The advantage of the institution in religion

One thing that I vividly remember about my time in Seminary was the amount of people that I would meet that would say something along the lines of “I certainly believe in Jesus but I don’t like the church”. The reasons for not liking the church are numerous and probably pretty obvious. Don’t like the people, don’t like the style, too much hierarchy, political positions they don’t agree with, etc., etc.

I do think there can be some merit to this. There are certainly some things that should be deal breakers when looking for a specific church or faith tradition. For me, aside from an orthodox view of Christ and the crucifixtion/resurrection, two things stand out for me – I will not be a part of a church that puts limits on leadership positions for women and I will not be a part of a church that is not welcoming to all (though that is more broad, as welcoming does not necessarily mean a specific political position, merely that anyone is welcome to worship and be a part of the church).

The way that this was explained to me is that with our faith, there needs to be things that we would die for, things we would bleed for, and things that we would hold more loosely. The first category should be pretty limited – for me it would probably be limited to the character of Christ. The second is a few more, for me the two things listed above plus a few other things. And then everything else would fit into the third category.

The issue that I think we run into is that way too many things are being stuffed into the first two categories in regards to what we want in a church (or denomination or faith tradition). With the great diversity that is in humanity, it is probably going to be impossible to find a church that fits everything exactly, or I like the think that it would be. The alternative would be to force compliance upon members, which leads to danger. Perhaps this is a theme that I will touch on later, as there is much to be said about it.

The other alternative, and one that is becoming more common among younger people, is a sort of cafeteria faith, where parts of many different faiths are taken and melded together into a faith tradition that fits the individual. This is the end result of the thinking of I like Jesus but hate the church. And this thinking extends far beyond the Christian church, and is a part of all faith traditions. People may take aspects of all faith traditions and merge them into their own faith. This is all well and good as far as the individual is concerned, but there are significant consequences.

(Before I go any further, I want to make a quick statement that I am not against engaging different faith traditions or denominations, and taking inspiration from them. The point I want to make is that it is dangerous to that while simultaneously abandoning any faith tradition and to instead go off on ones own, for reasons that I will explain now).

This idea was explored in a recent article in The Atlantic titled “The Case Against Mix and Match Spirituality”.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/06/the-case-against-mix-and-match-spirituality/373643/

It was a quick look at the Aspen Ideas Festival and the ideas there about religion. There was discussion about how younger people (millennials) were forming there own ideas of faith traditions and what they may mean for them. It was looked at from the perspective of Jews, Catholics and Muslims, but there is certainly lessons for all faith traditions and denominations, including my own evangelical.

One quote that struck me was as follows:

"To call oneself a Muslim, a Jew, or a Catholic, what do the continuities have to be? You cannot simply erase the entirety of the religion that preceded you and call yourself a Jew. You can say that there is this tradition that is X,Y, and Z, interpret as you choose, state your reasons. It's a free country, this is the kind of Jew you want to be. What worries me is that the new forms will be so disconnected from the traditions that something called Judaism will survive but that the tradition in its richness may not. That is my deepest fear about my faith."

It is a concern about the heritage and the future of the faith. Valid from my perspective. If you want to call yourself “Jewish” (or whatever faith tradition), how much are you able to change before that word ceases to have any meaning. What are the definitions that will fit with that? Does there need to be certain things that are consistent across all people that claim to be Jewish?

Christianity certainly has and continues to have those discussions, and I am still not sure there is a good answer. I have my own suspicions, but I am quite confident that people would disagree with me.

(For a hint, you can check out my post on progressive religion: http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/thoughts-on-progressive-religion-and.html)

The other quote that really struck me, and kind of gets at the heart of this situation, was as follows:

Call me old fashioned, but yes, I would say, to be a good Catholic you have to believe in God. There's a problem with the hyper-individualization of Millennial religion. The advantage of an institution is that it forces you into conversation with people you might not agree with. It forces you to grapple with a tradition that includes hard ideas. It forces you to have, for at least part of your life, a respect for authority that inculcates the sense that you have something to learn, that you're not reinventing the wheel, but that millennia have come before you. The structure of institutions, for all their evils, facilitates that. And we may be losing that."

The God part is pretty self-explanatory in my part. Hard to consider yourself a Christian (or other faith group based on a deity) if you don’t believe in God.

But the second part of the quote is what really caught my attention and is the reason I wanted to examine this article. I think that captures the crux of the problem with the hyper-individualization of religion, of the attitude that I like Christ but don’t like the church.

