Church Fire: Christian Unity Comes to the Rescue!

This reflection was shared by a Catholic pastor who lives and ministers in rural Mississippi.


My greatest experience of Christian unity happened about 12 years ago. 

It was late in the evening after a long Wednesday. I was ready for bed but reading.

There was a knock on the door. I was getting settled in and was not in the mood for visitors. 

The person announced that there was a fire! I grabbed my wallet, keys and some clothes and ran out the door, grateful for this intrusion.

Within 14 hours, the church, the rectory (where I lived) and the parish hall were completely consumed in the flames.

It was a hot August day. It never went below 90 degrees all night and was mostly over 100—and that was before adding the extra heat from the fire itself. Seven firefighters went to the hospital due to heat exposure and exhaustion. 

Despite the calamity, I was amazed to see blessings everywhere I turned. The wider Christian community responded virtually immediately:

Representatives from the Mennonite community were at the fire and helped organize relief all through the night. They brought ice water and cold towels for exhausted workers.

The next morning, the local Presbyterian Church told me:  "Our classrooms and hall are yours. We'll have to work out a schedule and lines of communication, but we can do it."

The Episcopal Church said it has an unused office for the Catholic pastor. It even has a private entrance. In time, they put a beautiful sign up.

The Methodist congregation agreed to take over duties of the local food bank that the Catholic Church had been doing.

The Disciples of Christ offered to host local AA meetings and made sure people who needed this group did not miss even one meeting in the transition.

About a dozen Baptist churches took up a collection and sent money.

A Pentecostal pastor shook my hand. When he walked away, I realized he had put $100 in my hand. I remember a conversation I had with him about a week before when he confided in me that he was hurting financially.

Months later, I found myself in need of heart surgery. This was probably due in no small part to the stress brought on by the fire and all its consequences. When I woke up from heart surgery, sitting beside me was an Assembly of God pastor—literally holding my hand and praying for me.

When we think of Christian unity (sometimes called ecumenism) we often think about it in terms of theological dialogue. We imagine representatives from different Christian groups and denominations coming to terms with our various doctrinal differences. Perhaps some of those differences are mere misunderstandings, perhaps some can be resolved through dialogue and study, and perhaps we just have to learn how to sit with the differences that we just can't figure out how to get past at this point in time.

However, the work of Christian unity is also at least partly about discipleship—living out the call of Jesus to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12).

Just do it! Just get out there and love one another! 

Be Christ to one another.

What's Fundamental to a Christian?

Some Christian denominations call themselves "fundamentalists"—they have identified a handful of concerns which they attest are, well, fundamental to Christianity. It's what is often referred to as "lowest common denominator Christianity" (for a good discussion, see Baptist writer John D. Pierce). It's a focus on the core values. There are pros and cons to this approach--it does reduce the whole of Christianity to a few basic principles, which can cut out a lot--too much, according to some. But it also helps to make sure that the most important pieces stay central, as Pierce discusses.

There are variations in the list of fundamentals, but a good representation is the original from the early 20th century:

1.       Biblical inspiration and the infallibility of scripture as a result of this

2.       Virgin birth of Jesus

3.       Belief that Christ's death was the atonement for sin

4.       Bodily resurrection of Jesus

5.       Historical reality of the miracles of Jesus

Other lists include the deity of Christ, the literal reading of the Creation account and the eventual return of Christ to earth. [I guess there's still disagreement as to what constitutes a "fundamental," as the list keeps shifting over time.]

My point here is: Absolutely none of these lists include the thing that Jesus Himself said was fundamental, despite the quadruple Gospel repetition: The command to "love God and love one another."

Isn't that a problem?

You could argue that the Greatest Commandment is included under the "inerrancy of Scripture" and it permeates everything on this list. That would be a fair point. But there are a few pieces of Scripture that were brought out for extra emphasis, and the Greatest Commandment was not one of them. Sadly, it rarely is.

Just to make sure you don't think I'm picking just on Protestant fundamentalists here, let's roll out the Nicene Creed. This is adhered to by the Orthodox, Catholics and most mainline Protestants. Like the five fundamentals, there are some points of disagreement on which version of the Creed is canonical. However, the Greatest Commandment is not included in the Creed nor is it a mentioned in any of the debates surrounding it.

In fact, almost nothing of what Jesus actually said or taught is part of the Creed.  That's a strange homage to the guy we claim to be God Himself. 

