Undeception

In a section recapping some Olympic news, the September 8 issue of World Magazine had a short piece about Ryan Hall, a record-setting runner who many considered to hold great promise as a contender in the 2012 Olympics. He received lots of attention due to his successes, and was the subject of a cover feature by Runner’s World Magazine in 2008 and appeared in an AT&T commercial this summer.

In London in 2007, running only the third marathon of his life, Hall posted the fastest time ever by a U.S.-born American citizen, 2:06:17.

So how did he do in the 2012 Olympics?

Five years later, in the same city and with Olympic glory at stake, Hall pulled out of the marathon after 10 miles due to a right hamstring strain. It was a disappointing follow-up to his 10th-place finish four years ago in Beijing.

What’s sad is the reason why he performed so badly.

Hall’s Olympic shortcomings have critics questioning his training practices. The 29-year-old left the prestigious Mammoth Track Club and coach Terence Mahon two years ago, moving to Redding, Calif., to join Bethel Church, a faith-healing ministry. Hall believes his Christian faith and self-awareness preclude his need for a coach. [my emphasis]

For those not familiar with the bubble of charismatic Christianity and its celebrity worship, Bethel Church is the famous headquarters of pastor Bill Johnson and associate pastor Kris Vallaton, whose prosperity gospel and healing “ministries” are extremely popular in the charismatic community these days. The Redding church has a famous “school” that teaches its students how to “move in the gifts of the Spirit”, and its leaders globetrot spreading their message and demonstrating their techniques. I know a local church (in Georgia!) that got turned inside outwards because many started devoutly following the Bethel movement; a core group from the church left it and began attending a Bethel-affiliated church two hours away, ostensibly to get closer to the “power source”. It’s a destructive theological system in more ways than one, and Ryan Hall is yet another victim of its message.

I hope others will learn from this. But unfortunately, the gatekeeping apologists for it will have explanations for his failure other than the obvious, and the acute leader-centrism of the charismatic movement will preclude much reevaluation by the people in the congregations. But here’s hoping anyway.

But it seems to me that it’s not just charismatics that have things to learn from the shortcomings of this deus ex machina theology that keep its adherents blissfully, sinfully inert while awaiting a divine quick-fix. Many aspects of more mainstream Evangelicalism treat God as a shortcut to things we should be working harder on ourselves. And often enough, the negative results dwarf Ryan Hall’s embarrassing Olympic performance.

Praying for those in need is one that comes to mind. It’s fine, good, and even important to pray for everyone undergoing hardship, but even if we believe intercessory prayer is going to solve the problem, our prayers should all the more focus on submitting to God to develop within us a greater empathy, to be more keenly attuned to the needs of those around us, and especially to be on the lookout for ways to help people firsthand instead of outsourcing it to someone else (or Someone else) to take care of. Jesus didn’t divide up the sheep and the goats based on whether they prayed for “the least of these”. Surely those who had a chance to do something and yet satisfied their deus ex machina theology (conveniently mollifying their conscience at the same time) by praying for them would be closer to the goats in that parable. Or in the words of James 2.15-16, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”

Now, I’m not calling just any belief that God will step in to set things aright by the name of deus ex machina theology. It’s the thinking that we have some justification for kicking back and resting on our laurels in the name of “faith” or “monergism” that I’m criticizing. The faith that pleases God is faith in action, not blind, complacent trust in some ethereal solution to our problems.

Even if God is an interventionist God – indeed, even if He regularly intervenes in the dramatically supernatural ways expected by charismatics at their sufficiently faith-empowered whim – can there be any doubt that He’d rather be at the beck and call of His most obedient children who only ask for His empowerment after having sought to emulate His behavior to the best of their ability?

I don’t often link to the big name bloggers: I assume everyone’s either already reading them or consciously ignoring them. But in this case I can’t help but stand up to lodge an “Amen”–and add a few notes of commentary.

First, please read this excerpt from Rachel Held Evans’ blog. I feel I could have written every thought in it.

Frankly, I find the whole conversation a bit depressing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want either group to “meet its demise” because I love elements of both! In fact, I think there are a lot of progressive, mainline churches that could benefit from a shot of evangelicalism, and a lot of evangelical churches who could benefit from a shot of progressivism. We have so much to learn from one another, but instead we’re like a pair of toddlers fighting over space in the sandbox.

But if the early church could survive—and in fact, thrive amidst persecution—when it included both Jews and Gentiles, zealots and tax collectors, slaves and owners, men and women, those in support of circumcision and those against it, those staunchly opposed to eating food that had been sacrificed to idols and those who felt it necessary, then I think modern American Christianity can survive when it includes democrats and republicans, biblical literalists and biblical non-literalists, Calvinists and Arminians…so long as we’re not rooting for one another’s demise.

