The Myth of a Christian Religion Page 7

  Six years ago, we all began to feel God calling us to move out of the suburbs into the city. We now live on the same city street within a couple blocks of each other. Until a decade and a half ago, I dreamed of living far out in the country, on the top of a mountain, or in an isolated cabin in the middle of a deep forest. I now find myself living in the middle of a densely populated city surrounded by an amazing diversity of people—and I love it!

  As a result of our new proximity, our level of interdependence increased even more. We now share everything from cars and shovels to salt, salad dressing, and even showers (we all live in older houses where things don’t always work).

  Our new location has also opened up new ministry opportunities. For example, we now partner with a nonprofit social-service agency that serves elderly and mentally disabled shut-ins in the inner city. As needs arise, we get together to repair homes, mow lawns, shovel snow, buy groceries, lead Bible studies, or just hang out with these dear people. You get the picture.

  This alleged autistic-tending loner has discovered the profound beauty of deeply committed relationships, and I’ve discovered that this is how life is meant to be lived—regardless of how introverted a person might be.

  Now, don’t get me wrong; I still need a lot of time in my cave. My friends accept this. Half the time while we’re on vacation, they are out doing stuff while I hang back, read, write, and just think. I’ve learned that being in community doesn’t threaten my individuality. To the contrary, it enhances it.

  Everyone in our group has eccentricities that the others accept and make good-natured fun of. It’s these very differences, working together, that make our group interesting and, with work, beautiful.

  God created each of us unique. But this uniqueness was meant to be woven into the tapestry of community. We are made in the image of the triune God, whose essence is a loving community. We are created for community. This is how Jesus lived, and it’s how his followers are called to live.

  THE IDOL OF INDIVIDUALISM

  In chapter 1 we noted that the world is oppressed by fallen Powers that influence human culture in ways contrary to God’s will. One primary way the Powers operate in modern Western culture is by promoting an ideology of “rugged individualism,” which runs directly counter to God’s will for us to live in community. We place unprecedented stress on our individual freedoms and rights. While people in traditional cultures tend to define themselves by their ties to a particular community, modern westerners tend to define themselves apart from ties to a particular community—“over and against” others instead of “in relation” to others.

  This tendency toward individualism has been greatly intensified by the hedonistic consumer culture we’ve created over the last century. We tend to measure our worth by what we are able to purchase. This in turn conditions us to make striving after things—pursuing “the American dream”—a higher priority than cultivating deep, committed relationships. Meaningful relationships take time, and that is something people indoctrinated into the consumer mindset never feel like they have.

  On top of this, the wealth of options our consumer culture offers conditions us to expect to have things our way. This also undermines our desire and capacity for deep, meaningful relationships, for this type of relationship requires that we be willing to sometimes forgo our preferences and put up with things we don’t care for.

  When you combine our relationship-eroding consumerism with our stress on individual freedoms and rights, you can understand why most westerners have many acquaintances but few (if any) deeply committed relationships that echo the beautiful love of the triune God.

  In his marvelous little book The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis envisioned hell as a realm in which people are forever moving farther away from one another. Hell is the ultimate, cosmic, suburban sprawl. It’s a vision of hell that is becoming a reality in Western culture, and it’s something Kingdom people in the West are called to passionately revolt against.

  WHAT NIGERIANS HAVE THAT AMERICANS LACK

  In the West we are brainwashed into thinking that clinging to our personal rights and freedoms, while striving after things, is our ticket to happiness. In reality, it’s making us miserable.

  Several studies have revealed that, statistically speaking, America has one of the highest rates of depression (and other mental health disorders) in the world. On the other hand, these mental health studies suggest that Nigeria has one of the lowest rates of depression. 2 Despite the fact that the average standard of living in America is roughly four times that of Nigeria, and despite the fact that Nigeria is a country with a multitude of social problems—including dehumanizing poverty, a serious AIDS epidemic, and ongoing civil strife—Nigeria has far less depression, per capita, than America.

  What do Nigerians have that Americans lack?

  Judging from the Nigerians I know, I’m convinced the main thing is a sense of community. Nigerians generally know they need one another. They don’t have the luxury of trying to do life solo, even if they had the inclination to do so. Consequently, Nigerians tend to have a sense of belonging that most Americans lack, and this provides them with a sense of general satisfaction in life, despite the hardships they endure.

  Many studies have shown that personal happiness is more closely associated with one’s depth of relationships and the amount one invests in others than it is with the comforts one “enjoys.” And this is exactly what we’d expect given that we’re created in the image of a God whose very nature is communal. It’s against our nature to be isolated. It makes us miserable, dehumanizes us, and ultimately destroys us.

