Christian tribalism, part 2: the god who only loves his friends

I won’t do much summarizing of Part 1. Read it. It’s good. Basically, Christians often claim to have some special access to God’s salvation. But they really shouldn’t not just because it’s kind of mean or “close-minded” but, more importantly, because it defeats their whole purpose for existing.

To clarify what I mean by that, let me start by showing this brilliant clip from a lecture given by Peter Rollins at Rob Bell’s "Poets, Prophets, and Preachers" conference:

http://vimeo.com/19258866

What captivates me here is how it seems so much the opposite of the always louder, always arrogant “I got saved” theology that characterizes so much of North American Christianity. Not being a loud "I got saved" Christian, it hurts a little, and my internal critic goes kind of nutty, anytime someone says to me, “I like you because you're one of those calmer sorts of Christians, not like the Bible thumping religious freaks.” I get the sentiment and I have no plans of beating anyone over the head with an annotated NRSV anytime soon. But what hurts is the perception that the difference between me and those “religious freaks” is a difference of degree rather than kind, that they’re simply more intense about Jesus than I am but essentially believe the same things about him. 

They don’t.

And if there is a difference of degree—if one of us, said “religious freak” or myself, is more amped about God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ—I’d probably reverse that popular perception. The problem with “I got saved” theology isn’t that it makes too much of God’s salvation but that it makes far too little. It’s not that “religious freaks” are too excited that God is good. It’s that they’re excited about a god who isn’t nearly good enough.

If you haven’t already, watch the short clip above, and I’ll try to show you what I mean.

Anytime someone stands up and says proudly, “I know I’m saved, because I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior,” they’re unwittingly saying, “My god’s ability to save people is so weak and inert that it needs me to activate it through my mental assent.”

This is a far cry from the God of Jesus Christ who, out of radical grace, “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5.45). Their petty, quibbling deity only loves those who love him, something that Jesus says even the craven tax collectors do (v. 46). It seems like this would raise an obvious question (though it never seems to): when Jesus asks us to love and forgive our enemies, is he asking us to actually be better than some small-minded, putz of a god that we worship? Or rather, is he telling us to love the unloveable because this is precisely how the real God is (v. 48)? I guess I'm whatever sort of Christian opts for the latter.

Notice the funny little ironies that occur when we compare the “I got saved” Christian above, who proudly claims, “I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior,” to Pete Rollins, who claims, “I deny the resurrection.” The “I got saved” Christian, we might imagine, searches desperately day and night for the perfect apology (a logical explanation for a certain belief) with which he might beat down the arguments of his “secular” friends in order to persuade them (and himself) of the rightness of his thinking. But by making the truth of the resurrection depend so heavily on his own mental agreement—by making his own verbal confirmation the active ingredient in God’s love—he has a funny way of turning “the resurrection” into an outgrowth of his own ego, not an act of God that happened with or without anyone else’s consent. So it can't really save anyone, including himself.

No wonder so many in our culture become so belligerent and defensive when you question their version of “resurrection faith,” it veritably doesn’t exist outside the chemicals and movements of their mind. I don’t just mean that non-believers would see it this way. These "I got saved" Christians themselves seem wary that their doctrines, their worldview and even their god might just be hanging perilously by a neurological thread.

By way of contrast, Rollins, with his nonchalance about making a “case” for the resurrection but his adamancy about living into its implications (standing up for those who are on their knees, crying out for those whose tongues have been torn out, etc.), has a funny way of letting the resurrection have a reality outside himself.

I once read that the otherwise very pious theologian Karl Barth’s belief in the radical “otherness” of God, the gaping distance that separates God’s ways from humanity’s ways, was precisely what allowed him to have a carefree drink and a cigar in the parlor. Similarly, Rollin’s version of the resurrection story doesn’t seem to depend on him at all for its reality. So, yes, he's free to be a bit calmer about it at times. Yet, for that same reason, it can still be something real, revealed through him wherever and whenever he manages to live up to his discipleship calling.

