Modern-Day Pharisees
So, I woke up this morning to the realization that I've been a Protestant Christian (as opposed to the Catholic Christianity with which I was raised) for almost exactly four years now.
It's been an interesting time. I've learned a lot. Mostly, I've learned that I really don't jive very well with most Christians (so it seems at least). It has, at times, made me think that I'm doing things very, very wrong, that I'm so stubborn and hard-hearted that God can't do anything with me, that even he can't make me think "right." Like, here I got saved, became a born again...but have no inclination to, for instance, go to church religiously, rant about gay people, smash people over the head with a Bible, or even to join the Republican party. :) No seriously, I just don't seem to feel the same spiritual urges that many of the Christians around me (with the exception of frostymook) seem to have. In fact, I'm feeling more and more of a need to shock fellow Christians, though I haven't really gotten up the nerve to do so.
Yet.
To a certain extent, I've felt these things from the start four years ago, and I've always had a vague sense of guilt about it. I have often questioned whether or not I really have any faith at all. Quite a number of times over the last four years, I've internally condemned myself as a "bad Christian" or a "faker." So, I have at times convinced myself that I must be on the wrong Christian path, that I made a horrendously wrong turn at Albuquerque. You know that bumper sticker that says something like, "Who are these kids and why are they calling me Mom?!" Well, I've often felt, "Who are these Christians and why the heck am I one of them?"
But lately, due to a series of coinciding events, I'm beginning to think that, instead, maybe I'm on exactly the right path. They're small things that have happened, by themselves, but when you add them together, well...
So, this whole little journey-within-a-journey began a while ago, with Frosty's ex joining this church, about which I ranted rather at length a couple of months ago. They are very focused on following all of God's Old Testament commandments for reasons that, honestly, are very unclear to me and that, frankly, they can't seem to make clear for the life of them, either. They say one thing but strongly imply another. And these folks have a way of looking down on other Christians as somehow inferior to them because "those other Christians" eat pork and go to church on Sundays. That attitude severely irritates me, now more than ever.
Then Jerry Falwell died. Thinking about him made me think about other "megachurch" pastors/televangelists and, on a wider scale, the mixing of politics and faith and how bad that is for both of them. About how people assume that if one is an American conservative Christian, one is somehow obligated to join the Republican party.
Then, just recently, I read Galatians in the Bible. Granted, I did it for fanfic-writing purposes (Gotta love Firefly's Shepherd Book! :D ) rather than for purely spiritual purposes, but nevertheless it did give me a mighty big spiritual kick in the butt. The book is one of Paul's epistles to a church that had returned to trying to follow the Law in order to achieve...something. Salvation, maybe, or maybe just greater favor with God. (Which sounds suspiciously like That Church; methinks they gloss over that book quite a lot in their Bible studies, for Paul gets really pissed at the Galatian church...)
Then I read a book by John Fischer (Thank you, thank you, drharper, for "introducing" me to him!) called 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (Like Me). And boy, did that one lay a convicting wallop on me and my view of what, as a Christian (But not a pharasaical one!), I am truly supposed to be.
I resisted returning to Christianity for a long time and for a number of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons was that I didn't want to be "like them." I didn't want to be judgemental like them. I didn't want to be holier-than-thou like them. I didn't want to look down my nose at other people, condemning them for breaking God's laws and willfully snubbing him. Had I stopped and thought about it for maybe even just one little moment, I would have realized that that isn't what Christianity is about at all. But it's just hard to see that when you have such lovely examples of judgemental, holier-than-thou, condemning Christians shoved down your throat left and right. And I'm not talking just about the famous ones of that lot. I'm talking about someone who might possibly be your coworker or next-door neighbor or maybe even a friend. It's the person who won't listen to pop music because "I'm a Christian." It's the person who won't have a drink at a party because "I'm a Christian." It's the person who rants and raves about gay rights activists and the perverted blasphemy of gay people in general because "I'm a Christian."
