Authority

Us Christians look for revelations in the strangest of places.  We seek truth while we pray in our closets, or from Michael W Smith lyrics, or from obscure passages in Jewish wisdom literature.

And sometimes we miss out on really important things that are right in front of us.

I got revelation just this week, and I got it from the strangest place.  In the middle of a American political party convention.  No, it didn’t come from a politician or a TV commentator or a journalist.  It came from a random delegate.  And it was not meant to be revelatory.  But it was.

After the speeches were over Monday evening, a TV reporter asked a die-hard Bernie Sanders supporter and millennial for her reaction to his speech and who she was going to support going forward, especially given the contentious divisions in their party. 

“I believe anything Bernie says.  He is the one politician I have heard that I absolutely believe.”

“Bernie told you tonight to vote for Hillary Clinton.”

“Well, I don’t believe that.”

And there you have it.  Everything you need to know – not about politics – about the social and historical forces pulling apart the church’s mission in this generation.  It may well be the ultimate question for the church going forward (as Phyllis Tickle has noted).  Where is the authority?

The church’s work has always been about authority.  The truth of our doctrine, the veracity of our teachings, the power of our message stem from their authority, depend on authority.  We are not making one argument among others, we are speaking truth, eternal and immutable truth.  And the authority from which we speak must be indisputable.

That authority is not just us!  It comes to us from without, from beyond, from above.  Whether it was the apostles, the Emperor, the pope, the Priest assigning penance or the Pastor preaching the gospel, the denominational leader or the TV celebrity, authority has always been external.  My willingness to submit to that authority is necessarily dependent on my ability to trust it, to understand it, to willingly submit to it.  Which is not always easy or given.  How do I know these authorities are trustworthy?  What if they are wrong?

Even the scriptures themselves are an external authority.  They are words speaking across a span of time and distance and generations and society, but they are external to me.  And so they suffer the same weakness of all external authority.  Trying to read the Bible literally reveals it to be archaic, internally inconsistent, factually wrong.  Trying to read it metaphorically tempts us to reductionism and escapism.  Since the last great reformation the Bible has been upheld as the ultimate authority of faith and doctrine and practice.  Since the last century, the Bible has been an object of criticism and doubt. 

No wonder that this generation has finally reached the end of the authority rope. 

Do not be mistaken – this is not their fault.  It is ours.  We have insisted on blind obedience to authority and they, educated, sophisticated and plugged-in as they are, have noticed that the emperor has no clothes.  We have taken the veracity and dependability our own faith for granted and assumed that everyone else would, too.  And we have been caught off guard when they refused. 

This generation is calling us to a new measure and definition of authority in the church, and even in the world.  They will no longer simply take our word as authority, but now demand that we bring them into the experience of faith, that we give them something actual and incarnate to hold to as their own.  They do not want to be told what to believe.  They do not even want to be told to believe. 

They want to believe for themselves.  They have to believe for themselves. 

Good for them.  Good for us. 

Wrath

Our imagining of God typically leaves out a most significant feature of the God of the Bible, and especially of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.  In the scriptures, Justice is the name of God, not in the human sense of getting what you deserve but in the divine sense of standing with those who have no one to stand with them.  The entire history of Israel is the story of a God who turns the world upside down by standing on the side of the insignificant and the lost, the second sons and the slaves.  As Jesus walks the earth he eats with sinners and tax collectors, blesses the poor and the hungry, interacts with Gentiles and women (even Gentile women!), gathers a collection of disciples from among fishermen and farmers.  He stands directly, even intimately, with those we callously pronounce unfit and undeserving.  God does not look with kindness from afar on the needy, but identifies with them and takes their side even as he curses the arrogance of the wealthy and powerful for their false conceit. 

An interesting parallel has risen in the world today.  There have been strong reactions to the very name of “Black Lives Matter” movement (not just the issue) as if the name implied that other lives do not, and so we see memes on social media, for example, avowing that “All Lives Matter,” or more recently, “Blue Lives Matter,” in recognition of violence perpetrated against law enforcement officers.  People are appalled by the creation of a victimized class, of any sort, that could potentially be raised above others for special treatment or recognition.  But what does this mean for followers of Jesus, who not only acknowledged the victimization of classes of people like the poor and the sick and the outcast, but considered them especially worthy of his blessing and his grace.  It was the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, the persecuted that he blessed in his teachings (Luke 6:20-26), not the rich, not the good, not the happy. 

Doesn’t everyone know this?  Even those whose are rarely present at a church know that Jesus cares for the unfortunate, the small, the disadvantaged.  The true nature of his heart is known within the church and without.  Yet too often the church does not exemplify that same grace for the world, preferring instead a doctrine of accomplishment, a gospel of prosperity.  We have defined the ethic of work as “protestant” now, as if it were the essence of Christianity, and in doing so have disregarded the God who saves without work. 

