The God of Joshua

                  In the rough and tumble of world of online polemics against Christians, it is common for our detractors to object that our Faith is fatally simplistic and essentially violent.  Many say that religion is the cause of all the wars that were ever fought (possibly forgetting that the greatest blood-lettings in the twentieth century, World Wars One and Two, were not fought over religion and that the death camps and gulags in which many perished were run by those opposed to religious faith). The Christian religion is said to be especially prone to violence.  Here the example of the Crusades is invoked, though the last Crusade was fought almost a thousand years ago (in 1272).  As an example of the violence inherent in religion, many cite the example of Joshua.

Admittedly when one reads the Biblical Book of Joshua one finds plenty of violence.  It opens with Israel gathered to invade the land of Canaan by God’s direct order, and with His promise to their leader Joshua that “no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.  Be strong and of good courage, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land which I swore to their fathers to give them” (Josh. 1:5-6).  Israel then invades the land of Canaan with the goal of conquering it and taking it over through holy war, in which entire populations are put to the sword as a manifestation of the judgment of God.  The first city to fall is Jericho, concerning which it is recorded, “They utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys, with the edge of the sword” (Josh. 6:21).  It should be noted that in Joshua’s campaign in Canaan, not all met this fate.  The inhabitants of nearby Gibeon made a covenant with Israel and accordingly were spared, as were the prostitute from Jericho along with all her family, since she aided the Israelite spies.  But there is no denying that the Conquest of Canaan (as the books call the wars of Joshua) involved tremendous slaughter and what we would today term genocide.

Thoughtful Christians have long struggled with this.  No less a thinker and theologian than Metropolitan George Khodr of the Patriarchate of Antioch and bishop of the diocese of Mount Lebanon has written about the evils of war.  In an article entitled, “Exorcising War”, printed in the Sourozh magazine of the Russian Patriarchal diocese of that name in Britain, Metropolitan George writes that in the Book of Joshua “It is God Himself who is portrayed as carrying out a ‘scorched earth’ policy…the Lord Himself who reflects the thirst for an all too human conquest on the part of a confederation of Semitic tribes….There is no possible transition from the god of Joshua to the Father of Jesus Christ.  The power of ancient Israel cannot prepare the way for the power of God on the Cross.”

For the Metropolitan of Mount Lebanon (a thoughtful and justly-famous advocate for peace in an area desperately in need of his witness), the Old Testament Book of Joshua simply misrepresents God.  The Metropolitan is of course aware of the patristic tradition that interprets the acts of such “a blood-thirsty God” simply as typologies and prophetic symbols of Christ, with the war against the Canaanites being simply a symbol for our spiritual warfare against the demons.  But he suggests that “such exegesis can obscure the historic meaning of the Scriptures”.  In other words, he is too thoughtful and honest a scholar to take such an easy way out.  He prefers what he calls “a kenotic reading of the Scriptures”, one which acknowledges the imperfections of the historical text and “the subjectivity of the author”.  Bluntly put, he admits and asserts that these Old Testament passages do indeed misrepresent God and give us not God’s Word so much as the “all too human” views, prejudices, and agendas of an ancient confederation of Semitic tribes.  That is certainly one approach to the ancient text.  But there are two problems with it.  

   One is that in the debate with our detractors who aver that Christianity is inherently violent because its Bible is inherently violent, we are simply giving up and agreeing with them that, well, yes, our Bible is morally repugnant in many places.  This is problematic because it leaves us with no snappy comeback when they make their next move, which is to reject the religion which reverences this Bible.  If Christ and His apostles believed in the Bible (which they clearly did; read Mt. 5:17-19), then how can they or their followers retain any credibility?  One can see our detractors’ point:  if the Bible is as all-too-human as all that, how can the religion based on it claim to be divine?

       Some try to wiggle out of the impasse by drawing a thick line between the Old Testament and the New, by sharply differentiating between the blood-thirsty God of the Law and the loving and sweet God of the Gospel—that is, by more or less dumping Judaism to save Christianity.  It is certainly easy enough to do:  the God of the Old Testament is the God who sends His Israel to war, who commands them to stone the adulterer, who commands them to execute one who gathers sticks of the Sabbath.  The God of the New Testament is the God who tells us to love our neighbour, to turn the other cheek, and to forgive our enemies.  The Old Testament is thus morally inferior to the New, and can be written off when it becomes embarrassing.  It is indeed easy enough to do, (though perhaps this approach will present something of an ecumenical problem when next we meet with our Jewish friends in Jewish-Christian dialogue).  But this serene rejection of much of the Old Testament presents another problem as well.