Those things and a host of others? Have squat to do with Christianity. I want to quote a rather long passage from Mr. Fischer's book. I do not have legal permission to do it, but I'm doing it anyway. Honestly, I don't think Mr. Fischer will mind because, if nothing else, this is a message that Christians of all brands and all stripes need to hear, and I know that he'd agree with me there. Christians, you want to know why it's hard to witness to people, why it's hard to get through to hard-hearted people and why their hearts are so darn hard in the first place? Well, here's the answer:
If the truth were told, none of us [Christians] is as good as we make ourselves out to be, and though we would all probably agree about this, we aren't exactly getting this point across to the world. We are pragmatists at heart, trying to show that as Christians we are happier, better, and more fulfilled than everybody else. This perpetuation of a high and holy example at any cost -- even the cost of honesty -- has become our cherished witness in the world and one of our biggest mistakes.
This "witness" has taken on various forms over the years, from excusing oneself from "social dancing" (something I did in my grammar school days) to turning down a drink at an office party and thinking some great victory had just been won for Christ and his kingdom as a result of our unflinching stand.
Actually, as far as drinking and dancing and host of other things like this go, most non-Christians couldn't care less whether we do or don't. They will make a deal about it only because we make a deal about it, and they like catching us in our own traps. It wouldn't be hypocritical to drink at an office party if we hadn't made it a Christian issue in the first place. What we think is witnessing in this regard is not witnessing at all. It's what the advertising world calls branding.
Branding is what identifies a product or service and sets it apart in an easily recognizable manner. True witnessing is nothing more than telling someone about Jesus. There is a big difference between the two. One is an image, the other is a message. One is conjured up, the other is simply shared. I think that as Christians we've been better at conserving the image than we have been at conveying the message. We're good at branding ourselves as singular Christians but not at introducing people to Christ. In my experience, asking the person on the street to define a Christian will bear this out. Typical definitions yield very little about Jesus and a lot about issues and attitudes that set us apart from everyone else -- definitions that put us squarely in the Pharisee camp.
Some people want to be Christians and would be if it weren't for this "branding" of Christians that obscures the truth. For instance, a person may have a heart of compassion, a keen interest in the truth, and an intuitive sense that Jesus is right, yet still be thought of as an outsider when it comes to the church. The reason for this often has little to do with one's real spiritual hunger as much as it has to do with one's stand on behavioral and cultural issues. It's sad but true that a person's belonging or lack of belonging to the church today can be related more to political and moral issues than it is to Christ and salvation.
The church exists for people who don't understand it all but who love Jesus, people who are always questioning things because they want to know the truth, and people who know they are sinners in need of a Savior, and yet these are the very people who often find a church to be a phony place full of Pharisees. Where does a pro-choice Democrat with homosexual struggles go to church today? Not many churches I know of. For that matter, where does a sinner go to church?
The gospel is just what it is: good news for sinners. The only people who should be offended by it are people who can't admit their sin. No one who can admit their sin is an offense to the gospel. Yet Christians today seem to carry a long list of offensive people, not the least of which are homosexuals, pro-choice advocates, rock stars, feminists, sex educators, atheists, Hollywood producers, and the list goes on. And yet no one on this list is an enemy of the gospel. ("For our struggle is not against flesh and blood..." Ephesians 6:12). No one on this list is out of range of the gospel ("And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified..." 1 Corinthians 6:11). Everyone on this list is one step away from admitting their sin, just like us. And any sinner who can do that is one confession away from heaven. Sin is the only offense; the brand of sin is inconsequential.
I've come to realize that I was "brander" both before and after being saved. Before being saved, I bought into the Christian branding and wanted no part in it. I shunned my Savior because I didn't want to be like those who claimed to be his followers. But even after being saved, I still bought into the branding, just as, apparently, many other Christians have. It took rereading the Bible (DUH!) and reading Mr. Fischer's book to shake me out of it. Here I was thinking that I was a "bad Christian" because of what I am: analytical, logical, not prone to the mass emotional hysteria that is many evangelical, charismatic churches. Most of all I felt that I was bad because I had no desire to join a church at all. But when you get right down to it, it's not the church I don't like, really, but it's the fact that they are the Keepers of the Brand. The brand is wrong, and the brand is horribly, horribly damaging.
