucharist, in fact, has power, but that the Church is not a “closed club” and literally anyone who chooses can in fact also choose how they wish to participate.  Her approach incorporates both aspects of what I am describing, a memorial and the bread and wine in the ritual having power, however it goes completely against the historical understanding of what it means to be orthodox, i.e., the acceptance of traditional Church teaching on sin, salvation, repentance, and the work of Christ, and how one gains entry into the Church.  Even Protestants, though they pick and choose their traditions and theological tenets as from a buffet, don’t normally go this far — yet.

If, on the other hand, the bread and wine are in fact the Body and Blood of Christ (I’ll just leave the details aside for now), and the teachings of Christ, the apostles and church fathers as found in Scripture and later have authority, then we’re in a whole different ballgame.  And Paul’s warning has weight and carries real meaning for us.  This, in fact, is how most of the Church lives and operates, whether they’re willing to say it or not.  That said, ideas as embodied by words do have consequences, and that is what I’m concerned about.

N.B.: I realize that I’m quibbling largely over words, however words have specific meanings, those meanings represent certain ideas, and ideas can be taken to their logical conclusions.  Hence, I’ve always felt that it’s critically important to try and choose our words carefully, and to think clearly about what we are really saying with them.  People may look at our lives (and talk is “cheap”, they say), but what we say is also held to account.  After all, the Word, Himself, has real power, and was how God “spoke” all of creation into being.

Paul (and Jesus, too, for that matter) is very clear that accepting Christ as Lord of one’s life is only the beginning of a lifelong process of becoming more like Christ, and that, as James says, faith without works is dead.

So the primary problem with this notion is really that it leads to a neglect of sanctification.  People are led to think that once they’re “saved” they’re done, in spite of things said to the contrary.  But why is that, you ask.  And why is that such a problem? After all, aren’t there a lot of sermons preached on WWJD, or “becoming like Christ”?

When combined with what I talked about earlier, in Sola Fide?, these two ideas get put together and lead to an actual avoidance of anything that might look like “works righteousness”.  (Some of which is simply an assiduous avoidance of looking like another older branch of Christendom which is often wrongly caricatured as emphasizing works over faith….)  As a result, “good works” only have instrumental value, that is, they are almost exclusively used to get people in the door to listen to a sermon, instead of actually caring for one’s fellow man.  How we live our lives, instead of giving glory to God, is only useful for something else.   This is problematic, if only because God repeatedly takes the Israelites to task for not caring for widows, orphans, the aliens in their midst, and their own poor.  Some of God’s most ripping words in the Old Testament are about justice, and the lack of concern for it by His people.  In fact, in Micah 6:8, the prophet says, “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you: He wants you to promote justice, to be faithful, and to live obediently before your God.”  But as I said, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  God’s statements of care for His people, and their lives here on earth, is evident throughout the Old and New Testaments.  ”Doing good” is far more than an instrumental good.

I would even go so far as to argue that making actual disciples becomes a suspect endeavor, because, first of all the people who should be discipled are already saved, so they don’t in fact need anything else; second, the real priority is getting other people to where they will say the prayer; and third, as a corollary to the second point, imitation of the Master isn’t really about being something in front of the world, but is only one more way to get people to listen to a sermon.

Consequently, if how we live is only useful for something else, if that something else isn’t happening quickly or effectively enough (according to our definition of those things) then we ought to just cut to the verbiage and avoid the other stuff, like feeding the hungry.  The other stuff is just a waste of time, energy and resources, because the only thing that really matters is  presenting people with the Truth, and hopefully getting them to see the error of their ways and say the prayer (with the hope, of course, that they really mean it).  (If you’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll know that I believe a large part of why we are put here is that we are to show the world Christ and the Father, in much the same way as Christ told his disciples that in watching him they had seen the Father.  Of course, verbal evangelism is important, too, but I see evangelism as something much broader than simply explaining  Truth, and rather as something encompassing our entire life.)