Going even further, the Catholic Church subscribes to the doctrine of infallibility. This is a very misunderstood (and at the same time hotly contested) issue, but at its core, it basically claims that the Holy Spirit will never let the Church be in error. Is this referring to following the ultimate Commandment of God Himself?  No, it is about whether the Church could ever be wrong in dogmatic teachings regarding faith and morals. 

If the Holy Spirit were going to make absolutely certain that the Catholic Church, in all its humanity, does not make any major mistakes, wouldn't you think the Holy Spirit would make sure we got the big things right? And Jesus (you know, God, right?) said the "big thing" was the Greatest Commandment. Sure, we profess it—but it’s not first on our list. It's not our central rallying cry. It's not the goal we strive for in our daily labors. Given the prominence which Jesus gave it, it is shocking, if not downright scandalous, how rarely we discuss it.

But instead, Catholics are convinced of the inerrancy of dogmas--theological explanations. Jesus Himself never said that our Christology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology or any of the other -ologies had to be correct. Rather, He said we are to love God and love one another. 

Isn't that just so hysterical it's ridiculous? Here's this guy walking around the earth, and most Christians will say that this man was actually God--literally. Mind blowing. Amazing.  Emmanuel--God with us. God came to earth in the person of Jesus, had a lot to say and gave a lot of instructions. And we have managed to silence every. single. word. from. his. mouth. in our most fundamental faith statements--a universal tendency shared by all Christian denominations. As we get ready for a year-long anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, this one point on which virtually all Christian denominations have in common is not something to be proud of.

I don't want to over-simplify. Christians affirm that the whole of Scripture is the Word of God, not just the specific words of Jesus. And many Christians affirm that God continues to speak through the living Body of the Church--the Body of Christ in the world today. Still, none of that takes away the strangeness of the duct tape around the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.

If you ask Christians for moral guidance, they are more likely to point you in the direction of the 10 Commandments of Mosaic Law from the Old Testament than to the Beatitudes, Works of Mercy or the Greatest Commandment preached by Jesus Himself.

God walked the earth as Jesus. Christians generally do not deny that. Many of Jesus' words are recorded in Scripture. Most Christians do not deny that. Jesus says out of all the things you do, this one should be the first. He even spells it right out for us! Here's the #1 place you'll want to devote your time and attention, folks. *Crickets*

Yet, when we come together to define ourselves as Christians, it doesn't even crack our top 10.

All around Christianity, the name of the game is belief. Dogmas and head games are the central talking points. Denominations have fragmented over arguments about nuances in the way we understand that which we, ironically, all agree is impossible to fully understand.

Yet, how many denominations have split over a desire to follow THE command of Jesus more fervently?

I admire the work of the Red Letter Christians who dare to ask:  What if Jesus actually meant what he said?

Just Say It, Jesus!

Detail from "Sermon on the Mount" by Carl Heinrich Bloch

Jesus was action-oriented. He avoided questions about his identity. He spoke in parables rather than in theological explanations. He spent time with all sorts of folks and performed a lot of healings (both of body and of the fractures in society), and he ultimately suffered, died and rose from the dead.

Christian theological debate, by contrast, has been obsessed with beliefs more than actions. These include pinpointing the specifics of Jesus' identity and the nature of God. There are many preachers today who will tell us that our very eternal fate depends on getting certain theological concepts right.

But ask yourself this:

If those beliefs are so important--if our very destiny for all eternity depends on adhering to the right set of beliefs--then the puzzling question is: 

Why didn't Jesus just tell us? 

Jesus could have simply said, Hey you know, I'm fully human and fully divine, I'm part of the three persons of the Trinity, and you need to do precisely A, B and C to be in good standing with this Christianity program I'm rolling out. Oh, by the way, I want to see churches, cathedrals and Mass on Sundays, yadda yadda.

There are lines in the New Testament that are instructional. But let's be honest--they are wide open to all sorts of interpretations. All interpretations are not equally valid, but there is plenty of room for significant disagreement.

Jesus had every opportunity to tell us that we had to have certain beliefs. There are hundreds of pages in the New Testament and a handful of authors. Any of them could have spelled it out in black and white. They could have made a list. Why in the world did Jesus tell stories with unclear meanings if having clear, succinct theological answers was so important?  It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

If razor-sharp doctrinal understandings are so important, then the New Testament actually comes across as a cruel trick. It is like the most sinister scavenger hunt where the stakes couldn't be any higher.

Are we to buy the argument that God speaks to us in puzzling metaphor, allegory and code, and it's up to us to decipher nuanced theological interpretations in order to stay in communion with the Body of Christ?

