Facing Racism

The Trump era has caused us to face the ugly specter of racism. No one wants to think of themselves as racist. When someone says "that's racist" let alone "you're being racist" or worst of all "you're a racist" our natural reaction is to deny and defend ourselves against the accusation. It's more than an accusation, it's a condemnation. Our response is to want to distance ourselves from people or groups that we see as racist, as if by doing that we could claim to be immune and untouched and pure. 

I recently came across a talk by David Gushee called "In the Ruins of White Evangelicalism" which he gave as the presidential address to the AAR. In the talk he said that the connection between Trump's base being racist and white evangelicals being the demographic most likely to support Trump made it an inescapable conclusion for him that racism was a major problem within evangelicalism. He says he is driven to the conclusion that evangelicals support Trump not in spite of his racism and cruelty, but because of it.

But the part that really impacted me was where he went from there. Although he had distanced himself from evangelicalism, he did not distance himself from its sin of racism. Instead he wondered how he, as a major voice within evangelicalism focusing on ethics, could have been blind to racism for all those years. His talk therefore was one of him confessing and repenting for what he called the sin of racism.

Calling racism a sin is interesting because it opens up a way to see racism that leads to self-reflection and growth. Let me unpack this. As Christians we should be familiar with the concept of confessing that we are sinners. We see this in the catechisms, but also in the Gospels, in the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the tax collector,

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector."

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. (Luke 18:11-14)

If we come at sin like the Pharisee, saying "I was a sinner before, but now I've repented and go to church and am saved and chosen. I thank God that I am not like those sinners outside of my church" then Jesus says we don't go away justified, even though we are trying to justify ourselves.  Growing up evangelical I heard statements like that made from the pulpit constantly. "Thank God we are not like those liberals, gays, woman's lib-ers, welfare queens, Muslims out there!" In other words, I heard messages of homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and racism constantly growing up evangelical.

Of course as an ex-vangelical it's just as easy for me to say "Thank God that I am not like those racist Trump supporting evangelicals over there." It's easy to write of racism as a problem "over there" in evangelicalsm, or in the South. In fact, it's really common for progressives and liberals in an attempt to "out-woke" each other to condemn others for the sins of racism and white privilege. People will be shamed and ostracized on social media, calls will go out for people to be fired and shunned for some insensitive comment or act. In that atmosphere of self-righteous progressivism, it's really no wonder people react defensively. They act like they are being attacked and condemned because... well, they are. Progressives see themselves as champions of compassion, but boy can they be merciless.

Jesus said we should remove the log from our eye before we take the splinter from our brother's eye. What if I looked at my own life before I became the progressive moral police of social media? Maybe if I did, I could approach others with the same mercy I know I need. Maybe if I did I could have conversations rather than accusations. Maybe I as a progressive Christian need to take the stance of the tax collector in Jesus' parable and say, "God, have mercy on me, a racist!" What if instead of seeking to prove myself innocent of racism, I assume that just as I am a sinner, just as I know that I can do things that hurt others, I am open to the idea that I have blind spots in me, I have racial bias, and am therefore open to seeing this and becoming sensitized to it so I can do better.

I also feel pulled to look back at my evangelical past and try to make sense of why it is that evangelicals today so overwhelmingly support Trump, as Gushee says, not in spite of his racist cruelty, but because of it. At the same time, evangelicals would all deny that they are racist. I think that's due to a misconception of what racism is. We think of racism as the stereotypical Southern plantation owner in the Hollywood film. We think that if we don't have malicious intent in our hearts, that we are not racist. But the thing is, people who do evil and hurtful things, even horrific things, never think they are doing evil. They think they are doing good. That's why the whole focus of "but I don't have any racism in my heart!" misses the point, and blinds us to the racial blinders that lead to do cruel and hurtful things.

What's behind racism is a reaction to fear that causes us to be tribal, to protect our tribe, and if "they" suffer as a result, well that's just too bad. It comes from perceiving some other group as being a threat, and reacting in fear to that threat. Fear is the opposite of empathy and compassion. As Gushee says in his address, American white evangelicalism today has really become "U.S. white tribalist religion" characterized by "aggrieved white conservatives." That stance of "aggrieved whites" of course is the constant mantra of  Fox News, and it very much echoes what I heard from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday, a message of fear and resentment towards "those sinners out there" who were a threat to our family, our way of life.

That tribalist fear stance is very much tied to the tendency in evangelicalism to justify violence as good and righteous. Evangelicals are more likely than just about any other demographic to support violence as a means to good, whether that's supporting torture, war, capital punishment. When you tie that propensity to justifying violence and cruelty together with demonizing other groups, fearing them, seeing them as a threat, it seems inevitable that when little black boys are shot by cops, evangelicals stress that "blue lives matter" and when hispanic children are traumatically ripped from their parents and held in concentration camps, white evangelicals feel the need to justify and support this.

If you feel threatened, it's a natural human reaction (Paul would call it a fleshly reaction) to justify a harsh, merciless response. 

The two poisons of racism and violence go hand in hand, specifically violence understood as a means to good, and racism as a fearful otherizing and thus dehumanizing of a person or group. Of the two of these, I want to argue the most important one to address is racism. I do not want, therefore, to propose a Christian solution of total abstinence from violence. That is, I am not arguing that the police should not be armed, we should not have an army, or even that a person cannot defend themselves in their home. I say this, primarily because it is utterly impracticable. If we want to take steps towards reducing violence, towards less cruelty, towards more compassionate way I living together, I don't think abstinence from violence is the key.

Rather, I want to argue that the core problem here has to do with the otherizing or dehumanizing of a person or group. When we see a person or group as a threat, as "other" it is easy to justify cruel or inhuman treatment. We see them as a monster, an animal. If we instead saw them as our brother, our sister, our child, as part of us, we would seek to deal with them in more humane ways. This would lead to a reduction in violence, a reduction in cruelty and hurt. We would find other ways because we value the other as we value our own. That's something that Jesus was constantly preaching, widening our circle to include loving the sinner, loving the enemy.

Conservatives need to not see liberals and people of color as the evil other, and progressives similarly need to not see white evangelicals as the evil other. Isn't that what "love your enemy" means? That is, it does not mean they are not your enemy, but that you should act lovingly towards them nevertheless. We should see them as a part of us. Again, that does not mean we tolerate people doing or saying hurtful things, but it does mean dealing with them as we would deal with someone beloved, which would lead us to seeking ways to deal with things restoratively and humanely.

Evangelicalism’s Two-Faced God

I recently went to a talk with Science Mike (Mike McHargue) where he discussed his memoir Finding God in the Waves, which I’m looking forward to reading (more on that soon). It was a great talk, and I was struck by something Mike said about neurology. He described how neuroscientists have observed that people who contemplate a loving God see changes in their brains, building their prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for things like compassion and moral reflection) and lessening the influence of their amygdala (the part of your brain responsible for impulsive fear-based reactions, which are helpful when you have your hand on a hot stove or step on a snake, but not so great when you are trying to resolve conflict in a relationship).

I related to what he said, and can certainly attest to experiencing this in my own life. I talk about this a lot in fact, in terms of moral development and the brain. In one sense, it’s just common sense that people who focus on feeling loved (religious or not) would tend to become more loving people. However, I found myself wondering how it could be that evangelicals (well, I should clarify, American white evangelicals) can be so focused on experiencing the love of Jesus, and at the same time can overwhelmingly support war, torture, the death penalty, corporal punishment of children, and so on. How can they so enthusiastically support policies that completely lack compassion and care of the least?

So I asked Mike, if it is true that focusing on Jesus’ love makes your brain develop the prefrontal cortex, then why is it that white American evangelicals seem to be so amygdala-driven, that is, driven by fear leading to hurtful reactive responses, as characterized by their overwhelming support for the policies of our current President?

It’s something I am genuinely baffled by. Mike stressed that some conservatives are indeed compassionate which I do not doubt, and that liberals can equally lack compassion, which is certainly true. We all can be jerks, we all can let fear lead us to being hurtful, there is no ideological monopoly on immaturity. However, there does seem to be something about white American evangelicalism that seems especially toxic. There seems to be something about white American evangelicalism in particular that makes it ripe for being unreflected, angry, fear-driven, scapegoating, and an enthusiastic supporter of violence and punishment in the name of the good. What is it?

