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:
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment