The Questioning Christian: We're helping with the Great Project

Resolved: Most of the church is not Christian

In a discussion at TitusOneNine, I'm being politely asked, between the lines:  If I don't believe the church's teachings about the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, etc., why am I intruding into the private club of those who do?  In response, I posed this proposition for debate, Oxford Union-style (I've edited it slightly here): 

RESOLVED:  No one may call himself a Christian if he demands more, as a condition of church membership, than doing one’s best to follow the Summary of the Law — Jesus (reportedly) said in Luke 10.25-37, do this and you will live, so to presume to require more than this would be to set one’s self above the Lord.

Another commenter responded: 

Disputed. ... Christianity is based on accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior and belonging to the community of faith—which includes belief in certain key precepts ....

Those who have come to believe those "key precepts" cannot be faulted for where their faculties and their consciences have led them. But I would disavow membership in any “community of faith” that went beyond this, insisting that its answers are the final ones and that those who don’t agree with the party line must either assent anyway or leave. Folks like that are like idolators, pridefully setting up their own conceptions above the reality that God has wrought.  (Hard experience has taught us that we don’t know everything about that reality, and that what we do “know” is necessarily provisional.) Fortunately, most of the Episcopal Church isn’t like that.

Jesus' mission was a bust - at least if that mission was what the church has long claimed

Over at TitusOneNine, commenter Jody+ asked me "what [my] understanding of soteriology is if it doesn’t include Jesus’ victory through the Cross and resurrection.  And Tory asked whether I believed that Jesus’ mission was a failure, "since Romans continued to run roughshod over Israel and other occupied peoples?  What kind of salvation did Jesus accomplish, if at all, for it certainly was not geo-political?”

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If Jesus thought of his mission as that of liberating Israel from worldly oppression and ushering in God’s reign:  then yes, that mission was an utter, abject, desperate, and miserable failure. To refuse to face that fact is to live in a fantasy world.

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If Jesus thought of his mission as that of winning victory over sin and death, and bringing eternal life to all who believed in him:  we have just about as much reliable evidence that he succeeded, even partially, as we do that the Heaven’s Gates suicides succeeded in joining the hidden spaceship that they believed was coming for them. 

Intellectual honesty requires us to admit that while we can hope, we simply don’t know, what happens after we die.  To claim otherwise is, again, to live in a fantasy world.

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What we can say with some confidence is that what Jesus characterized as the way to eternal life — the Summary of the Law — seems to touch on something fundamental in the fabric of the universe:

• The evidence for the existence of a Creator is pretty compelling, certainly more so than the evidence against;

• History suggests that, in the words of Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner, we seem to be “created co-creators,” participating unwittingly in a titanic process that has been gradually, and often painfully, creating order out of the chaos of the Big Bang;

• On balance, over the long term, those who seem to contribute the most to this process of creation — and who seem most likely to survive, reproduce, and pass their genes and memes on, not just to their children but to their grandchildren — are those who face the facts of the reality wrought by the Creator, including the fact of our human fallibility.  Who don’t insist that the world must be a certain way merely because they imagine it to be so.  Who seek the best for others as they do for themselves.  In short, who seek (whether they know it or not) to follow the Summary of the Law.

For all we know, when we die, the Creator will simply discard us his tools, the way we would throw away a worn-out drill bit. But it’s not totally implausible to conjecture that it won’t happen that way.  It’s not irrational to hope, and trust, that we’ll get to share, somehow, in the end result of whatever unimaginably-wonderful project the Creator has been up to.

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Returning again to whether Jesus’ mission was a failure:  If Jesus thought of his mission as being to inspire all people to organize their lives around the Summary of the Law, he didn’t completely succeed on his own.  But the church he catalyzed hasn’t done an altogether terrible job of continuing the mission.

If we would stop insisting that everyone believe traditionalist soteriology, christology, and theology, and return to simply preaching the Summary of the Law, we likely would have much more success in reaching nonbelievers and doubters with Jesus’ message.

Irish Catholics should remember potato-famine relief efforts by U.S. Protestants - WSJ article

From an article by Peter Duffy in today's Wall Street Journal:

Perhaps then, on this day of all days, the Irish Catholics of New York should do something that would've been unthinkable even a few years ago: raise a toast to the Protestants.

I am referring to the Protestants of New York City and their actions during the winter of 1847, an unjustly forgotten episode in the Irish history of this city.

* * *

... the pulpit was opened to speakers. Rev. Jonathan Wainwright of St. John's Episcopal Chapel, a future bishop, read several passages from foreign newspapers describing the sufferings in Skibbereen, County Cork, which had become infamous for the plight of its poor. He insisted that he did not attend the meeting to "speak of modes of faith," but to urge his fellow citizens to "share our loaf" and "contribute liberally from our ample store."

