RethinkingOurStory

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Before summer break, we looked at the players in our Christian Story. This Fall term, we’ve turned to the Story itself. Here’s a brief review of what we’ve said thus far:

We human beings are in a pickle, no doubt. Our religion has called the pickle “Sin nature,” telling us that inside us is both the nature of God (nobility and virtue), and the nature of sin (ignobility and corruption). And like all other religions and philosophies, ours has a Story to tell about how we got in the pickle, and how we are getting out. It begins with a garden, and a tree, and a serpent, and ends with a man, a cross, a grave, a resurrection. When it’s all said and done, we say these words; “Jesus saves us from our Sin.”

Through the centuries, we’ve told the story of what it all means in many different ways, but all Christian people agree; the centerpiece of our religion is that humanity is stuck in Sin, but somehow in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are saved.

We’ve seen how in recent history, the many ways Christians have told the details of the Story of salvation have been reduced to one. After Anselm in the 11th Century, and particularly after the Niagara Bible Conference of 1895, for many Christians, there has been only one way to talk about sin and salvation. We’ve called that way, the substitutionary theory of the atonement. It’s familiar to most Christians. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Like the Passover Lamb in Jewish history whose blood persuaded God to “pass over” and not exact death on the people, Jesus’ blood satisfies God’s wrath, and he passes over us, not exacting upon us the wages of sin; death.

But, we’ve seen, this way of telling the story has problems. Primary among them is the unspoken foundations upon which it rests. In this telling, God is vengeful, capricious, and unjust. God is a human-like being, sitting up in heaven monitoring our sins and exacting punishment for them. Having made us with the capacity to sin (God’s omnipotence), and having made us with the foreknowledge that we would sin (God’s omniscience), once we did sin, God punishes us with eternal damnation. God insists on a pound of flesh to pay for the offense our sin has caused his honor, his dignity, his holiness.

And, we have seen; though this way of telling the salvation Story seems to match the “Lamb of God” scriptures, it is very out of sync with the “grace, goodness, and justice of God” scriptures. So we’re in an interpretive dilemma. Do we side with the scripture interpretations we’ve grown up with, or do we rethink our story, and try to find a way out of the dilemma?

Since the way we’re telling the Story today so clearly is not working for us, since it does so little to inspire or awaken us to the life Jesus taught is ours, since the church is so clearly suffering under the toxic pollution of intolerance and dogmatic judgmentalism, let’s put some work in, rethinking things. let’s see if there’s another way we can understand salvation.

***

In this section we’ve considered a bigger picture of God, a God not containable within human constructs, a God that is not a projection of human traits, and thus, a God that is not required to do what any self-respecting human being would do; punish people when they sin against him.

We’ve also reconsidered “separation from God,” the Christian definition of Sin.  How does that work? Does God, like an angry husband, turn his back on us, divorcing his bride? Is God the one who initiates and enforces separation, or is it us? We’ve suggested separation from God comes from ourselves, caught up as we are, in un-Divine thoughts, un-Divine habits, beliefs, and illusions. Sin, we’ve said, is less our badness, and more our false beliefs about God, about human nature, about The Way Things Are; false beliefs that drive fear, shame, and soul wounds, which in turn, drive us into bad thoughts and actions.

These themes give us a different way of thinking about separation from God, and the possibility of a different way of telling the salvation Story, a different way of thinking about Jesus “saving us from sin.”

Rethinking a doctrine as deeply embedded in us as the doctrine of salvation is a very uncomfortable proposition. We wouldn’t do it, if it weren’t absolutely necessary. But look around. Look at the Christian Church. Our current Story isn’t helping us. It isn’t inspiring us to the Way, the Truth, and the Life that Jesus taught us was ours.

One of my favorite authors is Richard Rohr. As his community in New Mexico was rethinking our Story, they made a bumper sticker

God does not love you because you are good.
You are good because God loves you.

Later they refined it…

God does not love you because you are good.
God loves you because God is good

These simple couplets speak of a fundamentally different way of thinking about sin and salvation, but when we’ve been raised in one way of thinking, it’s difficult to live from a different starting point. We’ve lived lives based on the old script for a long time. We’re part of communities that interact with one another on the basis of the old script. The scarcity-narrative is deeply woven into our religion. It has become normalized for us to speak of God’s free grace on one hand, but strive for God’s favor on the other. We pray the right prayer, do the right ritual, attend the right meeting, behave this way, but not that, and so forth to gain God’s blessing.

