Some years ago I heard a radio interview with one of my favorite Christian writers, the late Fred Buechner. The occasion was the release of his newest book, a collection of sermons.
At the time he’d long since retired. Thus, at one point, the interviewer asked him where he’d been attending church. His answer stunned me. In fact, I thought it sacrilegious. It diminished him in my eyes. He said he didn’t go to church.
When asked why, he explained, in effect, that none of the churches he’d attended seemed to get it. None struck him as particularly relevant or engaging. It was mostly meaningless blather (my words, not his).
Since retiring myself almost six years ago, I now have a better appreciation for Buechner’s dilemma. Part of the problem, for me, is that being a pastor had afforded me the privilege of setting the theological and pastoral tone. Sitting in the pews is another matter altogether. I’ve likened it to being a grandparent – it’s best to keep your mouth shut!
But what I’ve seen “out there,” I must confess, is pretty discouraging. I often hear the right words being spoken but rarely do I get the impression that their deeper meaning is even remotely apprehended. Words such as “truth,” “justice,” and “love” are thrown around with abandon. What’s left unaddressed is what these words actually mean and how they apply to our everyday lives in 21st century America.
Take “love,” for instance. I hear ad nauseum that God is love, and that all we need is love. What’s lacking is any clear appreciation for the unique nature of God’s love. It’s not the same as human love, in other words. God’s love is “holy,” meaning “set apart.”
In all biblical “theophanies,” those moments of direct human encounter with God, the human response is one of awe or, more aptly, fear and trembling. Terror even. In such accounts, the human being, after facing the force of God’s holiness, invariably falls to the ground and begs for God’s forgiveness and mercy.
The reason is that the otherworldly power of God contrasts sharply, and uncomfortably, with human limitation and imperfection. God’s love is, after all, a double-edged sword – it is both mercy AND judgment. Not surprisingly, we tend to forget the judgment part, mainly due to the human desire to domesticate God’s untamable power. God’s love is not always as warm and fuzzy as we suppose. And it’s decidedly not the soporific mush we hear all too often in our increasingly sterile, flavorless churches.
Annie Dillard, the noted author, once said that most of the time we enter church with complete nonchalance. Yet if we truly understood what we are doing there, that we are in the very presence of the holy God, we’d strap ourselves into our pews wearing crash helmets!
Another doozy of a word often heard in our churches today is the ever popular “justice.” A couple of weeks ago, as a case in point, I attended a service where the pastor gave a lengthy disquisition on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The trouble is that while King’s accomplishments were unquestionably notable, we no longer live in 1963. Which is to say that the civil rights movement King championed in the 60s has morphed into the identity politics of today. His ideas are now quaint, if not passe.
No, with respect to racial matters, the emphasis today, even in our churches, is on our irreconcilable, immutable differences. People are routinely judged by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy has effectively been jettisoned for the revolutionary ideology of the Black Panthers. Peaceful protest has been replaced by the violent kind. Integration leading to a colorblind society has been superseded by heightened, intentioned racial tensions and divisions.
Sitting and listening to a morality play featuring Martin Luther King, Jr. felt almost surreal to me. For not only did it have very little to say about our current state of affairs, but it seemed as if frozen in amber, a celebration of a long-ago triumph oddly detached from the pressing challenges of today.
It was as if we were being invited to take a sentimental victory lap, lulled into a state of moral complacency, if not superiority, for having once successfully waged yesteryear’s labors. Rather than stirring us to action, we were presented with a comforting fairy tale.
Tim Keller, Christian pastor and prolific author, who died earlier this year, once said, and I paraphrase, that it’s not enough to exegete the Bible, we must exegete the culture as well.
This means we are required to study not just our sacred text but the culture we are called to engage. That we are willing to accept Christ’s mandate to seek justice is proper, yet we first must ask ourselves whether we are clear on what actually needs changing. Older truisms and set approaches may no longer provide effective answers to life’s ever-changing circumstances. Put simply, God’s justice requires nothing less than astute spiritual discernment, for God’s ways are rarely as obvious as we assume.
Furthermore, misdiagnosing our circumstances and pursuing strategies based on false premises often produces more harm than good, regardless of our sincerity or intent.
A doctor, for instance, must accurately diagnose a patient’s malady before any hope of a cure. Treating a migraine headache with aggressive chemotherapy is not helpful. The desire to heal, in other words, is not enough.
Complicating the matter, today’s churches almost uniformly substitute the word “justice” for the phrase “social justice.” The latter comes from a movement that began over 100 years ago.
At that time, a split occurred within American Protestantism, the “Modernist-Fundamentalist Controversy.” In short, the Modernists (the forebears of the “Mainline” churches today) decided, for a variety of noble reasons, that the church’s focus should be on addressing pressing issues within the wider culture. The idea was to Christianize America’s cultural institutions. This new approach would advance the unprecedented historical successes of the church in America.
The Fundamentalists, however, while appreciating the desire to “fix” the structures of American society, believed their focus should remain on the church. Their fear was that as soon as the church became involved in the “world,” it eventually would be absorbed by that same world and, thus, lose its distinct Christian character.
Even though I’m hardly a Fundamentalist, I think they got this one right. For, over time, as was feared, the mainline churches have indeed been absorbed by the wider culture. Worse still, this same culture has become actively hostile to the church. And yet, curiously, the mainline churches continue to follow its lead.
Today, the church genuflects in particular to the latest fads coming out of secular academia. Trust me, I get all the emails from my own denomination, the United Church of Christ. Anything considered fashionable by our cultural elites will find its way into our pulpits in no time flat.
Thus, what passes for “justice” or “social justice” in mainline churches today usually reflects not so much the uniqueness of God’s justice, but the intellectual trends of “high society.”
This is not to say that the culture always gets it wrong, though, in my opinion, it most often does. The worst of it, however, is that this worldly justice is presented in the church as entirely consistent with godly justice. Again, I beg to differ.
This means, among other things, that the culture is left to define the gospel rather than the other way around. I’ve heard far too many sermons suggesting that if the biblical witness doesn’t accord with contemporary secular thought, it either must be dismissed or reinterpreted to better meet the requirements of today.
Thus, as I say, the culture is now tasked with interpreting the gospel, rather than the gospel interpreting the culture – just what the Fundamentalists feared.
Our troubled society needs a faithful church witness perhaps more than ever. Yet what are our churches doing? Passing on tired cliches from the glib propagandist talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News? Parroting the “edgy” novelties dreamed up within the fevered imaginations of Ivy League professors? Or taking seriously the lies and prevarications of corrupt and self-serving politicians?
No, the simple answer is that the church once more needs to become the church. It needs once more to become religious. It’s really that simple, and that challenging.
So I keep going to church in the hopes of its rebirth. In the meantime, I take solace in the knowledge that God will not fail just because we don’t happen to get it.