What I took away from Mike’s response was that he suggested that the problem was their belief in a very different god from the God revealed in Jesus – a god characterized by fear and anger, who threatens eternal punishment, and is characterized by wrath. I was reminded of what Brian Zahnd has described as the “monster god” of neo-Calvinism. In short, Mike proposed that the basic problem is that they have not experienced the love of Jesus, and instead know a god of fear and anger.

It’s important to understand that Mike’s story is one that is deeply shaped by his experience of God’s love in the midst of the pain and rejection he experienced in his youth, as well as his experience of that same life-transforming love as an adult atheist. It's really a classic born-again testimony. I have myself been deeply influenced by that same experience of the love of Jesus in my life as a teen. I was born again, but this was not simply a one time event. I was drawn to knowing God's love relationally, and in that "pursuit of God" (to borrow a phrase from A.W. Tozer) I experienced over and over again a love that completely transformed my life. I write about this in my first book Intimacy with God which I chose to make free because I wanted to share this love with everyone. I realize that for many the idea of a “personal relationship with God” may seem sappy or sentimental, but I cannot stress how profoundly experiencing that love first-hand in my life as changed me. For me it is not sappy at all. From hearing Mike speak of his life, I think the same could be said for him. Mike told stories with tears in his eyes of how experiencing the love of Jesus literally "saved" him from committing suicide in his youth. It was a beautiful testimony.

From that perspective, it makes sense to think “There is just no way a person could experience love like that and be so angry and hurtful. They must experience God as angry and hurtful.” So when Mike said essentially this, my first reaction was to agree. Then the more “science-y” part of me began to kick in. The fact is, people are very capable of compartmentalizing and showing great inconsistency in different parts of their lives. I’m sure there were many people in the 1800’s who were moved to tears at a revival meeting, and then came home and mercilessly beat their slaves – I can even see them thinking that doing so was good. I’m also pretty sure that many of the people who adamantly support things like war and torture today actually do experience the love of Jesus in their lives. It seems really counterintuitive, but we humans are complex creatures. I strongly suspect that if we were to survey white American evangelicals who support these angry and hurtful policies, we would find that a great many could tell moving stories of how they have experienced the love of Jesus in their lives.

Let me stress here that I don’t mean at all to be critical of Mike’s answer. He said it off the top of his head, and I think it was a great answer with a really important insight. My goal with this post is to help further develop the idea, after having the chance to reflect on it for a while.

There is something going on, and it does have to do with an angry God, but this picture of a God of anger and fear seems to co-exist alongside the experience of the love of Jesus. It’s an odd mix of the love of Jesus for those on the inside of the church, with a simultaneous focus on anger and hellfire for those on the outside – including you, if you “fall away.” The “monster god” is thus not a god who is only angry, but a god who is deeply loving to those on the inside and full of wrath towards those on the outside.

This “two-faced God” (to borrow a phrase from Michael Hardin) means you can go to church and sing songs about the love of Jesus, and then hear a sermon by a very angry white dude about how we should fear our nation being corrupted and destroyed by [insert name of scapegoated minority group here]. In short, we experience love and compassion on the inside, but are taught that those on the outside should be feared and hated. They get wrath. This reinforces people’s natural tendency to feel love for their own family, race, nation, and religion, and to demonize, criminalize, and dehumanize those outside the boundaries. That’s why evangelicals can experience love themselves, and yet lack compassion for others, being instead driven by fear and anger towards them.

People in that environment are therefore not meditating on an angry “monster God” alone. The picture of God they have somehow simultaneously consists of the experience of the love of Jesus (which I do not doubt is genuine) mixed together with week after week of cultivating anger and fear to those perceived as enemies from the pulpit. Sitting in that atmosphere week after week, year after year, shapes your brain. It essentially stunts a person’s moral development. The course of moral development is supposed to go from being loved, leading one to extend that same love towards others, developing socially. This toxic theology however keeps people inwardly focused in a sense of fear-based reactionary self-protection. The neuroscience phenomenon Mike mentioned of building the social and compassionate part of our brain thus does not happen, because this preaching of fear and anger towards outsiders strengthens the reactionary fear-based part of our brain, the amygdala. To put this in more theological terms, while they experience the love of Jesus, they do not follow the teaching of Jesus. Jesus had hard words for people like that, 

I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7:23)

Jesus links faithfulness to how we treat others, and this is most seen in how we treat those who we regard the least. John echos this when he writes,

"Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person."

These are hard sayings, and I hope we are able to hear them. What is being expressed, in the strongest of terms, is that our experience of God's love is not worth much if it does not translate into showing compassion to others. It's like a flower that is planted, but does not grow out of the dirt.

This understanding of evangelicalism’s two-faced God is especially important for the “nicer” evangelical churches to recognize. Here I do not mean the churches where the pastor wears skinny jeans and a soul patch, but underneath still preaches the two-faced God. I mean the genuinely nice churches who only talk about grace and love, the churches that you and I would want to go to. Because evangelicalism is so fluid, those nice churches are filled with people who come from churches that preached the two-faced God. Almost never is it acknowledged in those nice churches that there are people in the congregation who are still carrying wounds from that past church experience. When it is acknowledged, it is almost always in the context of the person having misunderstood. You must have gotten the wrong impression of who God is. It’s always your personal problem, as opposed to us recognizing that this two-faced God of love and hate is very widespread within white evangelicalism, and addressing that. 

In other words, the problem is not simply that the person has gotten an angry picture of God, and now simply needs to hear of the love and grace of Jesus. They have experienced a God who is both loving and hateful, and as a consequence they have been damaged by that. To the extent that they have preached this non-gospel of “God hates you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” they have hurt others. Perhaps a father severed his relationship with his gay son because his pastor told him that was tough love. Whatever the specifics, many live with the fallout of relationships that they have severed because of this toxic theology when it is lived out.

Simply preaching God’s love is not an antidote to this, because they have been taught that there is no contradiction in God being both loving and hateful, nor is there a problem with their being both loving (to insiders) and hateful (to outsiders) themselves. Instead of their experience of God’s love leading them to follow the teaching of Jesus and caring for the least, this two-faced God theology has taught them to ignore the love they experience, and instead be driven by fear and anger which is pounded into people’s psyches by what they hear Sunday after Sunday, not to mention their diet of angry pundits and media that they consume 24-7.

I know that it is hard to face this, which is perhaps why these nice evangelical churches so often avoid it. But I really hope that the grace-focused evangelical churches can find the courage and humility to address this toxic theology head-on, and help people kick-start their hardened hearts, and move towards growing in compassion. Sometimes to find healing, to find what is good and beautiful, we need to first face the ugliness in ourselves and in our communities.

Talking To Your Christian Friends About Their Guns

Gun violence in our country has reached epidemic proportions with no end in sight. While on the one hand we have seen one mass shooting after another -- including mass shootings of little children like at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the response has not been to work to have less guns and less violence, but to encourage people to have more guns. As the NRA advertises, "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." So we have people with guns at schools, at movie theaters, at Bible studies.

Think about that for a minute. We do not have people who are trained at all in how to deal with hostile and dangerous situations. We have a person who is afraid, who has had that fear repeatedly fostered by groups like the NRA, Fox News, and others, and who is now walking the halls of your kindergarten packing heat. We also have laws like "stand your ground" that say that if that person feels "threatened" they can kill.

Take an untrained person, motivated by fear, and give them a gun. That is a recipe for disaster. The driving force here is fear. That's why people are so adamant about gun rights, and discussions can get so emotionally heated. They want to protect their own safety and the safety of those they love, and when someone suggests we take away their means of protection, they feel vulnerable and threatened, and react with anger. It's a response to a perceived threat that is ironically called being "triggered" and means that our body literally physiological shuts down the social part of our brain (the cerebral cortex) and engages the fear-center (the amygdala).