It’s normative for us to work hard so we’ll be attractive enough for people to accept us, to shape ourselves up, to remain in a state of God’s grace. We’re also used to the decorum and social norms that develop when other people are busy making themselves attractive for the same reasons. And anything we are used to, seems natural to us. Consequently, our brains tend to resist any alternative way of thinking, feeling, or behaving. Yes, we realize that our current telling of the salvation Story diminishes Jesus’ central theme of meritless love. Yes, we realize that our current instincts belie our own words, belie the unearned grace our saints and sages taught us. But change feels unnatural and unsafe. And those feelings, make change undesirable.

But we have to change, or we’ll die. Look around at the state of the Church. We need a better Story!

Many in our society believe that accepting Jesus as their personal savior would make them a worse person. They believe the salvation we hold so dearly would make them more self-centered. They believe “getting saved” would make them less concerned for the poor, less concerned for the environment, less concerned that the oppressed find justice. They believe Christian salvation would make them less forgiving of other people, less tolerant of their weakness, their sins.

And why do you suppose they believe that? Of course, because that’s what we do. We are more self-centered. We are less concerned for the poor, the environment, the oppressed, the weak, and those in trouble. And the world has heard enough about Jesus to expect more.

I’ve said repeatedly in this project, that it won’t do for us to see this problem, and work a bit harder to fix it. No, it’s our Story that is betraying us.

One toxic part of our Story is the idea of Jesus as our personal savior. This idea has led to a very flawed version of salvation. Our personalized version of the salvation Story focuses on what getting saved will do for us, not to us. Consequently, Christians over last several generations have given less of their souls, their energies to help others, have cared less for the troubles, the pain of others, and have served less of the world’s needs, the world’s troubles. Christians haven’t always been this way, but now, it is the majority report.

We fell into this sad state innocently enough. All we were trying to do was tell our story in a way that people in our society could understand (the same thing we’re trying to do in this project). We live in a society that holds one doctrine deeply and dearly; to make money, you must cater to people’s personal desires. This doctrine has so permeated our social thinking, our instincts, that we Christians co-opted it into how we tell our own Story. As central a belief as it is, it made sense to appropriate it as our own. It made sense to us, and it made sense to the people in our society we invited to join us.

So we told the story of Jesus as a personal savior. And when we did, the salvation of Jesus fell into the category of products designed to benefit people in their lives. It became the same kind of personal benefit we gain when we get a personal trainer. A trainer helps us lose weight and get stronger. A personal computer helps us be productive, a personal automobile helping us get where we need to be.

I have some personal radio stations on the internet. They only play music I like. This is a benefit I love! I don’t have to switch stations to find what I want. I don’t have to listen to music you like, or music my kids like. I find this a a great benefit to me!

And when we put Jesus’ salvation into this category, it powerfully connected with the sensibilities of a consumer society. The Church began selling salvation as a personal product, a product to improve your life, a product you consume for the good it will do for you.

And the benefits are considerable, not the least of which is a secure afterlife. By shopping around for a personal savior, we’ve been able to avoid hell and gain heaven. Also, Jesus’ salvation helps us improve our personalities. We treat the wife and kids better. When we pray, Jesus helps us on the job, with the family, in our own personal growth. Jesus helps us with all that stuff!

So, we Christians congratulate ourselves for being such shrewd customers. Boy, did we choose well! Look at all the benefits we get!

So with this way of telling our Story, it is no surprise that as a group, we’ve become more self-focused. It is no surprise that our religion is producing selfish people, consumerist people, narcissistic people.

But does consumer salvation sound like Jesus? Does this Story and the fruit it bears make us like Jesus? Was Jesus in the business of making people more self-focused?

Come on.  Of course not. The salvation of Jesus is from selfishness to selflessness, from unconcern for the world, to concern, from carelessness, to compassion for the hurting and needy.

Even though the Titanic had only enough lifeboats for half the passengers, only 708 of the 1084 lifeboat seats were filled. Because of the shoving, pushing, and self-focus, 35% of the lives that could have been saved, perished. Does it seem Jesus’ way to get his people in the cosmic lifeboat and leave others to face crime, injustice, poverty, and oppression? Does it seem Jesus’ way to focus on his people’s salvation, to gather us into tidy, gated communities where we can congratulate ourselves, and celebrate our good luck?

Of course not. But that’s what has happened to us. “Join us!  We’re going to heaven after we die. Join us!  the world may burn, but we’ll be safe. Join us!  Jesus will help you with your job and kids. We’re a bunch of shrewd shoppers. You should be like us…
…and become sons and daughters of perdition, just like us!

No, that’s not Jesus’ salvation! Not at all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 11th, 2010 at 2:36 pm and is filed under 6-What Happened?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.