Sunday Afternoon

Its Sunday afternoon. I'm thinking about the worship service this morning, the things that happened this past week, and a little about what is to come in the next couple of weeks. And, I have been reading "The Righteous Empire," a historical book about Protestants in the U.S. by Martin Marty written in 1969. It details the ideas of Protestant Christians in the U.S. that had such a profound influence over the development of the country. In general my thoughts turn in one direction: Christianity has so often been such a distortion of the truth of God in Jesus that I think a lot of people in history who haven't been Christians have been closer to God's will than Christians have been. Of course there has always been a more faithful and less faithful way in the Church, but, clearly among the powerful and influential, it has been consistently a distortion and even a downright rebellion against the way of Jesus. We read this morning the passage in which Jesus is amazed at the faith of the centurior (Roman soldier/non-believer) who is trying to find help for his sick servant (see Matthew 8:5-13). Jesus noticed the goodness and genuine faith of those who were not part of the Jewish religion in which he was raised.

It would have been easier for me to have kept up the belief that Christians are better than other people if I didn't know anything about history and didn't know so many Christians, and also if I hadn't met so many non-Christians as well. Having had these experiences, my advice is that we Christians need to get our house in order before we ever, ever try to judge anybody else. All this about being "saved" when we treat other people badly - it will not stand in the final day. And, I'm not saying I should stand in the final day. I really don't know about that. I think that is God's business, not mine. There are and have been wonderful people in this world, people who have suffered so horribly, but somehow carried on so gracefully. And, there have been people who have been broken in their spirit by their suffering - some of these people ending up hurting others. I try to learn from the examples of both groups of people, so that in my own life my experience in life leads me closer to loving God and neighbor and not further away. Religion has clearly been a powerful and a positive force in helping people in that struggle to deal with life's struggles in a decent and gracious way. Unfortunately, religion has also been a powerful force in helping people deal with life's struggles in a very indecent and very ungracious way as well.

To understand the Bible and the way of Jesus demonstrated in the Bible is to understand that the way of faith is a thorough-going criticism of religion. People often don't understand why somebody who is religious like me would spend so much time criticizing the manifestations of my own religious group. But, as I read the Bible, I see that Jesus didn't criticize the irreligious, but the religious. He turned the prophetic attacks towards the religious Jews, not towards the unbelieving people. Why? Well, I'll move on to one other thing before I close. When Jesus attacked the religious of his day, he stood there ready to show them a real holy alternative. When I attack the religious of my day, I stand there with the religious of my day, and it is only a matter of time until it becomes apparent that the criticism I have made against "them" applies to me as well. So, where is the holy alternative, that true path? It is where Jesus is.

So, part of the reason I attack the distortions of Christianity is that I am part of that tradition that comes from the Biblical witness. And, part of it is also that we often attack most strongly those things in others that we don't want to acknowledge in ourselves.