Where has Jesus Gone?
Jul 14th
The other day as I drove by a church I noticed one of the clever and witty signs that they love to put out front these days. It said something to the effect of “The Company You Keep Determines The Trouble You Reap“. At first glance, I thought “stupid but, sure, that makes sense”. About a second later it hit me like a ton of bricks: Didn’t the Pharisees say almost the exact same thing to Jesus, accusing him of hanging around with ’sinners’? Didn’t they demonize him and call him dirty and unGodly because of the company he kept?
The longer I think about who Jesus was and the harder I look at the Christianity that surrounds me here in America, the more I think the church is starting to look a whole lot more like the Pharisees than Christ.
When Did It Change?
I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m an anti-establishment soul. Red tape, processes, and administrative boards make me incredibly angry. So, maybe it’s this fact that causes me to view Jesus different than others might, but the more I look, the harder it is for me to believe that I’m seeing Him through a personal bias.
I’m just as tired as anyone of these “Radical Jesus” books and ministries and view points. There’s been a recent surge in pop-Christianity that has emphasized this Hippie Jesus, turning Him more and more into a drug-free Jim Morrison. So, don’t hear me supporting that movement with what I say here….but….
Jesus was a Radical. Jesus was anti-establishment. Jesus loved the unlovable and helped the untouchable. Jesus was angry with the traditions that prevented ‘regular people’ from worshiping God, and rejected the dogma of The Church at the time. Jesus derided the ‘personal improvement’ piety of the establishment and forgave those who were a miserable mess (telling them to simply be forgiven and go sin no more).
Where has this Jesus gone?
These days, I can’t pass by a church without hearing a message of self-improvement shouted from the pulpit. Many try and mask it by making them ’spiritual improvements’ or simply calling them something else. Improve your marriage. Improve your prayer life. Improve your financial situation. Improve your connections with people. Stop drinking. Stop doing drugs. Stop being gay. Stop having abortions. Stop voting for baby killers. Stop hating your job. Stop, basically, sucking at being human. You can be a good person. You can live up to our invisible standard. You can do it if you just stop sinning.
I hope we all understand how asinine that last paragraph really is. Because, guess what? We CAN’T stop sinning. We CAN’T improve ourselves. And we CAN’T be anything but a broken mess. All of us. Pastors. Homosexuals. Bible Teachers. Abortion Doctors. Small Group Leaders. Rapists. And everyone in between. We’re all broken and we’re all helpless…there’s nothing we can do to improve ourselves.
What does this mean? We need to stop thinking about ourselves so damn much. It’s not about us. Jesus made that clear. When he preached a message of “Lean on God because you can’t save yourself” that was pretty radical. That was pretty anti-establishment. Where has that message gone?
If I were a church
So, here’s the segment where I talk about how churches should change.
- They need to start being honest with their messages. They need to honestly identify these sermons of self-help (which they call by many ’spiritual’ names) and jettison them.
- They need to start preaching brokenness (see previous blog entry)
- They need to start preaching the REAL Jesus. They need to stop preaching “suit and tie, Leave it to Beaver, become a better person” Christianity and start preaching “insane John the Baptist, congregating with sinners, knocking over tables in the temple, homeless, mystical, irrational loving, anti-establishment” Christianity. A Christianity that looks foolish because of it’s over abundance of grace, love, and trust, even when others don’t ‘deserve’ it.
But I’m not a Church. And I don’t want to be.
The problem is, I’m not a church. I’m not an institution. And I’m not going to get tangled up in the structure to try and change it. The structure IS the problem…we don’t know how to live as Christians outside of that structure. So, if I can’t/won’t change the structure, I’ll continue to chip away at it. Hopefully, as an archeologist does when uncovering history encased in rock, I’ll be able to destroy the rock without the treasure inside. Hopefully I’ll be able to slowly destroy the structure of American church while preserving the precious faith encased (and paralyzed) inside.
How?
The other day I saw a news report about The Tea Party Movement. (I’m going to offend people’s politics here, I’m sure, but…whatever.) They were described as a movement based on anger and backlash without any substance of their own. A politician (believe it or not) made a wise statement when he said “Anger is fine, but a government RUN by anger (if they were elected) is not a healthy thing”.