Basically, the approach that pits the bad Old Testament against the good New Testament and sharply differentiates between the blood-thirsty Yahweh and the loving Father of Jesus Christ has been tried before—and rejected.  Its historical name is “Marcionism”, after a chap in the second century who said that the Old Testament God was in fact not the Father of Jesus Christ, but an inferior deity.   The Church of that time gave him a hearing and then soundly rejected his approach.  That is why the Creed opens with the counter-blast, “I believe in one God, creator of heaven and earth”—i.e. in the God of the Old Testament.  In saying that the God whom we worship is the Creator, we affirm that He is the God revealed in the Old Testament, the God of Israel.

    Admittedly the new Marcionism we have been discussing above does not go quite as far as the classic Marcionism.  This new Marcionism (a kind of “Marcion lite”) would agree that the God of the Old Testament is the Father of Jesus Christ.  But it can only do this because it divides the Old Testament Scriptures into various bits (as modern secular scholarship has long taught us to do), rejecting the bad bits we don’t like while retaining the good bits we prefer.  Thus we are not so much scrapping the God of the Old Testament as scrapping sections (large sections) of His Scriptures.  So, when the Old Testament says that God created the world, this is the Word of God.  When it says that God called Abraham out of Ur into Canaan, this is the Word of God.  But when it says that God commanded Joshua to conquer Canaan, this is not the Word of God, but rather simply a story by the men of that day, presenting a view we now condemn as morally repugnant.  How then can we decide which bits are the bad ones and which are the good ones?  Some would answer:  by the bits which resemble the Gospel.  Even here, though, let’s be honest.  What we really mean is:  by the bits our culture teaches us to like, and which we therefore identify with the Gospel.   But however we struggle with our hermeneutic, there is another problem with this approach to the Old Testament.

    Namely, that the Church’s historic Faith, rooted as it is in the words of Christ and His apostles, gives us no leave to divide the Scriptures of either Testament into the bits we can retain and the bits we can reject.  When Christ spoke about the Law and the Prophets as being more durable than heaven and earth (in Mt. 5:17-19), He was speaking about the Old Testament.  Does anyone really think that the Lord or any of His first-century compatriots would countenance jettisoning large chunks of the Law and the Prophets like this?  The New Testament and the Fathers, down to the last man, confessed the entire Scriptures to be divine.  We may not so easily carve it up like this and sit lightly on the parts that embarrass us as if somehow they were not really Scripture. 

    So then, what to do with these parts?  I do agree with the Metropolitan of Mount Lebanon that simply labeling them “typology” as if this solved everything will not do.  But I think the path forward lies not in rejecting them as somehow less than Scripture, but in refining our view of what Scripture actually is.

    Scripture is not the timeless record of God’s unchanging will, not a revelation of God’s first and last word on every subject.  That is how the Qur’an views Scripture, but not how we view it.  Our Christian approach is more paedological.   That is, it records how God worked with His people throughout the centuries to lead them, as children, from immaturity to maturity, but infancy, through childhood, to adulthood.  Thus St. Paul writes that before Christ came, Israel was confined under the Law, so that the Law was Israel’s custodian, taking care of them like a tutor cares for a young child (Gal. 3:23-4:3).  The Law with its provisions was never meant to be God’s final word to His people.  It was a stage through which they had to pass on their way to mature adulthood in Christ.  It suited them then and was necessary for their development at the stage they were once at, but it was never meant to be the goal of their national life.  That goal, that end (Greek telos) was Christ (Rom. 10:4).