So the question becomes, how can we help people to look at the issue of guns and violence without shutting down the rational and social parts of their brains and simply becoming angry and reactive? I've heard some pastors take the hard line of saying that Jesus forbids the use of violence, and so the answer to "How will I stay safe?" becomes "You won't. You will die like the martyrs did. Jesus commands it. Take up your cross." While that is indeed an argument that one can make with the New Testament on their side, you can see why this would make a person feel threatened and trigger a reactive amygdala fear response.

Let's not kid ourselves, the core message of the gospel is not pro-gun, and in fact Jesus' message of the kingdom of God is a systematic refutation of that way of thinking. This is one of the take-away points from the 2015 documentary Armor of Light, which follows one conservative evangelical pastor's attempt to speak to his fellow evangelicals about the conflict between guns and the gospel. You can watch it on Amazon for just a buck. It's a great conversation starter, and it's a conversation we desperately need to have.

What I would like to do is give some theological context to that conversation, demonstrating that a belief in guns cannot co-exist with belief in Christ. They represent two opposing and incompatible visions of life, and we need to be clear on that. What I hope further to show is that the way of Jesus is indeed good news. It is not pie in the sky idealism, but a realistic way, addressing the fears we have, and our deepest desires for abundant life. It's a gospel message that many white evangelicals in this country have never heard.

Jesus' message of the kingdom of God represents an alternate societal vision, in contrast to the societal vision embraced by the religious culture at the time of Jesus, and found in the parts of the Old Testament, which promoted  tribalism and responded to those on the outside with condemnation and acts of violence committed in the name of God. When Christians claim the Bible supports their endorsement and use of violence, they draw on those parts of the Old Testament that Jesus specifically confronts and rejects. So let's take a closer look at Jesus' message of the kingdom and how it speaks to the issue of guns, and more broadly to the larger issue of self-preservation and fear.

The big picture of Jesus' message of "die to yourself" is one of overcoming fear. The biggest fear we have is the fear of death. Fear is often behind why we do hurtful things. We are afraid we won't have enough for ourselves, so we are unsocial. We are afraid of being hurt, so we carry a gun. The gospel tells us that we need to care for others, that we need to learn to think socially, and that when we do, that our needs will also be taken care of. "Don't worry about food or shelter" Jesus says, "but seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you as well."

This is not about denying the self or denying your family or tribe or race. It's about widening the circle of who you consider to be "in" to include everyone. It says that it's not just about my family, but also about your family. It's not just about my race, but about yours, too. Jesus points us to caring especially for those who are neglected in society, the poor, the unclean, the condemned. He calls out racial prejudice with the story of the Good Samaritan. He calls out religious superiority with the story of the good centurion.

Today in America our "Samaritan" would be a Muslim, or more broadly anyone with brown skin who is seen as threatening and labeled as a terrorist if they are Muslim, or as a criminal if they are black. In other words, the people we feel threatened by, the ones who we feel we need to use a gun against, the ones we want to lock up in jail or keep out with a wall are the very ones Jesus says we need to love. The are the ones whose lives we value "the least" as Jesus says.

In other words, the reason Jesus would say "black lives matter" is because he recognized that society (including religious society like his and ours) disregards the value of the lives of those they see as "other" and "least." If we want to break out of that, caring for all lives, the way we get there is by caring especially for those who are treated as "the least" valuable by us.

Behind that otherizing is fear. We are afraid of the person who looks scary to us. That's where the idea of enemy love comes in. An "enemy" here is someone that you perceive as a threat. This is not something only conservatives do. Liberals do it, too. Liberals like me see conservatives with guns as threatening and scary, just as conservatives see liberals like me as scary. The typical reaction is to label the other, calling them a terrorist or a criminal (if you are conservative) or labeling them as racist or homophobic (if you are a liberal). Either way we see ourselves as the "good guys" and them as the "bad guys" who need to be stopped.

When you see someone in that category of "enemy" you feel justified in silencing them, harming them in order to protect yourself. You need to dehumanize the other to kill them. So they are labeled as a "terrorist" or a "criminal" and then it's okay. The gospel is about recognizing the humanity and value in everyone, not because we are innocent or "good guys" but rather the gospel is that even though we are sinners, God showed his love for us. The gospel is about seeing that the sinner -- which includes you -- is valued and loved by God.

It's relatively easy to care for those we see as meek, poor, helpless, begging for mercy, repentant. But what about those who we see as a threat? Do we know how to love someone like that? Do we know how to reconcile? Do we know how to make peace when there is real conflict? Or do we instead build walls, fire people, and even fire a gun? "Do not return evil with evil" both Peter and Paul write. The Hebrew there (which is the context they would be thinking in) is "do not repay anyone harm for harm." That seems to be the only way we know how to respond though. We either passively do nothing, or we return violence with violence, evil for evil. It's the American way. But it is decidedly not the way of Jesus.

What is missing completely from this is any application of love of enemies. It is at the same time the most ground-breaking and revolutionary of all of the teachings of Jesus, and also the least taught -- let alone practiced -- by Christians (whether they are liberal or conservative). Perhaps that's because we think that love of enemies means "be a victim," and pronouncements by pastors like the one above to "be like the martyrs" tend to perpetuate this misunderstanding. Similarly, lots of Christian pacifists take the stance that Jesus simply gives us a prohibition against the use of violence. I don't disagree, however I must insist that this cannot be all. Just as a Christian vision of sexual ethics cannot only be about not having sex, a Christian vision of love of enemies also cannot be only about not committing acts of violence. Love of enemies is not just a prohibition, a command saying what you cannot do. More importantly love of enemies presents an alternative means to resolving conflict without violence. In other words, it is not about doing nothing, but about doing something different.

Love of enemies is about recognizing the value and humanity of the one who you have dehumanized by seeing them as an enemy, and asking what you can do to end that hostility and work towards reconciliation. Whether it's the polarizing and hateful rhetoric of political discourse, or the fear-based stockpiling of guns, reconciliation is something we Americans seem to be utterly incapable of.

Love of enemies is connected to the widening of the in-circles discussed above. We widen the circle to care not just about my family, but also yours, and all families. We widen the circle to care about all races, all lives. We widen the circle to care about not only those in our nation, but all people.  That is something that Jesus teaches over and over in the Gospels, and it is the exact opposite of the idea of building a wall around us, and encouraging Christians to bring guns to church with them so they can kill bad guys. Again, there is really nothing "Christian" about being pro-gun if Christian has anything to do with the teaching of Jesus and his vision of adopting God's values "on earth as it is in heaven."

So why is it that it is so hard for people -- especially white American evangelicals -- to trust the way of Jesus more than they trust their guns? A big part of it is diet, that is, what we feed on. While pastors remained silent on the issue of guns, groups like the NRA and Fox News stepped into the gap, inundating people with a 24-hour message stirring up fear and anger. This "other-gospel" of fear and anger has come to be associated with white evangelical Christianity, but it is about as Christian as a strip club. The fact that those same white evangelicals endorse a presidential candidate who encourages acts of violence from his supporters, and who owns strip clubs, is not lost on me. White evangelicals have abandoned the way of Jesus, and substituted it with the way of violence, driven by fear. That may be hard to hear, but it is the truth. I say this as a white American evangelical myself. I say it out of love, calling on my fellow evangelical brothers and sisters to repent of their unbelief, and return to Jesus.

In the end it is a matter of faith versus fear. Fear keeps people away from the way of Jesus. Fear of losing the good things in our life, fear of death. We need to understand that Jesus is not about taking away good things from us. He came, he says, to give us life, abundant life. He continually is telling people not to worry, not to fear. But what he does want us to do is to learn to think socially, to learn to love, to learn to widen the circles we make to include those on the outside. He wants us to become messengers of reconciliation. That is what preaching the gospel, the good news of the kingdom, is all about.

The part where widening that circle becomes hard is where we perceive those outside the circle to be an enemy, a threat. The point is not to ignore danger as if it did not exist. The point is learning how we can reconcile with someone, how we can overcome hostility. The way we do that is not through escalation, buying more guns, or building bigger walls. The way we do that is by learning how to be ambassadors of reconciliation, how to be peacemakers. Currently the direction we are moving in is the opposite, shutting out the refugee in need, the racial divide ever growing, becoming more and more reactive, fearful, hostile, and violent. We need to learn the way of peace, the way of reconciliation.  Doing that is not some optional side thing, it is at the very heart of the gospel, at the very heart of what the kingdom of God is about.

