The Christian Religion

I was talking with someone recently who doesn't call himself a Christian any more. And I realized that I avoid that term "Christian" pretty intentionally myself.  Interesting. I didn't plan that.

The term is a Biblical term [Acts 26:28 & 1 Peter 4:16]. That's not the nature of my hesitation. 

I found myself saying that I avoid the term because I don't like the associations so much. There's a lot of heinous things that have been done in the name of the Christian religion. The crusades are a good example. 

But then I corrected myself. Yes, that's true, but the bigger issue for me might be that I don't like what has happened to the Christian Religion so much. Well, really, not at all. 

Yeah, the term is Biblical. That does not mean that what we've done with it is Biblical. It's not. We can point to the Romanization of Christianity first by Constantine's legalization and patronage of it starting in 313 AD, then the adoption of Christianity by Theodosius I in 380 AD. 

Those effects, both the patronage of government (think "501c3") and the cultural dominance of the religion are perversion (in my view) that have continued on even today. Christianity does not thrive when paired with government. 

We see another religion trying its hand at government: Islam is working pretty diligently to take over the world. Literally. If you look around, you can see a lot of growing dominance in a number of countries (Great Britain being one example), and there are communities around America that are considering adopting Sharia law (the religious law of Islam). 

Islam (Muslims) kind of hate Christianity. And they kind of have reason. I refer you back to the crusades, when Christian knights and armies slaughtered Muslims and took their lands. We did it badly then. They're doing it badly now, and reminding us of why religion and government don't mix. 

I've been living in the Gospels in the Bible for a few months. Some Christians today kind of hold up ancient Israel as an example of religion and government working together. But if you read the Old Testament (Kings & Chronicles in particular) and the Gospels with open eyes, you'll see that it never worked for them either. Jesus went waaay out of his way to castigate the religious ruling party (Pharisees, teachers of the Law) for how badly they got it wrong. 

The way I read it, Christianity was never meant to be a culturally dominant religion. Aw heck, Christianity was never meant to be a religion at all. It has always been meant to be a family. When family and government converge, you get dynasties and corruption, and we have seen too many examples of that in our lifetime. 

Let me add, however, while the Christian religion does not belong in government, Christian people ABSOLUTELY do. William Wilberforce and Charlie Kirk have been really excellent examples, though they've both were persecuted and paid a price for bringing their faith into their political work. Let's be honest: our faith belongs in our work, regardless what our work is. If we can't be a believer in our work - and I am not saying to be an evangelist or a preacher in our work - then our faith might be pretty superficial. 

So yes, I am proudly a part of Jesus' family. I am his son, his child, and I live my life in and under and for his kingship. (Note that God's Kingdom is NOT a political kingdom!) I have been redeemed by Father's massive love, and by Jesus' massive sacrifice, and Jesus lives in me, along with Father and Holy Spirit. I am born again. And I am what Luke (in Acts) and Peter called "Christian," but I respectfully decline to fit into the cultural and political boxes of what is called "Christian" in the 21st century. 

I know some folks who call themselves "Christ followers," and the term "born again" has some value again these days. I'm afraid that I expect that whatever "believers" (another option) call themselves will be corrupted quickly enough and filled with all sorts of cultural and historical baggage, particularly by people who want to put "those Jesus Freaks" (yet another option) into some sort of box so they can stop listening to them. 

So yeah, I kind of hate what has been done by the Christian religion over the centuries, but I think I resent what has happened TO the Christian religion even more. 

Maybe I'll find a label (ick) that will work, but maybe I'll just avoid labels as much as I'm able for the time being.  
 

Don't Quit Too Early

There is a classic and well-known story of R.U. Darby and his uncle during the Colorado gold rush era (late 1800s/early 1900s). Here’s the factual account as recounted by Darby himself.

Darby’s uncle caught “gold fever” and staked a claim in Colorado. He and the young R.U. Darby began digging with pick and shovel. They struck a vein of gold ore, which was promising enough that they covered the mine, returned east to raise capital, bought machinery, and resumed operations. The first loads of ore sent to the smelter confirmed it was rich—experts said it looked like one of the richest veins in the region. They recouped their investment quickly.