All that being said, it seems like here I am ranting about judgmental Christians, and here I am judging them. Which might be true, I suppose. On the other hand, we as Christians are given leave to judge teachers and prophets by the fruit that they bear, by what happens because of what they say and do. We can also judge what is "good" by checking the "something" against the Scriptures. And honestly, I'm seeing lousy fruit and nothing good to hold onto as a result of what many Christians say and do.
Because, my friends, I've come to believe over the past several months that this is what Christianity is: It's humility. It's admitting that we are sinners, just like everyone else, Christian or not, whether we've been Christian for twenty minutes or twenty years. It's knowing that accepting Jesus doesn't make us special, doesn't make us really different from anyone else, and doesn't make all the sins go away forever and ever. It's accepting that the only sins that we need to worry about are our own; everyone else's sins are patently not our business. It's facing up to the fact that no one's sin is worse than our own, that finger-pointing is not a part of Christianity. It's admitting that we do not know everything and that, in fact, people who do not believe as we do just might have pieces of wisdom that we do not have. Above all, it's realizing that we Christians do not get to control everyone else by dictating right and wrong to them on any level whatsoever.
The latter, of course, is what the Pharisees of Jesus's time specialized in. It's what kept them in the positions that they held. They were powerful and in control and feared because they got to decide right and wrong for everyone else, and woe to you if they didn't like you. And who was going to argue with them, at the time? The majority of people couldn't read the Scriptures and wouldn't be allowed to read them even if they'd had the ability to read.
It took the Son of God to shatter the Pharisees' glass house, and he died for it. Who, I wonder, is going to shatter the glass houses of the Christian Pharisees?
Me, I'm going to try to do my part, I've decided, starting right here with this journal entry. Christians scare and offend people away from Christianity. It's ironic (and very, very sad) that those who believe that they're holy are really the ones doing the majority of the devil's work for him. The devil's goal, after all, is to keep people away from Christ and salvation. From what I've seen, it's mostly Christians who are doing that these days.
I resolve here and now to try to do God's work, not the devil's. I don't know how to make that happen, at the moment, other than writing in a journal that, in the grand scheme of things, very few people will ever see. But it is, at least, a place to start...
It's been an interesting time. I've learned a lot. Mostly, I've learned that I really don't jive very well with most Christians (so it seems at least). It has, at times, made me think that I'm doing things very, very wrong, that I'm so stubborn and hard-hearted that God can't do anything with me, that even he can't make me think "right." Like, here I got saved, became a born again...but have no inclination to, for instance, go to church religiously, rant about gay people, smash people over the head with a Bible, or even to join the Republican party. :) No seriously, I just don't seem to feel the same spiritual urges that many of the Christians around me (with the exception of frostymook) seem to have. In fact, I'm feeling more and more of a need to shock fellow Christians, though I haven't really gotten up the nerve to do so.
Yet.
To a certain extent, I've felt these things from the start four years ago, and I've always had a vague sense of guilt about it. I have often questioned whether or not I really have any faith at all. Quite a number of times over the last four years, I've internally condemned myself as a "bad Christian" or a "faker." So, I have at times convinced myself that I must be on the wrong Christian path, that I made a horrendously wrong turn at Albuquerque. You know that bumper sticker that says something like, "Who are these kids and why are they calling me Mom?!" Well, I've often felt, "Who are these Christians and why the heck am I one of them?"
But lately, due to a series of coinciding events, I'm beginning to think that, instead, maybe I'm on exactly the right path. They're small things that have happened, by themselves, but when you add them together, well...
So, this whole little journey-within-a-journey began a while ago, with Frosty's ex joining this church, about which I ranted rather at length a couple of months ago. They are very focused on following all of God's Old Testament commandments for reasons that, honestly, are very unclear to me and that, frankly, they can't seem to make clear for the life of them, either. They say one thing but strongly imply another. And these folks have a way of looking down on other Christians as somehow inferior to them because "those other Christians" eat pork and go to church on Sundays. That attitude severely irritates me, now more than ever.