* * *

It appears that every minister in town sought donations from the pulpit. The list of churches that gave is impressive: Norfolk Street Methodist, the Reformed Dutch Church at the corner of Greene and Houston, the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue, Trinity Episcopal, the Second Wesleyan Chapel on Mulberry Street, Duane Street Presbyterian, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church on Christopher Street, Mercer Street Presbyterian, Grace Church, and on and on.

A response to an inquiring non-believer

Commenter Jason, who seems to be related to ee cummings <g>, asks some good questions this morning about a posting I did a few years ago: 

... as a non-believer (some call me atheist), this has been an intriguing article to stumble upon. frankly, i am at a loss as to understand how you can display such sound logic and skepticism, yet at the same time maintain a claim to be christian, or even religious at all. ...

... you say you are christian, which is to say that you do in fact have faith about certain metaphysical matters. how can you believe in a heaven or hell if the very source and support for that idea is something that you admit is not reliable? 

... please contact me. your position is very interesting and new to me, as such i believe i can learn quite a bit from you.

Jason, I'm very glad you wrote. I'll try to respond succinctly, and I'm grateful to you for providing the impetus to do so. 

Christian is as Christian does

I don't agree that, to call yourself a Christian, you have to "have faith about certain metaphysical matters."  That puts me at odds with a large number of people who think that, to be a Christian, you have to believe in, for example, original sin and salvation through Jesus' atoning death.  Personally, I'm not persuaded about these things (except to the extent that original sin is a metaphor for our inherent imperfection).  I reject the idea that this disqualifies me from being a Christian, or from being 'saved,' whatever that means.

I think the Jesus described in the New Testament had a very different view than do these latter-day Christians. Jesus the Jewish reformer seemed to want people simply to serve God and one another.  He stressed, correctly in my judgment (more about which below), the importance of the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law, which I would paraphrase along the following lines: 

Acknowledge the Creator and commit your whole being to serving 'his' purposes. In particular, seek the best for your neighbor just as you do for yourself; and keep in mind that 'your neighbor' is not just your kinsman or countryman, but anyone who crosses your path, even your people's hereditary enemy. 

In response to a question from an expert in Torah, Jesus is reported to have said, "do this and you will live [eternally]."  (Luke 10.25-37.) 

If we're to believe Jesus, it would seem that anyone who does these things may claim the title of "Christian," no matter what particular theological doctrines they happen to believe to be true.   

FOOTNOTE:  Some of my Christian friends will scoff that the preceding paragraph smacks of salvation by good works, which is anathema to many Protestants, instead of by faith. They argue that you cannot be 'saved' unless your faith is such that you truly "love the Lord."  My response is that people usually can't control whether they "love" someone as we understand the term, so Jesus must have meant that we should <em>serve</em> God and our neighbor.  Moreover, serving God and others by doing good works can cause a change of mind and heart — Greek: metanoia, usually translated as "repentance" — which can lead to precisely the faith that some Christians insist is a prerequisite to salvation. 

FOOTNOTE:  It's hard to believe (and we have no evidence) that God would punish someone for failing to believe the "right" things: so far as I can tell, what we happen to believe is something over which we have little or no volitional control.  Of course, we can indeed sometimes talk ourselves into believing that which we really want to believe, regardless whether it's true.

Motivation:  Reasons for doing what Jesus said to do

Of course we have to ask why we should seek to follow the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law. After all, as many have pointed out, these injunctions are by no means unique to Christianity; they come from Torah and are manifested in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

For many if not most Christians, the principal motivation is the claim that Jesus was God Incarnate, and therefore we should do what he said. I'm afraid that doesn't do it for me, nor has it ever for the majority of the world's population. Indeed, those of Jesus' followers who actually knew him in life didn't seem to think he was God.  So Jesus' alleged divinity would not appear to require that we follow his teachings.

My own motivation is largely pragmatic.  I've come to believe that, on the whole, following the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law is humanity's best bet for evolutionary success, and also for cosmic significance.  In particular:

1. To me the evidence makes it quite likely that there is a Creator; undoubtedly not precisely like the God described in the Bible (who really knows?), but probably not entirely unlike that.

2. At least locally, the universe hasn't devolved into chaos, but has evolved into the relatively highly organized form we have today. And there's not much doubt that this constitutes "progress" as we define it, because few if any people, at any time in history, would permanently trade places with a random  person who lived, say, 1,000 years previously.

3. The Great Commandment and Summary of the Law "just works."  People who stay real, who don't worship their own wishful thinking, but who instead live in the reality that the Creator wrought, are more likely to survive and reproduce.  And over the long term, altruistic cultures have proved more likely to survive and grow than narcissistic ones.

