(this is the 5th and final post in my systematic living series)

Fit into the system or get out!

If you were privy to this URL before my recent 2-year blog shutdown you probably already know everything I’m going to say in the following paragraphs.  For years I ranted about the state of Christianity in the western world (particularly the American brand) and how off-track it has seemed.  Since then I’ve read many books, attended a few different churches for months at a time, and tried to find out why I was wrong.  Afterall, EVERYONE was telling me I was wrong.  I sought earnestly after justification of what seemed so wrong to me.  I tried to fit into a church and be a “good Christian”.  I even thought about joining a small group (if you’re outside the faith, think of these as manufactured friendships that you’re required to have ;)).  But ya know what I found on that journey?  Ya know what I realized after many years of honestly and earnestly seeking a proper view of church?

I was right all along.  The modern church is jacked up and has virtually nothing to do with The Bible or Jesus Christ.

It’s funny because the above statement will evoke two opposite responses depending on who you are.  If you’re a Christian who attends church weekly, is part of a small group, gets your paycheck from a congregation, or otherwise accepts the modern church as “the will of God”, you’ll write me off as another angry person who was somehow hurt by the church and now has an agenda against it.  If you’re a non-Christian, someone who has been turned off to faith because of the church you’re reaction will be quite different.  It’ll be more along the lines of: Yeah.  I already knew that.

So, what’s wrong with the church?  Why do I have such strong statements about it?  As I said, I’ve gone over this a million times and don’t really have the energy to say it again.  So, here’s just a few bullet points of the issues as I see them.

• Above all the church, and by extension the brand of Christianity we profess, is systematic. “To be a good Christian you do this, don’t do that…you live like this, you give your money here, you pray like this, you study the Bible this often….blah blah blah”.  It’s all crap.  Jesus came to destroy the systematic living of the Old Testament and we’ve done nothing but reestablish it.
• The church is no longer a group of believers. It’s a 501c3 non-profit business style entity.  It has policies, procedures, paychecks, mortgages, janitors, and boards.  It spends more time managing all this worthless junk than it does living the life Jesus calls us to.  It’s a waste of time, money, and in the end because of an incorrect focus, it’s giving many people a wrong impression of the faith and what it means to be The Church.
• The church is disconnected radically from everyday life. When you walk into a church you’re supposed to dress differently, act differently, talk differently, pray differently, and sing differently.  If you swear outside the church, you better not do it inside.  If you have a naturally loud voice, you better not even TALK inside the church…or else.  Again, Jesus came to abolish all this disconnection and false piety.  It’s the stuff of the Pharisees.
• Churches now fall into 2 categories:  Old & dead or Entertainment. Neither has anything to do with Christ.  Both bore me or make me angry because they’re leading people astray.

Let me clarify that I’m not talking, here, about little things that need to change about the church.  I’m suggesting that our entire concept of “church” is wrong. We would need to tear down our buildings, dismatle the staff and boards, and start anew if we were to get closer to what I believe God intends for us to be.  Too many times when I talk about the church being off track the answer I hear is “Well…OUR church isn’t off track”.  If your church has a building, a full time staff, ‘ministries’, or a board…then yes it is (according to my defintion).  So, a change in worship style, getting younger leaders, or becoming a more ‘organic’ church with new branding doesn’t fix anything I’m talking about…just in case you’re missing my point.  Let me also say that I want the church to be healthy and everything God wants.  I don’t want to see the church go away…I want it to be the church of the Bible..healthy and pleasing to God. (and if you’re thinking I’m talking about the house-church movement or ‘Acts churches’, again, you’re missing the point)

Once in a while God steps in and gives me a little nudge in a direction I need.  He did this yesterday and it was some much needed encouragement to say with boldness everything that you’ve read above.  He put a book into my hands called Pagan Christianity which exposes much of what I say above, but on a much more studied and in depth scale.  It was the encouragement I needed to move ahead bravely with the belief that the Christian faith as become systematic and disconnecting from this system is ok (or possibly even something God wants).  I’m not talking about disbelieving the Bible or ceasing my relationship with Jesus. These have nothing to do with the systematic problem.  I’m a believer in Christ and, as long as He continues to help me believe, I always will be.  The church, and the mess that it is, will never change that.  But there is a point where I no longer am willing to be a part of the system as an active supporter of this mess.

However, here’s the caveat to disconnecting from the church:  If you do that, you must continue to meet and study and pray with fellow believers, and this I am doing.  I’m not saying it’s ok to make your faith “a personal journey” and still be a follower of Jesus.  That flies in the face of everything the Bible teaches.  What I’m saying is that you can have real relationship, real study, real Christian life outside of this systematic church. It’s harder, but it’s also the real thing.  It’s not a systematic solution, it’s an organic one and it’s the one Christ intends for us.

So, while I’ll probably continue to attend a systematic church (if I’m honest, it’s more for my daughter than for me or my wife) I won’t put much stock in it.  I won’t support the system in any way.  I won’t be bullied or insulted into being a part of something that Jesus neither envisioned or (in my opinion) entirely approves of.  But I will continue to be a person who follows Christ the best I know how.  Nothing a systematic Church can say or do will stop this real relationship from growing until the day I go “home”:  A place without system and a place of pure relationship.

(this is the 4th post in my systematic living series)

See all that grass behind me? That's how I roll...