Then the vein suddenly disappeared. They drilled desperately in every direction but couldn’t find it again. After months of frustration and mounting costs (with no more gold showing up), they decided it wasn’t worth continuing. They quit, sold the mine and all the equipment to a local junk man for a few hundred dollars, and went home.

The junk man wasn’t an expert miner, but he had a hunch they had stopped too soon. He hired a mining engineer to survey the site. The engineer’s advice was simple: dig in a different spot, just three feet from where the Darbys had quit. They did—and struck one of the richest gold veins ever found in that part of Colorado. The new owner went on to make a fortune from the very same claim.

That is a moving story, and it has loads of places that it applies. But I think it applies in theology and in Bible study as well, and that's what's capturing my attention today. 

I was discussing some basic Christian doctrines with Father recently, and I felt like he smiled and nodded to me and said, "Yes, but you may have quit digging in this one too soon." 

He and I have had this conversation before, but this time was a little different. It's not uncommon that he & I discover (well, I discover, while I'm with him) new treasures about his character and his ways, particularly when I'm considering new things that I haven't considered before. 

But this time, I was considering well-established truths, doctrine of the Church (and if I'm honest, dogma for the Evangelical community). We were talking about hell. 

I've been taught about hell, though pretty often, it's been in the context of "Turn or burn." For years, I've been growing less comfortable with "Turn or burn!" applying to my Creator who gave up his place in Heaven to become a slimy, squalling human baby, then grew up to teach us about the nature and Kingdom of God, and then submit willingly (what?!?) to a brutal murder so that you and I could be set free from sin and death. "Turn or burn!" doesn't fit that kind of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. 

Recently I've been reading George MacDonald. You know, the guy that influenced CS Lewis to the point that he called him his "master" as he came to faith. That guy. 

"MacDonald preached the unthinkable: that God's love is for everyone, not just the "elect." Now that sure sounds a whole lot more like Jesus (and a whole lot less like Zeus) than the "Turn or burn!" that I was raised under. 

That sounds a whole lot more like Philippians 2: "Instead he [Jesus] emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross."

So my left-brained, analytical, western mind shouted at me, "Well if this is true, then hell can't be true!" or at least the kind of sadistic "burning forever in a lake of fire" type hell that the evangelists shouted about at the end of his fire-and-brimstone message. 

I was in a quandry. The Bible talks about hell (though we conflate a number of diverse ideas in our translations). So I maybe shouldn't just disbelieve what the Bible (actually) says about it. 

But the idea that God loves everybody is in the Bible, too. 1 Timothy 4:10 talks about "We have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe." All is a pretty big word. Maybe I shouldn't just disbelieve what the Bible (actually) says about this, either. 

What a quandry. 

Into this context, he reminded me: "Which pedal do you push on a bicycle in order to go forward?" Well the answer to that one is that I push whichever one is up, one after the other. It's not either-or. It's both-and. 

I had to admit, I've been prone to "binary thinking," where if I accept one thing as true, then I feel obligated to reject any other idea on that subject. (Examples of binary thinking include, "I didn't get that promotion, so my work here is meaningless and I'll never succeed." or the hallmark example of our day, "Donald Trump is the worst president we've ever had!" vs "Donald Trump is the best president we've ever had. The reality is that there's good and bad in most people; deal with it.)

I've run into a number of people who have discovered that God really IS good, so they have concluded that hell must be a lie or a misunderstanding. And I know a number of good folks who understand that hell is real and it's horrible, some of whom have actually visited it, so the idea of God welcoming everyone is anathema to them. 

So today, I was thinking about these, and the conundrum it was for my literal, logical mind. And it was into the middle of that, that Father whispered, "Yes, but you may have quit digging in this one too soon."

I'm beginning to think that maybe he's not as fond of black-and-white answers as I have always been. 

Ezekiel’s prophecy to the shepherds of Israel spoke to me recently. (I’ll quote it at the end.)

The essence of the accusation is that the shepherds – the ones responsible for taking care of the people – were taking care of themselves at the expense of the people. They betrayed the people they were responsible to care for. 

