Over the years, I’ve been asked repeatedly to teach a class on other faiths. As religious people, it’s natural to want to know more about what other people believe.
But I always demurred. Why? Not because much can’t be gained, but because the church first needs to know what it believes!
The underlying assumption of these requests, I suspect, is that all religions are the same. Learning about other religions helps us learn what is basic to all.
My standard explanation is to offer this example: Suppose I meet you for the first time – we’re complete strangers. Using the same logic we use to understand other religions, I conclude you’re exactly like me.
Oh, you might look different, dress different, and come from a different part of the world. No matter. We’re the same. In fact, there’s no real need to get to know you. You’re just me in a different guise.
The proper approach, of course, one we all unthinkingly adopt, is to engage the other person in respectful dialogue, without preset assumptions.
In time, it’s likely we’ll discover we’re indeed the same in many respects. Yet it’s equally likely we’ll discover we differ in significant respects as well. After all, you come from a different family and have unique life-experiences, all of which colors your outlook.
I should avoid projecting myself onto you, as if you’re a blank screen upon which I cast my image. (Such an approach assures I will learn nothing about you whatsoever.)
The key is to engage you (which, of course, first requires I know something of who I am!). Only then will we discover our commonalities as well as our differences. In this way I can learn from you, and you from me. And, hopefully, we will learn to respect our differences (rather than assuming there simply are none).
A couple of Sundays ago, the church we attend had a “holy laughter” Sunday. Now it wasn’t as goofy as it sounds! In fact, the idea comes from an ancient European tradition of laughing at the devil!
What wasn’t mentioned is that humor is endemic to the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s premised, after all, on the fact that all human beings fall short of the glory of God. Thus there’s never any shortage of irony to be mined from human pretension.
The gargoyles on European cathedrals underscore the point. Not only do these “creatures” have a utilitarian purpose, as water spouts, but their grinning faces, looking down at us, are a healthy reminder that we’re all, and in key respects, fools! We are invited to laugh at ourselves, something essential to human flourishing.
In any event, during this service they invited members to come up to the microphone and tell a joke. I was tempted but demurred. Yet if I had, I would have told this one:
Q: What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness?
A: A knock on the door for no particular reason.
Unitarianism, I’ve thought for years, is a Christian invention.
In the Declaration of Independence, it reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
Thomas Jefferson originally intended to say that equality comes from God. But his friend, Benjamin Franklin, a Deist and an unabashed devotee of the Enlightenment (from which Unitarianism derives), convinced him to change the language to “self-evident.” The idea is that equality is a universal truth, obvious to one and all.
Yet is this so? There are societies, both past and present, where this “self-evident” truth is anything but. The idea of equality actually comes from Judeo-Christian, Western Civilization. Equality is neither self-evident nor universally true, though, as a Christian, it is basic to my understanding of life.
The lure of “universal truths” is that they satisfy the human longing for comity and peace. If we can all agree on what is true, we are on our way to finding a unified community. It’s a beautiful sentiment. The problem is, it doesn’t work.
Since the early 20th century, the Mainline Protestant churches have taken to this idea of universal norms and truths with gusto. In their zeal to reform the world (and who doesn’t think it could use it?), a conscious decision was made to deemphasize Christian beliefs.
Why? Because they’re too sectarian. They divide believer from non-believer. And they’re a turn-off to those who otherwise might work with the church toward achieving the desired social good.
This was something 20th century mainline missionaries discovered. Faced with the often-daunting challenge of converting stubborn indigenous beliefs, missionaries decided to avoid the subject altogether. Better to stick with “deeds not creeds” and focus on providing food, shelter, and education.
At home, the same logic prevailed. In attempting to build a better society, why alienate potential allies by insisting on Christian beliefs (which fewer and fewer people ascribed to anyway)? Besides, new scientific discoveries advanced by “expert” theoreticians promised a much better way. Why not work with them in effecting Christ’s work?
As a result, the mainline church came to consider theology and creedal beliefs as secondary, if essential at all. They were now an impediment to bringing people together.
Over the last few months, I’ve received e-mails from our local United Church of Christ “association” announcing several candidates for ordination. Included has been a copy of each candidate’s ordination paper.
Aside from the always-compelling nature of their “spiritual journeys,” the reader might come away thinking the church is, primarily, a social service agency, its purpose to provide goods and services to those in need (“caring and sharing”). If theology matters to these candidates, it’s fairly-well hidden.
Now I’d be the last person to suggest that helping others plays no part in the church’s mandate. It does. Yet, if truth be told, one doesn’t really have to be part of a church to help others. There are innumerable outside organizations and institutions dedicated to this task.
Come to think of it, there’s no real need to go to church to pursue one’s political interests either. In fact, as far as political analysis is concerned, you’d probably do better staying home on Sunday mornings reading the paper, or the computer, watching the Sunday news programs, or simply reading a book. What a pastor has to say about politics, at least in my experience, is not always all that informed or particularly illuminating.
No, the one thing the church has to offer that is unique unto itself is…Christianity!
An astute observer once likened Christ to a ladder. As the Christian climbs that ladder, he or she gets to see the ever-widening expanse of life. However, once this perspective had been gained or achieved, the temptation is to kick the ladder away, as if it’s no longer needed.
Christianity is, in some sense, a victim of its own success. Having achieved great civilizational advancement, it then politely went away.
People, therefore, outside the church, can be forgiven for seeing little compelling reason for it. After all, if we inside the church are hard-pressed to come up with one, why should anybody else?