Discernment

The Dreaded Christian To-Do List

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Pile, inbox, list, to-doMy son and I are reading through the New Testament together this summer. Though I’ve read through the NT many times previously, the word of God is rich, my life circumstances change, and people grow and see with more spiritual vision over time.

One truth is hitting me hard this time around.

If you are a parent of a child who has gone through public or private school, you received notes from teachers about your child. Some addressed issues in your child’s life that required fixing. Others were updates on the school or its activities.

In reading the NT again, I was struck by how Paul’s letters to the churches often resemble those notes from a schoolteacher. They contain correctives, do’s and don’t’s, progress info, and so on.

But here’s the thing: If I were try to recreate an image of my child, would those letters he brought home from teachers be sufficient to tell me who he is?

I see this tendency in churches to take the Scriptures and make lists of do’s and don’t’s, form an image from those do’s and don’t’s, and then call them The Gospel™.

Problem is, compiling lists and performing what’s on them is not the real Gospel and never has been. Ironically, there exists a list of 10 To-Do items meant for “religious” people and those religious people found it a bear to do them. Even more ironic, the Giver of those 10 items concurred with the people: Yes, those 10 were impossible to keep perfectly.

And yet for most people attending a Christian Church in America, what comes out of the pulpit on Sunday is almost always a list of more “spiritual” things for them to do. It’s three, five, 10, or 12 bullet points (depending on how long-winded the preacher is) that we must now perform to have perfect

marriages,

children,

finances,

relationships,

prayer lives,

Bible-study skills,

and on and on.

We have exchanged 10 items impossible to do for innumerable items impossible to do.

Preachers love to mine the Old Covenant for these items, despite the fact that covenant has been replaced by a much better one. Then they look at the better one, read all the “Notes from Teacher” letters of Paul, and use those corrective letters as additional fodder for more lists. (If anything, those corrective letters are intended more for Church leaders themselves to wrestle with. Sort of a “Teacher, teach thyself” sort of thing. But then how many preacher/leaders look at them that way?)

Funny thing  is, though the post-apostolic Church has loved its lists, the early Church knew better. When the issue of lists of Christian things to do came before the apostles and early Church leaders with regard to the gentiles, an astute James said there was no reason to frustrate those believers with a massive spiritual To-Do list. In the end, the leaders kept that list sane and super-short.

Even wilder? Those same apostles and leaders called the spiritual To-Do lists they’d had to contend with their entire lives “trouble” and a “burden.” You can read about this in Acts 15.

Jesus didn’t like lists either. When someone tried to force a list of approved behavior out of Him, He said all you needed to do was to love God and love your neighbor.

You know what? I think I can remember a list of two items. (Still, even those two are tough to keep!)

And yet today, the lists multiply and lengthen.

In Ecclesiastes, the narrator complains of the endless making of books and the weariness that comes from studying them. In our self-help, active, To-Do-centered culture today, books now equals lists. Because, hey, we’re too busy with our lists to focus on anything as lengthy as a book.

As someone 50 years old who has been a Christian for 35+ years, I’ve had enough Christian lists spoken to me over the years to gag a T. Rex. Actually, more like a herd of T. Rex. How many of those lists do I remember? None.

But if I really think about it, that statement may not be true. I do remember those lists—in a way. They bubble and churn under the surface of my spiritual life like so much hidden acid reflux and manifest as a case of spiritual heartburn. Not spiritual conviction, just a feeling like I swallowed something that’s stuck in my throat. Something akin to a millstone.

You know what? I don’t need more lists. You don’t either.

What we need more of is Jesus. And He never was and never will be a To-Do list.

The Problem with Christian Criticism

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Recently, I wrote “Humility, Unity, and the Overly Opinionated Christian.” In it, I noted that too often we lack the facts to comment and should probably, in humility, refrain from adding our two cents.

Seems some may consider me part of the problem. 😉

At Christianity Today, Rachel Marie Stone, in her “Why Criticism Belongs in the Christian Blogosphere,” argues the merits of Christian opinion. She equates it to iron sharpening iron, and she wonder how it is that Christians are refraining from offering much-needed criticism.

I would like to offer my answer.

1. Many people are tired of angry discourse on the Internet. It doesn’t seem as if anyone has enough couth to criticize without resorting to sinful expressions of anger and resentment. Stone notes her own criticism of others has often resulted in ad hominem counterattacks. Well, yeah. That’s where we Americans are in 2013. Still, some thoughtful people—thankfully—are tiring of this.

2. Our critical vision as Christians is too small. Nearly all criticism by Christians on the Web is directed at individuals rather than at systems. Problem is, it’s mostly the systems mucking up everything. While it is much easier to criticize individuals, doing so rarely changes anything on a larger scale, because the power of that larger scale is not in individuals but in systems.

3. Systems are ridiculously hard to address. Criticizing the guy next door for letting his dog poop on your grass may accomplish getting him to keep his mutt out of your yard. But if your state determines your house is ground zero for a new shopping mall for “the public good,” good luck with your criticism of the state. And many systems are more complex than even a state government. Try criticizing the result of the Industrial Revolution and changing it through criticism. That system is far harder to assault because it is enormous and nebulous at the same time.