“(An institution) forces you into conversation with people you might not agree with.” What a powerful concept and I think it should be the strength of the church. My church Central Baptist takes great pride in being a “purple” church. We run a wide spectrum of political beliefs, thoughts on worship style, organization of the church, etc. These are questions that we are currently debating and it is not an easy process. But we are united in Christ crucified, and there is power in that. There is not easy answer, but to deny aspects of the kingdom is to deny aspects of Christ. Surely Christ is more encompassing than any one person can fully realize. The power of the body is in its magnitude, and in how it truly compasses the full character of Christ. If we limit, or reject, parts of the faith, we limit (or reject) parts of Christ. This applies not only to what is around us today, but what has come before us.

It is easy and it may seem safe to stay in a bubble, to only take the parts of a faith tradition that you agree with. But it is limiting, and it prevents the opportunity for growth and for deeper understanding. We are not the first and only people to consider the higher truths of this world. There is great benefit in engaging each other and in engaging the past. Failure to do so will keep stagnate, and will keep us from fully experiencing all that Christ has to offer.

Benefit of the Doubt - Chapter 1

I continue my review of Benefit of the Doubt by Greg Boyd. The first chapter of the book is about embracing the pain. Bod starts with an overview and then weaves in his own personal story of his early conversion to faith and issues that he had when it was first challenged, the pain he felt, and how he eventually decided to embrace the pain.

Boyd starts this chapter by looking again at the thought that more certainty leads to a stronger faith and the potential problems this can lead to for believers. The gist of this was covered in my review of the Introduction, found here:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/benefit-of-doubt-introduction.html

Boyd uses an illustration from his first church of an example of someone with impeccable faith, and how everyone was compared to this giant of faith. He then proceeded to ask the question of how much faith is enough? The answer I would always think is “more” but this can be dangerous. There are always struggles that come throughout life and there is questions that come when it seems that God is not responding.

Boyd lists several questions that he receives from congregants including:

-Do my doubts disqualify me from “salvation”?

-If I’m fairly sure that Jesus is the Son of God – but not 100 percent sure – am I still “saved”?

-Are me doubts about God’s willingness to heal my child the reason she is not healed?

-I struggle with the idea that God really cares about my family and me. Do you think this is why I can’t find a job?

Questions like these are hard and hit close to home for me (and I’m sure for many of you as well). There are also scripture verses that would suggest that more faith should equal results – verses such as Mt. 9:29, Mk. 9:24, Mt. 8:10, Mt. 14:51, Mt. 21:22. These are all verses cited by Boyd that would seem to go against his basic points here, but he suggests that he will address them specifically later in the book.

The struggle that comes from these verses lead to the questions that were mentioned above. People develop a hierarchy of faith that certain levels of faith lead to certain outcomes. When people do not see outcomes they question their own faith and the reality of God. It is a terrible cycle that perpetuates itself if the only standard is more faith, and that is the only answer people have.

I would say on a personal level I struggle with this, and as a pastor or minister it is a difficult issue to address as well. Is God not honoring me because my faith is so weak? What do you do with this? Is this not a reasonable question to ask?

As mentioned in my post yesterday, one of the primary reasons that people are leaving Christianity is this very situation, “They met a God who didn’t met their expectations”. If you expect a God to honor your requests based on your faith, and you try as hard as you can and as long as you can and you don’t see the conclusion that you expect, this can be a problem. This is the danger that Boyd speaks of when he pushes back against a certainty-seeking faith.

I don’t have a perfect answer to this issue/question. I suspect that an emphasis on a quid pro quo relationship with God is probably an issue (that is, I promise to have faith if you bless me with a certain outcome), and I also suspect that expecting certain things based upon faith treads dangerously upon a prosperity Gospel (that is, God is not an ATM machine, where you insert faith and withdraw blessing). I believe God has a will for our lives and we are to seek that, not necessarily the results that we desire in our hearts.

I suspect Boyd will touch more upon this later in the book. He concludes this chapter with a personal story. He was riding high on his faith late in his high school years and then entered college at the University of Minnesota. His first class was on Evolution and his plan was to study up on all the writings to disprove Evolution and convert his class. However, he found that all objections he raised up with proven to be a problem and he ended up having his own depression and crisis of faith. He knew that he had to move beyond the certainty-seeking faith and took a new look at what is the true foundation of his faith if it was to survive. His faith had been about avoiding pain and challenge, but he soon learned that this needed to change as well. To grow in his faith, he needed to embrace the pain. He will build on this going forward.