I immediately thought of my constant attack on the church. Are these blog posts and my frequent rants Tea-Party-esque in the sense that it’s a lot of anger without much substance? If I could actually change the structure, would I have any ideas based, not on anger, but on positive progress? If I could be a local church would I be more like the Radical Jesus or would I simply continue reacting negatively to the old ways that angered me so much?
I think it’s hard for me to answer because I see things more complicated than that. I think my solution would be to destroy the system completely and continue to work outside of it as an individual. The following of Christ shouldn’t be a systematic thing. If there’s anything that the Lost Radical Jesus showed us this is it. We should be striving, not to be a ‘good person part of a good system’ but to be a broken person leaning on God and trying to do our best to heal those around us. We should be more like that individual Jesus I see in the bible and less like the systematic church I see in America.
So, do I have a solution? I think I do. But it’s a solution that exists outside of the local church. It’s wholy dependent on people disconnecting from the system and learning to Live Christ as individuals…so that solution looks different for everyone.
I hope, in some way, you’ll join me in this. Call out your local church on it’s self-help messages. Reject ‘button down’ Christianity. Embrace irrational love of your neighbors and personal responsibility for faith. As the famously over-used quote from Gandhi says: Be The Change You Want To See In The World (and, I’d add, ‘dont wait for the church to be that change). That’s the best I can do, in my own broken way, each and every day.
What’s the difference?
Jun 30th
One of the most important experiences any Christian can have is to to be philosophically outnumbered. I’m talking about being in a situation on a constant basis where your worldview most likely doesn’t jive with everyone else’s. This is when you are forced into honest perspectives about our Faith and the people around you and start to see the world a little more as God sees it. Let me explain, starting with a situation I find myself in lately:
Yoga
About a year ago now, I discovered the awesomeness that is yoga. I always hated working out…I found it boring and repetitive. I found lifting weights the mental equivalent of watching Everybody Loves Raymond. I’m more of a PBS guy myself…so when I discovered the amazing mental practice involved in yoga, I finally found some exercise that worked for me. I actually go more for it’s mental and spiritual benefits than it’s physical ones (although those are a killer bonus!)
I arrive at yoga each time looking forward to a deep rest period (albeit, one that makes you sweat your ass off). When I step in the room, the air is just different. Life looks different. People in the studio with me seem different. Everyone is suddenly more cerebral, more spiritual. In my experience, this is something I haven’t experienced anywhere outside of a place of worship (and only very rarely at this level, even in a church). There’s a heavy focus on the soul..there’s a different view on the world from inside that room than outside it.
Worldviews
As you may expect, when in that yoga class, my worldview often collides with that of those around me. Not in an obvious way, but in an internal way within myself. Since yoga is based on a spiritual worldview different than my own, I’m challenged to reconcile what I hear and what surrounds me with the world that I’ve experienced through Jesus Christ. I’m in that environment I was talking about: A place where I’m greatly outnumbered philosophically. And, ya know what? It’s been extremely healthy for my worldview and my faith.
This is gonna get uncomfortable
Ok, for all my Christian friends, this discussion is about to get uncomfortable. It’s about to get extremely challenging. And it’s about to get truthful.
You see, when you’re surrounded by folks outside the faith you find that they’re no different than yourself in most ways (duh!), but when you surround yourself with folks of a different spiritual or philosophical worldview you find something even more shocking (at least if you believe most popular Christian thinking out there): Modern Christians aren’t very different (mentally, spiritually, morally) from those that follow other spiritual practices. Not very different AT ALL.
This statement isn’t shocking to folks outside the faith…I hear a collective “duh! we already knew that” as I type this. However, for those inside the faith, this is blasphemy.
What We All Share
When in this environment of being spiritually ‘outnumbered’, you find out some things about both yourself and others pretty quickly. Contrary to what modern Christians may preach, the “world out there” isn’t any less spiritual than we are. Folks outside the faith understand prayer, they understand forgiveness, they teach love and respect, they know humbleness. These things are all cornerstones of other faiths (and of just normal, everyday, ‘be a good guy’ living). Folks “out there” know what real love is…they know what sacrifice is…they know what it means to submit yourself out of love for others. They are kind to their children and their friends, they are seeking spiritual truths and trying to better themselves.
Contrary to what many Christians think (and goes unsaid in churches all over the US each week): The people outside the church walls are good people. They’re moral people. They’re spiritual people….just like us Christians.
So, what’s the difference?