I think it is much more likely that Jesus wants us to be engaged in the process of figuring things out. He wants us to wrestle with the deep issues. He wants us to struggle over paradoxes and parables. It's more about the questions than the answers. It's more about the process than the conclusions--"The medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan said. 

Like a Zen master, Jesus confuses us on purpose. His stories seem to turn reality upside down. The parable put issues side-by-side that normally do not exist side-by-side. As a mentor of mine used to say, "out of confusion comes clarity." Jesus scrambles our brains so that we jar ourselves lose from the false reality around us so that we can get a glimpse of the Kingdom.

 

"What if changing our perception of God

 has the potential to change everything?"

-- Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance

The process of doing theology does matter--but maybe not in the way we think. Maybe it's more like going to the gym. You pick up weights and then you put them back down. The world has not changed at all, but you have changed in the process. Theology is important--I am writing, after all, a blog on theology at this very moment--it just needs to be put in its proper place in the hierarchy of importance.

Are our beliefs a pathway toward God or a way to build imaginary divisions between people?

Most Christians believe that God is a Trinity of three persons. But some Pentecostals are not Trinitarian. Muslims affirm the same God that Abraham affirmed, but Islam has some significant differences from Christianity. Are some of these folks outside of the reach of God's love and mercy as a result? That seems enormously difficult to believe. It took western Christianity about 300 years to formulate the precise language for the Trinity and the dual natures of Christ. Those debates have been recorded in the writings of early Christians. What became of the people who didn't understand the Trinity before the larger Church accepted it? What about the people who grow up immersed in one faith tradition and not another?

It is not the New Testament that is playing a cruel trick on us--it is the longstanding malady of obsessing over theological beliefs that gets us off track. It leads us on a wild goose chase, demanding that we find answers that Scripture itself probably may not even give to questions it is not even asking.

I totally understand that church communities will want to take the paradoxes and parables and try to extract from them some guidelines for living life on earth. However, we cross a line when a church community is married to its own conclusions. If those conclusions were so important, Jesus could have simply given them to us. He didn't. It has taken the churches hundreds--and in some cases thousands--of years to come to certain doctrinal conclusions. It's got to be more about the struggle. Rules and laws have their place, but they only make sense if we are compassionately involved with our whole being in the questions.

If black-and-white answers to questions of belief were of such paramount importance, why did Jesus seem to do everything EXCEPT give them to us?

I think there is great freedom in this. I'm sure it ruffles the feathers of people who are devoted to a particular set of doctrinal beliefs. But for the rest of us, it's bread for the journey and par for the course.

John 3:16 vs The Greatest Commandment

Part 3 in the series, What Makes a Christian? See end for links to the others.

I can go into any number of churches this weekend hear them "preach salvation." What does this mean? Believe this-or-that and you'll be guaranteed an afterlife in Heaven. In many churches across Christendom, this is probably the most common theme in a Sunday morning sermon, Bible study or prayer gathering of any kind, especially in the Evangelical world.

I can understand why people are preoccupied with their own fate--but in the words of Brian McLaren, when did Christianity become an "earth evacuation plan"?

There are a lot of assumptions that go into this kind of theology. It's quite a loaded statement, actually! We assume that the point of religion is to secure an afterlife--an afterlife that is either questionable or not available to us otherwise--and that the key to navigating this properly is to have the right beliefs.

Before you think I am picking on Evangelicals, a similar thing happens in Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. The Creed is rolled out about halfway through liturgy with a litany of "I believe this" and "I believe that."

When did belief trump action? What about simply doing what God tells us to do and trusting our fate in that?

Jesus seems to say it's not what you think but rather who you are that matters:

Jesus is very clear that the fundamental commandment is to love God and neighbor and that our witness of this will be the very mark of our Christian identity (John 13:34-35), that our closeness to the Kingdom (Mark 12:28-34) and participation in eternity (Luke 10:25-37) are contingent on it and that all other rules and parameters can be understood only in light of it (Matthew 22:34-40).

An incredible trickery happened somewhere in the history of Christianity. Early Christians were known as "followers of the Way" (Acts 9:2). Christianity was a holistic practice that impacted all areas of their lives. Somewhere this got truncated, and Christianity started looking more and more like a detached mental exercise.

I suspect I know why: Actions are difficult. Beliefs are easy. Changing one's lifestyle is just about the hardest thing to do. Ask anyone who has struggled with an addiction or has tried to lose weight or change any habit.