Then Jerry Falwell died. Thinking about him made me think about other "megachurch" pastors/televangelists and, on a wider scale, the mixing of politics and faith and how bad that is for both of them. About how people assume that if one is an American conservative Christian, one is somehow obligated to join the Republican party.
Then, just recently, I read Galatians in the Bible. Granted, I did it for fanfic-writing purposes (Gotta love Firefly's Shepherd Book! :D ) rather than for purely spiritual purposes, but nevertheless it did give me a mighty big spiritual kick in the butt. The book is one of Paul's epistles to a church that had returned to trying to follow the Law in order to achieve...something. Salvation, maybe, or maybe just greater favor with God. (Which sounds suspiciously like That Church; methinks they gloss over that book quite a lot in their Bible studies, for Paul gets really pissed at the Galatian church...)
Then I read a book by John Fischer (Thank you, thank you, drharper, for "introducing" me to him!) called 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (Like Me). And boy, did that one lay a convicting wallop on me and my view of what, as a Christian (But not a pharasaical one!), I am truly supposed to be.
I resisted returning to Christianity for a long time and for a number of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons was that I didn't want to be "like them." I didn't want to be judgemental like them. I didn't want to be holier-than-thou like them. I didn't want to look down my nose at other people, condemning them for breaking God's laws and willfully snubbing him. Had I stopped and thought about it for maybe even just one little moment, I would have realized that that isn't what Christianity is about at all. But it's just hard to see that when you have such lovely examples of judgemental, holier-than-thou, condemning Christians shoved down your throat left and right. And I'm not talking just about the famous ones of that lot. I'm talking about someone who might possibly be your coworker or next-door neighbor or maybe even a friend. It's the person who won't listen to pop music because "I'm a Christian." It's the person who won't have a drink at a party because "I'm a Christian." It's the person who rants and raves about gay rights activists and the perverted blasphemy of gay people in general because "I'm a Christian."
Those things and a host of others? Have squat to do with Christianity. I want to quote a rather long passage from Mr. Fischer's book. I do not have legal permission to do it, but I'm doing it anyway. Honestly, I don't think Mr. Fischer will mind because, if nothing else, this is a message that Christians of all brands and all stripes need to hear, and I know that he'd agree with me there. Christians, you want to know why it's hard to witness to people, why it's hard to get through to hard-hearted people and why their hearts are so darn hard in the first place? Well, here's the answer:
If the truth were told, none of us [Christians] is as good as we make ourselves out to be, and though we would all probably agree about this, we aren't exactly getting this point across to the world. We are pragmatists at heart, trying to show that as Christians we are happier, better, and more fulfilled than everybody else. This perpetuation of a high and holy example at any cost -- even the cost of honesty -- has become our cherished witness in the world and one of our biggest mistakes.
This "witness" has taken on various forms over the years, from excusing oneself from "social dancing" (something I did in my grammar school days) to turning down a drink at an office party and thinking some great victory had just been won for Christ and his kingdom as a result of our unflinching stand.
Actually, as far as drinking and dancing and host of other things like this go, most non-Christians couldn't care less whether we do or don't. They will make a deal about it only because we make a deal about it, and they like catching us in our own traps. It wouldn't be hypocritical to drink at an office party if we hadn't made it a Christian issue in the first place. What we think is witnessing in this regard is not witnessing at all. It's what the advertising world calls branding.
Branding is what identifies a product or service and sets it apart in an easily recognizable manner. True witnessing is nothing more than telling someone about Jesus. There is a big difference between the two. One is an image, the other is a message. One is conjured up, the other is simply shared. I think that as Christians we've been better at conserving the image than we have been at conveying the message. We're good at branding ourselves as singular Christians but not at introducing people to Christ. In my experience, asking the person on the street to define a Christian will bear this out. Typical definitions yield very little about Jesus and a lot about issues and attitudes that set us apart from everyone else -- definitions that put us squarely in the Pharisee camp.
Some people want to be Christians and would be if it weren't for this "branding" of Christians that obscures the truth. For instance, a person may have a heart of compassion, a keen interest in the truth, and an intuitive sense that Jesus is right, yet still be thought of as an outsider when it comes to the church. The reason for this often has little to do with one's real spiritual hunger as much as it has to do with one's stand on behavioral and cultural issues. It's sad but true that a person's belonging or lack of belonging to the church today can be related more to political and moral issues than it is to Christ and salvation.
