nakedpastor

I had coffee this morning with a good friend of mine. She’s an executive coach in the business world. We always have great conversations. She’s not afraid to ask me hard questions. I need that! She was telling me that more and more companies, employers, and bosses are recognizing the importance of spirituality in the workplace. I said that it is very important to realize the subtlety of what they’re doing. To promote spirituality in the workplace may be important for the health of the individual and for relationships. But there’s an incredible danger of promoting spirituality just to increase production and profits. Profits are important for a business, and necessary for its survival. Spirituality is important also, but for entirely different reasons. Of course, a healthier individual makes a healthier worker, producer, and profit-maker. Companies are recognizing this, and investing in promoting it in the workplace. Some are just concerned with the health of their workers. Others, maybe not. The risks are enormous, aren’t they?

In the church, it is even more important to be aware of this. The church must not have undue concern for its own survival, which is vastly different than business. Then, even more so, I think the spiritual health of the church’s members must not be linked to the income and profitability of the church as an institution. These two dots cannot and must not be connected.

“… in the contemporary churches, pietism, in any of its forms, represents a profound anxiety for success, for results, for reputation, for tribute to the conduct, practices or beliefs of churchgoers” (William Stringfellow, Count It All Joy, p. 92).

I like William Stringfellow because of his insightful and pointed critique of the contemporary church. I’m sorry he’s gone. I love everything he wrote. The above quote was published in 1967. Here we are, almost 40 years later, and things are worse! I too am certain that our modern day piety, which is “devotion to a deity or deities and observance of religious principles in everyday life”, reveals a panicky need for success, results, fame, and reward. The terrible truth is that the church tends to encourage, nurture, and sustain this kind of piety.

Do we have the courage to die to this kind of piety, personally and corporately?

Here’s an excellent statement:
“Innovation often originates outside the existing organizations, in part because successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it” (Nathan Rosenburg, quoted in Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start, p. 19).

This is one of the issues of any institution, including the church. I read lots of material on the desperate need for innovative thinking to change the church. It is desperate for all the obvious reasons that I won’t get into right now. The problem is that most of this material is written from within the institution, by people like me—paid professionals.

Which is why the desert is such a strong and important symbol in scripture and throughout the history of the church. If we want to critique the church and change it innovatively, we MUST go to the desert for a new vision.

Wendell Berry, the American social critic, has something to say about this in his book, The Unsettling of America. Berry believes the pursuit of truth is better than the protection of truth. Once the mind has “consented to be orthodox”, then it becomes “narrow, rigid, mercenary, morally corrupt, and vengeful against dissenters.” He says this is the nature of orthodoxy: “one who presumes to know the truth does not look for it” (p. 174). He draws a direct analogy from religion:
“The pattern of orthodoxy in religion, because it is well known, gives us a useful paradigm. The encrusted religious structure is not changed by its institutional dependents– they are part of the crust. It is changed by one who goes alone to the wilderness, where he fasts and prays, and returns with cleansed vision. In going alone, he goes independent of institutions, forswearing orthodoxy (‘right opinion’). In going to the wilderness he goes to the margin, where he is surrounded by the possibilities– by no means all good– that orthodoxy has excluded. By fasting he disengages his thoughts from the immediate issues of livelihood; his willing hunger takes his mind off the payroll, so to speak. And by praying he acknowledges ignorance; the orthodox presume to know, whereas the marginal person is trying to find out. He returns to the community not necessarily with new truth, but with a new vision of the truth he see it more whole than before” (p. 174).

Let’s go to the desert! Or maybe recognize that we are already there and take advantage of it.

“The Chinese people had learned by experience that the Party trusted them more and liked them better if they didn’t think for themselves but just repeated what the Party told them” (Nien Chang, Life and Death In Shanghai, p. 18).

I read this book years ago, but its impact never leaves me. It is a powerful autobiographical account of a woman’s imprisonment, deprivation, suffering and torture she endured at the hands of her own countrymen under Mao Tse-Tung’s reign, and her heroic and faith-filled fight to survive and see justice prevail.

It is a vivid lesson on how power can certainly corrupt and turn leaders into cruel, inhumane abusers of other people. It’s very subtle at first: dissent is frowned upon. Differing opinions are discouraged. Finally, it becomes suicidal to disagree or even question. To placidly agree is rewarded with trust, friendship and promotion. Disagreement is met with suspicion, rejection and exclusion.

I just listened to a Philip Yancey lecture, “Rumors of Another World” that my friend sent to me. Thanks Nato! Yancey talks about different agnostics and atheists, such as Voltaire, Hume, and Russell, and states that you can find the seeds of their thoughts in scripture, such as the Psalms, Habakkuk, Lamentations. He said that God never twists our arms or coerces us into what he wants. We are completely free to reject him and even not believe in him. In fact, God is so liberating to the human being, that he gives us some words we can use to articulate our rejection and disbelief of him!

Are we liberators or imprisoners?

I want to tell you a story of something that happened recently. It’s stories like these that keep me doing church the way I do, and why I pastor in my style. It was a small group setting. We were catching up with each other. A young woman started sharing how she was feeling tons of condemnation and judgment. She’d grown up under a legalistic style of Christianity, and in her adult years continued to do the same. She’d been taught that if anything was going wrong in her life, the first question she was asked was, “Are you tithing?” In fact, she was terrified to confess this to us because she was sure she was going to be punished and expelled from involvement in our church community. She was really struggling financially, even to the point of probably having to claim bankruptcy. She was basically confessing to us that they couldn’t tithe or give any offerings, and felt the judgment of God on her life because she’d been taught that she was robbing God and he is a just God who wouldn’t let her get away with it. She cried. We all listened patiently and sympathetically.