For everything there is a season,

and a time for every matter under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Like the vagabond poetic soul Qoheleth writes above, all things fit in God's Kingdom.

All words from Scripture fit, too.

I believe our task is to figure out how to order and prioritize them. We can end up with entirely different understandings of what it means to be a Christian--not by outright denying or contradicting anything in Scripture--but rather by choosing what to prioritize and reordering everything else in light of it.

A lot of churches start out with John 3:16 as their starting point. Catholics and many mainline Protestants start off with their doctrinal beliefs as expressed by the Creed. In this series, I explore the centrality of the Greatest Commandment to the faith--putting the commandment to love God and love one another as first and then reordering everything else in light of that. You may end up with a different theology, and frankly a whole different church this way!

For God so loved the world
 that he gave his one and only Son,

that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

There is no other verse more widely shared as the end all, be all of Christianity. This is the ultra-succinct, Cliff Notes version of Christianity. You'll see John 3:16 signs at sporting events, on automobiles and shirts. It's just everywhere. It's like Christians are saying: If all you hear from Scripture is one thing, make sure you hear John 3:16.

What's curious is that Jesus gave very different advice. When asked directly, He said follow the Greatest Commandment: Love God and neighbor abundantly. He didn't say "believe." He said, "do."

What's gotten us into this whole mess is our understanding of the word "belief." Scholars say that the modern American mind has been thoroughly influenced by the ultra-literalist approach to English Law that was in vogue several centuries ago. Words were stripped of their literary and artistic allusions and taken in the most basic, face value way.

I don't see any suggestions in Scripture to read it that way, but each of us brings his or her own interpretive lens whenever we read anything. There is a whole science called Hermeneutics devoted to understanding this phenomenon.

So when Scripture says that our duty is to "believe" in Jesus, we interpret that to mean the intellectual assent to the idea of Jesus as God and Christ. It's right there on the page, that's what the word "belief" means, right?

If elsewhere in Scripture it says we are saved "in the name of Jesus," we apply the same interpretive lens: We end up confident that if we profess the name of Jesus as the God we adhere to, then our duties toward our salvation are fulfilled. We have to say "Jesus" and not "Mohammed" or "Buddha" or "Krishna."

It's no wonder that many denominations in Christianity have violently split due to their vociferous disagreements over theological matters. When your entire stake in eternity hinges on getting the right theological concepts in order with the right nomenclature, it is no small wonder this has become such a high anxiety scenario!

In The Name Of . . .

Imagine if I were to say I am living my life "in the name of Martin Luther King, Jr."

Let's be honest--that would probably sound pretty awkward at first listen, because nobody talks like that. But with a moment of reflection, you would probably think this sounds like an old fashioned, perhaps overly poetic way of saying that I try to emulate the values and lifestyle of MLK.

In other words, I am trying to live in the tradition of MLK. I don't think anyone would assume that this has anything to do with renaming buildings or streets or that the name itself has some magical significance. Even if there were a change in nomenclature somewhere along the line, it would only be because of what that name represents, rather than some inherent quality of the name itself.

If I say I am trying to live, "in the name of MLK," you would expect me to lead a movement for civil rights or practice nonviolent resistance to structures of injustice. You can't really separate the name of MLK from those activities, because those activities are why you know the name of MLK in the first place.

The name of MLK. only has meaning because of who he was--and who he was is not a static entity--it is a reflection of how he lived and what he said and stood for. Who he was as a noun only makes sense in light of who he was as a verb.

In other words, if we are going to be saved by the "name" of Jesus, let's not be so literalistic to think uttering the name itself is the only condition. "The name of Jesus" is shorthand for all that Jesus has said and done--His teachings and model of life.

This makes perfect sense when you hold it up to Jesus' statement of inheriting eternal life from Luke's passage (Luke 10:25-37). Inheriting eternal life is about being merciful, just as Jesus showed us by being merciful Himself. In other words, helping our injured neighbor by the side of the road IS proclaiming "the name of Jesus."

In Biblical times, your name was tied to your inheritance. If your name is "Smith," that was not just some random combination of letters to make a sound. It was rather your connection to the legacy of the Smith family--their lands, their reputation, their culture. If you conquer some new territories "in the name of Smith," you are not just assigning the unique combination of letters and sounds to this land. You are invoking the legacy and reputation of the people known as "Smith."

If you're going to be saved "in the name of Jesus," it's because you are living into the Greatest Commandment.