Making no effort to prove his “orthodox” adherence to some bloodless doctrine about the resurrection, Rollins skips right to what resurrection living looks like. He paints a picture of resurrection’s beauty which we already recognize in our hearts when we see it, yet which happens outside of us and regardless of us.

When we learn of a God who made the decision to resurrect and reconcile the world unilaterally, that is, without consulting any of us, that will be the first and biggest step toward the end of Christian tribalism.

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Christian tribalism, part 2: the god who only loves his friends

I won’t do much summarizing of Part 1. Read it. It’s good. Basically, Christians often claim to have some special access to God’s salvation. But they really shouldn’t not just because it’s kind of mean or “close-minded” but, more importantly, because it defeats their whole purpose for existing.

For several months, I’ve been revisiting and reflecting on this brilliant clip from a lecture given by Pete Rollins at Rob Bell’s Poets, Priests, and Prophets conference:

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/19258866?portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

I’m still trying to figure out all that has captivated me here, but I know it has to do, at least in part, with how it seems so much the opposite of the always arrogant “I got saved” theology that characterizes so much of North American Christianity.

I need to confess that it hurts a little, and my internal critic goes kind of nutty, anytime someone says to me, “I like you because your one of those calmer sorts of Christians, not like the Bible thumping religious freaks.” I get the sentiment and I have no plans of beating anyone over the head with an annotated NRSV anytime soon. But what hurts is the perception that the difference between me and those “religious freaks” is a difference of degree rather than kind, that they’re simply more intense about Jesus than I am but essentially believe the same things about him.

They don’t.

And if there is a difference of degree—if one of us, said “religious freak” or myself, is more amped about God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ—I’d probably reverse that popular perception. The problem with “I got saved” theology isn’t that it makes too much of God’s salvation but that it makes far too little. It’s not that “religious freaks” are too excited that God is good. It’s that they’re excited about a god who isn’t nearly good enough.

If you haven’t already, watch the short clip above, and I’ll try to show you what I mean.

Anytime someone stands up and says proudly, “I know I’m saved, because I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior,” they’re unwittingly saying, “My god’s ability to save people is so weak and inert that it needs me to activate it through my mental assent.”

This is a far cry from the God of Jesus Christ who, out of radical grace, “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5.45). Their petty, quibbling deity only loves those who love him, something that Jesus says even the craven tax collectors do (v. 46). It seems like this would raise an obvious question: when Jesus asks us to love and forgive our enemies, is he asking us to be better than some small-minded, putz of a god? Or rather, is he telling us to love the unloveable because this is precisely how the real God is (v. 48)?  

Notice the little ironies that occur when we compare the “I got saved” Christian above, who proudly claims, “I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior,” to Pete Rollins, who claims, “I deny the resurrection.” The “I got saved” Christian, we might imagine, searches desperately day and night for the perfect apology (a rationalization or explanation for a certain belief or what Rollins calls a “power discourse”[1]) with which he might beat down the arguments of his “secular” friends in order to persuade them (and himself) of the rightness of his thinking. But by making the truth of the resurrection depend so heavily on his own mental agreement—by making his own verbal confirmation the active ingredient in God’s love—he has a funny way of turning “the resurrection” into an outgrowth of his own ego, not an act of God that happened with or without anyone else’s consent.

No wonder so many in our culture become so belligerent and defensive when you question their version of “resurrection faith,” it veritably doesn’t exist outside the chemicals and movements of their mind. I don’t just mean that non-believers would see it this way. These Christians themselves seem wary that their doctrines, their worldview and even their God might just be hanging perilously by a neurological thread.

By way of contrast, Rollins, with his nonchalance about making a “case” for the resurrection but his adamancy about living into its implications (standing up for those who are on their knees, crying out for those whose tongues have been torn out, etc.), has a funny way of letting the resurrection have a reality outside himself.