    The Law with its provisions was given to Israel as it became a nation after the Exodus at the foot of Mount Sinai.  We say this and affirm that Israel was God’s nation, but often do not stop to reflect on what this nationhood necessarily involved.  In a word, it involved Israel beginning its national existence with military combat, fighting for its existence and for a place to live in the same way and using the same methods that everyone else used at that time.  That is where all the hard parts of the Book of Joshua come in.  We shrink from such stories now, because newscasts tell us of genocide and other horrors, and it is through this prism that we read the ancient narrative.  But if Israel was to survive as a nation, there was no other way.  All Canaan was occupied—and occupied by peoples bigger, stronger, better-armed, and crueler than they.  (Yes, crueler, practicing sacred prostitution and child sacrifice.)  Peaceful co-existence is rightly valued now, but was not on anyone’s agenda back then.  The options available to Israel as an infant nation entering Canaan the way they did, were either to conquer to retain national integrity, or to be assimilated to the other nations, or be annihilated by them.   There was ultimately no other happy option, and the provisions of the Law presuppose their existence in this hard and cruel world.  Those laws—with commands to conquer, and kill, and to build altars and sacrifice animals, to circumcise the young, to keep certain food laws—were not the final goal of the nation’s existence.  Christ was the final goal.  The Old Testament is the divine record of how God worked with His people until Christ came.   The God of Joshua did transition to the Father of Jesus Christ.  Israel did prepare the way for the divine power of the Cross.  The Old Testament, with all its hard parts, was part of that preparation.

Converting the Heathen

          In 1996 National Geographic magazine featured an article on my old hometown of Toronto, in which a Torontonian commented on how the great urban city has changed over the years and become more multi-ethnic.  The aging Torontonian delighted in his city’s diversity, and compared it to the more monochrome Protestant Toronto he had grown up in prior to World War II:  “I grew up when you went to Sunday school and dropped your pennies in the box for the missionaries to convert the pagans and the heathens. Now the pagans and the heathens have moved in here, and they’re quite nice people, eh?”  I grew up in the 60’s in Toronto, when it was just beginning to embrace its present cosmopolitan diversity, and I also have met the pagans and heathens of my old hometown.  And yes, they are quite nice people.  Cultural diversity is wonderful, whether encountered in Toronto or anywhere else.

            The question arises then about those missionary boxes and the legitimacy of sending missionaries to “convert the pagans and the heathens”.  (Strictly speaking, of course, one cannot speak of an urban “heathen”, since by etymological definition a heathen is someone who dwells out on the heath, i.e. in the rural countryside.  The term refers to the historical fact that most of those clinging to the old gods of Greece and Rome lived in the countryside; Christianity was primarily an urban phenomenon.  But never mind.)  In particular, one might now ask, “Should we attempt to convert the heathens?  Should we strive to convert to the Christian Faith those who are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, or those of no religious faith whatsoever?  Is this not the height of arrogance?  Why should we try to convert them at all?”

            It is a good question.  Certainly we should not try to convert in an effort to make them “quite nice people”, because as the aging Torontonian noticed, they are quite nice people already.  And we should not try to convert them because otherwise they would go to hell.  Maybe they are hell-bound and maybe not.  That is not and cannot be our concern.  Our evangelistic efforts should, I suggest, be quite separate from the distinct question of anyone’s present eternal destination, if only because that bit of information is not available to us.  This question we must leave to God.

            So then, why should we try to convert the heathen?  Does our present delight in cultural diversity mean that we must now abandon our historical mandate to “go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mk. 16:15)?  Some would answer, “yes it does”, and argue that striving to convert others to Christianity constitutes a kind of ideological imperialism, a hopeless survival of a past and now discredited colonialism.  Orthodoxy, rooted in the mindset of the Fathers, asserts, “no it does not”, and insists that our Lord’s commission to His apostles remains as binding today as it did when He first uttered it prior to His Ascension. 

            First, a brief history lesson:  the world in which the early Church lived had just as much cultural and religious diversity as we do now.  The existence of a monochrome world culture, be it pre-World War Protestant Toronto, or the western Catholic Middle Ages, or eastern Byzantine Orthodoxy, is the exception.  In the case of Byzantium, it was admittedly a long-running exception.  But it was the exception, and it is over now.  The world of the early church contained an exciting and bewildering collection of languages, cultures, and religions, and they all co-existed more or less cosily beside one another.  Though everyone of course preferred his own religion to that of others, everyone acknowledged the other religions’ right to exist.  “Live and let live” was the motto of the Roman world (so long as one also confessed “Caesar is Lord”).  Everybody in that society accepted this diversity as the divinely-sanctioned status quo.

            Everybody, that is, except the Christians, and it was for this refusal to accept the status quo as divinely-sanctioned that we got into all the trouble.  When we looked at the old religions worshipping the historical gods Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, we did not discern legitimate religious diversity but the worship of demons (see 1 Cor. 10:20).  In our initiation rites, the convert formally renounced his old religion, condemning its cult as the worship of “Satan and all his works, and all his angels, and all his service, and all his pride”.  I have no doubt that the heathen neighbours of the new convert who still clung to the worship of the old gods were “quite nice people”.  But his religion (or “service”, to use our liturgical language) was still recognized and renounced as the worship of Satan anyway.  This is what our present Orthodox Liturgy refers to by the term “former delusion”.