  A “ONE-ANOTHER” COMMUNITY

  Jesus revolted against the Powers that fragment relationships by modeling what communal life under the reign of God looks like. Though he was the Son of God, he didn’t try to “go solo” in his life and ministry. He had a network of friends, like Mary and Martha, he could rely on when he traveled. He banded with a group of twelve disciples who traveled and ministered with him. And he chose three people (Peter, James, and John) to form his most intimate circle of friends. His life manifested the truth that where God reigns, individuals will be united together in close-knit communities.

  The earliest Christians understood this. They met regularly as a large group in the temple courts, hearing and studying “the apostles’ teaching” and enjoying fellowship with one another. But they also met in smaller groups inside each other’s homes on a daily basis where they shared meals and prayed together.

  These earliest disciples shared everything they owned with one another so that no one in their community was in need. In a culture that had no social “safety nets,” this was an aspect of the early Church that made it attractive to outsiders.

  House gatherings were the primary social unit of the Jesus revolution for the first three centuries. When Paul addresses a letter to “the church” at a certain location, we mustn’t think there was a large church building located in that region in which all the Christians congregated. Buildings specially designed to be churches didn’t exist until Christianity was legalized and began to attract prestigious and powerful people in the fourth century. When Paul addresses “the church” at a certain location, he’s addressing a body of disciples who gathered in various privately owned houses scattered throughout the city. His letter would be read in one house church, then copied and passed on to other house gatherings.

  Many of the New Testament’s teachings about how Christians are to relate to one another only make sense when we understand them in a small house-church context. For example, the New Testament commands us to submit to one another, confess sins to one another, encourage one another, serve one another, and hold one another accountable. How can we authentically do this unless we’re in intimate relationships with one another? These aren’t the kinds of things you can do by meeting in a large building once a week with people you hardly know.

  THE INVENTION OF MCCHURCH

  This isn’t to say there’s anything i
nherently unbiblical about larger Kingdom gatherings. The book of Acts suggests the earliest Christians met in larger groups when they could. I myself pastor a church that holds weekend services attended by a couple thousand people, and it accomplishes some good things. But by New Testament standards, large group meetings—the typical American church model—are not adequate.

  Among other shortcomings, the large-group, weekend-event model of church fails to confront the individualism we’re in bondage to. In fact, if we’re not careful, the weekend-event model of church can actually pander to our individualism.

  Think about it. Once a week we go to church (a religious building) rather than seeing ourselves as the church. As good consumers we typically choose our church based on our own preferences, conveniences, and needs. Since we’re conditioned to assume that “the customer is always right,” we believe we have the right to have things our way. If one church fails to please us we simply shop for another that will. Since there are only so many of us religious consumers to go around, churches have to compete with one another to acquire and keep as many consumers as possible. This, of course, puts pressure on pastors to sweeten the religious product they’re peddling by adding as many blessings as possible to their messages and by refraining from saying or doing anything that might drive consumers away.

  Welcome to McChurch, where you get served up a Gospel tailor-made to suit your personal tastes and needs and that never confronts you or causes you any discomfort.

  McChurch not only fails to confront the idols and pagan values of Western culture, it often “Christianizes” them. Not only do we not have to give up our possessions, as Jesus commands; we’re told that following Jesus ensures that we’ll get more of them! Not only do we not have to love and serve our enemies, as Jesus commands; we’re told that God is on our side when we applaud our nation bombing them!

  If you’re looking for an explanation as to why studies confirm there’s hardly any difference in Western countries between churchgoers and non-churchgoers in terms of the core values we embrace, I suggest you’ve just found it.

  GROWING TOGETHER IN CHRIST

  Against the theology and practices of McChurch, Kingdom people are called to live and minister in community with others. We cannot hope to manifest the Kingdom if we are doing life “solo.”

  The Bible says we are all members of the body of Christ. A member of our physical body that becomes detached stops growing and becomes useless. So too, we can only grow and reach our full potential in the Kingdom if we remain attached to the body of Christ. The Kingdom suffers, and we suffer, when we try to do life solo.

  We all need people we are committed to loving and serving and who are committed to loving and serving us. We all need people who are close enough to us to notice when we’re discouraged and who care enough to take time to encourage us. We all need people who can spot areas of weakness in our life and care enough to confront us in love. We all need people who can notice when we’re going astray and who care enough to hold on to us. We all need a community that helps us revolt against those dominant aspects of our culture that are inconsistent with the Kingdom life. And all of us—even quasi-autistic loners like me—need a community with whom we can share the joys, sorrows, victories, and defeats of ordinary life. It’s essential for our wholeness and Kingdom effectiveness, and it’s essential if we are to reflect the communal love of the triune God in our life.

  Close-knit, loving, mutually submitted, and mutually accountable relationships—these are the primary context in which God transforms us and uses us to transform the world. If we can think of the Kingdom as a spiritual army (which it is), then we’d say the commander has decided that small platoons are the primary place where soldiers are to be equipped for battle and the primary unit he uses to engage in battle.

