August, 2014 | Questioning the Answers

A while back, I was at a church service and at one point the worship leader read the words of Jesus from Matthew 22:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

After quoting the passage, he went on to say that the entire Bible could be boiled down to these verses.

Several people uttered “amen” and although I agreed wholeheartedly, on the inside, I felt my heart sink a little as I thought “If only…”

If only we truly believed that.

If only we lived as though the Bible really could be boiled down to these few verses.

If only these two commands could be the barometer not only for how we express our faith, but how we define it.

If only we could consider that part of the power and supreme importance of these commands lie in the fact that they transcend doctrine and denomination and religion altogether.

If only we could consider how this teaching may have affected those who initially heard it.

Humor me while we think about that last one for a minute. Let’s say I happened to be present when Jesus spoke these words and I was captured as I considered the intensity of a teaching that claimed that all of the law and the prophets – in other words, the equivalent at the time of our Bible – could be summed up by these verses. And if I made the radical step to live the rest of my life accordingly, would that have been enough?

Even if I never heard another thing about Jesus – how or why he ultimately died, or whether he was thought to be just a rabbi, or a messiah, or somehow divine. I’m not sure how likely such a scenario would be, but it’s not out of the question to consider it and then go on to ponder, “Would that have been enough?”

According to Jesus, it would’ve been, especially if we consider that the gospel of Luke places these commandments in the context of how to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds, “Do this and you will live.”

If it was good enough for the people following Jesus then, is it not good enough for us now?

It’s hard to know what kind of widespread impact such a teaching had on those who heard it, but it must’ve had an impact on at least some the early followers of Jesus. In a previous post, I talked briefly about the Didache, a church handbook that likely dates to the first century and that gives us a compelling look at the teachings and practices of some of the earliest Jesus followers.

Interestingly enough, the Didache calls out “the way of life” and “the way of death.” The way of life begins by loving God, loving your neighbor as yourself, and not doing to others what you would not want done to you. Ironically, for these Jesus followers, the ways of life and death had nothing to do with orthodox beliefs or doctrines. Things were much simpler hundreds of years before a Bible was canonized and creeds were formulated.

But here we are 2,000 years later. And as nice it sounds to sum the Bible up with the two greatest commands as identified by Jesus, it simply doesn’t work for us. It’s as though we have to define what it means to love God properly, and, in doing so, we create the very structures and doctrines and systems of belief that love is supposed to transcend; indeed, that love has the power to completely obliterate… if we’d allow it to. But instead, we effectively create a whole new version of “the law and prophets,” perhaps because we don’t believe that everything will be just fine if only we’d love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

This is all particularly relevant in my life right now. For whatever reason, God has brought me beyond the boundaries of the Christian box where I’ve spent most of my life. Of course I didn’t realize I was in a box; I don’t think any of us ever do. And I didn’t set out to venture here, but I’m here, having been pressed to truly engage some hard questions and to probe the status quo of my belief system. And at times it’s been terrifying, largely because where I come from, that’s not okay. (Well, it’s okay as long as you ultimately return to the established answers and beliefs.)

No one wants to mess with the box. I certainly didn’t. And I think it’s because we don’t see it as a box; we see it as ultimate truth.

Frankly, the whole situation just sucks.

It sucks because I’ve invested so much of my life into a church family where there simply isn’t room to grow beyond the established ideas, conclusions, and doctrines (in other words, beyond the boundaries of the box that are defined as truth).

It sucks that even though I’ve invested years and years and years, there’s no possibility that there might be some merit to my evolving views. No possibility that I’ve come to new conclusions responsibly and faithfully.

And it sucks to be backed into a figurative corner and effectively told “It’s not okay to believe those things and it’s even less okay to make those beliefs public. If you want to stick around here, you have to believe X, Y, and Z. These things are non-negotiable.”

And, as if all of that’s not enough, it sucks that now I’m somehow seen as a threat by some because I have “divergent views.”

Divergent views that ironically don’t conflict at all with loving God and loving my neighbor as myself.

Divergent views that couldn’t have even been an issue when Jesus was traipsing around Palestine because they’re only in conflict with doctrines or teachings that developed much later.