As the church, we have preached that the only class worthy of God’s grace are believers, adherents to our structure and our doctrine and our practices.  In the eyes of Jesus, grace was made for those who suffer and are oppressed.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician,” Jesus said, “but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Mark 2:17, NRSV)   He was constantly critical of the most “religious” people of his day, at odds with Pharisees and Sadducees alike.  Instead he lavished his time, energy and attention on the unworthy, the disadvantaged, the lost.  His parables celebrated prodigal sons and lost sheep, his work brought him in contact with the outcast and lepers, whom he welcomed. 

We do not proclaim this gospel or practice this kind of justice in the church because, like society, we only value what is earned, what is merited.  Justice and deserving are synonymous in our eyes.  For God, grace and justice are one.  The kingdom is ordered for the sake of that grace, both the kingdom of this world and the one yet to come.  Our work is defined by such grace, that we should be about the business of those particular souls who should, in fact, especially matter, who particularly live in want of grace.  This is difficult and subtle work, impervious to the clarity of dogma and tradition.  This requires us to leave behind the certainty that protects ourselves and enter into the strange, foreign lives of others. 

We would prefer a God who follows simpler rules, and hands out reward and penalty accordingly.

And this has created the most striking feature of our painting of God.  An angry, vengeful God, who distributes not coal but brimstone, not in lumps but as fire that rains down from the heavens, on whatever Sodom or Gomorrah we abhor.  This is the God of divine retribution, and in our self-serving misinterpretation of biblical justice we are emboldened us to dare to prophesy this wrath against others, against outsiders and any convenient scapegoat we can find.  There is coming, we boldly decree, a day of holy judgment, when we will be vindicated for our own believing and everyone will find out, some to their eternal horror, that we were right the whole time.

We love this God because he is the winner we aspire to be.  He is all-powerful and willing to use that power in the service of defeating every enemy.  The notion that God is gracious or merciful, that he sides with the weak or the needy, that he calls us to love our enemies and pray for them, does not fulfill our needs.  But that can be easily disregarded.  Perhaps we could follow the example of Pastor Robert Jeffress, Senior Pastor of the 12,000-member First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas and adjunct professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, who simple dismisses pieces of scripture like the Sermon on the Mount because they are not “given as governing principle.”   And who decides which words of the Bible count are to be taken as “governing principles?”  We do, because it suits our needs to do so.  Those others, who see Jesus as a champion of the poor and downtrodden, well, they must be wrong.  We are certain!

If only they knew God the way that we know God. 

If only we knew God the way we believe we do. 

Idols

While most of the world has left the church, those who have remained have taken church-ness to new heights.  There is a serious intensity and devotion to religion today.  Our certainty is not merely a shelter against the storm of worldliness, it is a weapon that we wield proudly and aggressively.  Christianity is not our faith, it is our brand, our position.  It is our expectation, of ourselves and of others.  The world must teach as we teach, practice as we practice, in schools and places of employment and in the marketplace and in the halls of government.  We are not merely evangelists, we are crusaders, exerting an activist conviction that will broker no rejection.

Perhaps, ironically, this is a lesson we have learned from the world.  It is our love of sports, after all, that shapes our culture, teaching us that life is a game to be won, and to be won at all costs.  Winning isn’t the everything, it’s the only thing.  In the same way that we play at economics and politics, so now we play at religion, certain that we are not called merely to participation in the creation, but to total and complete victory.  By a clever and self-serving interpretation of Genesis, we have defined our place in creation as dominant, ascendant.  We are not the creation’s servants, the world exists to serve us, to worship us.  We are its god.

And in this way, the Christian church itself has become its own idol in the world.  Religion is not merely a path to spirituality, it is the very object of worship and devotion, our tenets and our creeds are the bottom line we serve.  The Bible we read is our Bible, not a living, breathing experience of the vastness of God’s grace throughout history that speaks to us and examines us, but a cold, dead, series of proof texts subject to our own usage and narrow purpose.  Doctrine and dogma are not simply tools for teaching and organization – they are the faith itself.  The church today is the church of our own creation, our best work, we take great pride in it.  And we expect others to worship it, too.

We come to this point, I believe, because our primary theology is about ourselves, our trust in our works, in our decisions, in our choices.  We have defined the church in this most basic, human term:  believing.  I made the choice to believe in this way, and because I made this choice, it is the right choice.  We worship our own works, the regularity of our attendance, our programs, our hymnody, our righteousness, our lifestyle, because we chose them.  Here is the final Americanization of Christianity – the ultimate adoration of the god of human will.

The role of the human will has been a great theological debate of the Christian community from its beginnings.  The question of the right division of labor between grace and human will has both captivated and tortured the church’s greatest thinkers.   Paul taught first that salvation comes “as a gift,” (Romans 3:24, NRSV) that is, entirely from the hand of God, underserved, unearned, regardless of and prior to anything we have done or will do.  But from that beginning the church has sought rather to assert the importance and the necessity of the human contribution to salvation, through good works or sufficient self-recrimination for bad works.  Or, at least, choice.