With this in mind, maybe being “in between” isn’t so bad. Maybe being “in between” puts those of us who find ourselves torn between conservative Christianity and liberal Christianity in a position to act as peacemakers and bridge-builders between the two groups. Maybe it enables us to help break down these binaries altogether, as we are living proof that you don’t have to choose one or the other.

I’m not exactly sure what this peacemaking process will look like, but I have a few ideas of how we can get started:

Let’s be ourselves.

This may surprise you, seeing as how I’m a blogger with an outspoken opinion on everything, but when I’m a part of a conservative Christian community, I tend to keep my more progressive views quiet, and when I’m a part of a more liberal Christian community, I tend to keep my more liberal views quiet. I don’t want to cause division. I don’t want to be shamed. I don’t want to make Sunday mornings any more difficult than they already are.

And so I essentially fake it through worship and community activities, accepting whatever “package” that particular church has to offer, then feeling distant and removed as I go through the motions before eventually quitting.

But what if I stopped faking it? What if I brought myself—my gifts, my questions, my opinions—to church? What if, instead of conforming to the mold, I refused to accept it?

[from "Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between"]

I’ve certainly been thinking along these lines lately. A couple of weeks ago I toyed with the idea of starting something of a campaign among bloggers of my theological ilk, those of us whom Rachel Held Evans might call the Caught-In-Betweeners. This grassroots movement would be about coming out of the theologically liberal closet. If I judge the enthusiastic response to Evan’s latest post aright, it looks like she’s beaten me to the punch!

In my conservative environment, I’ve recently started being convicted that these conservative Christians really need to know that people like me exist. I guarantee that a preposterous number of people in my church have never even considered the possibility that you could trust in Jesus as Lord of all creation and be an evolutionist, despite the fact that I am aware of a couple people in our congregation beside myself who accept evolutionary theory. No wonder they view us as outsiders: they haven’t ever met us inside!

Like Evans, many of us are playing it safe, being in our conservative environments with our in-between-stolid-conservative-and-flaming-liberal faith incognito. Lord knows it’s not easy to “come out”, is it? I have some things at stake, unfortunately: in particular, I have a side job doing something I really enjoy, but it’s run by an outfit that wouldn’t be happy to know my stances on these contentious issues. I have several friends who have suffered some painful emotional persecution when their beliefs were made known. But in most of these cases, it seems they did not freely divulge themselves: they were “outed” by someone else. And that always looks worse, doesn’t it?

I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be negative repercussions from a decision to “stand up and be counted”. But as long as we act in humility, not as evangelists for our pet causes but as honest people who occasionally find the need to gently correct misconceptions about our beliefs when presented as fact within our churches and faith communities, I think we can weather the inevitable storm better. I know it’d be more healthy for me and my poor wife.

If I felt I were part of a bigger movement, one of many friends taking our shades off, hanging up our trenchcoats, and removing our disguises, I think I could handle it. I predict that it would be good for them as well as for us In-Betweeners. It’s one thing to hear that there are weirdos who believe that God created through evolution; it’s another to know and rub shoulders with those people in intimate social settings like being members of the same church. It’s much harder to dismiss them and their strange beliefs when you know them personally.

So again, I’m toying with the idea of advocating a campaign, or probably better, a resolution to decloak.

Not sure how thrilled the Romulans will be about the Enterprise “boldly” showing up like this.

Abandoning the most conservative brands of Christianity doesn’t entail either abandoning the faith or, at best, adopting a wishy-washy spirituality. Our hard-won faith and theological perspectives are worth more than that: if we believe our understanding of the faith is true and worth holding onto, then it deserves attention and devotion; it deserves to be understood by our fellow believers; at least it deserves to have its existence acknowledged.

I know what many of you are thinking. “Why rock the boat?“

I want to address one of the better reasons for remaining quiet and not disturbing things. Many of us do so out of a conviction that we don’t need to challenge people’s faith when they’re not ready for it. I hear a couple of my friends saying things like, “Far be it from me to upset them and send them on the sort of precarious journey I’ve been on. They’re happy in their faith, not hurting anyone.”

But they are hurting someone.

• They’re hurting their children by leaving them unprepared for incontestable scientific evidence against their creationism.
• They’re hurting society by polarizing political, social, and religious positions on dramatically sectarian lines, painting Evangelicalism and the GOP platform as coterminous, etc.
• They’re hurting the viability of faith in Christ in a world that won’t simply accept their claim that the inerrant Bible dropped in our laps from heaven above.
• And they’re hurting us, by persecuting us and making us so frustrated with them that we are reluctant to even fight to have fellowship with them, when we should and could be learning things from them.