All this suggests that the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law summarize one of the fundamental mechanisms by which the Creator's universe is being caused to evolve.  They appear to be like laws of nature.  Doing the math, it seems entirely plausible that they were ordained by the Creator so that we would function as created co-creators in his continuing creation of the universe.

This possibility is supremely exciting to me.  It might be just a matter of egotism, of my personal liking to be "where the action is," perhaps like Jesus' disciples James and John (and their mother!) importuning him to name them his chief lieutenants . If that's the case, it is what it is.

I can't be sure I'm right about this, of course.  But every day we make bets, choosing particular ways to conduct our lives on the basis of uncertain information.  This particular bet seems like an eminently worthwhile one.

FOOTNOTE: For an account of how I arrived at the above beliefs, see this posting about Why I Still Call Myself a Christian, and an Episcopalian.

FOOTNOTE:  Some of my Christian friends criticize me for relying on "private judgment" in reaching the conclusions above. Ultimately, I believe, it's I who am responsible for use of whatever gifts of discernment and judgment have been entrusted to me.  (Cf. the Parable of the Talents.) Prudent stewardship of those gifts will often entail choosing to rely on the judgment of others smarter or more knowledgeable than I. But in the end, "the buck stops here"; I'm the one who is accountable for my stewardship.

Faithfulness

I also admire Jesus because he was faithful to his people and to God's calling as he understood it. 

True, some of his early followers believed he was the long-awaited Anointed One, a man designated by God to become the warrior-king who would soon return to rescue Israel from oppression and usher in the Kingdom of God. The New Testament claims that Jesus himself believed this (although personally I'm skeptical about that). None of this happened, of course.

But that error is pretty inconsequential, as long as we're willing to face the facts, and not insist on living in a fantasy world.  Jesus was human; being wrong on that point takes away nothing from his faithful pursuit of his duty as he saw it, even unto death.

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Thanks again for writing, Jason, and please do so again. You might read some of the postings listed in the right-hand column, if you haven't done so already.

A Christian's creed should be about life commitment, not belief

The creed of a follower of Jesus should proclaim, not what we happen to believe to be true at the moment (which can and should be provisional, always subject to change as new evidence and insights are revealed to us), but how we commit to living our lives. Here's my attempt at such a creed, inspired by a similar effort by the MadPriest and by the Soldier's Creed. I merely paraphrase Jesus' core teachings, as indicated in the right-hand column below:

We are followers of Jesus. Always and everywhere, to the best of our ability:
we will put God first, and seek the best for others as we do for ourselves;	Love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.
we will face up to our mistakes and our misdeeds;	Repent - when you see that you're going in the wrong direction, make a change (that's roughly the meaning of the Greek word metanoia, commonly translated as repentance). And when you sin against your neighbor, fix it.
we will live as if, in God's good time, all things will be well.	Don't fret about the future; instead, trust that things will turn out OK.

The real Christianity: Devotion to God and care for one another

Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard of Florida, a self-described conservative, tells of a conversation he had (linked here) with another conservative bishop at the recent House of Bishops meeting. The other bishop had not taken communion with his fellow bishops since 2003 because of theological differences. But at the HoB meeting, the other bishop was at the communion rail every day. Bishop Howard asked him why, and was moved by his answer:

... An old friend of mine who, like I, is a conservative, traditional bishop, had chosen to refrain from taking communion with the House since 2003. He did this quietly and without show; he simply felt he could not take communion with his fellow bishops because of the theological difficulties which have been with us in recent years. But during this meeting—at the very time one might suppose those theological difficulties would be most evident—my friend was at the communion rail every single day. Last week marked the first time that I have been privileged to receive communion with this old friend as a fellow bishop. It was a profound experience. 

I asked my friend how his change of heart had come about, what it was that had brought him back to communion with the House of Bishops. He spoke to me of illness in his family and of turbulence in his vocational life. And he told me of how it was that as he stood in the need of prayer, it was the more liberal members of the House of Bishops who had called him and reached out to him. As my friend spoke, I heard a message of deeper and richer communion: communion formed not by agreement on all theological issues but by a common life of devotion to God and of care for one another.  [Emphasis added]

My dear friends, Communion is not about having the "right answer" for every theological question. It is, as I have preached and taught across our diocese, about loving the Lord with everything that we have and everything that we are, and it is about doing the right thing by others. It is about loving others in the way we ourselves wish to be loved. This is the very summary of all the law and the prophets which Jesus has given to us. And it is in that command, and in the perfect communion of love offered us by Christ, that our church and, indeed, our world, find ultimate and permanent hope.  [Italics in original]

Devotion to God and care for one another: that, my friends, is the real Christianity.