But as much as it sucks, I get it.

I understand that, to some extent, there’s an institution that needs to be protected. And I get that people’s faith is in differing places and we need to be sensitive to that, not randomly wreaking havoc on the faith of others.

As one author put it, the challenge is that we end up teaching to the lowest common denominator in order to avoid ruffling the feathers of people in the congregation. It hardly seems fair. Stuff that’s been common knowledge throughout biblical scholarship for centuries doesn’t make it to the average church member (for any number of reasons). And it’s unfortunate, because it has the potential to help our faith grow in amazing ways. And if we engage it responsibly, it doesn’t have to be scary or threatening. It might make us rethink some of our certainties, but history has shown us that that’s usually not a bad thing. It’s just not easy.

In fact, one minister I was talking with fully acknowledged that there may not be anything wrong with these so-called divergent views. If people want to dive into doctrines or some of the deeper topics and they ultimately come to a differing opinion that doesn’t mesh with a traditional view, that’s okay. The problem is, in order for ministers to truly understand these things so they can bring a responsible understanding of them to the congregation, it takes work. A lot of it.

Plus, it can potentially get very messy and uncomfortable, which creates even more work as feathers get ruffled within the congregation. And who wants extra work? As a result, many topics get avoided altogether as staff members opt to keep the message from the pulpit as simple as possible.

Unfortunately, it puts people with said divergent views in a tricky spot, because when differing views haven’t been engaged from the pulpit, they’re seen as threatening. And if word gets out, it can get messy, which means more work for the minister.

And so, the easiest and cleanest way to deal with a situation like this is to say, “It’s not okay to believe these things and it’s even less okay to make these beliefs public. Either toe the party line or leave so as to not disturb anyone else.”

Sigh. Really? Those are the only options, lest I end up being marked as “divisive”?

So here I am on the heels of such a mess, trying to process the conflicting and at times overwhelming emotions that come raging in like a tidal wave.

Anger. Rage. Sorrow. Pain. Confusion.

In some ways, it feels what I imagine a divorce might feel like. An unnecessary divorce, at that.

Plenty of people have pointed out that it’s best this way. It’s best to be in an environment where my path is not only welcomed, but encouraged, perhaps even celebrated. An environment where questions aren’t seen as a threat and where faith is greater than doctrine and tradition.

And many have posed the question of why I’d want to even try to be somewhere that doesn’t allow that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah – I get it. And I agree wholeheartedly. But it still sucks, because the pain isn’t any less real.

And as I try to process it all, I circle back to the words of Jesus.

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’…and… ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

And I think “If only…”

If only.

I was recently reading a blog post and the author said that if you blog long enough, eventually you’ll be called a heretic. I hadn’t even been blogging for two months before that happened to me. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Honestly, that’s part of the reason I initially resisted starting a blog or writing a book to begin with. I didn’t want to invite controversy into my life or the life of my family. But when you feel strongly called to do something, there comes a point when you have to let go of fear and simply surrender to the path you’re called to be on.

The furor that arose over some of the things I’d written was far more than I expected. Not only that, some of it was directed at things that I found surprising. I knew that expressing my evolving views on an issue as controversial as homosexuality was akin to kicking a hornet’s nest. I fully expected some hides to be chapped over that, so I was seriously taken aback to hear instead that I was subverting and attacking the heart of the gospel message. Wait. What?

In one of my first articles, I talked about how certain elements of the Christian story can be internalized such that they shape us in unhealthy ways. And I mentioned that I’d lost count of the number of times I’ve heard that we’re enemies of God without the blood of Jesus.

This swiftly became a massive problem because, as I was informed, “enemies of God” and “objects of wrath” are crucial themes that lie at the heart of the gospel message. And thus I was subverting the gospel.

Wow. I’m still perplexed by that. I thought love was at the heart of the gospel message.

To equate growing weary of hearing that I’m an enemy of God without the blood of Jesus with subverting and attacking the gospel message doesn’t compute with me. Especially considering that, in the gospel accounts, Jesus didn’t go around telling people that they were enemies of God. Or objects of wrath, for that matter.