            But if we make no assumptions about the present eternal destiny of those clinging to other religions, why ask them to convert to ours?  In a word, because our Faith is more than simply eternal fire insurance.  We ask people to embrace Christianity for two reasons:  1. because it is in fact true, and 2. because through the worship of Christ we have access to a peace, joy, healing, and transformation not found anywhere else.

            Take conversion from Islam for example.  I gladly put my pennies in my missionary box (or write my cheque to the Orthodox Christian Mission Center) because Islam asks its practitioners to believe things that are not in fact true—such as that Jesus of Nazareth was not crucified (when He was), and that He is not the Son of God (when in fact He is).  Why believe an error when one can have the truth?  Also, I would convert my quite nice Muslim neighbour because I believe that were he to worship Christ as God as part of His historic Church he could find abundant life not otherwise available to him were he to remain a Muslim.  Salvation (or theosis, to give its fancier name) is only found through the worship of Christ our God, and through penitent participation in the Church’s sacramental realities.  My Muslim neighbour is admittedly quite nice already without any such theosis.  I might be nice apart from Christ as well.  But how much happier would we both be with such theosis?  Christ came to offer abundant life (Jn. 10:10), and conversion is simply the process whereby we all lay hold of it.

            I suspect that modern people, in Toronto or elsewhere, have given up the practice of putting pennies into missionary boxes and striving to convert others to Christianity because they have ceased to believe in Christianity themselves.  They do not view religion as a way of seeing the world as it is (i.e. having an accurate worldview), nor as a way of experiencing interior healing and transformation (i.e. obtaining salvation).   Rather, religion is now viewed simply as an expression of one’s earthly culture, like cuisine or manner of dress.  Cultural diversity is rightly valued because differences in cuisine and dress are all equally legitimate.  But religion cannot be reduced to matters of culture.  Rather, it connects us with transcendent realities and powers.  In the case of heathen religions, some of those powers are harmful, and should be renounced.  In the Christian Faith alone do we have the possibility of accessing a power that leads to healing and joy.  And that is ultimately more important than simply being quite nice.

           

The Long Shadows of Byzantium

           Every time I stand at the altar in our little church of St. Herman’s in Langley, B.C., I stand in the long shadows of Byzantium.  That is, I find myself facing the processional cross which we keep at the back of the altar table.  At the base of that cross, there is, in carved metal, the figure of a double-headed eagle.  This does not represent our liturgical choice; the cross was the kind donation of a parishioner, bought from an Orthodox church supply store.  The double-headed eagle comes standard, it would appear, on all processional crosses.  I have seen that eagle even more prominently displayed in other Orthodox places—in a church located on a campus in Winnipeg for example, it is part of the marble flooring, measuring about six feet across, just before the Royal Doors.  It is as if one had to tread on holy Byzantine ground on the way to the Chalice.

            Byzantium casts its long shadow in other ways as well, not the least liturgically.  This is the case especially when the bishop comes to town, sometimes with a deacon in tow.   In that Liturgy when the deacon begins to introduce the singing of the Trisagion Hymn, he cries out, “O Lord, save the God-fearing!”   In invoking God’s saving assistance upon “the God-fearing”, the deacon is not referring to us; he is referring to the Emperor and his family.  And when the deacon then makes his little liturgical twirl, saying, “unto ages of ages!” he is not simply getting exercise.  That twirl is a vestige of the time when he went out to lead the Imperial family to their place over by the side.  There is now no Imperial family to lead, and so this action has been shortened to a picturesque twirl, but originally (like everything else in the Liturgy) it had a practical purpose.  The Emperor, both of Byzantium and of Russia, is long gone, and well past any need of saving, but the actions of praying for him and seating him in church remain. 

