Inconsequential Christianity
CHRISTIANITY AS A THEORY CHANGES NOTHING
Christianity as a theory is, for the most part, inconsequential.
I was driving in rural Kentucky one day and I came across this old run down store. The front porch had been hit by a large truck years before, (I was told this by an elderly gentleman who was working on the building) the roof was sagging, and there was an entire section of the wall completely knocked down. I stopped to take some photos and was struck by an image. There, in an old worn latch was a pin, locking the door.
Inconsequential Christianity | Context Is Vital
There was an eight foot hole immediately to the left of the door (which I walked in through) where the cinder block wall had collapsed, but the door was locked. At some point that little pin was significant. A man or woman placed it there with all confidence that it would protect their stuff, and in theory, it worked, but in the context that it’s in now, it has no application.
Some of my darkest days have been when I woke up with the knowledge that most of the things I believed and said I stood for were just concepts and theories that I was not actually living, and not only that I wasn’t living them, but that I hadn’t forged any avenues to apply them. The hardest days, for me anyway, have always been church days. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Church, but so many times I am frustrated with myself when it’s all over, because I sing songs and make these incredible declarations about what I think and know about Jesus and His passion to reach the lost and help the helpless and the broken, but I haven’t and I don’t.
I have been a “professional” in the ministry field for a long time, years in fact. Those dark days were nestled right into this professional stage. For two years I lived in a church, literally, that I worked for. During the first half of that tenure I had absolutely zero impact on the world outside of the building, yet I was employed to be a “minister.” I had to force myself to find ways to connect with people who weren’t a part of our local church culture, to see people who weren’t part of the staff that I saw and theorized with everyday.
The problem wasn’t what I believed or the people I theorized with on a daily basis. The problem wasn’t church days or any of that. The problem was that my Christianity, the truths that I believed and held were out of context. There was no relevance to the Christianity I wanted so desperately to be a part of and the life I was living as a professional minister.
I found that a theory left unproven becomes a doorway to discontent. I have a friend who was also a full-time youth pastor at the time that I was going through this period of disconnect, he called it the Summer of Discontent. It was almost bizarre how similar our situations were. We didn’t sit around bashing the church, that’s never helpful. We had many conversations, however, about where we felt like the church was in relation to the world around us and how it seemed we were about the profession of Christianity as an industry instead of the possession of Christ as a lifestyle. We both felt deeply that church was about more than productions and events, but about the great passion of Jesus Christ to empower people to become who He made them to be by helping them remove (or at least control) the things that keep them distracted.
I was working for a group that was very image driven and he was working for one that seemed to be more driven by monetary gain. Image and money are important. If nobody trusts you as a spiritual entity and you have no finances to work with than you are going to really struggle to fulfill the purpose that God calls you to, but they are not the most important things.
I had a great conversation with a young Bible college student. We had lunch at Panera, which is actually a very spiritual place. There’s something spiritual about bread for me, so I go there and work and feel close to God when I see people making and eating bread, yeah, I’m weird like that. Anyway, our conversation gives me hope for the future of the Church. He has questions, like me (and probably you) about why we hold on to so many things that have nothing to do with the Bible and why we have so many theories and concepts that have absolutely no connection to real life. What gives me hope is the fact that he (and people like him) is thinking, thinking about what he believes and challenging its validity and, more importantly, its applicability.
It’s not so much that we are trying to disprove anything, what we’re trying to do is to prove that truth can be real in the context of our everyday lives, beyond a religious theory or a philosophical concept.
So many people think that Christianity is about going to church, but if it is, than it’s not about much. I sometimes dread (and this is no reflection on the church, it’s just me) going to another church service. I know we need Church and I’m not advocating that we stop having church, but I sit there and have to fight the urge to stand up and shout, “What the heck are we doing? We’ve heard all of this before, why aren’t we feeding the poor or doing something about poverty in the Appalachians?” while I run screaming at the top of my lungs out of the building.
There is an inherent danger in thinking. I’ve read history books about communist regimes that overthrow the former government of a free society. One of the first things that they do is round up the thinkers. They kill the artists and the musicians. Why? The only way to control a large populace is to create a system that makes thinking a crime and takes away the ability of the people to put new ideas into the context of their lives. Then you redefine context, making the truth you propagate the only thing that fits.
And there is the rub. Religious people hold onto things that have nothing to do with the Bible and have so many theories and concepts that have absolutely no connection to real life because their context has been redefined by a system that is more about control than it is about thinking.