Finally, I said, “That sounds really harsh. That’s not right!” I stated that this idea of tithing is just the tip of the iceberg in her view of God, which is legal, harsh, vengeful, retributive, and frightening. I went on to explain that what God delights in is a cheerful giver, not one who gives out of fear of punishment or out of desire for reward or to appease her conscience. Very gently and lovingly, we gathered around her and affirmed that God isn’t retributive like that. God’s grace and love are total, and her freedom is complete. I said that it is good to give, but wait until you can do it spontaneously and cheerfully.

My experience as a pastor is that when people move from legalism to grace, love and freedom, it takes time. Sometimes years! If I have that kind of patience, my income being directly affected by peoples’ offerings, then I’m sure God has that kind of patience. Even more so! It was a memorable delight to watch her released from the oppressively heavy burdens right before our eyes! (The young woman gave me permission to tell this story.)

Geez! I’m saying this lots this week, but I’m tired again. I’ve painted a couple of really nice watercolors, if I must say so myself. Check them out and bid if you like (click on “shop” above, and you’ll get there). All that to say that I’m relaxing now with my wife with some single malt and ET television. Commercial right now.

I’m getting increased traffic on my blog and some interesting feedback, all of which I appreciate. Keep it coming. I am becoming more and more convinced that the job of the church is to introduce people to the freedom that is theirs with God in Christ. That is primary and central. It is finished. Now enjoy it. It is good news, not good instructions. Barriers and obstacles and burdens and heavy loads need not apply. Love to all, commercial’s over.

I appreciate all the comments I’ve received from many of you. I get anything from I’m not criticizing the church enough to I’m criticizing the church too much. Right off the bat, I want to admit I love the church. I confess it. I believe in it. But what I love is the actual church, the actual fellowship of believers. What I try to criticize are the “ideas” of church that swirl all around her. They are not her, but thoughts about her. That’s why I invite criticism of my ideas, because that’s all they are.

Here’s a couple of reasons why I criticize ideas about the church:
1. Many of my friends, who are “believers”, abstain from church altogether. Why? This is a burning question for me. I don’t think they’re just being lazy or rebellious or backslidden, but that there’s something crucially wrong. Maybe they, like squirrels, smell a trap and avoid it because they know it would mean their deaths. If there’s a sniff of manipulation, control, oppression, or bondage, they stay away. And I happen to believe that the church is the perfect culture for these poisons, like any other institution. I want to address this issue.
2. If we are concerned about evangelism, missions, or church growth, look at #1.
3. I pastor a church. I love her. That is, the church as it is. The actual fellowship of the actual people. However, there are all kinds of ideologies, expectations, theories, strategies, and propagandas around her and within her that would damage, deform, and destroy her. I’m critical of those.

Anyway, just some thoughts on thoughts. Feedback!!!!

Okay, listen… it’s late, and I’ve had quite a day, and I’m very, very tired. On top of all that, my 13 year old daughter went to her graduation dance simply looking too beautiful, and I haven’t had time to really focus on an intelligent blog entry today. But I have a thought: why can’t we just be humane? Definition please:

humane (hu·mane adj)
1.    showing the better aspects of the human character, especially kindness and compassion
2.    without inflicting any more pain than is necessary
3.    with an emphasis on respect for other people’s views

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Can we, like God, suspend judgment, even for a second? I have stories to tell. Maybe tomorrow!

Stringfellow equates the biblical “principality” to modern-day “ideologies” or “institutions” or “images”. He talks about the principality of Hitler’s “image” eventually possessing him—where Hitler surrendered to his image in the struggle for control. Public image is a principality that can become demonic in proportion. He also talks about how invitations to serve an institution are often invitations to bondage. He calls them “angelic powers”. He asserts that demonic doesn’t mean evil, but that it refers to death and fallenness. “No man escapes enduring the claims for allegiance and service of the principalities. For a man to live in the state of fallenness is to endure these very claims”. “A profound concern for self-survival is the governing morality of every principality… by this a man is judged” (An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens In a Strange Land, p. 63).

I’m thinking a lot about this idea these days as it relates to the church. When the church becomes self-possessed… overly concerned with its image, influence, and effectiveness, and when it becomes obsessed with its own survival, it is possessed by a power. And the invitations to serve this institution are invitations to bondage.

As a Christian, church-member and pastor, this is of GREAT concern to me!

“The children of God present nothing peculiar, nothing new, nothing that exercises a compelling power. And so, after standing for a moment in amazement before the comedy of an unreal communion with God, the children of the world turn away supported and confirmed in their knowledge that, after all, the world is the world. With proper instinct for the truth, they do not permit themselves to be imposed upon, and they are thus protected against any turning towards the ‘God’ of the pious man. Whenever men ‘adopt a point of view of God’; whenever he is not everything and they are nothing; whenever they desire to be and to do something in co-operation with him; then, however stimulating their ideas, however noble their actions, God becomes—a notion. When only the empty canals of God are visible, objections and protests against ‘God’ are wholly justified” (Barth, Romans, pp. 74).

Somewhere else, Barth talks about how religion, including Christianity, is the “canal” where the original river, the original revelation, flowed. I have, I think, a better analogy: God’s revelation, the original event let’s say, is the meteor. What religion is, including Christianity, is the crater. If the meteor isn’t there, if the power isn’t there, if what made the impression is missing, then it is empty religion, and that is a comedy. And too often I feel I’m living in that comedy! And further: Christians often take scorn as undeserved persecution only to be expected as Christ’s humble followers. Barth’s point should be taken: scorn may be well deserved when the power isn’t there! We may actually BE a joke!