You might be familiar with the concept of a leader “fleecing the sheep.” That’s a bad thing. God sounds pretty serious when he talks about it here. 

I’ve encountered “Christian ministries” whose “ministry” was mostly asking for donations. It’s pretty easy to see there’s a problem with that. I’ve thought, “I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes on Judgment Day,” and I stopped asking questions. 

But this morning, I felt the Good Shepherd drawing my attention in a couple of new directions that I hadn’t considered before. 

○ First, I realized that while *some* of these failing shepherds might know full well that what they’re doing is wrong, there are probably others who are doing the best they can, and still failing, still qualifying for inclusion in this judgment. So far, I see four categories. 

• We’ve already considered the shepherds who are fully aware that they’re betraying their people.

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, but no actual skill at leading anyone. Bible School or Seminary doesn’t teach you to be a competent leader of people. 

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, had great skill at leading, but they had missed the memo that they were called to build God’s Kingdom, instead of their own. It’s too easy to get a business card printed these days. 

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, great skill, and wanted to build God’s kingdom, but their moral compass had lost its bearings, and they fell into all sorts of temptations and corruption. So sad.

○ And, of course, there are a huge number of faithful shepherds, who put both the needs of the sheep and of the Good Shepherd ahead of their own, many times at great personal sacrifice. I’m really thankful for these men and women among us!  <3 

Outrage is a really popular, and really powerful thing these days, and frankly, it’s a worldly response to some of these failing shepherds. But for some of them, I wonder if pity might not be appropriate. 

And since neither outrage nor pity fixes anything, maybe we should pray for these poor failing individuals. And especially for the sheep that they oversee. The Good Shepherd, it seems, is more about redemption than about punishment.

But he wasn’t done stretching me. 

I’ve always thought about this passage in the context of church leaders; after all, we call them “shepherds” sometimes. 

But then I realized that he’s talking about people who have a responsibility to take care of other people, and that is not just about church leaders. (That unbiblical and artificial “sacred/secular division” busted my chops again!)

I realized that God is no less concerned about “secular” leaders who betray their people, too. 

• These days, it’s not too difficult to think of political leaders who betray the people who voted them into office. The number of leaders whose net worth increases by tens of millions of dollars while on a moderate salary is indicative. And embarrassing. And those whose income grows the fastest seem to not stand up very well for the issues of the people they represent. 

But then I realized that this betrayal might be a bigger issue than even self-enrichment. No wonder God is so frustrated about it. 

• I thought about business leaders who put their own profits, the profits of their businesses ahead of the people that they are “serving” in their business. Names came to mind: Disney, Pfizer, Merck, Amazon, Enron, Weinstein, Epstein. There are others. I suspect that there are business leaders in all the same categories of failure as church leaders. 

• Then it occurred to me that there has been a similar betrayal in our education system. Claudine Gay at Harvard made a lot of headlines in the past year or two, and higher education has, as a whole, been pretty active at intentionally disassembling the faith of their students. And there have been thousands of videos of teachers and school board meetings revealing an intentional effort to change the values, and occasionally the gender, of the students they “serve.” 

• We’ve discussed the betrayal of the mainstream media enough over the past several months; so many of them have transformed from “presenters of news” to propaganda tools of both government and big business. Both news media organizations and news personalities.

So what do we do with all these shepherds who have failed us, who are still failing us? 

Well, I begin by praying. If we fail in our prayers, nothing else matters. I’m still praying that the things that have been hidden in the darkness so long would be brought out into the light, and dealt with justly; I pray it for every aspect of our culture here: government, church leaders, business leaders, media, all of it. (I pray this for my own life as well, but that’s a different conversation.)

More and more, I’m finding my prayers including calling for repentance in the hearts of the leaders who have made a living betraying our trust, preying on those they are called to serve. God is no less interested in redemption in the 21st century than he was in the first century. 

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Here’s the passage from Ezekiel that started this: 

The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! 

Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. 

You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. 

"'Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: 

I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them. 

[Ezekiel 34:1-10]