The fact is, white conservative evangelical's association of God and guns going together has virtually nothing to do with Christianity. It has to do with something that runs deeper. It has to do with the fear of death, with our human survival instinct, which is an incredibly powerful drive. The gospel speaks to that fear. We need to learn how to preach that gospel message. We need to learn how to place our trust in the way of Jesus, and not in a gun.

How Moral Immaturity is Taking Over Evangelicalism

Authoritarianism has become a major characteristic of white American evangelicalism. We hear story after story of how leadership in major evangelical institutions has shifted to be more conservative, bullying professors and pastors to leave their jobs if they do not agree to the conservative views of the leadership – a stance that is stridently anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science, pro-gun, pro-war, and pro-torture. Let’s pause on that last one. Evangelicals are more likely than any other religious group to support torture.

That makes me ashamed to be an evangelical. I am not alone in this. There are a great many evangelicals who feel that this type of “evangelicalism” represents the very opposite of what they believe in, the very opposite of the values of Jesus. Many of us have felt compelled to leave the church, out of moral protest, and what we feel we are leaving is a toxic and abusive environment. That’s why when a church gets a fog machine and lights we still don’t want to come back. What’s needed is a moral overhaul, not a better entertainment system.

While the rest of society is moving forward, evangelicals are behind on pretty much every moral issue of our day. Not in a passive way, but actively opposing that moral progress. We are seeing major movements in our society towards reducing violence, towards civil liberties for all people, towards caring for the needs of the disadvantaged, towards human rights, and the largest group who is actively engaged in fighting to stop this moral progress on every front is evangelicalism.

So we basically have two evangelicalisms. One is the evangelicalism that I grew to love. It was an evangelicalism focused on cultivating a relationship with a loving God, on knowing “the father heart of God.” It was where I learned about grace, and how being unconditionally loved opens your heart to love others with that same kind of open hearted grace and compassion. It as an evangelicalism where you sang with all your heart, with hands stretched high to the heavens out of gratitude for that love. An evangelicalism where you wanted to share this good news with the whole world. It was an evangelicalism that I associated with joy, deep friendships, and abundant life. Maybe that’s an evangelicalism you knew, too.

Then there is the evangelicalism that people associate with being intolerant, judgmental, angry, sexist, homophobic, and Islamophobic. It is an evangelicalism characterized by fear and hostility, which then responds with authoritarian violence and coercion. That’s why it supports police brutality, pushes for laws with harsh criminal punishment as well as laws that restrict civil rights, endorses torture, and cheers when politicians promise to indiscriminately carpet bomb their enemies. As much as I wish I could bury my head in the sand and insist that this ugly and immoral evangelicalism is not the “real” evangelicalism, it is very real, and very much a major force in our world with great political and economic influence, not to mention popular support – not a majority thankfully, but a significant and very vocal and engaged minority.

Why do people support it? Because of fear. Feeling threatened leads to hostility. This is characteristic of low level moral development. A child, when it does not get what it wants, will go to whining, hitting, and screaming. That child will justify their actions saying things like “that’s not fair!” This all comes naturally to children, it comes “pre-installed” so to speak. It’s cooperating, being social, and resolving conflict that they need to learn. When a person does not learn this, and retains the simplistic black-and-white, us-vs-them-thinking characteristic of a child, this is moral immaturity. It is a low-level morality that has been stagnated or retarded. Unlike children, morally immature adults are not cute. They can also do a lot more damage than a little child can, especially when they are in positions of power – morally immature pastors, politicians, and CEOs.

Being a morally immature adult is of course not exclusive to evangelicalism, to Christianity or even to religion. There are lots of morally immature angry black-and-white-thinking atheists, just as there are loving, thoughtful, compassionate, morally mature atheists. There are also thoughtful, compassionate, morally mature evangelicals. I hope I can count myself in their number. But as a morally mature evangelical, I do think it is important to recognize that my beloved evangelical faith can and does act to give religious cover, providing justification and sanctification to morally immature people.

Indeed, morally immature evangelicalism typically wraps itself in scriptural justifications, and claims to represent orthodoxy and tradition. It claims to represent the good, and genuinely believes that it does. That’s why Hollywood’s negative portrayals of religious conservatives miss the mark when they paint them as just plain mean “bad guy” characters. Moral immaturity is sincerely trying to be good, but does so in a way that hurts others. That’s what immaturity looks like. The key difference between maturity and immaturity is that maturity is complex and social. Children therefore need to learn to develop into social beings, learning empathy and the skills to maintain relationships – as do morally immature adults.

Likewise, a morally immature evangelical is not always angry and judgmental. The complex reality is that they can be deeply loving in certain situations, while being angry and hostile in others. Just like a child can be wonderfully loving... right before they throw a fit. As any parent knows well, children can be little angels, and little monsters. They are both. That is, again, characteristic of immaturity.

It’s understandable why immature evangelicals react as they do with hostility, but we do them a disservice when we let their aggressive and hurtful behavior take cover, saying their hurtful actions are due to being “passionate” or having “zeal.” The Apostle Paul knew about that kind of “zeal” first hand, but came to regard that very zeal as his greatest sin. When Paul repented, he was not repenting of breaking a commandment. He boldly claimed, in this regard, that he was “faultless” (Philippians 3:6). Yet he nevertheless came to regard himself as “the greatest of all sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15) precisely because of the harm resulting from his religious zeal.

Those of us who are morally mature evangelicals need to know how to articulate what a morally mature faith looks like in action, drawing from those same scriptures and traditions, in order to demonstrate that one does not have to choose between a morally immature faith or rejecting one’s faith altogether.

Moral immaturity is not focused on the self, but on the in-group. It is not me-focused, but rather it is us-focused. It is us-versus-them, whoever that perceived “other” is. In contrast, Jesus continually taught people to expand that circle, saying that the way we treat those who we regard as “the least” is how we treat our Lord, teaching us to care for the beggar, the outsider, the stranger... even going so far as to tell us to love our enemies. This is the very height of moral maturity, which is focused on growing ever more social, focused on the ministry of reconciliation, the mending of broken relationships.

It is only when you begin to practice this that you learn that the tools of moral immaturity – the tools of yelling and hitting, of coercion and force, building higher walls and dropping more bombs – are simply ineffective when our goal is to make for peace and work to reconcile. Those who are immature cannot see this. To the morally immature, true strength, the strength to compromise, forgive, and work together is regarded as weakness. They gravitate towards authoritarian leaders who they see as strong and bold. But those who are mature can see that this “strength” in fact reflects an utter ineptitude in regards to solving problems, working with others, and resolving conflicts. We have a word to describe a morally immature person who has grown big: They are a bully. Being a bully is not strong or admirable or brave or moral.

The more we become versed in the way of reconciliation, the more we see how ill-equipped the means of moral immaturity is at achieving this. It only knows how to build walls, not how to build bridges. That’s why it’s so important that those of us Christians who support nonviolence do not simply regard it as a statement about what we won’t do, about where we draw the line, about what is forbidden. This is often where the conversation stops. But it needs to go beyond what we won’t do. Nonviolence also needs to be about how we actively work to make things right, how we act to resolve conflict and mend relationships. For example, it’s one thing to say you are against adultery. Big deal, pretty much everyone is. It’s quite another thing, however, to be able to provide a couple with the relational tools to walk the difficult path beyond betrayal, and towards re-building trust together. Forgiveness is not simply about overlooking a wrong, it is about learning how to reconcile. Learning how to do that is what moral maturity is all about.

Homosexuality and Why You Can’t Remove Love From Exegesis: An Appeal to Tim Keller and Matthew Vines

With the major shift in our country’s laws affirming marriage equality, homosexuality has become a hot-button issue within Evangelicalism. We have seen both Evangelicals who are speaking out in favor of acceptance of their LGBT brothers and sisters (often losing their jobs in the process), and at the same time we have seen a doubling-down from Evangelical institutions and leaders in rejecting this shift.