This is why we have such a tremendous loss of young men and women who step out of their parents’ home and church into real life. They aren’t able to fit what they have been taught for so long into their everyday lives, because it never was part of their everyday life. It was a very small segment of their week and their whole Christianity fit into the time slot allotted by the church.
Then they walk into the arms of a college professor who challenges them to do the one thing about their Christianity that they have been taught not to do, think. So, they begin to think and usually they turn away because in their “real” life, none of it fits at all.
The job of the Church, than, is not just to try to build bigger buildings for larger congregations, but to empower men and women to think about what they believe and weigh it against how they live and what they do.
If they can’t fit it into the context of their lives, then maybe it’s not really Christianity.
Jesus kicked over tables and whipped the money changers in the temple. Why was He so hacked off? Here’s why, the religious leaders of the day had invented a new context so they could propagate their own version of “God’s plan.” They took what was meant to be a beautiful illustration of the salvation message and perverted it into a scheme where they could take advantage of the people who were coming to the temple. On the surface it was about the money, but the underlying motive, the true motive, was, and usually is, about control.
The Jewish people of that day were required to make sacrificial offerings at the temple. They would come from miles, often taking days to make a dangerous and exhausting journey. The temple priests had complete control over the acceptance of the animal that was brought to be sacrificed by the believer. Many times the priests would refuse the person’s sacrifice by citing some fictitious blemish on the animal (which was required to be blemish free by the Mosaic Law). Then they would point the weary, and typically angry, person to the acceptable and over priced animals they conveniently had for sale right there in the temple.
Not only that, but the only currency that was accepted in the temple was, you guessed it, temple money. The temple money was often valued higher than the currency the person brought from home. This translated into a loss for them monetarily as they exchanged their currency, before they could even buy the replacement animal. They had traveled so far to come to the temple that they would accept the reinvented context of the religious system and forgiveness from God became a burden and drudgery to them instead of the beautiful example He had intended it to be.
Jesus wasn’t angry because people were selling animals in the temple, it was because they had taken His word out of its true context and they forced a new and erroneous context onto His people. Remember His words, it should have been a house of prayer, but instead they had made it into a den of thieves.
They had redefined the context and by doing so they made their “truth” the only thing that fit.
Religious institutions are as notorious about redefining context as communistic governments. Religion is really about resisting change. In fact the word religion comes from the Latin word “relegare” which means to “tie fast.” Many of the traditions that are accepted as normal within a religious culture can be traced back to a redefinition of context. Here’s a humorous example: during the 1960’s there was a movement of young men and women to protest and resist social convention.
I know some of these people were simply being rebellious, but I’m sure there were some very intelligent young people who had simply come to the place where they didn’t believe and/or agree with what they had been taught and were willing to stand up in protest. This was the heart of the civil rights movement and had some very positive implications.
For many of these people the church didn’t have an intelligent response to their questions. So the protestors left. Before we judge too harshly, we should stop to consider that most of us consider ourselves to be “Protestant” in our faith. Yes, protestors.
One of the things that happened during that time in most churches regardless of organizational affiliation was strong pressure for the young men in their congregations to refrain from growing moustaches and beards. The thought behind this, of course, was to keep their people from identifying with the rebellious “hippies.” Most of these organizations relaxed their stance on this subject after the decline of the hippie era, some however, adopted this practice into their permanent church culture and continued to teach and preach against facial hair for “their” men.
In fact, I attended a church for over a decade that taught against facial hair as a matter of doctrine. I remember seeing books in the church library about facial hair. I never did read one, but I’m sure I would enjoy it. I only bring this up to make a point. I was taught early into my religious training that the reason we were to be clean shaven was Biblical. In reality, if I want to preach against something I can, if I look hard enough, find some scripture, however obscure, to back up my position.
It’s true that the Old Testament is a type or shadow of the New Testament and many of its physical examples have spiritual implications for us today. What I was taught, using this true principle, was that Joseph, one of the sons of Israel, had been betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery. In what is one of the most incredible examples of God’s faithfulness he ends up becoming the second in command in the most powerful nation on the planet. During the transition from slave to world leader, Joseph is placed in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. I won’t go into all of the details, but Joseph is summoned to appear before the Pharaoh to interpret a dream for him that his court of priests had been unable to explain.
As Joseph was being summoned to come before the “king” he shaved.
“Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon: and he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh.” Genesis 41:14
This, as I was taught, with no other reference to a scriptural basis, was why we as Christian men should keep a clean shave, because Joseph shaved before going into the presence of the “king” and we are always in the presence of the “King.”