In sum, I’m not denying the basic need for people to say a prayer, repent of their sins, acknowledge their need of Christ, and accept Him as Lord of their life.  I’m simply trying to point out how, in my experience, a wide swath of Christendom has interpreted it as the goal, when in fact it is just the beginning of a lifelong discipleship and sanctification process.  And, how, when it is put together with a narrow understanding of sola fide (in contradistinction to a more catholic or historical understanding of living faith), it actually encourages people to avoid good works, unless they’re useful for another end, i.e., evangelism.

Just so that I’m not setting up a straw man, what I have heard across most of my life is that we are justified by faith alone.  As far as it goes, this is entirely biblical and in complete agreement with Paul’s statements in Romans and Ephesians and elsewhere.  It also agrees with statements of Christ.  There is absolutely no way that we can earn our salvation through anything we do.  However, I normally hear this followed by a comment or action that indicates once we’ve “said the prayer”,  we need not concern ourselves with good works, as if sanctification and living out our faith are not important.  My concern here is that, as with sola Scriptura,  people take this idea to its logical extension and, lacking adequate emphasis on sanctification, minimize the importance of a living faith.

What I have seen is an effective, and actual, denial of the importance of doing good in the world — which, by the way, flies directly in the face of much of the Old Testament and its equating living justly, caring for the poor, and caring for God’s creation with what God requires of us.  I have found that this denial is also directly connected to a denigration of God’s creation (“it’s all going to burn, anyway…”) which leads to a focus only on the spiritual aspects of life (neo-Gnosticism or Manicheanism?), along with a very narrow focus on verbal forms of communicating the Gospel being of importance.  This latter often leads people to only do good as a way to get people in the door to listen to a sermon, so that caring for others is largely seen as a practical necessity for something else.  That’s not what Christ did with his healing, or feeding, or caring for people’s daily needs.  The two things were not connected in that way, i.e., listening to a sermon was not a quid pro quo for being fed… if anything, Jesus lived as if the two things were inseparable from each other, but that each one was simply another way of showing the Father to the world.   Actually, Christ also talks about living in a way that shows our faith to the world (e.g., Matthew 5), indicating, like James, that faith without works is dead.

What I have also seen, and heard people describe, is a fear of “works righteousness.”  As if, by doing good, they or others will be tempted to somehow look to their works for salvation.

Combine all of the above with, in my experience, a paucity of talk about sanctification (which is also due to a minimization or elimination of the work and power of the Holy Spirit), and it’s no wonder that people find it existentially difficult to live out their faith.   They are not told that accepting Christ as their Lord is only the beginning of a process of sanctification, nor are they told about how the Holy Spirit can actually indwell them and enable them to live more like Christ; they are scared off of doing good and told it doesn’t matter anyway, unless it’s necessary to get people to listen to a sermon; and they are told that the only Gospel worth preaching is a verbal one.

In sum, I am once again most concerned about how the idea of “by faith alone” gets worked out and taken to its logical conclusion.  When combined with the other ideas I’ve mentioned, it leads to a result that is not biblical, and something which I see being lived out every day, and hear defended vociferously.

(See, also, Evangelism, below.)

Sexual relations has had almost all the risk of pregnancy removed from it, eliminating the most obvious “downside” to having heterosexual sex. And medicines and condoms, etc., have effectively removed most of the risk of anyone having sex with anyone else. On the other side, pretty much anyone who has the money can obtain a child, freeing people entirely from procreative sexual relations at all. This has enabled individuals, and same-sex couples, as well as otherwise over-age people, to have children.

What is interesting is that almost no one (to my knowledge), with the exception of the Catholic church, has ever spoken out clearly about contraception and faith, let alone about human sexuality, with the result that Christians are every bit as adamant about their “right” to total control over their lives – including their sexual lives – as the culture around them. The one place where they differ significantly is on abortion, with some variations when it comes to pre-marital sex. On the latter, though, it seems to often come down to vague principle (“abstinence”, for example), or practical matters, rather than much else. Just look closely at, or talk to, the young people you know. There has been almost no clear positive articulation of what it means to be human and sexual, notwithstanding sex is our most basic and urgent drive.

