American Church

Three Little Words We Christians Need to Say

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The worst teaching we get here in America is to always stick up for ourselves. From the time we take our first steps, the mantra we hear over and over is to stand up for our rights and stand against “the bad guy.”

But in the rush to always reinforce the American collective mentality, found in our forefathers as they battled British “oppression,” humility has taken a devastating hit. Somehow, we lost the way to fight for what is good while simultaneously being humble people. Worse, our lack of humility causes us to gloss over atrocities, both individual and collective.

And no entity in America has suffered more for this than the Christian Church.

Here are three little words you almost never hear in the average church:

We were wrong.

Or the individual version:

I was wrong.

Our inability to confess to failures continues to compromise the effectiveness of the Church in our country. Swept along by the spirit of the age, the Church here has forgotten what it means to be humble. Haughty, arrogant, prideful, judgmentalAs a result, like other failed institutions wracked by hubris, the Church has been lumped with all the pride-filled transgressors and relegated to meaninglessness in the lives of most Americans. And for those people who have not thrown the Church on the dung heap, usually Christians, they continue to be slaves of their own pride, unable to say those three little words.

We live in a cynical age. I would argue that our cynicism is borne out of witnessing far too many instances of pride run amok. When that pride is only reinforced in the wake of obvious failure, when confession and remorse should be the response—and yet are not—we throw another log on the fires of “wisdom” and harden ourselves further, like Damascus steel, over the flames.

When was the last time a church confessed publicly that…

…all the money dumped into the new youth program hasn’t made the teens better disciples?

…for all the talk of community, people in the church were getting no help finding work or were unable to pay their bills?

…the enormous building campaign was fueled more from a need to outdo neighboring churches than to lift up Jesus?

…the beloved special speaker brought in for a yearly teaching series is doctrinally wonky?

…it personally failed the young person who wound up pregnant/in jail/homeless/drug-addled?

…the latest spiritual bandwagon it jumped on went off a cliff?

…the nationally known Christian, whose ministry it supported unquestionably, needed to be questioned more throughly, long before the scandal broke?

Why is it we are so afraid to say we blew it?

Why is so much swept under the proverbial rug?

I know so many charismatics who have come to me over the years glowing with some exciting “word of knowledge” they received from some “Spirit-filled” leader or traveling prophecy show and yet that “amazing word” never came to pass. And still those same people are the first ones in line to grab another “word.”

Some bizarre denial mechanism exists in Evangelicalism that takes all that failure and walls it off in our psyches as if it never happened. This hardens some to the point they become unable to discern anything. Others wind up wrecked on the rocks of those failures, and in the midst of everyone around them denying the problem, end up walking away from the Church—and often from God.

How is it that we cannot weep with those who have been burned by the inability of the Church to say We were wrong? Are we THAT filled with pride?

People keep wondering how we can fix the horrible mess we find ourselves in as Christians in America. Confessing our pride and our failures would be a great start. They used to call that repentance, though I know that word is not popular when applied to us. Usually we reserve it for the other guys. You know, the sinners.

A nation of people who are not humble will be humbled. A Church that asserts pride-driven power will be brought low. God is not mocked, and placing ourselves on a platform on His level, demanding rights only He can possess, is a sure recipe for a butt kickin’—ours.

You and I are dust. Remembering that would go a long way toward fixing a world of problems.

And maybe, just maybe, if we were a lot more humble, people who are dying for real answers to real problems would again look to America and the American Church for solutions.

Every revival starts in the ashes of humility.

Various Spring Thursday Musings

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A variety of thoughts on this sunny April Thursday:

+ I was thinking how power is the modern equivalent of will. We want to have power over all aspects of our lives, with powerlessness one of the most hated of all hateful ideas. But if we take Christ’s “not my will, but yours, be done” and do the word swap, how would it impact the way we live? What does it mean to surrender power to a higher authority in a society where individualism reigns and each person demands the right to control his or her life?

+ In keeping with that thought, whatever happened in the Church to the concept of corporate sin? And how are we worse off for its loss?

+ There is something odd happening in the Church when thousands (or even millions) of American Christians are lamenting Rick Santorum’s leaving the presidential race. A few months ago, not one person was clamoring for Santorum to be president, and yet when it appears he will not be, people are disappointed. As for Mitt Romney, one can say the same thing. I mean, who was screaming for him to occupy the White House? All this becomes even more puzzling when one considers my previous thoughts on power.

+ Not a day goes by when I don’t consider that the general emotional outlook of this country is nowhere near as healthy as it was when I was younger. Yes, yes, yes, “the olden days were better” someone will quote at me with a wink, but still.

+ I get the feeling also that in the rush to be good Christians, we have forgotten Jesus.

+ Now that everyone is on Facebook (and a few lonely souls inhabit Google +), can any of us say our interpersonal relationships are better?

+ Along those lines, the last of my small groups stopped meeting. I used to be part of four or five at a time. Now, none. That makes me sad. Looks like I’ll be bowling alone.