I once read that the otherwise very pious theologian Karl Barth’s belief in the radical “otherness” of God, the gaping distance that separates God’s ways from humanity’s ways, was precisely what allowed him to have a carefree drink and a cigar in the parlor. Similarly, Rollin’s version of the resurrection story doesn’t seem to depend on him at all for its reality. Yet it can be revealed wherever and whenever he manages to live up to his discipleship calling.

Making no effort to prove his “orthodox” adherence to some bloodless doctrine about the resurrection, Rollins skips right to what resurrection living looks like. He paints a picture of resurrection’s beauty which we already recognize in our hearts when we see it, yet which happens outside of us and regardless of us.

When we learn of a God who made the decision to resurrect and reconcile the world unilaterally, that is, without consulting any of us, that will be the first and biggest step toward the end of Christian tribalism.

Christian tribalism, part 1: the problem with “Matrix Christianity.”

I picked up a disturbing book today, the sort you would only find on a derelict, old bookshelf in a dusty, church library, written by…we’ll call him Ludwig Churchman. This book offered nothing new in the way of thought…or really, nothing in the way of thought. But because I spend most of my study time with books that are…umm, hi, uhh…good, I was appalled at how uncritically and effortlessly he was able to restate every stupid thing that has ever subverted the radicalness of the Christian faith. One passage in particular read:

Peter said, “There is salvation in no one else” (Acts 4.12). Is that true?...How about people who have never heard of Jesus? It is not up to us to decide their fate. God alone knows how to judge them. Even they, however, if they are saved, are saved because Jesus has won the battle and has paid the price for them.

What interests me here are not the stock answers that we’ve all heard out of the mouths of Christians at some point or another but the (don’t get thrown off by this one) metanarrative from which they predictably flow. A metanarrative is the biggest story around all the other stories by which we make sense of reality. It is so big and all-encompassing that we don’t even realize it’s there, just as a fish doesn’t realize that they’re swimming in water. So, for instance, one narrative or smaller story that many Americans are especially fond of is: “People that work hard will rise to the top.” This small story is often debated, of course, but the metanarrative, the story so big that most don’t even realize it’s there, let alone debate its validity, is: “The top (a place defined by high status, power, and wealth) is a desirable place to be.”  Many devote their entire lives to this big story, and for that very reason, don’t consider that it could be any other way. Americans may be especially worshipful toward this big story, but we didn’t invent it. Blogs don’t allow enough characters to cite all the places where Jesus challenged it in his own time. We’ll just say it’s almost all he ever talked about in our gospels.

So that’s a metanarrative, now, back to this stupid book. This passage may not strike anyone as the most belligerently tribalistic that they’ve ever heard. But (aside from the fact that it’s the first thing I turned to) I cite it because it’s precisely when Christians try to be this innocuous and non-committal that the tribalism of their metanarrative becomes the most powerful. Like when someone speaks with a passive aggressive tone, what’s really disturbing is that you agree with the words that they’re saying…except, you don’t. What I mean is, and this is really devilish, the whole passage can take on a completely different meaning depending on the assumptions the reader brings to it.

There is no shortage of stupidity here, and there isn’t time to cover it all, but the real shenanigans begin with the assumptions that almost definitely undergird Mr. Churchman’s words—that he unquestioningly assumes that salvation is something so simple and straightforward that we need not discuss it beyond who’s in and who’s out, that who’s in and who’s out is decided by fate (which would seem to contradict his other assumption that it actually matters with regard to salvation whether one is a Christian), that God keeps a ledger of all the sins of humanity and refuses to balance it until someone suffers (theologians call this “substitutionary atonement” and its image of God as a “divine child-abuser” doesn’t jive well with the concept of radical grace where God just throws the ledger out entirely)—but the metanarrative I want to focus on, that the author obviously takes for granted is that God’s salvation can somehow be tapped into by certain people, namely Christians. Like when that metal thing is inserted into the back of Neo’s head, and he is suddenly “plugged in” to “The Matrix,” this author takes for granted that something has clicked somehow in the minds of Christians, and they now have some sort of special access to salvation. 