Millennials and the “false gospel of nice”

To provide a little bit more balance to my blog, and to build upon the sixth point that I talked about yesterday:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/frank-viola-top-7-reasons-why-people.html

I wanted to link to an article by Daniel Darling from the Southern Baptist Convention.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/03/millennials-and-the-false-gospel-of-nice/

In this article he takes a further look at the ideas that millennials are fleeing the church and that the orthodox teaching of Christianity (as he defines it) is not the true teaching of Christ. The problem is laid out in these two quotes:

If key evangelical influencers don’t listen, we are told, they are about to lose the entire millennial generation. Or, maybe that generation is already gone.

And:

If only orthodox evangelical leaders would give up their antiquated beliefs, get more in step with the real Jesus, the church and the world would be better off.

The short answer that Darling gives is that neither of these ideas are actually true. And I for the most part agree with him.

The first part is that milennials are leaving the church in droves. This is most likely not as true as the most dire projections make it out to be. Part of the reason is that many milennials are shifting from being nominal Christians to being non-affiliated Christians, which is something that I covered here:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-shift-from-nominal-to-none.html

Another point made by Darling, and something that I am quite sympathetic to, is that the projections of the death of the church have been made for decades, and while numbers may be down, Christianity is nowhere near death. There are a variety of reasons why milennials have been hesitant to commit to churches or denominations, but that doesn’t mean the church is dying.

Darling continues by acknowledging some of the concerns of the Southern Baptist convention, such as declines in baptisms and membership, but he wants to make clear it is not because of orthodoxy.

So what is the reason? Darling points to “a lack of faithful preaching and intentional gospel witness” as the main reasons. He further states that “a mushy, heterodox movement is [not] the cure for stagnation.” On these points I fully agree. The issue that of course comes up is what exactly constitutes faithful preaching and intentional witness.

I suspect that both of us would agree Christ should be at the center. My theme of the past couple of days has been Christ crucified and Christ resurrected. This can form the core of faithful preaching and intentional gospel witness. The question is what happens when people expand beyond that. Do they focus on more on morality or do the maintain focus on resurrection? Is it more about personal behavior, or more about new life?

Darling points to some good news as it relates to Southern Baptists:

Networks such as The Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel and others are growing. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, an unflinching bastion of orthodoxy, enrolls more Masters of Divinity students than any other institution accredited by the Association of Theological Schools.

These are good trends, so long as this is concerned. But even he admits it is more anecdotal evidence than a true measure of growth. I suspect that we may be seeing the development of a hard core with a somewhat shrinking population, but one that is becoming both more vocal and more entrenched.

Darling then talks about how Jesus was not afraid to be hated by the world, quoting Jesus in several scriptural passages. This is all true, and surely I agree, but I suspect again that Darling is fundamentally misunderstanding the reason for the world’s hatred.

I see the hatred because of how offensive the gospel is to the world. The idea that rebirth and new life comes from the power of Christ, not the power of any worldly institution. The idea that the last will be first and the first will be last. The idea that Jesus came to serve, not to be served. These are especially offensive in a society that is seeing increasing economic disparity and the power lying primarily in those with great wealth or access. How offensive is it that Christ, at the pinnacle of His power, chose to ignore the temptation of temporal power and instead laid down His life for all of us.

I think this is much different than making sure you have right political views or right theological positions. How offensive are you actually if you look around and see that you are surrounded by people who look and think exactly like you do, and you aren’t the marginalized of society. The true orthodoxy is Christ crucified and Christ resurrected. There is space for everyone after that.

I agree with his critique of the progressive notion of faith, I wrote about it here:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/thoughts-on-progressive-religion-and.html

The answer is not a Jesus that appeals to everything and everyone so that it no longer means anything. The answer is to start with the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and everything will flow from that.

With that said, I want to end on some notes of positivity from the article in regards to the orthodox.

But if you move past the rhetoric, you’ll find that it is often not aggrieved ex-evangelicals who are founding and leading charitable organizations, but the stubbornly orthodox. Faithful Christians are not the only ones in the trenches, relieving human need - but they make up a large percentage.All over the world, you will find faithful followers of Christ adopting orphaned children, rescuing girls from trafficking, feeding the poor, digging wells and volunteering in disaster relief. … And some of the world’s most effective ministries to the poor and marginalized were started by and continue to operate according to evangelical Christian beliefs. They live in the tension of the New Testament, which calls believers to both faithfulness and charity.