Those Evangelicals who see homosexuality as wrong tend today to argue this point based on the “authority of Scripture alone,” meaning they present no actual evidence that would lead them to conclude there is anything harmful with people in loving same-sex relationships, other than that “the Bible says so.” In other words, their position —and this is by far the most common position among conservative Evangelicals today— is essentially that it does not matter what you or I think, it does not matter what we can observe, it does not matter what gay people tell us... all that matters is what the Bible says. The Bible condemns it, that settles it. All we need to do, they argue, is to look to what Scripture clearly teaches about homosexuality, and regard this as the final and authoritative word on the matter.

As I demonstrate in Disarming Scripture, there is a major flaw in this kind of reasoning. Using this exact same approach to the Bible has lead Christians in the past to support both slavery and child abuse based on the “authority of Scripture.” Let me clarify here that first of all, I am not referring to spanking, but what would be considered criminal child abuse—beating children bloody with a whip or rod. This type of child abuse was common among Christians (as well as the broader culture) for centuries, and was justified based on the “authority of Scripture.” Likewise, slavery was justified for centuries on the “authority of Scripture.” We should not have any romanticized notions of what slavery was like in the ancient world—it was brutal and inhumane. Slaves in the ancient world were not only commonly beaten, but raped by their masters.

We can see from these examples that this approach to Scripture—which is the predominant approach taken by Evangelicals today—has led in the past to justifying things that are terribly damaging, immoral, and abusive.

Now, that of course does not mean that just because some things in the past were hurtful and immoral (like slavery and child abuse) that therefore anything we object to in the Bible is automatically wrong. However, it absolutely does mean that we cannot rely on “what the Bible plainly says” alone, detached from any sort of moral evaluation, ignoring our conscience, ignoring people telling us they are being hurt. If we do not question, and in fact ignore our conscience screaming at us “this feels really wrong,” and ignore everything we can observe about how humans work, including people saying to us “this is hurting me!” pressing on despite all of that “standing on the authority of Scripture” this is a virtual guarantee that we will arrive at abusive and hurtful interpretations.

Evangelicals Who Can’t Remember Their Past

So how do conservative Evangelicals respond to this? One example is Tim Keller who in his “The Bible and Same Sex Relationships: A Review Article” in response to books by Matthew Vines and Ken Wilson, attempts to deny that Christians ever endorsed slavery. Keller writes,

“Up until very recently, all Christian churches and theologians unanimously read the Bible as condemning homosexuality. By contrast, there was never any consensus or even a majority of churches that thought slavery and segregation were supported by the Bible.”

Keller cites a number of authors to back up this claim. For example he claims that “historians such as Mark Noll have shown the 19th century position some people took that the Bible condoned race-based chattel slavery was highly controversial and never a consensus.” However, this completely misrepresents what Noll actually says. Of course there was not a consensus. That’s why we had a Civil War. The point is not that Keller can find progressive-leaning American Christians who opposed slavery. The point is that those who read the Bible like Keller does now were the ones who supported slavery then. Listen to what Noll actually has to say on the issue,

“[F]or over thirty years Americans battled each other exegetically on the issue, with the more orthodox and the ones who took most seriously the authority of Scripture being also the ones most likely to conclude that the Bible sanctioned slavery.” (Noll, Civil War as Theological Crisis, 115)

As Noll illustrates with multiple case studies, it was much easier for those on the pro-slavery side to make a direct appeal to the “plain meaning” of Scripture. Theirs was the stronger and more self-evident biblical argument, Noll observes. Yet that very focus on “correct” interpretation led them to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty and barbarity— all done in the name of submitting to the authority of Scripture.

Further, as Matthew Vines points out in his response to Keller's review, this is not only a matter of slavery in America, but slavery practiced by Christians for centuries upon centuries. Slavery was vigorously defended by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards. Keller’s characterization of history is just flat out wrong here. The reality is, the church has a long history of endorsing slavery based on the authority of the Bible. The same is true of the church’s endorsement of what we would now regard as criminal child abuse, again based on the “authority of Scripture.” The issue here is that history shows us that reading the Bible in this unquestioning authoritarian way has led Christians to defend and maintain these deeply hurtful and immoral practices.

As the saying goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” What Keller is not facing is that Evangelicals such as himself continue to read their Bibles today in regards to homosexuality in precisely the same way conservative Christians read it in the past in regards to slavery. Nothing has changed in this regard. The hermeneutic of unquestioning obedience is identical. Evangelicals have apparently learned little from their past in regards to how they read the Bible.

I'll never forget the first time I visited the Gedaechtnis-Kirche (Church of Remembrance) in the city center of Berlin. The pastor, seeing that I was an American, came to me and said, "I want to ask your forgiveness for what my people have done." I was only 22 at the time, and pastor couldn't have been much older, meaning that at the time of WWII he was not even born. Yet here he was asking for  forgiveness on behalf of his country. As an American that never left me. It was so... what's the word I'm looking for?... Christian. Yet in my own country,  a country where its citizens often refer to it as "a Christian nation," such a statement seems nearly unthinkable. I wish that we American Christians could take responsibility for the past sins of our country like that young German pastor did. I wish we Evangelicals could learn to care less about defending our doctrinal camp or our Bibles, and a little bit more about the marginalized and the "least" among us. I wish that was not so foreign to us.

Reading Morally

Referring to 19^th century Christian abolitionists, Noll writes, “[T]he stronger their arguments based on general humanitarian principles became, the weaker the Bible looked in any traditional sense. By contrast, rebuttal of such arguments from biblical principle increasingly came to look like a defense of Scripture itself” (45). The same could be said today. The reason Evangelicals like Keller so adamantly oppose acceptance of same-sex relationships is because they see this as tantamount to the defense of the authority of Scripture. Likewise, the strongest arguments of those Evangelicals who are gay affirming such as Matthew Vines or Ken Wilson are those based on humanitarian principles—noting the harm that is resulting among gays due to the rejection and condemnation they experience.

The overwhelming majority of social scientists and mental health practitioners today would maintain that there is simply no evidence that same-sex relationships are destructive or harmful in and of themselves. Conversely, what we can observe, as far as harm is concerned, is that statistically the LGBT community has a higher rate of drug abuse, mental illness, and suicide than the larger population— alarmingly higher in fact.

The reason is quite clear: the rejection they experience. Being kicked out of their homes, hiding who they are, being threatened and hated, etc. can easily make a person sick, depressed, broken, and even drive them to suicide. As their voices have begun to be heard, we have seen story after story of how gay and transgender kids have felt hated, at times even hating themselves.

This matters tremendously. This is what we need to pay attention to. This needs to factor into how we read the Bible. As I say repeatedly in  Disarming Scripture, if we recognize that our particular interpretation and application of Scripture is leading to observable harm, this necessarily means that we need to stop and reassess our course. Scripture, as Jesus read it, needs to lead us to love God, others, and ourselves. If we find that it is leading instead to causing harm then we are getting it wrong.

I appreciate very much the work of Vines and Wilson. My concern, however, is that the approach taken by left-leaning Evangelicals like Vines continues to affirm the authority of Scripture but argues that we have just misread it. The basic argument is that we just need to understand the context, or know the Greek better, and we will see that the New Testament is actually not condemning homosexuality.

Vines says his book God and the Gay Christian “envisions a future in which all Christians come to embrace and affirm their LGBT brothers and sisters— without undermining their commitment to the authority of the Bible” (3). That’s certainly a laudable goal. However, the problem is that this ultimately plays into the hands of conservatives like Keller who want to restrict the conversation to solely “what the Bible says,” and discount any discussion of what is good and loving based on paying attention to our life experience and relationships. It acts as if the problem was simply one of correct exegesis, and that all we need to do is find that right reading to settle the matter. Again, this leaves out the necessity of a moral evaluation of the text, and connecting our reading of Scripture to our life experience.