The church exists for people who don't understand it all but who love Jesus, people who are always questioning things because they want to know the truth, and people who know they are sinners in need of a Savior, and yet these are the very people who often find a church to be a phony place full of Pharisees. Where does a pro-choice Democrat with homosexual struggles go to church today? Not many churches I know of. For that matter, where does a sinner go to church?
The gospel is just what it is: good news for sinners. The only people who should be offended by it are people who can't admit their sin. No one who can admit their sin is an offense to the gospel. Yet Christians today seem to carry a long list of offensive people, not the least of which are homosexuals, pro-choice advocates, rock stars, feminists, sex educators, atheists, Hollywood producers, and the list goes on. And yet no one on this list is an enemy of the gospel. ("For our struggle is not against flesh and blood..." Ephesians 6:12). No one on this list is out of range of the gospel ("And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified..." 1 Corinthians 6:11). Everyone on this list is one step away from admitting their sin, just like us. And any sinner who can do that is one confession away from heaven. Sin is the only offense; the brand of sin is inconsequential.
I've come to realize that I was "brander" both before and after being saved. Before being saved, I bought into the Christian branding and wanted no part in it. I shunned my Savior because I didn't want to be like those who claimed to be his followers. But even after being saved, I still bought into the branding, just as, apparently, many other Christians have. It took rereading the Bible (DUH!) and reading Mr. Fischer's book to shake me out of it. Here I was thinking that I was a "bad Christian" because of what I am: analytical, logical, not prone to the mass emotional hysteria that is many evangelical, charismatic churches. Most of all I felt that I was bad because I had no desire to join a church at all. But when you get right down to it, it's not the church I don't like, really, but it's the fact that they are the Keepers of the Brand. The brand is wrong, and the brand is horribly, horribly damaging.
All that being said, it seems like here I am ranting about judgmental Christians, and here I am judging them. Which might be true, I suppose. On the other hand, we as Christians are given leave to judge teachers and prophets by the fruit that they bear, by what happens because of what they say and do. We can also judge what is "good" by checking the "something" against the Scriptures. And honestly, I'm seeing lousy fruit and nothing good to hold onto as a result of what many Christians say and do.
Because, my friends, I've come to believe over the past several months that this is what Christianity is: It's humility. It's admitting that we are sinners, just like everyone else, Christian or not, whether we've been Christian for twenty minutes or twenty years. It's knowing that accepting Jesus doesn't make us special, doesn't make us really different from anyone else, and doesn't make all the sins go away forever and ever. It's accepting that the only sins that we need to worry about are our own; everyone else's sins are patently not our business. It's facing up to the fact that no one's sin is worse than our own, that finger-pointing is not a part of Christianity. It's admitting that we do not know everything and that, in fact, people who do not believe as we do just might have pieces of wisdom that we do not have. Above all, it's realizing that we Christians do not get to control everyone else by dictating right and wrong to them on any level whatsoever.
The latter, of course, is what the Pharisees of Jesus's time specialized in. It's what kept them in the positions that they held. They were powerful and in control and feared because they got to decide right and wrong for everyone else, and woe to you if they didn't like you. And who was going to argue with them, at the time? The majority of people couldn't read the Scriptures and wouldn't be allowed to read them even if they'd had the ability to read.
It took the Son of God to shatter the Pharisees' glass house, and he died for it. Who, I wonder, is going to shatter the glass houses of the Christian Pharisees?
Me, I'm going to try to do my part, I've decided, starting right here with this journal entry. Christians scare and offend people away from Christianity. It's ironic (and very, very sad) that those who believe that they're holy are really the ones doing the majority of the devil's work for him. The devil's goal, after all, is to keep people away from Christ and salvation. From what I've seen, it's mostly Christians who are doing that these days.
I resolve here and now to try to do God's work, not the devil's. I don't know how to make that happen, at the moment, other than writing in a journal that, in the grand scheme of things, very few people will ever see. But it is, at least, a place to start...