I think that, having lost this battle for the hearts and minds of believers over contraception, and having not framed a case for what human sexuality is (in contradistinction to what it is not), we have effectively also lost the war. And not just the so-called “culture war.”

Back to our friend’s article… I felt I had to tell him that, based on my experience, gays and the gay lifestyle will probably just come to be accepted in 5-10 years by the Evangelical world. I didn’t explain why, however my comment was based on the above history of sexuality in our contemporary culture and my experience of the Christian culture in the U.S. I don’t know of, or see, anyone who appears to be willing to die on this hill, although should it become a criminal offense to speak Biblically orthodox teaching about such things, I can certainly foresee people going to jail, being fined, etc. Generally, though, my experience has been that the Evangelical world will simply over time get used to the idea, lacking convincing evidence to the contrary, and come to accept it. (I haven’t found that describing other people as moral reprobates, or quoting chapter and verse constitute convincing arguments, for example.) I do believe that, as a result of not thinking clearly or Biblically about human sexuality and all it entails, and always fighting a defensive rearguard action, we have in fact lost the war.

What might have happened if the Church had, instead of demonizing gays and arguing over what words and author intent meant hundreds of years ago, embraced them, loved them, and fought for their basic human rights – while also teaching what it means in the best sense to be a sexually-vibrant human being and a child of God? What if the Church had also lived out, and taught, what it means to trust our heavenly Father with all things, including our sexuality, and through positive actions shown the world how much of a blessing children are, and how human beings through their God-given creativity and intelligence can mitigate the problems of food distribution, water, and urban overcrowding? (To be certain, we have done some of these things, but often with a caveat that it was really all about “saving souls”, as opposed to actually caring for people.) Might our current situation be somewhat different?

So, to pick up again on the idea of Sola Scriptura…  First, it’s simply not possible as people talk about it, implying that tradition is somehow outside the pale of what we should take seriously. The simple fact is, we all must read Scripture through some theological — and traditional — paradigm for understanding it.  There is no other way.  Without some sort of reference point for understanding and interpreting Scripture, we are left entirely to our own devices!  I want to say that the popular Protestant understanding leads inexorably to an individualistic interpretation of Scripture, and factionalism/denominationalism, because there is no guide of tradition, excepting that which each individual chooses to accept as authoritative.

This excising of tradition. and individualism, also creates a tendency (in my experience) to emphasize differences and to focus on what divides us, leading not only to separatism (from those who don’t think as we do), but to a negative approach to our faith.  What I mean is, instead of simply focusing our attention on who we are and what we believe, we become focused on how we are not like some other person or group, and then define ourselves negatively in reference to that.  It becomes very difficult to live simply out of what we do believe and espouse, because we are more interested in how we stack up, theologically or otherwise, with other believers and the world.  We become obsessed with being more “right” than the other person, or group.

Consequently, this also engenders a spirit of criticism, instead of a spirit of unity and oneness with our fellow Christ-followers.  It also fosters an inability to see the “lost” as fellow beggars seeking bread.  Instead, they become evangelism projects and someone to be convinced of our position.  That is, people who are wrong — and even dangerous — unless they come around to our exact way of thinking.  This attitude cuts us off from seeing our fellows as valuable in God’s eyes, and can make it easier to leave them aside when they spurn our attempts to convince them and treat them as projects.

Next… sola fide.

For example, the “big” one, which is common to most all Protestant denominations, is what is usually called sola Scriptura, or Scripture alone — leave tradition and everything else behind.  All we need in order to understand our Christianity is a Bible, and maybe a commentary.  As I look around me, it would seem to be increasingly clear that just reading a Bible isn’t enough.  Since the Bible got into the hands of the layperson (truly a fantastic thing, in my opinion), and they were encouraged to leave church tradition behind, there have been about as many opinions about what the Bible is saying as there are readers.