            There are other Byzantine liturgical vestiges as well, such as the Antiphons.  Originally, these hymns were psalms, sung with a refrain interspersed between the verses.  By the end of the eighth century, the usual refrains for the three antiphons were “Through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Saviour, save us”, “Alleluia”, and the refrain we now know as the hymn “Only-begotten Son and immortal Word of God”.  When the antiphons first started being used, they were sung as processional hymns as the Christians wended their way through the city on the way to church.  In those days, unlike now, it was not the case that the city was a secular space, dotted with sacred churches.  Rather, the entire Byzantine city was sacred liturgical space, and the churches were simply the loci for the Eucharistic gatherings.  In theory at least, all the citizens were Christian, and all would come to church.  During certain festal days, the Eucharistic gathering at church would be preceded by a procession, a parade through town. 

            These were very popular, partly because everyone loved a parade, and also because it demonstrated which group was in charge of the city, which group “owned the streets”.  At certain times, it was the Arian group that was in the ascendant and owned the streets; later on, it was the Nicene group (i.e. us), and taking over the streets for a periodic parade helped demonstrate that.  John Chrysostom in Constantinople thought it was a great idea, and commissioned a huge, fancy, and expensive cross to be carried in the procession, adorned with candles.  These processions were so popular that eventually the psalms and refrains for them were sung in church at the beginning of the Liturgy even on days when there was no parade.  The presence of the Antiphons in our contemporary Liturgy represents therefore yet another vestige of Byzantium, hearkening back to the days when the Church “owned the streets”, and all the city celebrated the Christian feasts as a city.

            As anyone can tell, the days when the Church owned the streets are long gone.  Any parade through town is now a trek through secular space—sometimes through militantly secular space—and one often needing a permit from the secular authorities.  Such a procession would not be so much a manifestation of the Christian nature of the city, as rather a protest against its secular nature.   The world in which the Church now lives is radically unlike that of Byzantium.  It is much more like the Roman Empire prior to its Byzantine phase—a world pluralistic in form, secular in foundation, and predominately pagan in religious practice.  (The American “Bible Belt” may represent a last gasp of an older way, and a dying “hold out”.  It swims valiantly against the prevailing tide.)

            What does this mean for us Orthodox? The main difference between the Church in the pagan Roman Empire and the Church in the Christian Roman Empire (i.e. Byzantium) is that the former knew itself to be a tightly-knit community standing over against a hostile society, an island of faith and love in a sea of unbelief and unrighteousness.  Each member of the local church made deep personal attachments to the other members—as Gregory Dix once commented, people risking at least penal servitude for life for being part of the same group usually take pains to get to know one another.  In the days of the pagan Roman Empire, the Christians were close as family members to others in the church, and each defined himself as belonging to all the others.   Membership in the church was characterized by deep feelings of solidarity.   Their song was “You and Me against the World”.

            In Byzantium, that old line between the Church and the World was blurred, as the World declared itself to be Christian.  It was scarcely possible for the Church to form tightly-knit communities of faith like in the old days where each member of the local church knew the other and belonged to the other, because “the local church” now included everyone in the city, at least in principle.  After the world accepted baptism, such closely-knit communities were impossible to form.  Obviously there still existed smaller churches in the Byzantine world—that was the point of building the larger ones like the Hagia Sophia, as a contrast to them.  But the people within even these smaller churches no longer shared the same huddled closeness and family feeling that they did during the days of persecution.  Now that everyone in the city or village was a Christian, there was no “World” to huddle against, and individuals no longer defined themselves as belonging to the Christian family but rather to their own biological families.  Thus even in the smaller churches a sense of eschatological personalism was lost.  (Some ascetics would try to recover it nonetheless; the experiment was called “cenobitic monasticism”.)  In the parish church of St. John Chrysostom there was no “coffee hour” after Liturgy.  Deep personal attachments were made of course, but they were made between members of one’s family and one’s friends—not between all the members of the local church.  Belonging to the church for most people simply meant accepting its over-arching culture and fulfilling certain requirements, though of course some fulfilled them with great piety.  You went to Liturgy, received Holy Communion (or didn’t), and then you came home.  Going to church for most people in that culture was something you did, like paying taxes, or going to the theatre, or spending time with your friends.  Membership in the Church did not necessarily define you; the others at Liturgy were not “your people” except in the sense of being fellow citizens of the same city. 

            As said above, Byzantium is gone, its long shadows notwithstanding.  The challenge for us now is to recognize this and begin to recover the closeness and solidarity with others in our churches that existed in the early days.  This solidarity and mutual love for fellow church members was not possible in Byzantium; it is possible now.  And as the world becomes an increasingly darker place, recovery of such solidarity becomes not just possible, but essential.  This involves not simply making sure there is a coffee hour following Sunday Liturgy, but radically rethinking what it means to belong to the Church. 