  In the process of belonging to and fighting within a platoon, we learn how to manifest the beauty of the communal Kingdom while revolting against the destructive individualism of our culture and the Powers that fuel it. In community, the beautiful revolution advances.

  Viva la revolution!

  CHAPTER 7

  THE REVOLT

  AGAINST NATIONALISM

  Our citizenship is in heaven.

  PHILIPPIANS 3:20

  Nationalism is an infantile disease.

  It is the measles of mankind.

  ALBERT EINSTEIN.

  WASHING OSAMA’S FEET

  A friend of mine hired artist Lars Justinen to paint the picture on the previous page to use on posters advertising a conference on the character of God that he was hosting. 1 He had contracts with several malls to hang these advertisements. Almost immediately after hanging the posters, however, the malls began to be flooded with angry calls—mostly from Christians—demanding they be taken down. They were outraged at the image of Jesus washing Osama Bin Laden’s feet. So strong was the outcry that the malls decided they had to cancel their contracts and take down the posters. The Christian college that was renting space to my friend rescinded its contract as well.

  Apparently, the protesters believe that Jesus would not wash Osama Bin Laden’s feet. And why would they think this? Presumably, it’s because these protesters assume that any enemy of America is an enemy of Jesus and that Jesus would not wash the feet of his (and therefore America’s) enemies.

  It’s a curious belief. If Jesus was willing to suffer a hellish death on behalf of Bin Laden, how can we imagine he’d balk at washing his feet?

  This episode reveals the extent to which many American Christians have allowed their faith to be co-opted by nationalism. Many have allowed their allegiance to the flag to compromise their allegiance to the cross. They’ve allowed the values of the empire they live in to redefine the Jesus they believe in.

  Rather than obediently agreeing with God that every person—including Osama Bin Laden—was worth Jesus’ dying for, they’ve reduced Jesus to a pagan tribal deity who, of course, agrees with them. If they would rather kill Bin Laden than wash his feet, then surely Jesus must want this as well.

  The truth is that the real Jesus bears no resemblance to this tribal Jesus. The real Jesus is reflected on the poster!

  A NATION TO REUNITE THE NATIONS

  To appreciate how important revolting against nationalism is to the Kingdom, we need to review a little Bible history.

  God’s dream has always been for humans to form a single, united community under his loving Lordship. His goal has always been for humans to reflect the love of the triune God by how we relate to one another. This dream was shattered when our sin set us against one another and divided us into different tribes and nations. But God did not give up on his dream.

  He called Abraham to form a unique nation by which “all peoples on earth will be blessed.” The unique calling of the descendents of Abraham (the Jews) was to become a nation of servant-priests whom God would use to reunite the nations under his loving Lordship.

  This vision of a reunited humanity is hammered home with increasing clarity and strength throughout the Old Testament. For example, Jeremiah looks forward to the time when “all nations will gather in Jerusalem to honor the name of the Lord.” Zechariah prophesies of a time when the Lord will “be king over the whole earth” so that he will be the only Lord confessed among the nations. And Joel prophesies of a time when God’s Spirit would be poured out “on all people.”

  But the prophet who most forcefully captures God’s vision of a reunited humanity is Isaiah. From the start, the Israelites had a tendency to define themselves over and against other nations rather than as the servants of other nations. They fell into nationalistic idolatry. Through Isaiah the Lord confronts this idolatrous mindset and reiterates his agelong goal of reaching all nations.

  In Isaiah 55 the Lord announces that anyone from any nation who is thirsty or hungry can come and feast at his banquet table for free. He promises everyone who comes to his feast that he will bring them into the “everlasting covenant” that he “promised to David.” For, the
Lord says, David was raised up not just to be the earthly king of the Jews but also to be a “witness” and “ruler” of all nations. It’s clear from this that God’s goal was, and still is, to incorporate all nations into his covenant with Israel under the reign of a Davidic King.

  The Lord reiterates his global goal when he goes on to say that his chosen people will “summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you” because the Lord “has endowed you with splendor.” God’s goal was always to bless Israel as a means of attracting all nations to himself. Most Israelites forgot this, however. They thought the blessing was just because God favored them over other nations. They had reduced Yahweh to a tribal deity.

  And so the Lord goes on to proclaim,

  My thoughts are not your thoughts,

  neither are your ways my ways….

  As the heavens are higher than the earth,

  so are my ways higher than your ways

  and my thoughts than your thoughts.

  Isaiah 55:8–9

  People often cite this verse to justify embracing incoherent beliefs. A convenient way to insulate a cherished belief from rational criticism is to simply say, “God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts.” It’s really an abusive use of this passage, for in the original context God is confronting our tribalism. God is saying his thoughts are higher than ours, for like the ancient Jews, we often forget that God’s heart is for all people from all nations to come and feast at his banquet table for free.