To return to the first bullet point above, the biggest reason they need to know this is the biggest reason they fear us: their children. These kids going off to college have been prepared for assaults on their faith by their families and their faith communities, but research shows that whatever they’re doing is just not enough. And as we are now seeing highlighted in the news story prompting Evans’ post, it’s not just conservative forms of Christianity that are losing the battle. Kids who are taught to accept the whole package or throw it all out, who are never told that they must examine the contents and accept what’s good, are leaving the church in droves.

No matter how kind and loving they’re being, no matter how much sin they’re resisting, no matter what lives of holiness they are striving to live, there are factors endemic to mainstream Evangelical theology that disqualify it from being sufficient salt and light in this world. Indeed, in some of the most important ways Christianity is supposed to be ministering to our world, Evangelicals are far behind unbelievers.

For instance, look at the most common Evangelical response to homosexuals or to those in need: first we blame the individual, try to get them to repent from their lifestyles that leave them where they are, demanding that they jump through difficult hoops while offering the hope of communion with God as a carrot. Christians have to be able to minister to and accept those groups, no matter what we think their sin is, be it the sexual deviancy that is allegedly responsible for homosexuality or the laziness and selfishness that supposedly causes people to become parasites on society, rob the upstanding producers through taxation, and vote Democratic. Christians have to dine with those groups as Jesus did with the “tax collectors and sinners” of his day. We have to engage them, love them, and let God deal with the personal holiness of each individual as He sees fit.

Letting conservative Christians be without challenging their assumptions will eventually have the effect of leaving Evangelical faith with a pretty short shelf life. Isolating ourselves and simply letting them soldier on will render them irrelevant. Among those unbelievers who believe conservative Christians when they say, “It’s conservative or nothing,” our non-conservative theology is flushed down the same toilet as conservative theology. Remaining cloaked is a no-win situation.

By all means, be tactful. Know your audience. I’d caution against intentionally rocking the boat at all: that’s not what this is about. But let me make a couple of suggestions about what adopting this decloaking resolution might look like.

When someone in Sunday School waxes eloquent about the evils of godless evolution, swallow your fear and tactfully suggest that however evil godless evolution might be, evolution isn’t necessarily godless. When your Bible study assumes the legitimacy of capital punishment or the divine justice of U.S. foreign policy, be the voice that encourages them to be consistent in their convictions about the sanctity of life.

But whatever you do, remain engaged. Don’t lie, and don’t stay silent. Don’t withdraw to a safe distance. Try to learn what you can from them; share life with them. Don’t zealously divulge all of your heretical beliefs and them expect them to come around to them. Live out your beliefs with fear and trembling, including the belief we liberals think should stand out the most: love one another. Maybe even these conservative Christians will fulfill Jesus’ words and eventually be convinced that we are Jesus’ disciples by our love.

So what do you think? Are you in?

NPR has a rather good article up called “Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve” (sic — what the heck is up with the indiscriminate capitalization?). It vividly showcases how the tide is (finally) starting to turn in this culture war for/against evolutionary theory. Peppered with quotes from several key people, including Dennis Venema, Karl Giberson, Al Mohler, and Reasons to Believe’s Fazale Rana, the article points out that more and more self-described Evangelicals are coming to grips with the fact that the scientific evidence against a literal Adam and Eve is overwhelming.

Image via Wikipedia

Calvin College’s Dan Harlow underscores the importance of this discussion to the vitality of Evangelical Christianity when he says, “This stuff is unavoidable. Evangelicals have to either face up to it or they have to stick their head in the sand. And if they do that, they will lose whatever intellectual currency or respectability they have.” Respectability notwithstanding, conservative standard bearers like Al Mohler see nothing in Christianity worth holding onto sans a literal Adam and Eve. Despite Venema’s confident insistence that there’s nothing to be afraid of in accepting mainstream evolution (which decisively refutes two original progenitors), obviously there are some theological implications that remain in need of explanation. And although that end is not out of sight anymore, it’s still going to take a lot more work.

This reminded me of something I learned back in my linguistics program several years ago. (This isn’t a tangent: it’ll come back around!)

When two people groups speaking mutually unintelligible native languages come into contact and have need for communication, especially in a trade situation, they are likely to come up with some sort of compromise that will allow them to interact. Often they will form a sort of hybrid communication system taking elements from each of their languages. This communication system is called a “pidgin”: the vocabulary comes almost completely from the visitors who are seeking trade (historically, usually English or French) and the grammar (morphology, syntax) is taken predominantly from the native language. This system works well enough for trade, but pidgins are not classified by linguists as languages because they lack a number of grammatical features of natural human language. Because of its limitations, the pidgin is often spoken between the two language groups strictly in order to conduct business; the grammatical holes hinder much communication beyond such practical matters.