With a literalistic eye, it looks like Scripture is contradicting itself. In some passage, it says that we are saved by a profession of belief. In other passages, we are saved by love and good deeds. I'm here to say that those are not in conflict at all.

Scripture is not divided up between a theology of belief and a theology of action--it is a combined, holistic expression.

John 3:16 is a beautiful verse, understood this way--that God's act of sharing Jesus with us comes out of love, and that all who participate in that love through loving both God and one another follow in the Way of Jesus, which is the Way of eternity--to love Jesus so much that you imitate Him and follow His Way. To believe in His message so much that you follow it.

This is part 3 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.
Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last

Like Looking at the Sun

Part 2 in the series, What Makes a Christian?

***

It is amazing how often we fail a most basic mark of the faith.

It is a downright scandal how rarely it is preached.

It's questionable how directly our religious and moral practices stem from it.

Yet if we believe the direct words of Jesus Himself--you know, God--the very ability of others to recognize our Christian identity is dependent on how we follow this.

We gather in churches. We have elaborate worship and praise. And yet we barely give lip service to the first and foremost of the commandments. When we do, it is often to give exceptions--No, Jesus didn't really mean that . . .

I'm talking about the Greatest Commandment--love God and love neighbor. Abundantly.

Christians often spend more time talking about obscure lines from the Bible or obscure doctrines about obscure topics, and it's amazing how very little time we actually spend on the fundamental, core command that Jesus Himself preached to us.

If you want to take the Bible literally: God Himself actually told us what to focus on!

Jesus is very clear that the fundamental commandment is to love God and neighbor and that our public witness of this will be the very mark of our Christian identity (John 13:34-35), that our closeness to the Kingdom (Mark 12:28-34) and participation in eternity (Luke 10:25-37) are contingent on it, that all other rules and parameters can be understood only in light of it (Matthew 22:34-40). That's it. All else gets at best a distant second or third place.

And yet our denial knows no bounds. It's rubrics. It's obscure passages. It's theologizing about the finer points of a Baptism--full immersion or partial? Oil or water?

How about loving God and neighbor as the only full immersion God asks for?

Given the seriousness and centrality of the Greatest Commandment, you would think two out of every three sermons would be focused on it. You would think we'd have task forces set up to evaluate how good we are doing in living it out and suggesting ways to do it better and better.

It is so simple, yet so difficult. We do everything we can to make being "Christian" about something else--it's about church membership, a certain baptismal formula or having the right "beliefs." Even denominations at odds with one another have this in common! Way to go, ecumenism!

You could argue those other things are important, too. But we put them front and center when Jesus was clear that something else was front and center. He actually comes out and tells us to put this commandment first, and we do everything except that.

We don't outright deny the Greatest Commandment. Oh no, we would never be so bold. Rather, we do something far more sinister--we just sort of brush it aside, put it on a pedestal and otherwise ignore it.

We box it in, limit it, put the ropes around it because, in truth, it scares the living daylights out of us.

Rubrics, rules, doctrines, Morse code, alien symbols and Cracker Jack box toys--all of these only make sense in their proper place. All too often, we place them first and foremost rather than as secondary or tertiary matters which can only be properly viewed and understood in light of the primary commandment, according to the passage from Matthew above.

We find ways to rationalize. We claim that God must want our bitterness, divisions, hatreds and such, so "loving God" then becomes manifesting these things. We find every excuse NOT to love abundantly, NOT to overflow with mercy, NOT to do all that love requires of us. We can contort anything into what we want, but much of it isn't in the spirit of the New Testament. For example, we can find all sorts of examples in Scripture and Church history to support all sorts of actions. The Bible is full of war and violence of all kinds, so we could claim Biblical support for these actions. Before we blindly imitate them and claim some Scriptural backing, we should ask--does this love God and love neighbor abundantly? If not, it should go to the fires of Gehenna.

Still, individuals and churches do everything they can to wiggle out of these requirements and try to make it out to be about something else. It's not that those other things aren't important--the scandal is the disproportionate amount of energy we put into those obscure things compared to what should be first and foremost.

And let's be clear: It's absolutely and totally a scandal how we treat the Greatest Commandment.

We give lip service to love. We attempt it here and there. But we are like unruly teenagers whose parents have told us to clean the house while they are gone. So we first spend several hours watching TV, talking to our friends, and yes, thinking about cleaning the house from time to time. About 10 minutes before they return, we run roughshod over the house to give the appearance of cleanliness. That is how I see us regarding the commandment to love. We do talk about it, just enough to get that monkey off our back and claim that we are following it. But the level of enthusiasm and energy we put into it is not anywhere near what we are commanded to do by Jesus--you know, God Himself.

