a lesson from history's knucklebrains

I read this passage in my Systematic Theology textbook just now, and was reminded of some of the popular responses in the American Church to the election of our two most recent Presidents. The last one caused a lot of us to have to eat our hats. The current one, well, it's far too early to tell how history will remember him. But we can be pretty certain that the nigh-deification we've been seeing is at best misguided, and at worst idolatry.

We need to be careful as to what we identify as God's providence. The most notable instance of a too ready identification of historical events with God's will is probably the "German Christians" who in 1934 endorsed the action of Adolf Hitler as God's working in history. The words of their statement are sobering to us who now read them: "We are full of thanks to God that He, as Lord of history, has given us Adolf Hitler our leader and savior from our difficult lot. We acknowledge that we, with body and soul, are bound and dedicated to the German state and to its Führer. This bondage and duty contains for us, as evangelical Christians, its deepest and most holy significance in its obedience to the command of God."¹ A statement a year earlier had said, "To this turn of history [i.e., Hitler's taking power] we say a thankful Yes. God has given him to us. To Him be the glory. As bound to God's Word, we recognize in the great events of our day a new commission of God to His church."² From our perspective, the folly of such statements seems obvious. But are we perhaps making some pronouncements today that will be seen as similarly mistaken by those who come a few decades after us?

-Excerpted from Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (2nd edition) (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998)

Now I'm not in any way comparing the President to Hitler. I'm not comparing the last one to him, either. I'm simply pointing out that, with both of them, a lot of evangelical Christians acted as though they were the anointed ones of God, when in fact they're just men. The religious zeal of the German Christians for Hitler is but an extreme example of the folly inherent in such conclusions. Let us act more wisely going forward.

¹ Quoted from Berkouwer, Providence of God, pp. 176-77.
² Quoted from Karl Barth, Theologische Existenz Huete (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1934), p. 10.

four loves

The love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing – to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is the love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.

– Frederick Buechner

if you don't want to see it, maybe you ought to

I've not yet seen Bill Maher's new movie Religulous, but I'd really like to. After reading this review, I'm even more excited about it.

Please note that I didn't write this (I haven't seen it, remember?); I'm just reproducing someone else's work.

Movie Review: Religulous
by Steve Holt

I saw Bill Maher’s Religulous on Saturday night. Maher, along with Borat director Larry Charles, has produced a “scripted comedy” (Maher is careful not to call this a documentary) in which he pokes holes in supernatural belief and its’ wildly different manifestations around the world. To say he targets the lowest common denominators in the interviews he chose for the movie would be a gross understatement; a group of toothless long-haulers at a truck stop church provides the movie’s most heart-warming moment from a spiritual perspective. Besides the truckers, Maher speaks with:

…the curator of the Creation Museum in Hebron, Ky.
…two gay Muslims in Amsterdam.
…a radical, anti-Zionist Rabbi, who, shockingly, frustrated Maher to the point that the slick-haired comedian actually took his mics off and ended the interview.
…a drug-laced Amsterdam man who believes marijuana produces a religious experience.

Again, Maher is not making a documentary, which, by the strictest definition, is more of an objective, journalistic look at a subject from every angle. He produced Religulous with one goal: to demonstrate the stupidity, and ultimately the danger, of religion.

If I were to judge his success solely based on the information given in the film, I probably would not still be a follower of Jesus. But my thought throughout the film - which is side-splittingly hilarious, by the way - was that “this is not the whole story.” In fact, much of the fodder for Maher’s ridicule is not even part of the story.

A 5,000-year-old Earth?
Bling-donning pastors preaching health and wealth?
A Puerto Rican dude who claims to be the anti-Christ?

Is this all you got, Bill? Really?

But as we left a packed Boston theater, I realized that Maher is asking the same questions as many of those exiting around us. The conversations I overheard revealed a deep distrust in institutionalized religion first and foremost, with an openness to the unexplainable and mysterious. For many Americans, Maher is stepping out as the only one willing to publicly say some of these things, and people of faith would do well to listen.

Those of us who do believe (and live, and act, and hope) could have one of two reactions to a movie like this.

1) Boycott it. Undoubtedly, this is the stance of many Evangelical Christians in America. Their view? Maher shows his cards before we ever sit down at the table, and he cheats, smokes, drinks and cusses his way through the poker game. So we’re sitting this game out. Sorry, Bill.
2) Watch it. You’ll laugh right along with your heathen neighbors at the stupidity of the faithful. You’ll cringe at the bad theology. But you’ll be taking a seat at a conversation already in progress, occurring in the back alleys, pubs, book clubs, and universities of the world. Basically everywhere besides the church.