Yet in cases such as colonization in which the language of the traders makes an established presence, a pidgin may be spoken around young children who naturally adopt it as a native language rather than a limited communication system. In these cases, something very interesting happens: as part of the language acquisition process that comes so naturally to the young of our species, children fill in the pidgin’s holes. When children speak the pidgin to others, they unconsciously and effortlessly begin inserting new parts of speech, formulating verb tenses, bringing in missing vocabulary, and creating any other necessary language features that the pidgin lacked, so that the result is a robust, full-fledged language. This nativized pidgin is what is referred to as a “creole”.

Processes analogous to creolization recur outside language: quite commonly it’s in our children that thesis and antithesis are synthesized and for whom conflicts are likeliest to be resolved or otherwise fall away. Most of my peers in my generation grew up oblivious to and often incredulous of the traumatic struggle for racial equality that our parents and grandparents had to fight so hard for; I anticipate the same for my grandchildren in regard to the currently contentious issue of homosexuality.

I hope and expect this to happen also in the area of evolution and biblical literalism.

As a case in point, I had a conversation about woodenly literalistic interpretations of Scripture and evolution with my young daughter, a science nerd; at first, as a good Sunday School pupil (and my mother’s granddaughter), she was horrified to think about the possibility that what she’d heard wasn’t God’s truth (“But God doesn’t lie!” she once whispered desperately), but it was not too difficult to explain to her that the opinions of her creationist teachers hadn’t been taking all the important information into account. So in a relatively short conversation I was able to assuage her concerns and free her of some latent fears about her beloved science books so that she’ll be a part of the first generation of American Christians that tolerates some variation in the list of acceptable “vocabulary” for the origins question; in turn, theology/philosophy nerds (my son is already heading this direction) will nativize the “grammar” of how it all works and what it all means when taken together. Most importantly, they’ll now be able to look sympathetically at believers on both side of the question to an extent much more difficult for my generation and older.

I’m suggesting that we who have struggled in our exodus from conservative Christian theologies should not despair too quickly or fear too much for our children’s ability to retain and adapt Christian theology: this transition will not be nearly as difficult as it was for us who were more inculcated in our own native tongues before we made contact with those foreigners with their bizarre, barbarian languages. My hope is that, so long as we continue to stand by and tinker at the puzzle we’ve begun and teach our children to lay down their arms when dealing with those who disagree, we can trust that they will come in behind us and, relatively effortlessly, fill in the holes.

What interests me—and what I take to be demonstrable and important—is the particular ensemble of moral and imaginative values engendered in numberless consciences by Christian beliefs. That such values had political and social consequences I certainly do not deny; I feel fairly safe in saying, for instance, that abolitionism—as a purely moral cause—could not easily have arisen in any non-Christian culture of which I am aware. That is quite different, however, from claiming that Christianity ineluctably or uniquely must give rise to, say, democracy or capitalism or empirical science. It is to say, rather, that the Christian account of reality introduced into our world an understanding of the divine, the cosmic, and the human that had no exact or even proximate equivlanet elsewhere and that made possible a moral vision of the human person that has haunted us ever since, century upon century.

David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, p. 202-203

Cover via Amazon

The above quote was called to my attention by the latest episode of the Unbelievable? radio show, in which Hart and Terry Sanderson, president of the UK’s National Secular Society, debate the potential results of the new atheist goal of secularization and the relegation of all religion to individual, inconsequential observance (at best).

I’ve been interested in David Bentley Hart since my friend Cliff Martin reviewed his book a couple years ago. The above quote is indicative of his approach, which is careful not to argue that Christianity is true because it does this or that for the world. As he says on the show, “The book is not an exhortation to ‘believe, because if we don’t, we don’t have moral rationales for behaving the way we ought to behave.’ ” In fact, “It’s not that anyone would deny that there is some natural promptings and desire for the good that is part of our human natures (if you believe in human nature); every faith says as much, that these are indeed human good and human values.” He finds it “silly” to suppose that we would have rationally deduced specifically the types of values that most of us, secularists included, find most important: ”It’s simply the lesson of history that what that desire for the good produces is not a particular set of values that are immediately rationally recognizable.” His point is that we cannot and should not ignore that Christianity has yielded felicitous impacts on society that he finds exceedingly unlikely to have occurred in a truly secular environment devoid of Christian influence—benefits which he insists are likely to dwindle in the thoroughly secularized society that’s been progressively more stridently advocated in recent years.

Sanderson, of course, disagrees, which leads to some stimulating discussion. Highly recommended.