For maximum irony, he’s commenting on the book of Acts which, looking at it as a whole rather than misusing one of its verses, could be summarized as the story of the Holy Spirit running roughshod over the entire world completely uninvited from “Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1.8). Salvation in this book is a unilateral movement of God’s Spirit. It sucks pious Pharisees and impious jail-keepers and Athenian philosophers and Roman centurions into its vortex willy-nilly. That anyone would claim any kind of special access to the Holy Spirits’ movements in Acts is absurd and unthinkable.

Just so there’s no confusion, the so-called “mainstream denominations” (Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) have subtle (and, of course, polite) ways of doing the same ledger-keeping that goes on in Evangelical circles with their more in-your-face litmus test, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior?” Frankly, while still very stupid, the in-your-face brand of exclusionism might be refreshing in congregations that have learned, institutionally, to demand the same thing but with a passive smile on their faces. For Lutherans, this is especially ironic since we talk so much about grace which, by definition, can’t coexist with any kind of litmus test.

This series of blogs starts with the assumption that God either saves the whole world and is therefore worthy of worship or doesn’t and isn’t. It’s intended to deconstruct this pervasive “big story” that is almost never questioned: that God’s salvation can be specially tapped into by some to the exclusion of others.

the second cave

This is a variation on Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, but it’s not necessary to have read that first. If interested, see http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html.

Behold! Some human beings lived in a cave, which had a mouth open towards the light. Here, they had been since birth, always staring at the back wall. See, the light entered the cave in such a way that it passed over their heads, so when people outside the cave would shuffle by carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues, and figures of animals, the cave people would see these shadows projected onto the wall. And given the echoes around the cave, when one of the passers-by spoke, they’d presume that the voice which they heard had come from the passing shadow.

They quite liked the daily show of shadows—devoted themselves, even. It distracted them from the boredom and drudgery of living in a darkened cave. For fear that all else was darkness, they made a pact that each one would look neither to the right nor to the left but only stare straight ahead at the shadows. When someone would get curious and start to turn their head around to see what was behind, they would use rocks to bludgeon that person to death, all the while careful not to look back themselves. No one wants to believe that everything around them is darkness.

Besides,they were sure that the shadows were all there was to see.

Shadows cannot reach out and grab one. There is nothing fearsome or imposing about them. They can only distract and entertain. So while there was not much to get excited about in the cave, there was little to get upset about either. Things were just nice enough. And the cave people were nice enough too. Why should it be otherwise? Like the shadows they worshipped, the cave people were careful not to intrude on one another’s space; no one was ever guilty of an offense, though offenses occasionally just “happened” as if by their own accord; and if something negative needed to be said, it was never without a positive preamble.

Very nice, indeed.

Now, there was still another cave, the entrance of which was just to the left of the first. And unlike the cave on the right, this one had no shadows. The narrow, winding entrance allowed no light to enter.

The people of this cave, the left cavers, had nothing to look at, they just groped around in darkness all day long. In all the sheer misery of living in a pitch-dark cave, the left cavers were never shy about voicing how they felt. On occasion, when one would cry out in agony, the others would allow it having often done the same, themselves.  

One day while stumbling about aimlessly one of the left cavers felt a small crawl space in the wall. It was the passage to the outside. As he started to crawl through the space, he began to experience a sharp pain at front of his face unlike anything he’d ever felt. It was the glare of light on his eyes, and as he continued to crawl, the pain became more intense until even the red glow beyond his eyelids was painful. But he also felt elated somehow, like a sort of warm air had been breathed into his cave-hardened chest. Excitedly, he backed out of the passage to alert the others to his discovery.

The light outside was far too bright for their unaccustomed senses. But shielding their eyes and focusing on the blurry ground, they were thrilled even to feel its balmy heat on their skin. This, even though they could not make out what sort of strange new place this was. 