          We must let belonging to the Church define us, and think of ourselves not primarily as Smiths, Joneses or Farleys, but as members of our local Eucharistic community.  This involves recognizing that the people receiving the Eucharist with us are our true family, and striving to treat them as such—as our close kin, fellow members of the same body.  We must rejoice when one of them is honoured, and suffer with them when they suffer (1 Cor. 12:26), making their trials and triumphs our own.  This is difficult to do, especially in our busy world where we often live far from each other.  But it remains the challenge of our time.  Byzantium is gone, and can only cast shadows.  But Christ remains, and He calls us to follow Him in these exciting new days.

Is God a Sociopath?

         

I recently saw a brief debate on line, from the show “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell”, featuring a debate about the existence of God.  The segment featured two comedians, Jamie Kilstein (arguing for atheism) and John Fugelsang (arguing for Christian theism).  Although lacking in intellectual substance, the debate was good-tempered and funny in spots, as you might expect when you bring in two stand-up comedians.

            I was particularly interested in the arguments of the atheist Jamie Kilstein (with whom I had greater sympathy than my ostensibly Christian brother).  Jamie seemed to be genuinely humble and open.  At one point in the short exchange he admitted, “If the ceiling came crashing in and someone was like ‘I’m God!’…I’d be like, ‘I apologize’.  But if I get up to heaven and there is a God, and He’s like, ‘You were wrong!  How did you live your life?’ And I’m like, ‘I tried to help people, I tried to give to charity.  I didn’t know if You were real, there was no evidence’, and He’s like, ‘Well, you didn’t worship Me everyday!’, then I’d be like, ‘Fine.  Send me to wherever’s as far away from You as possible, cause You’re a sociopath!”  Jamie’s objection seems to be not to the idea of God’s existence per se, but to the idea that God would damn a good person who was trying his best simply because that person did not worship God.  If all God cared about was whether or not He was worshipped, and that He would damn people regardless of how they lived, it would seem to Jamie that God was an egotist.  Or, to used Jamie’s term, a sociopath.

            So, what’s the deal?  Is God a crazed egotist?  Does He demand to be worshipped simply because He enjoys the attention?  Is our religious worship and praise all He cares about?  The idea was examined by C.S. Lewis over half a century ago in his book Reflections on the Psalms where he talks about the Scriptural exhortations to praise the Lord.  In his chapter “A Word about Praising”, Lewis writes, “All enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless shyness is deliberately brought into it…The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside…Praise seems to be inner health made audible.”  His point that we are made in such a way that when we are spiritually healthy, we naturally praise things that our beautiful.  Praise is essential to our enjoyment of something.  Scripture exhorts us to praise God because we were made to enjoy Him, and to behold His ravishing beauty forever.  Our praise is the overflow of that enjoyment.  The Westminster Catechism teaches that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”.  In fact, these two are the same thing, for to fully enjoy is to glorify.

            The human spirit was created to live on God in the same way that the body lives on food, or to vary the metaphor, in the same way that cars run on gasoline.  One can pour lemonade into the gas-tank in a valiant attempt to save money, but the car will not run on lemonade.  Unless one feeds gasoline to the vehicle, it will not move.  And unless one feeds food to the human body, it will not grow or live long.  One can try other things.  During famines one hears of people trying to eat grass.  But man cannot live on grass alone.  Only food can sustain human bodily life.

            In the same way, only the presence and beauty of God can sustain the human spirit.  God does not ask that we worship Him because He wants the attention.  Indeed, a God who left the adoration of the heavenly angels to become a human being and suffer rejection, scourging, mockery, and crucifixion is clearly not a God who cares much about His own ego or His own rights.  God wants us to worship Him because He loves us, and because feeding our spirits on His divine beauty is the only way we can truly live.  When a father tells his children at the supper table to eat their food, he does so because he wants them to grow up big and strong, not because he wants them to praise his culinary skill.  It is the same with our heavenly Father.  He also wants us to live, and grow, and become strong.  We can, like sulky children at the supper table, refuse to eat the food that alone can nourish us, and still expect to thrive.  We can refuse to worship Him and still expect to live forever.  But who is the crazy one then?

            

Does Church Suck?