Amen to this.

Frank Viola – The Top 7 Reasons Why People Leave Christianity

Frank Viola published a new article on patheos on his opinion, after three decades of following Christ, of why Christians leave the faith for either atheism or another faith tradition.

He says all of friends who left Christianity left for one of these seven reasons. These are why they bailed out on the Lord.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankviola/whychristiansabandonthefaith/

For this post, I will include each of his seven reasons and write my thoughts on them and how they might look in the context of the bigger church.

1. The horrible, disgusting, nasty way that Christians treat one another in-person and online. I wrote about this in Warning: The World is Watching How We Christians Treat One Another and The Art of Being a Jerk Online. But it’s also one of the reasons why some Christians want nothing to do with following Jesus anymore. It’s because of the sub-human way that so many of His professing followers treat each other. Ways in which they themselves would never want to be treated, breaking the cardinal commandment of Jesus Himself — which fulfills the Law and the Prophets — in Matthew 7:12.

I am very suspicious as this being a reason for people leaving the church. While I certainly agree that the conversation between Christians on different sides of the spectrum on certain issues is not exactly civil, I am not sure that this trickles down to the local church in a meaningful way. This smacks a little too much of being in the bubble of elite Christianity, if the debates are what you are most focused on.

This is not to say that the local church does not have disagreements, sometimes even nasty ones, that cause splits within the local body. But I question whether that has a meaningful impact on leaving the faith and ultimately bailing out on the Lord. This is not to say that we, as a church and as believers, could go for some more civility in our conversations and disagreements, but this is also a strong part of human nature. People debate vigorously for the things that they believe, and I like to think that nothing is more important to an individual than their walk with the Lord. I also suspect that too often calls for civility are calls to agree with me, and on too many issues that isn’t going to happen.

History is littered with strong disagreements over faith issues, and too often it ended up not with hurt feelings but dead bodies, or perhaps excommunication if you were lucky. So in that sense there is at least some improvement.

2. The canned superficial answers they had been given to complicated questions. Example: An 18 year old is brought up in a Christian home. She is taught that God created the earth in seven literal days and that the earth is young. The 18-year old enters college and she hears this idea ripped to shreds. She is confused and finally concludes, “If that’s wrong, then I have to throw out everything I’ve been taught in the Bible. Maybe it’s all myth.” The fact is, this 18-year old has never been exposed to some of the best thinking on the subject. She’s never been exposed to the sophisticated answers to modernity, to empiricism, to the problem of evil in the world. Nor has she ever been taught that one can interpret Genesis a number of ways and none of them means doubting the authority, reliability, or inspiration of Scripture. The canned answers she received is all she knows and they are proving inadequate. Greg Boyd’s excellent book, Benefit of the Doubt, goes into some of this very well.

This is a nice continuation of my post from yesterday where I took a look at the introduction to Greg Boyd’s book. I look forward to reading more and seeing how he fleshes out this issue.

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/benefit-of-doubt-introduction.html

I strongly agree with this point by Viola. I think that in general the church is doing a very poor job of preparing youth who grow up in the church to face significant challenges to their faith as they reach adulthood. This is seen through either the development of a poor foundation, or the preventing of youth from critically thinking about their faith and testing it against other ways of thinking. Both of these are dangerous.

I don’t want to do a sweeping generalization of the church and youth ministry, as many of them do a fantastic job, but complaints about depth is something that I hear quite often. Youth ministry is in trouble when it is about hanging out and having fun with minimal focus on Christ, or when it is about teaching specific dogma with no room to explore.

There are stats cited about how a large percentage of youth leave the faith (at least for a while) when they enter college. The common reason cited is that colleges are so liberal and hostile to faith. I don’t buy this. I think the main issue is that youth are not prepared with a strong foundation in their faith and they are easily swayed away, or they lose it when certain points of their faith are challenged for the first time. This is the issue. Colleges and free inquiry are not the enemy of faith, they are vital to make sure it can stand challenges it will surely face.

More will be said about this in the future.

