SAY NO TO CHRISTIANITY . . . AND YES TO JESUS
This isn’t a “Christianity isn’t about religion, it’s about relationship” argument about semantics. Rather, this is a missiological perspective on the concept of Christianity here in the US and outside the US.
Outside, there are many parts of the world where the word for “Christian” is synonymous with the word for “foreigner.” I believe strongly that indigenous outreach must be emphasized, for foreigners (i.e. not native to a country, for example an American missionary in Africa) are not nearly as spiritually effective or financially efficient as natives, and they can create all sorts of incorrect perceptions that to follow Jesus is a Western thing, something that people from modernized, industrial nations do.
In fact, many missiologists, when considering the Muslim world, support a form of conversion that allows Muslims to retain their Muslim faith and simply add to it their allegiance to Jesus. In many Muslim societies, conversion to Christianity is punishable by ostracization, disowning, beatings, and even execution. It is also considered conversion to a Western set of beliefs.
You might be cringing at the thought that this angle is merely a form of syncretism, i.e. that the following of Jesus is simply being added to other religious elements that have nothing to do with the core of the Christian faith. Consider, then, how we Western Christians have ourselves syncretized the Christian faith. There is a lot of good that came out of the Reformation, but some of what has emerged from this historical movement has created a Christian faith in North America and Western Europe that is similarly “Jesus and,” that is we follow Jesus and we have elements of religion that may have nothing to do with what we read in the Bible.
This is a point our pastor made a few weeks ago, when he read a quote from a theologian in Colorado, I believe, who argued that Christianity has nothing to do with the Biblical notions of faith and discipleship. Christianity, he argued, is simply a set of beliefs we mentally assent to, closer to a political ideology or a secular philosophy than to the life-changing faith that the 1st-century converts in the Bible experienced.
Whether at home or abroad, let’s not get caught up in Christianity. At its worst, it is a great and saving faith dressed in Western clothes, which causes it to be rejected or opposed by those who don’t wear Western clothes. At its worst, it is a set of beliefs that make for interesting late-night dialoging or safe Sunday church-going and overall do-gooding.
Those are bad outcomes because the true faith, of the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much more. It is life-changing and relevant and provocative and merciful and flavorful and all-consuming. The enemy of the best is the merely good. And Christianity, as defined above, as merely good. Following Jesus is the best.
This isn’t a “Christianity isn’t about religion, it’s about relationship” argument about semantics. Rather, this is a missiological perspective on the concept of Christianity here in the US and outside the US.
Outside, there are many parts of the world where the word for “Christian” is synonymous with the word for “foreigner.” I believe strongly that indigenous outreach must be emphasized, for foreigners (i.e. not native to a country, for example an American missionary in Africa) are not nearly as spiritually effective or financially efficient as natives, and they can create all sorts of incorrect perceptions that to follow Jesus is a Western thing, something that people from modernized, industrial nations do.
In fact, many missiologists, when considering the Muslim world, support a form of conversion that allows Muslims to retain their Muslim faith and simply add to it their allegiance to Jesus. In many Muslim societies, conversion to Christianity is punishable by ostracization, disowning, beatings, and even execution. It is also considered conversion to a Western set of beliefs.
You might be cringing at the thought that this angle is merely a form of syncretism, i.e. that the following of Jesus is simply being added to other religious elements that have nothing to do with the core of the Christian faith. Consider, then, how we Western Christians have ourselves syncretized the Christian faith. There is a lot of good that came out of the Reformation, but some of what has emerged from this historical movement has created a Christian faith in North America and Western Europe that is similarly “Jesus and,” that is we follow Jesus and we have elements of religion that may have nothing to do with what we read in the Bible.
This is a point our pastor made a few weeks ago, when he read a quote from a theologian in Colorado, I believe, who argued that Christianity has nothing to do with the Biblical notions of faith and discipleship. Christianity, he argued, is simply a set of beliefs we mentally assent to, closer to a political ideology or a secular philosophy than to the life-changing faith that the 1st-century converts in the Bible experienced.
Whether at home or abroad, let’s not get caught up in Christianity. At its worst, it is a great and saving faith dressed in Western clothes, which causes it to be rejected or opposed by those who don’t wear Western clothes. At its worst, it is a set of beliefs that make for interesting late-night dialoging or safe Sunday church-going and overall do-gooding.
Those are bad outcomes because the true faith, of the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much more. It is life-changing and relevant and provocative and merciful and flavorful and all-consuming. The enemy of the best is the merely good. And Christianity, as defined above, as merely good. Following Jesus is the best.
Comments
What though-provoking entry! I too have long felt that "Christianity", as practiced in the western world in general and in the U.S. in particular, cannot truthfully be confused with the true faith that Christ and the Apostles practiced.
I believe it was columnist Joseph Sobran (a devout Catholic himself) who referred to Judeo-Christianity in America as "the Great National Religion". It's goal, he said, was not so much encouraging the practice of the faith as to foster mutual feelings of goodwill in a very general sense. Otherwise, the inherent incompatibilities of the various Christian and non-Christian faiths would set people at each other's throats, leaving America to resemble Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s and Northern Ireland during the worst period of "the troubles."
The problem with Christianity in America today, especially Protestant Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity, is that it has been co-opted by politics, particularly the extreme Right, which has injected into it many blatantly unChristian elements, most noticeably bigotry, averice, and a worship of temporal power.
I think we would all do well to focus on the wisdom of His word contained in the four gospels as a means of bringing ourselves back on the right spiritual path.