So I shaved every day. The only reason that this teaching worked with me is because I was grossly ignorant of the Word of God and Biblical history. The way that this teaching was backed up was that we (Christians) should be submitted to those who were over us and to go against the teaching of the pastor was rebellion and rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and we all know what God thinks about those sorry witches. In effect saying that to have a different opinion or not agreeing with the pastor would put me or anybody else in hell with witches. “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.”
Now, I hardly think that the wonderful man who was my spiritual leader at the time did this with malice. He was simply perpetuating the teaching he had received. You know what’s funny, though, is that this teaching is ridiculously erroneous both in its basis and its enforcement.
Let’s take the first part, Joseph shaved so we should.
Joseph was in an Egyptian prison. When he was summoned to go before the Pharaoh he wasn’t going before a king, he was going before a false god. Yes, the people of Egypt worshipped this man as “god on earth”. The Pharaoh cannot be used as a type or shadow for God because that would contradict other scriptural principles. Also, when Joseph was called to the court of Pharaoh, he wasn’t coming in as a believer of the one true God (in Pharaoh’s eyes), he was coming in as one of the multitudes of other soothsayers and magicians. He was, essentially, coming in as a pagan priest, so in order for him to be acceptable to Pharaoh, he had to shave his face and probably his entire body. It’s very likely that Joseph shaved his head, eyebrows, arms, legs and everywhere else, because many of the Egyptian religions required their priests to be completely hair free as a rite of their priesthood. Hair was considered unclean. In fact, according to BlueLetterBible.org’s online concordance, the word used here for shaved is “galach” which means “to poll, shave, shave off, be bald.”
I’m not on a band wagon nor am I suggesting that everyone should grow a beard (especially not the women, but if you have one that’s o.k.). My point in all of this is that this passage of scripture cannot be used to support a clean shave doctrine, but when taken out of context, any scripture can be used to support any doctrine. All you have to have to make this work is ignorant people who are intimidated into not thinking contrary to the leader.
Which leads to the second point, you must agree with the pastor or leader because they are in charge. At this point some of my pastor friends are going to disown me and in earlier centuries this would probably add a few pounds of wood to the fire as the witch is being burned. As Nacho Libre said, “I smell cookies.”
The church does not own the people. The pastor is not the local demi-god who has complete control of the individuals in the congregation he pastors. I purposely didn’t say “his congregation” because it’s not the pastor’s church. For anyone to say that you are a rebel because you challenge the validity of a man’s opinion or stance is to take away one of the most fundamental ingredients of true Christianity.
I am not against pastors, I am a pastor. I am, however, against religious systems that take away the right (and obligation) of Christians to think and have a voice in their own lives.
Let me put it this way, each individual believer is the captain of their own ship. The job of the church leadership is to point in the direction that God is leading the church, try to remove the obstacles in the path of the believers or give them instruction on how to navigate around them, but we have no authority to grab the wheel and push them into the passenger’s seat of their own lives.
If you don’t agree with my opinion or my personal preference (which the facial hair issue and so many other issues are truly about) and I have no true Biblical basis for my argument than you pray and do what you think God is calling you to do. I am not authorized to override your relationship with God.
When we teach people we should welcome disagreement and invite them to discuss their disagreements and go to the Word of God as the ultimate authority, always striving to use the scripture in their true context.
Then, and only then will people be able to put Christianity into the context of their own lives.
Look, the captain of the ship in the control room and the passenger playing tennis on the upper deck are on the same vessel, making the same journey and in the same peril, but are worlds apart in their understanding.
The captain knows how to navigate the ship. He knows how to read the instruments and knows the location of the vessel in reference to its final destination. His job is to know.
The passenger knows when dinner is going to be served, approximately when he or she is going to get to the destination and that someone, somewhere is in charge of the ship. His or her job, in reality, is to be blissfully ignorant of most of the details. Even though he or she is on the journey, the context of everything is different. If something happened to the captain and crew of this ship, or the passengers were suddenly placed at the wheel, they would be in serious trouble because they don’t know how it all works and have never been instructed on how to guide the ship to safety.
If we are going to see young men and women continue to follow Christ when they leave their parent’s homes and go off to college, when they take the wheel, so to speak, we are going to have to get rid of the cruise ship mentality. The church is not a cruise ship. It’s a tightly knit group of individual rafts that are controlled by their single passenger. This is less controllable for a religious leader and there is less recognition for “Captain Pastor,” but it is Christianity in everyday context.
As the church we exist in concert, like a choir. The leadership of the local congregation stands in front and leads the choir because that’s his job, but the harmony of the song comes from the people who have equal access to the music and choose to sing, individually following the directions of the composer, as much or more, as the conductor.
Besides, I have a problem preaching against facial hair and keeping my eyebrows.