I'll stand up and say that theology matters. We need to ponder over the deep stuff. I'm doing it right now. We need to meditate on who Jesus was and is and what that means for us today. Our churches have all been enriched by deep theological traditions. Rituals, church institutions, doctrines--all these matter, too. They have their place--the problem is that they are not staying in their place but have all-too-often assumed center stage.

We shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that theologizing about God is the same thing as being a Christian. That would be like mistaking the pre-game huddle with the football game itself. The preparation time is NOT the game. For far too many, simply "figuring out" their personal theology is an end unto itself. Pope Francis challenges us on this: It 's not just church leaders, but also theologians who should "smell like the sheep." No one is exempt from the hard work of living out the Commandment.

I love theology, but I have to admit my faith is pretty simple.

To me, Jesus' message is both incredibly simple and also incredibly difficult at the same time. Little children get it. The poor get it. Those on the margins of society get it. The more and more "stuff" we have just makes it more difficult to hear the message. It doesn't matter if the "stuff" is material wealth or just something else we are holding onto. It could be anger. It could be our ego. It could be our need to be right. The Gospels predict this. The more attached people were to their stuff the harder time they had accepting the truth of Jesus and following.

Let that stuff go and you start to see Jesus.

Maybe the message of Jesus is like looking into the sun. It's just so bright we can't do it for long. All we can do is hint and squint at it and try to come back to it later when we are ready. There is a case to be made for that.

Maybe humankind will always be sun worshippers--the first and perhaps the only religion.

God Himself gave us the commandment. Why is this not being preached from the mountaintops? Why is this not the cornerstone of all that we say and do? Because:

Jesus is the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22, Ephesians 2:20)

and

Jesus is God (John 1:1, 1:14, Matthew 1:23)

and

 "God is love.

Whoever lives in love

lives in God,

and God in them."

(1 John 4:16)

Therefore love is the cornerstone. Our active participation in love puts us in line with God, the Creator, as love is the creative energy of the universe, and love is the wavelength of eternity.

 

***

 

This is part 2 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.

Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last

The Elephant in the Living Room

Part 1 of the series, What Makes a Christian?

Sometimes I think that the collective witness of Christianity is best expressed by the expression, "the elephant in the living room."

I can close my eyes and envision millions--perhaps even billions--of Christians in this large room, all talking, milling about and being energetic about their faith--but virtually ignoring this giant elephant who is right there in the middle of it all.

They even have to bend and contort themselves to see around this elephant, but they continue to ignore him.

What is this elephant?

Let's look at it this way:

Christians profess that God Himself lived on earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

You with me so far?

God Himself walked among us, teaching, preaching and showing what He meant by His life example. He was very clear what was the most important. 

That giant elephant is the Greatest Commandment.

I hear Jesus saying: Of all the things you do, do this.

If you're gonna put your time and attention anywhere, put it here: Love God and love neighbor abundantly.

Yet, how often is this preached?

Of course, it is mentioned.

What I mean is: How often is it preached like this? 

How often is it preached the way Jesus preached it:

With intensity,

Centrality,

And a sense of utter, singular importance?

I'm sometimes baffled by our ignorance--it must be some kind of collective denial. But it is certainly immensely disrespectful to the person Who we claim is God.

* * *

The Greatest Commandment is in all 4 Gospels:

In Mark 12:28-34, Jesus makes a connection between following this commandment and one's closeness to the Kingdom of God:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus tells us that all other laws are to be read through the lens of the Greatest Commandment. All other laws are qualified by--and cannot be otherwise understood--outside of this context:

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.

In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus not only gives the command to love God and neighbor, but he also says this is what you must do to inherit eternal life. How often have you heard that preached at church? I am not a betting man, but it would be easy money to say that most preachers only mention this line in order caution us not to take it too seriously--using other lines from the Bible to qualify--or outright negate--this statement by Jesus Himself. They say that Jesus could not possibly have meant what He, you know, actually said:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus then tells the story of the Good Samaritan. He gives the answer in verse 37:

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

In John 13:34-35, Jesus states that our very public witness of our Christian identity itself depends on whether or not we love one another. Otherwise, people will not recognize that we are indeed Christians. Jesus tells us to follow his example. Jesus not only gives the commandment to love, but also states that His life has modeled this love. 