As sola Scriptura has become about as central a tenet of Protestantism as the virgin birth, we now see an increasing number of people who seem not to know what Christian orthodoxy is, nor care.  All that is important is their (new) interpretation of certain passages, and statements that would imply the Biblical authors, rabbis, Church Fathers, and even Jesus, really didn’t know their Greek or Hebrew, or cultural backgrounds, as well as we do.  And what or who is to disagree with them?  After all, we are on the cutting edge in physics, biology, psychology and other sciences, and obviously know more than any other humans who have ever been alive.  But does this make us wiser? And is it even true, that we know and understand more than anyone ever before?

Back to my original question.  Is there evidence that other Evangelical Protestant tenets at their roots lead, and have led, to behaviors, beliefs and ways of thinking that are un-Biblical, even heterodox?  As I have begun to think about this, my short answer would be yes.  And as these beliefs have worked their way out into peoples’ daily lives, we see their results in a culture that has less and less use for what people think we espouse, the latest example being simply the Judgement Day on May 21.  But that’s not the worst of it, really.  The worst of it is that the Protestant world has become disconnected from the roots of our faith, and almost entirely lost its moorings, setting it adrift on a sea of personal opinion as regards everything from Biblical hermeneutics to worship style.  Whatever works to attract people and not alienate them, and whatever can be called “a new move of the Holy Spirit”, is what must be True.

It would be more frightening if the parts of the Church which have embraced this approach weren’t themselves already doing so much to make themselves irrelevant — not that relevancy as people nowadays count it is very valuable.

Jesus seemed to think so…  do we?

Are we willing to leave the “already-convinced” in their contentment and safety and head out into the wild and woolly unknown to find them?  Are we prepared to deal with a possibly ornery sheep who doesn’t want to come back home? Are we prepared to deal with possibly inclement weather, rough terrain — even unsafe terrain — to search for them? Are we prepared to try and find out why they ran off?

Actually, if I’m right, Jesus did just that when he became a “sheep” exactly like us, and we didn’t just fuss… we ganged up on him and killed him.  If we say we’re now his siblings, and followers, are we willing to do any less?  Or are we only willing to go where it’s safe, or where we know they’ve never before heard or seen the good news?  Actually, Jesus also went where they should have known him and his message, but they’d already taken it and distorted it and turned it into a system of control.  Hence, their feeling threatened by him.

Again… are we willing to do any less?  Are we willing to admit that perhaps we’ve messed up, and that’s why the sheep ran away?  Or, are we also into a religious control thing that doesn’t admit of any questions or bear up under scrutiny?

http://coregroups.org/crossandcrown.html? utm_source=CORE+Discipleship+Ministry+List&utm_campaign=71799f59b2-Sept_27_2010&utm_medium=email

instead of something like this  http://www.JPCatholic.com

or this http://www.wheaton.edu

or this http://www.biola.edu

Please don’t take me the wrong way.  Christian colleges are a wonderful thing, and most of my family have graduated from one.  However isn’t teaching people about how to effectively engage the world and their unbelieving friends, starting from the very moment they acknowledge Jesus to be the Lord of their life, the better approach?

Actually, why on earth should this need to be taught in a college?  What has been happening — or not — in these students lives before they entered college that they now need to learn how to do this??  And how does one teach this as an academic subject???

I’m asking this, as one who DID have to learn about this in college (at Wheaton) because I knew very little about how to engage the world beforehand… and now I’m the oddball, or worse, because I ask questions like this, and have raised my kids to know why they believe, to be comfortable out in the world, loving people, and bringing home all their not-yet convinced friends.   (I guess, the fact that they even have such friends can be suspect, or something of an oxymoron, too….)