In fact, didn’t Jesus look upon those who were discarded by society and show them that they had value?

Didn’t he say something about how the second most important thing is to love others?

Didn’t he look on people with compassion and talk about them being harassed and helpless, not objects of wrath?

In the parable of the prodigal son, do we get the sense that the dad had to hold back his wrath against the son?

The intense imagery associated with a term like “objects of wrath” simply doesn’t seem to have been crucial to what Jesus was trying to convey. This leads me to think that plenty of his first followers lived their lives without ever entertaining the notion that they were objects of wrath, let alone embracing it as crucial to their understanding of the Jesus message.

Speaking of the Jesus message, I was recently hanging out with some friends and we were reading and discussing some prayers from the Didache, an early church handbook, of sorts. Likely dating from the late first century, it contains various teachings on ethics and provides details on practices such as baptism and communion. Some people have dated the Didache as early as the mid first century, which would make it earlier than at least some of the gospel accounts. But even if it dates to the late first century, that still puts it within the same time frame that the later gospels were written. So it gives us a peek into practices and beliefs of some of the earliest Jesus communities.

I’ve often heard that the first-century church is the model for what God always intended. Well, minus the part about sleeping with in-laws, getting drunk at communion, suing each other, and the like. But seriously, what better way to get a glimpse into the first-century church than looking at a first-century church manual that specifically outlines the church’s practices? One that likely pre-dates the book of Acts, by the way.

In the Didache’s section on the Eucharist (more commonly known as the Lord’s Supper or communion in evangelical America), the prayers that are recited in conjunction with the bread and the cup are quite surprising.

“We thank thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David thy Son, which you have made known to us through Jesus thy Son… We thank thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou hast made known unto us through Jesus thy Son… We thank thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou hast made known unto us through Jesus thy Son…”

As soon as we were done reading these prayers, everyone was quick to make some very interesting points.

“There’s no talk of sin or forgiveness.”

“It says that Jesus revealed life and knowledge.”

“The focus is on what his life stood for, not what his death stood for.”

“There’s no talk of his death at all.”

It was perplexing. How can this have anything to do with a tradition as sacred and central as the Eucharist?

It almost didn’t compute. After all, we exist within a Christian tradition that tends to highlight very different things when it comes to the bread and the cup. Things like Jesus taking our punishment upon himself, Jesus dying in place of us, our responsibility for his death, and God’s inability to be in the presence of sin. Things ingrained so deeply that labeling ourselves as “objects of wrath” has become a key component to what we’re calling good news.

So what do we do with a crystal-clear indicator that “do this in remembrance of me” meant something very different to some of the earliest communities of Jesus followers? Followers whose focus was on the life that Jesus lived and the knowledge he made known. Followers who didn’t equate the bread and cup with suffering, death, and sin.

Talk about a paradigm shift. And potentially a very, very uncomfortable one, because it challenges our traditional understanding of Jesus.

Suddenly we’re faced with the question of whether our faith is big enough to handle something like this, as well as the possibility that an understanding so crucial to our faith tradition isn’t quite what we’ve always thought.

Can we even sit with and consider these possibilities, rather than responding defensively and with staunch certainty and rigidity?

It may be uncomfortable, for sure. And in order to deflect the discomfort, it can be very easy to point to a given scripture with certainty in order to reinforce an established belief or point of view. But even though we’re often quick to do that, we should consider that the early followers of Jesus simply didn’t have that ability.

Atonement theology is a massive topic, one that I never even knew existed. Theology? What’s to theologize about? Jesus died because of me, plain and simple.

Well, it doesn’t take an extensive commentary on the Didache to realize that it’s actually not plain and simple. The conversation on atonement extends far beyond the prayers found in this early church handbook, but maybe meditating on or otherwise reflecting on these prayers will allow us to consider that the Christian story hasn’t gone uninfluenced from the time of its origins.

Maybe we can open our minds and hearts to the possibility that there has been far more development over the course of the last 2000 years than we’d ever imagine.

And maybe we can consider that not everything is as black and white as we’ve thought.

If Only

Objects of Wrath

Archives for August 2014