In the Fall of 2008 my eating started to change pretty dramatically.  Mostly it was due to some wakeup calls by all the clichely referenced authors of my generation (Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser, Mark Bittman, et al) where I realized that, as Jamie Oliver puts it:  “We demand the best of everything from our beer selection to our running shoes, but we’ll put just about anything in our mouths”.  We have such high standards for things that don’t matter, yet we never think about what we’re putting in our bodies to be our fuel and, literally, our biological makeup.  So, one day last Autumn…I started paying attention.

Now, when I talk about “paying attention” I, of course, mean paying attention to the quality of food that I’m eating, the amount of processing that happened before it went down my gullet, and the actual ingredients that went into making what I was eating (as a side note, it’s it strange that foods we buy have “ingredients”?  That tells you how little we prepare our own foods anymore.  Ingredients means you’re trusting someone else to prepare your food for you….ok, tangent over)

However, thinking about what made up the food I ate wasn’t limited to the ingredients.  Every single food item we purchase has massive political, social, ethical, and even religious implications. (Do you think I’m overstating it?  If so, spend some weeks reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, Fast Food Nation, or go see Food Inc. and then let’s talk.) It’s not all about the food…it’s also about the way the food was made, who made it, how they were treated and compensated..and it’s also about how the FOOD was treated before it became food.

I’m no bleeding heart…but I do have a responsible conscience.  I also have a faith that presides over all of these decisions, which is why, to all outsiders, it looks like I’m a vegetarian.

Years ago when I was having some tattoo work done, the artist and I spent lots of time talking.  He was a vegan and I was a Christian and we were both interested in each other’s views on the world.  One question he asked that stuck with me to this day was “Why aren’t there more Christian vegetarians? Afterall, that’s the way your Bible says God originally  made us, before original sin”.  Bam. There it was.  My first exposure to faith and food issues intersecting.

Years later, this question still haunts me.  Not just because this is “the way it was in the beginning”, but for a more pressing reason:  This is God’s planet…people are God’s people…animals are God’s animals and, to put it bluntly, our food system (and therefore us, as consumers) treat all of them like shit.

I can’t possibly describe the conditions that the laborers experience in animal processing industry, but I can assure you:  It’s degrading, neglectful, and very, very dangerous.  These are God’s people and when I support the company that treats them like this, I’m responsible. Then, there’s the animals.  They are packed into areas where they stand knee high in their own crap for months on end.  They aren’t allowed to move so they get fatter quicker.  They get sick because of how they’re treated and fed and then we shoot them up with drugs so they’ll last just long enough so we can kill them in a pretty inhumane way.  These are God’s animals and when I support the company that treats them like this, I’m responsible. At the risk of sounding like a hippie, I’ll also point out that our industrial food system is destroying the planet with it’s monoculture, massive amounts of fertilizer, and total neglect for soil health.  And yes, if I buy from those companies, I’m responsbile for that too.

So how does all this lead to my title-question?  People see how I eat and they assume I’m a vegetarian. When they ask why I eat this way, they don’t really want the full answer because it makes them feel like I’m judging them (which, truly, I’m not…not everyone should be expected to come to the same conclusions just because I have).  So I respond with the easy answer:  I simply tell them “Yes, I’m a vegetarian.”  But it’s not true.

I’m not someone who thinks meat is bad for us.  On the contrary, I think it’s healthy.  I think God made animals for our use…But, the kicker here is that I think that 99% of the meat available to us is irresponsible (and an insult to God and his creation) and I won’t eat it or support companies who make it.  The ‘easy’ answer, the ’systematic’ answer is to become a raving judgmental and political vegetarian. But I refuse.  That’s just buying into a different system..one that is equally unthiking and indiscriminate.

So, what’s the answer?  It’s harder, but I believe it’s correct:  You must think about every piece of food you put into your body. How was THIS food grown?  How was THIS animal raised?  What does it mean for my faith?  What does it mean for my politics?  If you think through this every time you put something in your mouth I can almost assure you that, in a short time, you’ll also find that the only option is to eat very differently than most of us do now.  We might all look a whole lot more like vegetarians.

In practice, here’s what I’ve come to.  I don’t think it’s systematic and I think it’s in line with the principals of my faith:

• I eat no  factory produced meat (which is literally all meat you get anywhere except directly from a local farm)
• I eat as little processed food as possible. (anything in a box, bag, wrapper, or bottle is going to be processed)
• Generally (although not a hard and fast rule) I eat local meats only once a week. This is more of a personal preference since I actually enjoy eating mostly vegetarian.
• If I buy meat, I talk to the farmer face to face first.  I ask about their farm, their animals, and I listen to their passion and love of their work.  If they don’t love their animals and have a commitment to raising food how it was intended, I won’t buy it.
• When talking with the farmer, I try to build them up and encourage them.  Imagine how hard it must be to be a small farmer fighting the enormous system that says you should be raising your animals feedlot style.

So, am I a vegetarian?  Not really.  Do I eat like one?  Most of the time, I do.  So, next time we have a discussion about this and you ask about my eating habits, don’t ask unless you really want to know the full story.  If you want a short version that just writes me off as crazy so you don’t have to think about changing, don’t expect the truth.  My answer to you will simply be:  Yes.  I’m a vegetarian.