Free will is our idolatry.  Free will is how we judge the world and thereby keep others at bay.  Free will is the stone and mortar with which the walls of our city are built.  And it is no stronger than that, because it is, in the end, a human construction, only as strong as we are and every bit as weak.  That is why Martin Luther, the great protestant reformer, spoke against this dogmatic supposition of free will: 

For my own part, I frankly confess that even if it were possible, I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive toward salvation. For, on the one hand, I should be unable to stand firm and keep hold of it amid so many adversities and perils and so many assaults of demons, seeing that even one demon is mightier, than all men, and no man at all could be saved …

Instead of upholding its importance, Luther professed, the cross of Christ necessarily revealed the brokenness of the human will, the truth of sin, that left to our own devices and choices we are bound to the wrong work, the wrong inclination.  This is the definition of sin, the self-centered worship of human will and human choice, this is what Christ died for, so that we might recognize our own powerlessness and submit to God’s determination instead.  But such theology has no place in a church bound by certainty.  Religion is, in the end, lived out in humans and in human works.  And so we battle to the death for our own role in God’s work, and in the process constrain his work to the inferior place.  Always.  We say that grace is primary, necessary, chief.  But in the end our words and acts express our belief that grace is helpless without the work of our own hand, our choice, our decision, our will.  God cannot save us, after all, unless we save ourselves.  God cannot save us unless we want to be saved, mean to be saved, act to be saved. 

We say it is all about God.  We act as if it is all about us. 

The world can see this, by the way.  We believe it is our best quality, this willing desire for God, our illustrious religiosity.  The world sees our public confession, our public display.  But it also knows the truth, our private guilt, our not-so-hidden corruption and sin.  The world knows that even as we tout our faith in Jesus we live and act in ways that are contrary to his teachings.  We are prideful, we turn our back on injustice, we stand with polluters and warmongers, the violent and the oppressors.  We sing our love of grace, forgiveness and mercy, and then pronounce judgment and condemnation on all.  The world can see the log in our own eyes even if we cannot, and names it hypocrisy, this worship of our self-made empty religion.  The world knows our bondage, and now awaits our destruction so that it can step in and seek the dawn of a brand new day.

Flags

It is a great holiday.

Not just because it comes in the middle of the summer, when we need a holiday really, really badly.  Not just because of the great barbecue or that you get to blow stuff up (hopefully not yourself!).  Not just because of the great march music or the speeches or the patriotic display.

Independence Day is a great holiday because it celebrates a great thing.  Independence.  The foundation of this nation and the essential component of all human society.  Independence appeals most to us because it is intrinsic to our nature, the characteristic that defines us, that makes us human.  We have the ability to rise above the tyranny of our circumstances and our environment.  We can be more than we seem to be.  We carry within ourselves the aspiration to define ourselves and the will to accomplish our dreams. 

Everything good that has been accomplished by human beings has been a produce of our independence. 

And everything bad.

Injustice, bigotry, violence –these are all products of independence, too, of our need to place self above community, of our willingness to make others suffer for our desires, of our inability to give up immediate satisfaction for long range goals or to sacrifice for greater good.  We ignore corruption and destroy the planet and go to war just because we don’t want anyone else to tell us what to do.  These are the fruits of our worship of independence, our idolatry of self to the exclusion of our corporate burden. 

But what if Independence Day was a celebration of our independence from all of that? 

Perhaps we have misunderstood the real value of freedom.  The real tyranny in life is not dependence but disconnection.  We are only ourselves, and we are our best selves, as we are a part of a larger organism.  We are never fully realized until we realize our role in society, we are never whole until we are part of the greater whole of the community we share. 

We live our lives under the influence of two competing voices.  One calls us to stand apart from the crowd, to be unique and self-sufficient, to protect our privacy at all costs and live with no obligation to another.  Another sings to us a song of belonging, of the absolute magnitude of loving and being loved, of the value of friendship and family, of the power of compassion and giving.  And which one is right?

The first is the voice of sin.  It is the voice that calls us to self-regard and greed, to rampant egoism with no thought of its impact on others.  And history is filled with the wreckage of such pursuit, with the multitudes who have been crushed by the ambitions of few, the wastelands of egregious consumption, the tears of too many who have paid the price of the successes of too few. 

Yes, it promises to lead us to enterprise and fulfillment, but this is a half-truth, a lie of omission.  For we can also find enterprise and fulfillment in relationship with others.  And the truth is that we can only find enterprise and fulfillment in relationship with others.  “It is not good for man to be alone,” is God’s first reflection at our creation.  And this is the truth that determines our destiny.  It is only when we are independent from our own selfish self-interests that we can truly be who we were made to be. 

That is independence worth a great holiday.