(Via TitusOneNine)

Evangelism: Clear Soup First, Steak Dinner Later

A hiker emerges from the wilderness.  He's rail-thin, having survived for weeks on what he could forage.  Well-meaning greeters urge him to share in the rich, delicious meal they themselves are enjoying:  sixteen-ounce steaks with sauteed mushrooms and onions; baked potatoes with butter and sour cream; and chocolate sundaes with whipped cream.  The hiker tries a bite or two.  Accustomed to leaner fare, his stomach rebels.

The hiker would have been better served if his greeters had recognized his condition and started him out on just a little clear soup.  But the greeters insisted on giving him what they liked, instead of what he needed.  He turns away from the table, no better off than he was before.

Unfortunately, some Christian evangelists are like the well-meaning greeters.  They offer non-believers a rich meal of theological doctrines — delicious to those accustomed to them, but hard to digest for those who aren't, especially those brought up in the West's culture of rationality.  They are puzzled when many non-believers, like the hiker, turn away from the table after a bite or two.

For many of these non-believers, we'd serve them better if we offered to start them off with the equivalent of clear soup, instead of the complete steak dinner that some of us might like.  (Cf. 1 Cor. 3.2:  "I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.")

Just the Thing:  Jesus's Core Teachings

As it happens, we have just the "soup" to give them:  Jesus's simple, empirically-defensible, core teachings about how we should live our day-to-day lives in relation to God.  I can't do justice to those teachings in a summary.  Even so, I would be so bold as to paraphrase a selection of those teachings — all of which can be supported with citations to the Gospels —  along the following lines:

There's Nothing Wrong with "Rotary Club Theology"

Regular readers know of my view that anyone who follows the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law is a Christian, be s/he Episcopalian, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Jew, Muslim, Hindu . . . .   Some have derided this view as mere Rotary Club theology. 

I don’t know much about the Rotary Club.  They apparently emphasize service to others and a high ethical standard, as exemplified by their Four-Way Test of the things we think, say, or do.  An April 12 Wall Street Journal editorial ($) notes the Rotary Club’s pivotal role in essentially wiping out polio from the world:

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine. Poliomyelitis, also know as infantile paralysis, used to be one of childhood's most feared diseases. . . .  Today polio has disappeared from the Americas, Europe and the Western Pacific and is nearly gone from the rest of the world.

A too-little known part of this feat is the role played by Rotary, the international businessman's club, which 20 years ago adopted the goal of wiping out the disease. Rotary understood that medical breakthroughs are worthless unless people aren't afraid to immunize their children and efficient delivery systems exist to get the vaccine to them. And so it mobilized its members in 30,100 clubs in 166 countries to make it happen.

*  *  * 

An economist of our acquaintance calls Rotary's effort the most successful private health-care initiative ever. A vaccine-company CEO recently volunteered to us that the work of Rotary and the Gates Foundation, both private groups, has been more effective than any government in promoting vaccines to save lives. It's become fashionable in some quarters to deride civic volunteerism, but Rotary's unsung polio effort deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

If that’s “Rotary Club theology,” we could do worse — and often do. 

The Difference Between Christians and Jews

The Great Commandment and Summary of the Law say:  Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself — and your neighbor is whoever happens to cross your path. 

Jesus said that if we observe these, we will gain eternal life.[1]

But these commandments come straight from the Hebrew Scriptures, aka the Old Testament. 

Craig, a correspondent on the TitusOneNine blog, asked:  What, then, is the difference between a Christian and a Jew?   

Under Jesus’ definition, there’s no material difference between a good Christian and a good Jew. (That makes sense; after all, Jesus and his original followers were Jews.)

It was only after Jesus' death that his later followers and his Jewish compatriots excluded each other from fellowship. 

If Jesus had still been around, I don’t think he would have put up with that.

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Notes

[1] Luke 10.25-37 tells how Jesus explained the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus [tells the parable of the Good Samaritan]. * * *

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” [Editorial comment: I wonder if a better translation might be “The one who practiced acts of mercy toward him.”]

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Let Small Groups Celebrate Their Own Eucharists

A major controversy in the Anglican Church of Australia is whether lay people and deacons should be allowed to celebrate Holy Communion a.k.a. the Eucharist. That's long been a big no-no in the Anglican, Roman, and Orthodox Churches: Only ordained priests and bishops can be eucharistic celebrants (sometimes called presiding at or administering the Eucharist).

In the Diocese of Sydney, some congregations apparently have been experimenting with letting lay people celebrate the Eucharist, without a priest. The diocesan synod recently dropped a proposed rule that would have explicitly allowed such lay administration, as it's sometimes called. But the diocese's standing committee said it would not discipline any deaons or lay people who did administer Communion. See this news article for more details.

I was curious about what the New Testament has to say on the subject of lay administration (even though I'm definitely not one of those who says Scripture contains definitive answers to all theological questions). Are only priests (which includes bishops) allowed to celebrate the Eucharist? Or can any old Christian do so?