In his book, Vines tells how his father changed his mind “persuaded by biblical scholarship, historical evidence, and reason” (19). This surely plays a vital role, but I would like to underline (and I think this is something Vines knows) that the reason for his father’s change of heart was surely not because of exegetical arguments alone, but also because his father loves his son. Love is not a factor that can be removed from exegesis. When love is there, those exegetical arguments can build a bridge. For all the parents and loved ones of LGBT Christians, the exegetical arguments in Vine’s book could be the glue that works towards love and reconciliation. But when those same arguments are encountered by someone like Keller who feels the need to defend Evangelicalism’s doctrinal front-line, those appeals to relationship and love are simply discounted, and the focus is placed solely on “what the Bible has to say.”

For such Evangelicals, the issue of homosexuality is tied to their understanding of the authority of Scripture. However, with the issues of slavery and child abuse that understanding of “the authority of Scripture” has been shown to be deeply flawed, leading to advocating things deeply hurtful and wrong. That immoral understanding of Scripture has to change. We Evangelicals need to find a way of reading the Bible that leads us to Jesus-shaped love, not a way of reading that is divorced from love and relationship.

My article on the Ooze

My article Love Wins: Rob Bell and the New Evangelicals is currently on the front page of the Ooze. Go check it out and leave a comment!

Love Wins (#2) -Rob Bell and the new evangelicals

In my last post I discussed the intro and first chapter of Rob Bell's new book Love Wins where he begins by asking some really important and challenging questions about the messed up way many of us have come to see God. The book has gotten a LOT of media attention, debuting at #2 on the NY Times Best Seller List, and making the cover of Time Magazine. So for any of you evangelicals like me who thought that we were a small fringe minority in our wresting with these things, this is a big wake up call that you are not alone. This book, and the questions it raises is obviously resonating with a whole lot of people out there. Bell and other Evangelicals like him (names like Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, Jay Bakker, Greg Boyd all come to mind) are part of the new face of evangelicalism, and that of course has gotten those from the old (grumpy) guard pretty mad. It also has a lot of liberals confused because we don't fit into their cliche of what an evangelical is supposed to be (mean spirited, judgmental, unconcerned about the poor, anti-gay, etc.). They are left scratching their heads: "So what is an evangelical if they are not those things?" they ponder.

The back of Bell's book has a quote from Andy Crouch in the New York Times where he writes, "Rob Bell is a central figure for his generation and for the way that evangelicals are likely to do church in the next twenty years." Yet to others, Bell has left the evangelical fold all together. John Piper declared as much with the tweet "Farewell, Rob Bell." Similarly, many liberals are wondering what the difference is between what Bell says and good old liberal Christianity? Lisa Miller of Newsweek asks Bell in a recent interview "Aren’t you just a mainline Protestant posing as an evangelical?" I'd like to offer a response to that question here. I don't pretend to speak for Rob here. This is my own answer to why I continue to identify as evangelical:

The controversy with Bell's book has to do with the doctrinal claims it makes. So those who have spoken out against it are doing so based on saying that it says things that are wrong. The focus is on Truth with a big T, on authoritative doctrinal correctness. This focus on black and white right or wrongness is also characteristic of how traditional evangelicals understand morality and ethics. Their focus is on the "thou shalt nots," i.e. on opposing certain behavior that they see as immoral. So they say X is wrong, and people who practice X are a threat to the to moral fabric of our society. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks yourself.

On the other hand you have the way that liberal Christians (not to be confused with secular liberals) do morality and ethics. Instead of being focused on right and wrong, their focus is on compassion. This does not mean that everything is okay. They would insist that many things are really hurtful and bad, but that our response should be one of grace: We should be seeking rehabilitation and reconciliation, not retribution.

One focuses on something being either right or wrong, and then condemning the wrong. The other may agree completely that it is wrong, but still focus on a response of compassion because the goal is to mend and restore people--even the screw-ups and failures like us. This caries over into theology too: one focuses on saying what they think is the truth about God. The other may agree with these doctrines, but places a priority on communicating grace, and realizes that if something is said without love, without compassion, without sensitivity, that is can actaully give a wrong picture of who God is. This is at the heart of Jesus' critique of the Pharisees. Truth without love leads to a dead faith. As Paul says "If I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, but do not have love, I am nothing" (1 Cor 13:2).

Of these two ways of doing ethics (and theology), the later is clearly more Christ-like. As far as this goes I fall very much in the liberal Christian camp, meaning that while I may agree most of the time with the doctrinal conclusions of traditional evangelicalism, I think that compassion is often absent from how they do theology and ethics, and to the extent and degree that it is absent, it is heretical and wrong. It is heretical and wrong because it gives a false witness about God, and pulls people away from faith. It's wrong because it hurts people, and thus opposes God's purpose. I use that word "heretical" here very intentionally, because while people are quick to say that wrong doctrinal formulations are "heretical," I would maintain that what is far more heretical and damaging is for people to say things in a heartless and unloving way. Why don't we see those people brought up on heresy trials? Why don't we see those people fired from their position in a seminary? Why is our criteria not focused on being Christ-like? That's a completely wrong priority. Yet so many of my fellow evangelicals seem completely oblivious to this point, even though it is blatantly obvious to pretty much everyone else.

So you might ask at this point: aren't you just a liberal Mainliner then? As far as this broad approach of compassion goes, I am. But there is something crucial that is missing here: I do not think that Christianity is primarily about affirming certain doctrines or adopting a certain set of ethical principles. It is about having a personal life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. That focus on relationship with God is and always has been the core of evangelical faith. That is the gospel. This is what being born again is all about. It is the foundation from which all Christian ethics stems.

In the evangelical churches I have been a part of (and for what it is worth, they were pentecostal/charismatic ones of that makes any difference) this has always been the central focus. You can hear it in the worship choruses we sing, in the focus on personal prayer, devotional reading of Scripture, and of course the many alter calls. Yet to those on the outside, you might miss this. From the outside it seems all we talk about is the wrong/right morality issues. On our church webpages you will find Statement of Beliefs which focus on affirming orthodox doctrinal statements. Now, once you are on the inside you will meet with this focus on a warm and living faith that flows into acceptance, support, love. But if you are on the outside looking in, you will encounter this focus on "right/wrong" which takes the shape of threats, condemnation, and (if the person you are speaking with gets frustrated with you) mean-spirited judgement. It's all very bi-polar, but goes a long way to understanding why evangelicals are perceived as a bunch of heartless, judgmental, jerks.

For a long long time a big part of the church (usually the part with political power on its side) has been really focused on right doctrine--on finding absolute authoritative infallible truth. Heck, they burned people at the stake for making doctrinal statements they thought were wrong. Today theology professors still get fired from seminaries for having the "wrong" beliefs, and these "wrong beliefs" are exactly what Rob Bell is being attacked for. But look at the people who are calling him that. What are their fruits? As Bell has said, "When you hear the word 'Christian,' do you immediately think 'oh yeah, the people who never stop talking about God's love for everybody'? ...or... do a number of other images and associations come to mind?" We evangelicals are not known for being loving to a fault. We are known for a merciless focus on being right. In other words, we have the same reputation now as the Pharisees in the NT.

So again, I want to retain that vibrant focus on intimately knowing the Spirit of Christ relationally, and of having that love and grace change who I am. But I want to lose the focus on heartless moralism, and instead focus on compassion and grace. I think that focus of compassion fits much much better with that living relationship. But I don't really find that in Mainline liberal churches. Maybe its because they are worried about sounding too much like evangelicals (a four-letter word to them). Maybe its some other reason. Maybe there are people who do have a vibrant personal relationship with God, but who just never talk about it. I don't know. But I do know that it is something that you will hardly ever hear in liberal Mainline churches. The focus is very much on ethics and compassion--on adopting principles. So while I agree with those principles, it is not enough. It is not the core, the heart of what faith is about. I miss that there.

So from all that, I would like to propose that what makes a new evangelical is that we retain the focus on a living transforming relationship with God, but that we have a way of thinking about theology, and of ethics which is rooted in compassion and grace. Rob begins his dialog with Lisa Miller with a brief sermonette where he says that we have "lost the plot" of the gospel which he defines simply as "God is love and sent Jesus to show us this love, that we might know this love, and extend it to others." There's that focus on relationship again: "Knowing God's love," and there it is right alongside of a focus on compassion "and extend it to others."

