As we embark on an unsettling and tentative new year, let us examine a model of "types of Christian faith" that I see making the rounds:
Fire and Fury Christians. These are folk whose faith mirrors the primitive experience of the earliest believers from the pages of the Hebrew Bible. In more simplistic times, the authors of these chronicles posit a loving God, but one who tries to govern by strict "rule of law." Sort of a "Here are some commandments--follow these and we'll be buds" arrangement. Of course, this view isn't an accurate one of Yahweh, the God of the Bible, because it is being told through the eyes and pen of the human experience. Ancient people tend to use ancient lenses, without the benefit of later learning and experience, in describing God and their relationship with God. One doesn't have to use much deeper scholarship to discover the authentic Yahweh--the Yahweh as revealed later in Jesus Christ--in these narratives, but one does have to dig a bit. Taking a lot of things from the Hebrew Bible at literal, "face" value, especially the parts about God's "fire and fury," "smiting," and demands that highly specific commandments be followed to a "T" leads one to posit a God that some have incorrectly labeled "the God of the Old Testament" at best, and one that is strictly cause and effect, meting out punishment rather gleefully when an infraction is flagged. (Since this sounds like a football allusion, let me use another: Fire and Fury Christians often have a fearful relationship with God in the same way that late Ohio State football coach Woody Hays related to passing the ball: "Three things can happen, and two of them are bad!") Responsible scholarship of these ancient texts doesn't allow this theological "boiling down" of what is a pretty complex thing--the relationship between the Creator and the created, between Yahweh and the "children" of Yahweh. Fire and Fury Christians can develop a nasty habit of being judgmental, prepared to cite a text and hammer someone with it. You will hear phrases like "keeping the covenant" and "the Bible is true" being used as signs of faithfulness. And no, I'm not just talking about the current flap over inclusion/exclusion of LGBTQIA persons in my denomination. Much more is at stake here. This goes to our very understanding of the nature of God. In this venue, simple is not a good thing. This is important, complex stuff, and the survival of the people of God depends on us not rushing to judgment. This may be why God--and Jesus in the New Testament--tells us to leave this alone, and up to God, ultimately.
Reconciling and Loving Christians. The more theology I "do," the older (and hopefully wiser) I get, and the more of the people of God with whom I am privileged to interact, the more I am drawn to a view of faith that participates with God in God's action as stated in II Corinthians 5:
8 All of these new things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and who gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 In other words, God was reconciling the world to God through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. God has trusted us with this message of reconciliation.
20 So we are ambassadors who represent Christ. God is negotiating with you through us. We beg you as Christ’s representatives, “Be reconciled to God!”21 God caused the one who didn’t know sin to be sin for our sake so that through Christ we could become the righteousness of God.
If this is what God is really up to--and note that it is God's action, meaning that even Christians don't have a corner on HOW God is doing this--we are called to be "ambassadors" of it, not prosecutor, jury, and judge as to whom God is pardoning and including. This is the reconciling part--we are called to find as many ways to include people in the "family" of God on this earth, not build walls to keep out the ones we think have "broken the covenant." And then there is the loving aspect of this particular vision of what it means to be Christian: Many of us Wesleyans believe that what John Wesley meant when he talked about "holiness" and "perfection" was his "primitive" way to say that the ultimate pursuit of Christian perfection is learning how to love perfectly as Christ did. It's not about how "clean scrubbed" we are (Jesus took care of that, anyway), but about how broadly, deeply, inclusively, diversely, and justly we can love others. This is a really hard thing. Really hard. And maybe this is why some give it up as the ultimate aim and fall back on rules, "keeping covenants," and drawing lines as to who is "in" and who is "out," or at least in peril of being "out." I also know that our brains are "wired" differently, with some tending to default to the "rule" thing much more quickly than others because of in innate need for "clear margins." Still, this does not excuse them from righteousness, which, according to Jesus, has much more to do with loving one's neighbor than surveying our property lines and fencing ourselves off from those who disgust us or make us fearful. As one committed to becoming a Reconciling and Loving Christian, I have to admit to not making much progress, and I don't have a lot of time left! It's often one of those "take three steps forward and two-and-a-half back" journeys, at least for yours truly. But I have to say, when I am "successful" at offering an olive branch to someone who feels like God has judged them and found them wanting, welcoming them fully into the presence, grace, and fellowship of God, it really makes me feel more like Jesus than about anything else I do. It's worth the effort. And then I get behind the wheel of my car and the whole thing "goes to hell" in a matter of minutes. See what I mean?Destiny Christians. I added this category after listing for a radio ad for the "Joel Osteen" channel on Sirius XM radio. God love him, Joel proudly announces in this ad, "Everything you need to realize your destiny is within reach!" What destiny? We have no "destiny"other than the life we have been given, the opportunity to build a legitimate human community of justice and peace, and the offer of God to be part of God's action in "reconciling the world to Godself." There is no specific destiny promised to us as individuals--no promise of success, no promise of wealth or "American superiority" or even perpetual happiness. (Even the Founding Fathers of this nation said we should have the right to pursue happiness--no guarantees of it!) The biblical questions are: "What will you do with what you have been given? And whom will you serve?" Remember all of the arguments among Christ's disciples about which one would sit at his right hand? Or which of them was the greatest? These are destiny questions, and Jesus' answer to them was 180 degrees in the opposite direction of what the twelve were expecting to hear. Servant of all? That doesn't sound like a Joel Osteen theology to me!
I can listen to intelligent arguments about the first two types of "Christian" and possibly even that the "truth" may even be in some hybrid of the two. But if you want to be a Christian, please, please run with all of your might from this Osteen crap. There are no Destiny Christians, unless you count a really bad destination as your ultimate aim.
As for me and my house, I'm going to keep working on the Reconciling and Loving faith. May 2018 be a year when I--and we--take three steps forward, and maybe only ONE backward! Shalom, Yinz!
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