As I thought about this I was stopped suddenly in my tracks. I realized that if you look at 95% of what we believe the Christian faith to be…nothing about it is unique. We’re just like anyone else. So, take this one more shocking step: I would suggest that since we share this 95% of what we think our faith means with everyone else, this isn’t what Christianity is about. If we’re trying to find the difference between Christianity and every other religion (including many secular atheists) it’s not found in love, or humility, or sacrifice, or prayer, or honesty, or the seeking of truth. These things are found in many, many people (and are the bedrock of many faiths) outside of our own.
So, I ask you…what’s the difference between being a Christian and not?
Subtlety
At this point there’s two lessons to be seen: First, for those outside the faith: Christianity isn’t about good works. It’s not about our love for each other. It’s not what most Christians say it is. It’s much more subtle than that. Second, for Christians: Stop thinking these things are unique to our faith. “The World” is not full of evil people waiting to tear you down. The majority of people are spiritually VERY similar to you, and about as ‘good’ as you…so stop acting and talking like they’re not.
When we learn those lessons, we must ask again: What’s the difference? There obviously is one…somewhere. It must be a very understated, but VERY important one, otherwise Christianity might as well be any other religion (or no religion at all).
The Breaking Point
Some of you may be having an imaginary argument with me right now. You may be telling me I’m foolish because I think people are good, people are loving, and people are humble. You’re invariably going to “The Hitler Argument” (where people in arguments about good and evil always end up) or you’ve written me off as a disconnected hippie. If you are thinking that, you’re assuming that I said that people are ALWAYS good, ALWAYS humble, ALWAYS loving. But I never said that. I said that when it comes to love and humility and goodness, people outside Christianity are about the same as those inside. I never declared people always good…that’s too one dimensional and, obviously, just not true.
So, if on our best days Christians and Non Christians alike can be equally moral and equally loving, that’s not where the difference is found. So, what about the other times? Just like we can all be loving, we can all be hateful. We can all be cruel. We can all be selfish and arrogant. Christians and non-believers are no different…we’re all equally broken. The question becomes: What do we do with our brokenness? Our hate? Our anger?
I would suggest that we may have stumbled onto the difference.
Watch Someone’s Bad Day
When work goes south. When there’s death and sickness at the doorstep. When we’ve been wronged. When we step outside that yoga studio and resume life. These are times when, I’m starting to believe, the difference in being a Christian can be seen. If you could watch someone’s bad day, I think it would tell you alot about their spirituality. It’s easy to be ’spiritual’ and loving when things are good (or at least not bad)…as I’ve mentioned, we can all do that equally well. But how does a person see life when things are falling down all around them? How do they react? Who do they blame? Where do they hide?
I’m not going to suggest that all folks who claim to be Christian become suddenly zen when things go badly. But I am going to suggest that someone truly following Jesus will look different than someone praying to the Buddha. I’m not prepared to predict exactly how they’ll look different…but they will. Whatever difference you find in that moment is the core of Christianity. Who we are and what we do when ‘life happens’ is what separates worldviews and is proof of what we really believe deep inside.
Truth in Brokenness
I wish we, as Christians, would stop talking about how ‘evil’ the world is. It’s a waste of breath and it’s a lie. “The World” is no more evil than we are. It’s also no more loving. I wish we’d preach the difference in brokenness. I wish we’d stop thinking we’re ‘better’ and realize we’re the same broken, loving, sinful, angry, good, beautiful, spiritual, prayerful, hateful, truth-seekers as everyone else. For a faith whose birth lies in The Garden, we should know this more than anyone.
Let’s stop treating other faiths as something they’re not (inferior and full of lies). Let’s acknowledge that we have almost everything in common with others on their spiritual journey so we can peel away the layers and get to the difference, the piece that makes them incomplete: the embracing of brokenness and the need for a Perfect Healer.
From now on, I’ll see the spreading of the gospel differently. It’s not about love, it’s about healing. It’s not that other religions are completely “wrong”..they’re mostly just incomplete. There’s just a statue or a story (or even a blank hole) where a Healer should be. The difference is in the brokenness and where we go to be made whole again.
We are all made in His image. We were all born in The Garden. We were all thrown out for our disobedience. We are a mess of love and brokenness all mixed up. The difference in our worldviews is all found in one question: When we find this to be true…where do we go from there?
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