4. Criticism of individuals does not lead to change on a larger scale, while criticism of a system often gets absorbed by the immensity of that system. That tendency toward “lose-lose” explains the result Stone laments in her article.

For too long, some Christians have focused too much anger in their criticism, reserving much of it for individuals. So and so is a heretic! You don’t know your Bible! And on and on. This does not get us far. More people now recognize this. They also note that much of that criticism was not wrapped in love but in self-righteousness and pride.

Where Christians should be focusing our criticism is on systems, yet almost no one does. No one talks about workplace justice. No considers whether our lifestyles are based on fallacies locked in place by deviant cultural assumptions. No one asks whether the Reformation and democracy have led Americans to no longer fear of God. For the most part, Christians are not offering criticism of these larger thoughts, ideas, and systems because we’re too intellectually lazy and too satisfied with the status quo. Why rock the boat and bring down the system on our little heads?

I stopped reading most Christian blogs because they went after the minuscule. They strained for gnats. And then when they did, they were too often mean-spirited about it.

I think many people are tiring of the mean spirit. Meanwhile, few are willing to wade into larger battles. Stone talks about how hard it was to receive criticism for her criticism of another writer’s book.  If that’s the size of our vision, then all is lost already. Taking on systems, which is what we Christians SHOULD be addressing, is costly, complex, and tedious. Our criticism needs to be laser-like, educated, and relentless if we are to fix entire systems in the name of Christ.

Christians of long ago were up for that task. I’m not so sure we are today.

Oh, look…

“Hey, you! Get your dog off my lawn!”

Christian Girls, Bad Boys

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I don’t know why I read the article “Let’s Mock People Attracted To Aaron Hernandez.”

I don’t like to see people mocked.

I don’t know who Aaron Hernandez is.

I don’t follow sports.

But the picture accompanying the article in my Facebook feed showed a pro football player; that and the strange juxtaposition with the article title pushed the oddity meter high enough to draw me in. I was almost certain where all this data would lead, but I think God took it in a different direction.

Tim Baffoe, the author of the article, turns out to be a high school English teacher who also writes sports commentary for a Chicago radio station’s website. In other words, he interacts regularly with young women in his role as a teacher. Perhaps his story, as acerbic as it is, serves as a warning.

I sure hope it does.

Aaron Hernandez is an NFL player now accused of murder of a fellow football player. (I suspected as much.) He allegedly also shot another man in the face. It is now coming out that he may have been responsible for an earlier, unsolved, drive-by shooting that killed two others.

Much has been made of the culture of violence that surrounds football. When is there not a story about a football player who decked his girlfriend or molested some woman he thought he could manhandle with impunity? I’m not sure why, but people were shocked when we learned that the New Orleans Saints had a bounty system in place for hurting rival players. Shocked.

But back to the Baffoe story, which I suggest you glance through. Really, just a glance, since you’ll get the gist immediately.

In the wake of the Hernandez arrest, Baffoe encountered a number of Twitter comments by young women who felt compelled to note in a public forum that despite his penchant for murder, Aaron Hernandez is “hot.”

The groupie who swoons over the serial killer is not a new trope in our society. While I am incapable of understanding why, way too many women out there adore violent men, and the more violent those men are, the more women they attract. Girls screamingAnd not just homely girls who feel their only shot is with a loner who kills people, but women with advanced college degrees, who may be pulling in six figures a year. Attractive women who draw the attention of every man whenever they walk into a room. Smart women who absolutely, positively should know better, but who can’t seem to stop thinking about the bad boy.

Where the line should stop, though, is with Christian women.

But if you read on in Baffoe’s article, a Proverbs 31 verse from the Bible shows up midway in the text. And then comes more than one example of a Tweet from a woman who appears to be a Christian talking about how attractive Aaron Hernandez is—for a murderer.

I can’t recall that the woman depicted in Proverbs 31 had a thing for guys who kill people indiscriminately.

I don’t know which is worse, that Christian women find murderers attractive or that they confess that attraction in public.

Keith Green once said that going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger. I guess that quoting a few Bible verses and claiming to be a Christian doesn’t make it so for these women.

Still, what disturbs me is that I know they are the tip of the iceberg. Not only as an example of confused women who can’t tell good from bad when it comes to men, but as people who call themselves Christians and yet cannot tell good from evil.

At its most basic, murdering other people is the standard of wrongness. If people can’t get that right, how can they discern anything?

Somewhere, these women got just enough Christianity so as to be inoculated to its fullness. I suspect that’s where we are in the Western Church in 2013. We have an entire generation now wandering this planet who have developed enough antibodies to genuine Christian faith that they are immune to it.

Parents, Christian leaders, and the general Church itself has much to be proud of—if inoculation was the goal. I think we can mark that campaign a success.

Sadly.

I’m wondering if we are too far gone in the United States. Something is horribly broken, and I’m not sure what must be done to fix us.