           A member of our church recently asked me for my assessment of “One Love Church” in Eugene, Oregon, and their message “Church sucks”.  Upon investigation, I discovered that said church is pastored by the Rev. Crank (his real name, I swear), and that he is trying to connect with people who think that “church sucks” by agreeing with their negative assessment and offering something different.  He bills himself as a pastor, not a preacher.  Presumably preaching also sucks.  Since September he has been mailing out their “Church Sucks” message to hundreds of homes in Lane County promising a different kind of church. Specifically he offers them a church which does not focus too much on sin, which has services which last just over thirty minutes and which feature the music of Katie Perry and Maroon 5.  I am tempted to satirize this, but am unsure how.

            What then is my assessment?  First let me say that I have no reason to doubt that the Rev. Crank is sincere in wanting to serve Christ, and that he genuinely wants to reach out and connect with people, bringing into the church those who would not otherwise be reached.  I believe he has good intentions, but the road paved with such things does not always lead to good places.

            Perhaps the best way to proceed would be to ask One Love Church a few questions.  Question one is about Ariel Castro.  Castro, as will be recalled, is the man who kidnapped three young women and repeatedly raped them for about a decade while keeping them confined and hidden in his Ohio home.  He was stained deeply with sin and guilt, and completely in bondage to the darkness within him.  If the late Ariel Castro had come to One Love Church, what would have been their message to him?  Would they fear to focus too much on sin?   The message of the Orthodox Church to him would’ve been, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 4:17).  This is not focussing too much on sin, but zeroing in on Ariel Castro’s greatest need—that of forgiveness, cleansing, healing, and transformation, all of which are only available through repentance. 

            Admittedly most men are not like Ariel Castro.  But all need forgiveness, cleansing, healing, and transformation nonetheless.  If one does not acknowledge this need and therefore is irritated upon being told that one does need to repent, presumably one will conclude that Church Sucks, and may even feel it to be judgmentally pointing the finger.  But it is doubtful that Castro would’ve felt unjustifiably judged, since the church would simply have been confirming what his tortured conscience was already telling him.

            Question two:  what is One Love Church really trying to accomplish by altering so dramatically both the church’s message and its worship?  Yeah, yeah, I know all the religious talk about reaching the lost.  But the question remains.  That is, what is the actual goal?  Specifically, is it to transform and change the people who come, making them different from the world around them and from their old selves?  Is it to persuade them to “turn from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18)?  Is to radically alter them so that they now live as strangers and exiles in the world (1 Pt. 2:11)?  Or is it, as I think, simply to get them into the building so that they regularly attend the service and can be counted?  (One should take care to count quickly, since they will only be there for little over thirty minutes.)  The Rev. Crank is, I suspect, part of the American evangelical subculture, and that subculture has long been trained to work (and emotionally manipulate) to produce “decisions for Christ”, decisions which can be counted because people raise their hand or walk to the front of a church and allowed themselves to be prayed for.  What matters here is the external act; what matters is the numbers.  Success is based on these numbers, and not on the converts’ perseverance or internal transformation, which of course cannot be easily determined, much less numbered.  If one packs ‘em in, one is reckoned to be a success.  The goal then is to pack ‘em in, by whatever means necessary, even Katy Perry.

            Last question:  does One Love Church really think in their heart of hearts that the Church of God for which Christ died sucks?  It is easy to agree with worldlings as they sneeringly and disdainfully write off the Christians as a judgmental and self-righteous lot.  Whether or not most Christians are in fact judgmental and self-righteous is, of course, another question, but when one is determined to write off something, one rarely takes time to do in-depth research.  But does the Rev. Crank really agree with our detractors?  If he does not, then his strategic move to appeal to the worldling’s sneering opposition is not particularly honourable or even honest.  But if he does, I would suggest that he turn his gaze away from the trendy and affluent American west coast and look further east.  A lot further.  For in the Middle East and in other places around the globe, the Church is even now undergoing tremendous persecution, as hundreds of men, women, and even children are suffering and dying for their Faith.  These brothers and sisters are not judgmentally pointing the finger (the ultimate sin apparently in Eugene, Oregon), but are enduring torture, rape, despoliation, and execution for their love for Christ and for membership in the Church.  If anyone can face them and declare to them that their Church sucks, they will have more nerve than I have. 

            I think that the true mark of success is therefore not how successful one is at packing in worldly affluent Americans into a half-hour service featuring the music of Katy Perry and Maroon 5.  I think the real mark of success is how successful a church is at producing martyrs like these.