Of course, I hope Christians will choose the latter. But when we see this film, we should remember a couple things. First, resist the temptation to defend religion. Religion binds, harms, and causes its adherents to follow suit. Religion is man-created, and therefore broken. In this film, Maher is simply observing and underscoring what we’ve known for thousands of years: that left to our own devices, humans have always taken the teachings and actions of Jesus and Muhammed and Yahweh and changed and added to them to suit our own selfish desires, leading to some of the worst atrocities history has ever seen. Maher is almost completely correct in his gloomy assessment of religion, the man-made and imperfect institution.

Second, remember that for many of us, there’s an alternative story to Maher’s assessment of religious belief, especially Christianity. At one point, Maher asks an Evangelical who ascribes to a Lehaye-esque End Days theology a thoughtful question: “Doesn’t all this talk about the end of the world prevent Christians from actually improving the world today?” My answer, to quote Sarah Pailin, is “You betcha.” We know that following Jesus means joining the ancient, cosmic rescue operation begun by God through his remnant in Israel, and continued and sealed through the life, death, resurrection and reign of Jesus of Nazareth. As N.T. Wright puts it, Jesus’ death and resurrection doesn’t mean we are saved from the world, but saved into the grand mission of God. Through communities of Christians around the world, God is changing apartment complexes, blocks, cities, and nations into that which God created them to be.

The religion that goes to war, divides over petty issues, and alienates the world [that God so loved] is not true religion. According to James, true religion is the kind that follows Jesus in looking after the most marginalized ones in our society, which in Jesus’ day were widows and orphans.

At the end of the day, my assessment is that like many other agnostics/skeptics/atheists, Maher’s main problem isn’t so much with belief or the person of Jesus, but with fallen believers who choose to follow what he believes is a fairytale instead of actually making the world a better place. He’s also on the offense against absolute certainty among the faithful without doubts or questions … you know, the ones who lean on supposed proven empirical data, the Bible as science text book, and warmed over clichés as their foundations.

These answers simply won’t fly for Maher, whose questions stump nearly everyone with whom he speaks. The clichés and pat answers also won’t fly with most of our neighbors.

I’ll close by returning to the most positive depiction of the faithful Maher gives us in his film, the guys in the truck stop chapel. After the chaplain gives Maher a few minutes to take to the pulpit to ask a few of his biting questions, a number of men leave the service. But a few stick around, politely answering his questions to the best of their ability. They are clearly not Ph.Ds in theology, but they do listen to Maher (a courtesy Maher does not grant to every one of those he speaks with) and then pray for the comedian before he leaves.

As Maher walks away, he has a smile on his face, a genuine look of peace. His departing words to the circle of mostly overweight, toothless rednecks is startling:

“Thank you for being Christ-like, not just Christians.”

Amen, Bill.

Author Bio: Steve Holt is a disciple, writer, husband, and proud father to an apricot mini poodle, and he lives and conspires in East Boston, MA. You can find his musings about faith, culture, and mission at harvestboston.wordpress.com

The tough thing about being in a leadership role is that you're held to a higher standard than everyone else. Once you tell people that certain behaviors or actions aren't acceptable, you have to make sure that you're following through with that in your own life. Even harder than that, once you realize that certain things that you've been condoning or even participating in are unacceptable, you then have the burdensome responsibility of telling people that you can't allow them to continue doing what you had just been encouraging them to do yesterday.

Leadership isn't a total downer, though. Its upsides most certainly outweigh its few downsides. For one, leaders are required to live with integrity. You're forced to give careful thought to every move you make, because your life is held as an example of how others ought to live. I'm a youth leader with my church's high school ministry, and the two years that I've been ministering there have caused more positive personal changes than any other time of my life, because how I live my life is a major factor in the spiritual and moral development of my students.

If anyone needs a boost in the integrity department (and I think everyone does), it'd be a good idea to find some kind of leadership role to take. But make sure you take on a leadership role that is appropriate for your own social and spiritual maturity level! I've seen so-called "leaders" whose integrity and maturity are so lacking that they actually do more harm to their students than good. If you can't handle what life throws at you, if you're going to whine and complain and moan about every setback that comes your way, if you don't actually have a grasp on the stuff you're supposed to be teaching, then you have absolutely no business being in any kind of leadership role until you can at least start getting your act together. Like Jesus once said, if the example you're setting causes anyone to fall, it'd be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a boulder tied around your neck than to continue leading.