+ So far, 2012 has been a lovely year weatherwise. But here in SW Ohio, we were in the 80s in February, 70s in March, and now 60s in April. Should we expect snow in July?

+ Why is it that so few people seem to be able to commit to anything anymore? What happened to a person’s word? Does that concept mean anything today?

+ It’s sad, but the people who seem to do the most Bible study are often the ones who miss the most obvious portions of the Bible. Or they try like the dickens to explain away the hard parts (or the parts they are failing to live up to) by going all systematic theology on us. Anymore, I don’t have a lot of interest in what the self-labeled scholars are saying. And when someone recommends a recently written book on Christian subjects, my reaction is meh, since I rarely read any that make any astute points that challenge the status quo (or they fail to provide workable solutions when they do post a challenge). In short, people just aren’t using Holy Spirit sense, which is the only kind of spiritual insight that matters.

+ Right now, Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church is writing one of the best Christian blogs on the Internet. He should be a regular read for everyone, because he is not afraid to touch verboten subjects and question the crazy way we Christians practice the Faith.

+ At The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia, Arthur Sido is regularly writing some insightful posts in the same vein as Knox’s.

The Mystery of Why American Politics and American Churches Resist Change

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Nothing baffles me more than the intersection of politics and conservative American Christianity.

The election of 2012 promises to pit more of the same old, same old against itself, as Republicrats and Democans battle to see who will preserve the status quo for the ruling powers that be. Into this fray comes the handwringing, conservative, evangelical Christians who will go on and on about “the soul of our nation” and “if my people will humble themselves and pray….”

I’m about as truly conservative as it gets, both in politics and theology, but anymore, I can’t identify with any of my supposed Christian brethren when it comes to governing the nation or running a church.

I don’t understand how supporting a pro-life GOP candidate makes one iota of difference in overturning the demonic Roe v. Wade. Pro-life politicians have had decades to work, even having insurmountable majorities at times, yet nothing has budged Roe even the slightest.

In addition, we keep electing politicians who campaign on platforms of reducing government, only to show their true big government colors once in office. They get in power, put out the nepotism shingle, and the next thing you know, a pack of Ivy League School frat brothers are running the country (club) again. Democrat or Republican? Who cares? It’s just a different set of frat rowdies subjecting the country to the same hazing.

Worse, we Christians are running our churches the same way. The same failed programs get repackaged year after year and voted on by church councils as the “new direction for our ministry”—only to wind up abandoned on the dustheap a year later, their ashes choking us, even as we ignore the coughing.

Something in the conservative Christian mindset has congealed around a set of unchanging parameters that has us locked into being neither all that conservative nor Christian. We’ve become unable to challenge the status quo and ask hard questions about why we keep failing to meet the goals we set for our nation or for our churches.

Honestly, I can’t think of a battle we are winning on a macro level, either for America or for Jesus. And if we want to be truly depressed, try finding a winning battle that is both for America and Jesus at the same time.

The problem as I see it is an inability to take every assumption we make as Americans and as Christians and put holy fire to it. When even our brightest minds are unable to ever ask the question “Why are we doing things this way?” then how is it that we can ever expect a different outcome? Unless we start challenging every practice we have forged within American politics and the American Church, we will be lost. The amount of bovine methane production from the sheer number of our sacred cows will keep reducing the amount of oxygen to our brains, and then what hope will we have?

Anyone familiar with computer software understands the concept of “skins.” The menu bar in your Web browser may look different from your neighbor’s, but it’s still Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox underneath. You just chose different art to “skin” your personal copy.

I look at Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama and I see the same underlying person, albeit with a different skin over the top. The same goes for our churches.

The problem is what lies underneath the skin. And we are failing to address those problems, instead swapping in different skins with the hope that our experience will be different.

But as the old Southerner opined, “Ain’t no sense putting lipstick on a pig.”

I can’t sit idly by and not question what’s underneath the skin. I won’t put lipstick on a pig and tell myself she’s a beauty.

We Christians have got to stop supporting systems that are based on a foundation of repeated failure. We must question not only the silliness in modern politics but also the identical silliness in our church praxis.

This is not about assaulting the core truths of the Gospel or of our Constitution, but it’s a hope that we will get back to what is truly important, while questioning everything else.

Why do we do what we do in our church meetings on Sunday? Why are we supporting Church systems that perpetually fail to produce disciples? Why do we run our churches like businesses, with hierarchies that are not only not biblical but actually rob average people of their God-given birthright to serve the brethren and not be just a passive lump deigned to absorb another Sunday message that won’t stick beyond Sunday lunch?

Why do we continue to elect cold, calculating political animals who are only in it for themselves and their Ivy League frat brothers? Why do we prattle on about change while electing the same old type of yahoo?

Why?

Snake baring fangsIs ANYONE asking that question?

Folks, it’s time for the sheep to wake up and heed these words of Jesus:

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”
—Matthew 10:16

We’ve been solely innocent doves for too long, and it has not served well either our nation or our churches.