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

If there is any doubt as to who is included in the list of people to show love toward, the New Testament is clear--the commandment to love includes everyone from those in our own Christian group to the widows, orphans, outsiders, marginalized people on up to and including our enemies. In other words: Everyone. There is no shortage of Scripture citations to back this up. We will explore this further in the next post, stay tuned!

***

This is part 1 in the series, "What Makes a Christian?" Each part stands on its own.
Part 1: The Elephant in the Living Room
Part 2: Like Looking at the Sun
Part 3: John 3:16 vs the Greatest Commandment
Part 4: The Law Hangs in the Balance of Love
Part 5: The First Commandment Shall Be Last

Belief or Pratice - What Makes a Christian?

For most of the last 500 years since the Protestant Reformation, denominations in Western Christianity have been obsessed with making sure they have the right doctrine. The assumption in western Christianity has often been this: Being a Christian is about having the right salvation plan and your very salvation plan depends entirely on the right set of beliefs. 

Beliefs are the meat & potatoes in this model while actions are treated as the optional gravy side dish. Having the right beliefs is the foundation in this mindset, and on that foundation, a church community has some flexibility in the way those truths are lived out. Various styles and charisms follow. The beliefs are absolute; the practices vary. We are sympathetic when people do not live into the difficult prescriptions in the Gospel for our lifestyle, but we hold as absolute our beliefs. 

Jesus called on us to be "salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13), but he seemed to imply something much more essential than just an optional flavoring. 

 

This belief-centered approach is promoted even when the language goes to theological extremes that few can understand. Even the most educated theologians struggle to understand slim nuances of difference between theological arguments. Nevertheless, many churches have not hesitated to claim that your eternal life depends on having the right beliefs and joining the right club.

I have an advanced degree in Theology, and yet I still do not understand the differences between any number of hot button church dividing issues.

Those nuances DO matter. But is it possible that we may sometimes obsess over the finer points of theology as a distraction from actually changing our lifestyle in light of the revelation of Christ?  

The belief-first model makes sense on some levels: For example, we can all agree on the belief that feeding the hungry is important. How we feed the hungry can legitimately change shape depending on the circumstances. Still, not all methods are equal, and therein lies the rub.

 

We also know that humans are imperfect, and we believe in a God of compassion and forgiveness in our mistakes to manifest this truth we have come to know. We may fail to freed the hungry but still affirm that feeding the hungry is important.

 

I am suggesting something more symbiotic: 

The truth impacts the way we live, so having different beliefs will definitely bring about different practices. It goes the other way, too: The way we practice the Christian faith informs our beliefs. By practicing mercy, for example, we come to know God and therefore expand our beliefs, not to mention demonstrate what we actually mean by those beliefs. By getting to know the world better through servanthood, our beliefs broaden, deepen and develop.



Left: Traditional Model - Belief Centered
Right:  Symbiotic Model

I liken it to the way Scripture and Tradition have a symbiotic relationship in Catholic theology--bouncing off each other, informing each other, each providing a lens to see the other.  

I would be hesitant to suggest that practice is more important than belief. For now, I am comfortable saying that the two should be kept in balance.

The relationship between belief and practice would follow in a similar way:

Our knowing helps us to do --

and our doing helps us to know.

 

"The medium is the message," as philosopher Marshall McLuhan said and my Theology advisor always reminded me. Belief and practice are expressed as one phenomenon. How something is conveyed is just a part of the message as the explanation that may accompany it. There is a oneness here. Thought cannot be divorced from action. 

Telling someone you love them while punching them in the face gives at best a mixed message, if it is not an outright contradiction. It certainly calls into question your definition of love and your meaning, intention and conviction behind it. You may believe in love, but do you really know love? I am using "know" here in the Biblical sense--a whole-person experience rather than just a detached intellectual experience.
 
Obviously, we will all have ideals that we fall short of realizing. I am suggesting something more than simply "practice what we preach." I am saying that the way we understand the faith could benefit greatly if we understood the Christian life as being as much a verb as a noun.

The famous love passages in 1 Corinthians 13 backs this up. Grace--as understood as faith, hope and love--is the only thing that is eternal or coherent, according to the passage. Knowledge, prophecy--everything, really--all pass away, but faith, hope and love endure. All else is only so much senseless noise. It is only God's grace which brings order out of chaos, which turns that senseless noise into music and which brings something that dies to life. Our participation in this is a more energetic relationship than an intellectual, contractual agreement.
 