I want to stress that I do not want to say here that doctrine or morality are unimportant. I think they are tremendously important in fact, and I'm sure Rob does too. I also am not saying I agree with everything Rob Bell says in his book. I disagree with him on a lot of things (which I think is a good and healthy thing). But what I see him doing primarily is recognizing as a pastor that people are being hurt by the way these doctrines present God, and wanting to address that hurt. His is a pastoral focus rather than an exegetical one (in other words a relational focus, rather than a detached intellectual one), and I think it is in fact a much more important focus to have when interpreting the Bible. In fact, I would go so far as to say that without that pastoral/relational focus, it is not possible to do proper exegesis. In many ways, to be a so-called "new evangelical" is to get that.

Love Wins - rethinking the gospel

I'm reading through Rob Bell's new book Love Wins and am loving it so far. He begins the book in the preface by saying its good to ask hard questions, that God wants us to ask them, and then proceeds in the first chapter to ask a bunch of hard questions about the "good news" of the gospel that can sound like bad news:

God loves us.
God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part.
Unless you do not respond in the right way. Then God will torture you forever.
In Hell.
Huh?

Is God really going to torture people you love forever in hell because they didn't accept his love? Is that how love acts? is that what grace looks like? Is that what justice looks like? Is that what holiness looks like?

Hell no.

Isn't God the one who teaches us to forgive and love our enemies? So if that's true, then why would God act the opposite? I'm sure you've heard people say it is because he takes sin so seriously, but really doesn't that in fact trivialize sin? Doesn't it make God look petty and unjust? That is one of the biggest reasons people leave the faith, that and all the suffering and injustice in the world. In short, the major reason people leave Christianity is because of moral outrage, because sin--real sin, the kind that deeply wounds people, the kind that destroys lives--is not being taken seriously enough.

What about rape? What about abuse? What about all the violence and oppression in our world? That's the kind of thing that I think God cares about, and he cares because these things are killing us, and he loves us. God is not concerned with his "glory" because God is not egotistical. God is love, and that means that what God really wants, what it truly means to love him, is to love each other. That's a point you will find being made over and over in the NT.

The heart of the gospel is that God does not come to judge us (even though he hates these horrible things we do to each other), he comes to save, he has come to pull us out of that world of hurting and being hurt. That's what real justice is about, making things right, and that is what Jesus was all about.

That way of making things right--the gospel--begins with God entering into our hearts and lives and showing us what it means to be loved. I'm taking here about being born again, about having a personal relationship with God where you come to know God's loving grace first hand, where God just pours his love out on you until it completely changes who you are.

One place I disagree with Rob is when he says that the phrase "relationship with God" is not in the Bible. Of course it is not there verbatim, but then a lot of things are not which are still truly biblical. Like the Trinity for example. The question is whether the concept is there, and I think it clearly is (both the Trinity and relationship with God). Loving God, Jesus says, is the "greatest commandment." But as I said, it can't stop there. If we really love God, if we really know grace, know what it means to be loved unconditionally, then this can't help but spill out into all of our life. We will feel compelled to live out that grace with others, to love like Jesus did.

That is the urgency that Jesus preaches: stop hurting each other, stop with your stupid wars and killing in God's name, stop with all the condemnation and hatred! Learn the way of the cross, the way of overcoming evil with good, the way of enemy love. That is a way that is not just some trivial religious concern which seems so tangential to life, it is about real stuff, life and death stuff, quite literally.

Living in that is the gospel. The gospel is absolutely inseparable from love of enemies. In other words, the gospel is about radically loving everyone. That means that we have to care about poverty and starvation (Jesus certainly did!), we have to care about human trafficking and war and corporate abuse and a host of other social causes because belonging to Jesus means we care about people.

That's the gospel: being loved by God so that we can know love and walk in the way of love--knowing grace firsthand so we can show that grace in a world that desperately needs it.

Junkboy

I was recently asked if there was a gospel tract that expressed the Christus Victor model of the atonement. An alternative to those nasty Chick tracts that talk about threat and fear and ticked off God. I was reminded of a little book I read a long time ago in German called "Ein Ganz normaler Müllmensch" (trans: "Just Your Average Junkboy") that I really loved. Since there is no English translation, I decided to translate this sweet little tract myself for you (and you thought knowing German was only good for reading Karl Barth!).

So without further ado, I present to you the story of Junkboy. Just click the picture below to read the rest.

Is Obama a Christian?

There are basically two ways for an Evangelical to answer that question. One if focused on affirming a certain set of doctrinal statements, the other is focused on a conversion experience. I would maintain that the doctrinal definition is one that is often upheld by Evangelical leaders and academics (i.e. those with a voice in the public square), while the second relational definition is held by the masses.

For example in "American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving" sociologist Christian Smith views Evangelicalism in context of its doctrinal positions in contrast to Liberal Christianity. However in interview after interview the actual Evangelicals in Smith's sociological study continually define their own faith not in terms of orthodox doctrine per se, but as a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. What we see here a discrepancy between how Evangelicalism is understood as doctrinally focused by its leaders, and relationally focused by its laity.

Along these lines, former Moral Majority VP Cal Thomas bases his definition of an Evangelical on a set of doctrinal issues, and concludes that "Barack Obama is not a Christian". But if we instead ask whether Obama is a Christian based on the relational criteria that most Evangelicals actually hold to, we get a very different answer. Obama can speak very naturally about his relationship with Jesus Christ. For example addressing a church he tells the story of alter call experience when he was introduced to,

"someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life. It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith... kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works." (full text HERE)

It is interesting to note that in the interview from the Chicago Sun-Times which Cal Thomas references as the sole source for his conclusion of Obama's non-Christian status, Obama is quoted there as well as describing himself as having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ". Thomas omits that part, and only focuses on his doctrinal disagreements.

But let me throw a wrench into all of this. I would propose that whether a politician is a Christian (using either of the two definitions) is actually pretty irrelevant. What we need to know is how the Christian faith plays out in how he does politics. A politician's personal faith is something that I have no connection with since I do not know them personally, where we interact is on a political level, and so what I need to know is how they conduct their public and political life and the values and policies they have. Are those vales influenced by the character and values and way of Jesus? Are their actions and values reflecting Jesus and his kingdom? That is what matters to us.

We Evangelicals have in the past paid way too much attention to politician's personal faith, and way too little (if we paid attention at all) to what it would mean to govern in a Christ-like way, or what Jesus would do if he were them. As a result it has been enough for a politician to simply say they were "one of us" and we simply assumed that this must automatically translate into them making all the right choices, with relatively zero reflection on what those choices might be, or what Christian leadership on a political level might look like. This kind of naivete has lead to us evangelicals being easy targets for politicians to take advantage of. Former White House Aide David Kuo tells an eye opening insider story of this which you can check out online HERE.

I'd say based on this that this biblical illiteracy of what it means to be a Christian politician - or better how to be a politician in a "what-would-Jesus-do way" is of major importance. What I would like to do over the next few blog posts is to outline what I see as a biblical criteria for Jesus-style politics, leadership, power, and public life. But that will have to wait for the next post...

Being Post Evangelical

I've been trying over the past few years to figure out how to describe my faith. It seems a lot of others are on that same journey through the "evangelical wilderness" not really feeling at home in the traditional molds, but not knowing exactly where they belong either. I'm not conservative, but I am equally not liberal, and in todays polarized culture where you are either one or the other, that puts me in the category of nowhere.

Many people have responded to this with a shift in terminology. They see that calling themselves evangelical and even Christian has a negative association that they want to distance themselves from and so they come up with new terms like "follower of Jesus" or even "follower in the way of Jesus" (that's FITWOJ for short, very catchy indeed). Others have left evangelicalism for the orthodox church, the mainline church, the catholic church, the emergent church, and so on. I never felt I could do that. As much as I struggled with it, I felt that this embarrassing family was, like it or not, my own family. It was my home, and I felt inauthentic anywhere else. Yet I did not feel at home in my dysfunctional evangelical family either, kind of like how many of us feel at our own biological families over the holidays when we cringe at the awful things uncle Larry says.