Everything else is joy to people born in darkness. 

Little by little, as their eyes began to distinguish their surroundings, they noticed that there was another cave, the one to the right. Joyously, they rushed in to free anyone within and share with them what they’d found. Finding the right cavers staring at shadows, the left cavers began to shout and sing and dance about in the entrance to get their attention. But naturally, the right cavers thought that this was just a lively new show that they had never seen before. Of course, they knew, the shadows were all that was there.

As I wrote this, I had in my head the difference between loving God and loving religion. But you are welcome to hear in it something else, if you like.

the radical discipleship of little old church ladies...

I’m definitely not alone on this. The moment my faith first mattered to me was the moment I discovered that Jesus was not, in fact, the lame white guy, smiling meekly in the halls of my childhood congregation. Just the opposite, actually—Jesus was a badass.

For all of us little boys (and quite a few girls) formed in the sanitized surroundings of suburbia, whose need for danger, and adventure, and purpose was lived out vicariously through Indiana Jones in childhood, James Bond in adolescence, and Che Guevara in college, the discovery of badass Jesus is very nearly the difference between life and death.

We want to ride the wave of that initial discovery, whatever the cost. We go running off into inner cities and far off countries fearful that we might lose it.

This is really valuable formation time for us. I wouldn’t trade this part of my story for anything. At some level, I hope it continues for the rest of my life. But at some point we need to integrate our image of badass Jesus into the life we’re actually living, not the life we fantasize about living in our highest ideals. Hardly willing to confess the reality of our middle class lives, we risk becoming caricatures of disciples. Still benefitting from middle class upbringings and middle class educations and middle class incomes, our hypocrisy becomes every bit as entrenched as that of the pseudo-Christianity we rebelled against, our devotion to Jesus every bit as vicarious as our devotion to Bond.   

At the height of my reforming zeal, it was very clear to me that what the church needed was a good clearance sale, everything must go. The church was in disrepair and I was going to repair it, dammit. Terms like “Constantinian” and “Churchianity” and “American civil religion” became a part of my everyday lexicon. The church of yesterday had sold out, far too many accommodations to the culture.

I had become what the ancients referred to as “a jerk.”

Sure, I would have cluttered it up with some snotty verbiage about the “thin tradition” and the “saints in every age,” but the simple version of my simplistic worldview was still that church of yesteryear had gotten it wrong and I was going to get it right. The problem was nearly as clear to me as a Colorado spring. Nearly. There was just one pervasive fact of church life that kept clouding it up. Little old church ladies.

It seems that every moment I’d finally settled into the black and whiteness of this narrative—out with the old, in with the new, new wine needs new wineskins, and so on—I’d turn around and there’d be some old church lady knitting a quilt for the poor, praying with the sick, bringing a warm meal to the grieving.

As I made my way through seminary, I’d gradually find bigger and bigger stages on which to talk. Man, I loved to talk. I was good at talking. I’d talk about everything I was going to do to lead a more Christ-like church into a new age. People loved my words. I loved their accolades. Meanwhile, some old church lady would be washing dishes in the basement or setting up some floral arrangement in the Narthex for someone who had died.

At this time, I’m quite certain that I would have explained to Jesus how “service needs to be the ‘calling card’ of the ‘cruciform church’” just as he was bending down to wash my feet.  

So here’s what I predict: I’ll continue to talk, and emergent church leaders will continue to talk, and mainstream church leaders will continue to talk, and conservative church leaders will continue to talk, and in each of their basements some little old church ladies will continue to get shit done for the kingdom of God.

If the church is going to become more Christ-like, it won’t be because of Guevara-wannabe hotheads like myself who are ready to take a can of gasoline and a match to two thousand years of church history. If the church is going to change, it will be because of love. The kind of patient, unpretentious love that little old church ladies have been trying to teach us since Easter morning.