Hiding-in-Plain-Sight Christianity

 

The spiritual path can be hard, and it is easy to hide from it. There is no better way of fooling people--and yourself--than hiding in plain sight. We do this by talking about Christianity. We may practice a few core disciplines that our tradition mandates--we may go to church and abstain from certain behaviors, for example. But do our lives actually give witness to what we claim to believe? Is there even an attempt made to express the radical reality of Christ? Do we know Christ only in our thoughts but not elsewhere?

 

The western mind is the descendent of the Ancient Greeks. Their heavily analytical style broke apart reality into pieces for study and comment. The human person in its wholeness became thought of as mind, body and soul. This kind of fragmentation is great for analytical study so long as we do not lose sight of the integrated whole. The Greeks may have inadvertently paved the way for the way we nowadays often see belief and practice as so distinct as to be virtually unrelated to each other. 

 

The Letter of James attempts to remind us that the human experience is whole: "For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead" (James 2:26).

The great Reformers cautioned us with this. They wanted to quell the idea that humans are in charge of our destiny and that somehow we can "earn" salvation from our own efforts. It is a fair point, but they miss an even bigger point: Grace itself is a holistic experience of faith, hope and love that is not limited to the mental affirmation of belief. When we say that faith is crucial but works are not, we are acting like attendance in the locker room is essential but participation in the game itself is optional. Good works become a kind of optional victory lap in the Christian life rather than the race itself.

James challenges us more than most Christians are willing to consider. Consider this often ignored line: "Even the demons believe--and shudder" (James 2:19). Belief is not enough--the Christian experience must be more than that.

Faith without works is dead not because we earn salvation, as many in the Reformation argued. It is dead because the Christian life is not merely an intellectual head game--it is a whole-person endeavor.

 

A lot of people like to talk about religion. It is like theology is a puzzle to figure out, and they brood over it deeply. Indeed, many people have the spiritual calling--or burden--to be theologians. Their minds are unceasingly pondering the great mysteries and trying to glean what we can know of God from what has been revealed. Still, one of the great hiding places for the westerner is to hide in her/his own mind. We need thinkers, but when thoughts are too separated from a lived expression they fall short.

Defining Ourselves By Orthopraxy

Christians tend to group themselves along lines of belief. What if we were to group Christians along lines of practice?

Take something like the peace movement—very united in practice, but not always united in dogma, as people come from a variety of traditions. Yet at the same time, the practice of peace does bring about a sense of who humans are and our place in the cosmos—an implied theology is there. The peace movement is a kind of "church." Perhaps according to the test of Matthew 25, maybe we need to remove the phrase "kind of" and say "is"--it is a church in the sense that it is doing what Christ says to do.

 

The same is probably true of other movements, such as the charismatic movement or missionary movement(s). Movements have a theology. 

My colleague Dr. Rick Stern noticed that there is a unique and identifiable theology in the lyrics of bluegrass music. The practice of the music, the community which has formed around it and the revelations discovered through its practice have give it a distinct charism, or theology.   

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
—John 14:6 NIV

This is a verse most Christians have heard over and over again. It just becomes part of the wallpaper of daily life—it is so central, yet it can be so overlooked.

 

Jesus announces that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  In other words:

* No one comes to the Father except through the Truth of Jesus. 

* No one comes to the Father except through the Way of Jesus. 

* No one comes to the Father except through a Life in Jesus. 

 

Practicing Christianity may be just as important as believing in the right Christianity. To this point, many early Christians were referred to as followers of the Way (Acts 9:2).

 

Even the word "truth" itself is not necessarily about intellectual assent but about the Mystery of Jesus as the Incarnation of God. It is how we are in relationship with this Mystery and the impact it has on our lives that matters.

Merely identifying the Truth alone is only part of the equation, and I believe this is what James was warning us about. James was not fostering a "salvation by works" theology as much as he was reminding us that the challenge of Christ is a whole person endeavor, and he was trying to call us out of one of our favorite hiding places: Our mind.

For Further Reading

Saving Souls, Not Dogma, is the Heart of Pastoral Church Life discusses a paradigm shift along the lines of this post and was helpful in constructing it.

The First Canon: Mercy offers the quote by Pope Francis below which I believe also speaks to the relationship of faith/works and orthodoxy/orthopraxy:

"Mercy is not just a pastoral attitude,

but it is the very substance of the Gospel of Jesus."

-- Pope Francis