I have tried putting a good face on evangelicalism by my own witness, trying to broaden people's view of what it means to be evangelical, showing them that it can be thoughtful and compassionate. The basic line I took - and I think it is one an awful lot of people take - is that yes there are a few wackos out there that give us all a bad name, angry hurtful people with a pulpit and a TV camera, but the vast majority of us are really pretty loving people. "On the whole evangelicalism is good," I would argue, "it's just a few bad apples". I don't think I can get off that easy now. I think there are many things that are fundamentally wrong with my own evangelical faith, places where we have strayed from the Gospel and become idolatrous in adopting values of our country and culture that are diametrically opposed to the Gospel and what Jesus stood for. I could string out a laundry list of these, and I'm sure you could too. I don't want to defend that or even white wash it.

So I am post-evangelical. Not 'post' in the sense of being 'anti' evangelical or 'past' evangelical. I still very much affirm all the core beliefs of evangelicalism - I am an evangelical. But I think our faith needs to reform itself back into a faith that authentically arises directly out of the Gospel. A big part of that recovery of an authentic evangelicalism has been in looking at my own church heritage and history. Like most evangelicals my understanding of the last 2000 years of church history used to look something like this:

Book of Acts . . . . . . . . . Luther . . . . . . . . . now.

What I found though as I studied history is that my own evangelical faith has a rich tradition beginning with German pietism, continuing into Methodism and the First and Second Great Awakenings, and then into Pentecostalism - not only of stressing the importance of being transformed through a vibrant relationship with God, but also of a deep commitment to social justice and the poor. For hundreds of years loving Jesus and caring for the poor were inseparable. That's not to say that these 'golden years' of evangelicalism were without their own problems of course. I don't want to idealize the past. But I have found that understanding more about where we have come from can help us to figure out where we should be going now, and what authentically following Jesus might look like in our time.

For me being post-evangelical (or if you prefer new-evangelical) means that I affirm that I am an evangelical, and at the same time that my own evangelical faith has in many ways taken a major wrong turn and seriously needs to deeply seek out what radically loving and following Jesus might look like.

I remember when I first visited Germany we were at the Gedaechniskirche in the center of Berlin. This is a church that has been deliberately left as it was after the war - a huge gaping hole ripped into it by a bomb - as a remembrance of Germany's role in WWII. I remember speaking to the pastor of that church and him asking me to forgive him and his people for what they had done. I was taken aback at first since this pastor could not have been more than 4-years-old when it all happened. Yet there he was, taking responsibility for the deeds of his own people, and repenting in the midst of that war-torn cathedral. I hope I can be a bit like him now, because I am an evangelical, and I need to ask your forgiveness.

The Emerging Relational Theology #5

Emergents are often accused of being little more than repackaged liberal Christianity. One place where this comes up is in our understanding of what it means to be a Christian. The typical evangelical pat answer here has to do with believing the right stuff, and having a conversion expereince. The flip side liberal answer has to do with doing the right stuff. Many emergents, unsatisfied with their own evangelical background which was focused on rigid orthodoxy now stress a focus on orthopraxy, and speak of being a "follower of Jesus". In this focus on following the moral teachings of Jesus over and against right belief they do seem very much to echo liberalism.

There is however a third relational way that goes beyond this liberal/conservative divide between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. This way is one that is not so much new as it is a rediscovery of ancient faith (I realize that this is a claim nearly every group makes for itself, that they are the original and true version, so take it with a grain of salt). The term orthodoxy as it was originally used does not actually mean right belief or right doctrine, it means right worship ("dox" as in "doxology"). In this sense what we believe, value, embrace, and affirm is directly connected to how we live, and in fact how we live and love God is primary - that is, our expression and formulation about who God is and who we are come out of experiencing God in history transforming our own history. As a consequence being a Christian is not based on our moral performance, nor is it based on our ability to arrive at the right formulations (a kind of intellectual salvation by works). It is based on God entering into our lives and doing a work in us. This relational view assumes a real living God who can be known by us relationally and that being in this relationship is transforming. It is not simply following the teachings of a dead guy on our own, nor it is affirming the formulations of who God is that were written by some others dead guys, it is about being connected to the living and risen Christ - to the one who is life abundant itself, and having that new life form who we are, how we see, and how we live. Being a Christian is about being alive in Christ. It means having Christ abiding in our hearts, being transformed into his image through his present love in our lives changing us from the inside out.

Now all of this is pretty much a Wesleyan view of salvation as integrally connected to sanctification. It is the kind of intimate relationship with God that many evangelicals have been familiar with from day one. In may be more familiar within charismatic denominations than reformed ones, but it is not really anything "emergent". What is emergent is an additional "catholic" twist to this relational view. That's "catholic" with a small "c" as an adjective not a noun, meaning not the Roman Catholic church, but simply a focus on the church as a body rather than on individual personal salvation in isolation from the community of faith. Here church is not understood as an authoritarian institution that meets on the weekend to dispense correct teaching, but a living community of those who indwelt by God in Christ are being transformed into living out Christ-likeness together. Simply put: loving God cannot be separated from loving others. We learn God's love by seeing it modeled and lived out, and the vocation of the body is to be this salt - to reveal Christ. We can't really speak of a relationship with God if we divorce this from living in relationship with others in community. That's pretty much the point John makes over and over in his epistles.

This communal idea of living in relationship together as the body of Christ in the world is an idea that has been pretty neglected. For many of us we go to church in the sense of it being an event, close our eyes during worship and face forward to listen to the sermon. We sit next to others, but we might as well be alone. Afterwards we might small talk a bit over donuts before we drive off in our cars back to our own private lives. Not exactly the same as the vision of koinonia community in the book of Acts where they lived together sharing everything in common, living and dying together, living out agape love. We know from Paul's letters that this was not always rosy or without problems, but it seems that this kind of real relational living together in our world of commuter church events is not really even on our radar at all. Frankly I am uninterested in whether a church has cool moody candles and overhead beamers with interactive worship video, and would love instead to just have some people sharing their lives and being real - less postmodern glitz and more plain old unromantic friends hanging out and sharing their imperfect lives.

(thanks to emerging grace for the above poster)

Being honest with doubt

One of my favorite podcasts is Internet Monk Michael Spencer. He defines himself as “post Evangelical”. Not “post” in terms of being “anti”, but in terms of challenging his own and our assumptions about that particular culture in order to try and find an authentic and grace filled way of following Jesus. Michael said something there recently that I thought was so good that I'd like to quote it at length here.

To those who - despite all their deep sincerity and honest efforts, try as they might - feel that Christianity is just not working he says:

“I don't have an answer for you guys, what I have is just a moment of saying that I know you are there, and I know some of the pain you are in... some of the frighting, doubting aspects of all this that hangs over your head when you wonder what's real, what's true. I know there are moments when you say 'man, have I made a complete fool of myself with the way I live my life!'.

You are not alone. There are lots of people like you. It's hard for us sometimes to reach out, and hear one another's stories, but those stories are there... Please don't be afraid to tell your story – on your website, or across a cup of coffee, or in whatever way you have. Don't be afraid to tell that story, because there are people listening to you - tell the truth - who know that you are like them, and they value the fact that you have validated their own experience. And they are closer to God, and God is more real to them. Because you were honest about the way that Christianity sometime doesn't work for you – you help their faith journey along by letting them know that they're not crazy. They may not walk up to you and say 'I appreciate what you said', but they are there.

Christianity is I think a lot different than the people who advertise what it is. Those of us – and I hope I can count myself in this group – who will from time to time tell the truth about some of what we go through, and some of what we feel, are breaking a code of silence that keeps all kinds of people prisoners. It keeps them prisoners in manipulative churches, and abusive religious situations. It keeps them prisoners in places where leaders have to be very unlike Jesus in order to accomplish the goals of the religious organization and institution

You are okay. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Don't be afraid to have your own experience. And don't think that the Great Shepherd has lost track of you. He hasn't. There are all different kinds of sheep in the flock. One of those kinds of sheep is the sheep that feels lost. Maybe you are lost, maybe you're not. Maybe you're just going through a difficult time. But however you find yourself: don't lose your integrity, don't lose your honesty. And don't lose that sense that there are thousands and thousands of other people just like you.”