3. They met a God who didn’t meet their expectations. It could be a tragedy they experienced. It could be a painful event. It could be something dark and horrible that they’ve prayed to be saved from for years and God doesn’t seem to care. It could be a “promise” in Scripture that they stood on in faith, but never saw materialize. I’ve talked at length about this problem and the solution for it in God’s Favorite Place on Earth. Thankfully, that book has helped scores of people who have read it. But unfortunately, I can’t make people who would benefit from reading a book to actually read it. One of the frustrations of being an author. (Countless contemporary Christians will only read a book if a movie is made for it or if it appears on Fox News, The Today Show, or is heavily promoted by a mega-church pastor.) Anyways, this is a BIG reason why many abandon the Jesus ship.

His personal loathing aside, I think this is a huge issue. I don’t have a great answer for this, as faith in God is hard and it doesn’t always go in the manner that is expected. Two possible solutions to this:

First, it is critical to teach a robust faith. It is vital to move past an easy faith with easy answer. Aspects of this can touch on the prosperity gospel, that belief if God will lead to good things (beyond just money). When good things fail to materialize that can lead to a crisis of faith and perhaps abandonment. A robust reading of scripture cannot lead to this. Cherry picking scripture can.

The second issue is a loose, weak and distant church community. When people within the church are faced with problems it is vital that the rest of the community rallies around them. The failure to do so can lead to crisis in faith. This is especially true for older congregants, as I touched on here:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/allocating-church-resources-for-older.html

4. The stupidity and ignorance of so many Christians. Regrettably, many Christians believe whatever they read or hear. Those who are wiser and smarter don’t want to be associated with that lot. So they start thinking, “If Jesus was the Savior of the world, why are so many of His followers so stupid?” . . . “If Jesus is the head of the church, why is His church so dysfunctional and so toxic in so many cases?” So they start questioning the claims of the Lord Himself.

Meh. This seems unnecessarily harsh. I would hope that the members of any organization, church or otherwise, would realize that there will be a wide range of intelligence levels among the members. If someone is truly leaving for this reason, I would take a look at their heart instead of blaming everyone else.

5. Failure to live up to the gospel of legalism. I’ve watched Christians leave the Lord because they were taught a gospel of legalism — namely, that God will be upset with them if they don’t live a perfect life. Despite how hard they tried, they kept failing to keep the standard in various areas of their lives. They prayed, fasted, and sought victory over the problem with no results. Eventually, they got so weary that they concluded that it’s just not worth it to follow the Lord, so they left Him. 

I will certainly agree with this. I wrote a post on this about the bad trade that Christians can make:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-bad-trade-of-christianity.html

It can be devastating for individuals to fall into this cycle. If the church is teaching a high standard that no honest person can live up to without teaching the freedom that comes with Christ, people will eventually crack. There is a worthwhile debate to be had between law and grace, but it must be had in the context of the freedom and life that comes through the resurrection of Christ.

Of all the reasons that people leave the church, this is the one that causes the most long-term damage.

6. They loved the world more than Christ. Jesus wasn’t enough in their eyes to satisfy their heart’s desires — or what  they thought were their real desires. They loved “the pleasures of sin” more than the pleasures of God. Paul said of Demas, a Christian worker who had abandoned him, that “he loved this present world.”

I certainly agree with this. For many people the church just doesn’t do anything for them. They see no reason to accept the message of Christ. That is of course their decision and there isn’t much the church can and should do about this. The responsibility of the church is to be a community that teaches the Gospel. This message should not be watered down or altered merely to get as many people as possible into the doors. That trade is especially dangerous and ultimately counterproductive. My next post will focus on this idea a little more.

The other thought I have that is related to this is that for many people the core of the Gospel just doesn’t do anything for them. They see themselves as living pretty good lives, treat people well, etc. so they don’t see their own depravity and the need for life that comes from resurrection of Christ. The best the church can do is continue preaching the Gospel the best they can and trust in the Lord.

7. The cares of this life choked the (spiritual) life out of them. In His famous “parable of the sower,” Jesus talked about the seed of God’s word being choked to death because of the cares of this life. The daily grind of day-to-day life with all of its twists, turns, and problems can be a perpetual distraction to the spiritual person. So much so that it can easily choke the life out of them. The spiritual life, that is.

Yes, and in many ways this is similar to last point. Again, the solution is to teach Christ. Christ says that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Mt. 11:30). I can see how the cares of life can overwhelm, the hope is that church can provide relief, and a truth that transcends these concerns.