The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
- from “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats
“Blessed are they who do not have to impress others by showing how smart they are.”
- Christoph Blumhardt
It’s been an uneventful day. I’ve had no motivation to do anything, really. I have a couple papers left to do so I can finish up my summer classes. It’s a strange place to be at, and to be honest, one that I didn’t think would look the way it does to me now.
I am about to start my third and final year of seminary.
During my time in seminary, I have to admit that I daily fall into all of the three categories nicely laid out by the beginning quotes. I often find myself lacking conviction for things I believe God wants me to do, but probably more for who God wants me to be. I justify my actions (or inactions) by telling myself how responsible I’m being by going to seminary, or that I can’t save the world through my good intentions, thus allowing myself the chance to emotionally “check out” from issues I used to care about strongly. Or, even better, I add good intentions to my laundry list of things I will do when my life is “more together:” when I’m finished with school, when I’ve found a stable job, when I’m married and my finances are more secure.
I don’t know if any of that sounds familiar to you, but that’s where I’m at. I have also, regrettably, been full of passionate intensity at times. I have allowed my opinions or concerns to go so deeply within me that others, even well-meaning friends, have sometimes become the enemy because they are not as compassionate as I am by virtue of their taking different stances than me on select issues. And while I may not be the type to argue verbally for hours on end, at the end of the day my mind will inevitably backtrack to those few conversations when I began to feel less respect because of those differences. Intensity is not always fruitful.
And, like any student who has been a student the majority of his/her life—more recently by choice— it’s all too easy to try to impress my professors, mentors or supervisors. Never mind the fact that the academic level at any given seminary is weighed with grace. I get upset when I get an A-. I worked hard on that paper, thank you very much. And I wouldn’t mind if I got an accolade or two for the article I just wrote for the newspaper.
All of these things—these ways of being and acting—have been to my own detriment. They are also some of the lenses through which I see myself. I see them in myself first because I know that I am a human in need of God and grace, but through these lenses I also see the church.
About a week ago, I stayed up for hours tossing and turning in what I can only describe as a holy, angsty Spirit struggle. I usually enjoy thinking about what the church *is*, what it should be, and how we as a variety of Christians can at least entertain the idea of *being* the church to the world. If someone were to casually ask me on the street, I would say that the church is an instrument of blessing through which God blesses the world through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nice, abstract, United Methodist Church-approved language, formed from the combination of my home church’s influence on me and what I learned from my Religion professors at my UM, liberal arts undergraduate school.
And then, seminary happened. Cue “Twilight Zone” music here.
I didn’t enter seminary with quite the amount of naïveté I had when I began college, but I at least had enough to think my understanding of what it means to be “church” would become more clear. Interestingly enough, the context for all of my ecclesial musing has been the United Methodist Church, a denomination surrounded by conversations from all sides about declining church membership and generational angst. Woo-hoo! Sign me up.
What I have realized about the church has come from a few channels: My understanding of Scripture, my experience in several very different church environments, the denominational lens of the UMC, and the logic which I claim as a halfway-rational person (“halfway” in the sense that my logic can become fuzzy at times). But just for kicks and grins, I’ll also throw in a few more qualifications: I’m approaching this as one influenced by post-modernity. I’m approaching this as a Christian who is clearly frustrated by many things happening under the same label, and I’m approaching this through my academic habit of writing with themes and ideas, which may sound a bit “preachy” at times. However, there are times when the words we are given must be presented. There are some things that must be preached.
I don’t claim to be an authority on anything. I see things incompletely and through my own biases. But I also think there may be a whisper of the Spirit, and so I preface these confessions of my late-night ecclesial/theological angst. They are in no particular order and fall at various places on the angst-o-meter.
1. Shelving books at the seminary library, I’m struck by the number of books which feature proud-looking, old, white theologians (all men!) with their chins in their hands, suggesting visually that they have aspired to the heights of a theological Gnosticism I could only imagine. Is this the truth to which I am aspire? That if I throw myself into theology with enough rigor that I, too, will be praised by scholars and placed on the cover of a book to admire my own profile?
2. I am sick and tired of the polarities into which we are so hell-bent on putting ourselves. It doesn’t matter if someone is a self-proclaimed liberal, conservative or moderate. We can learn from everyone, and just because each person has a particular hermeneutic or tendency does not mean that yours must match perfectly in order to be refreshed by their insight. The Holy Spirit is a little bit bigger than that.
3. I am tired of feeling like I have a third eye when someone asks me about biblical authority. I don’t believe the Bible fell out of the sky in a Ziploc (kudos to Anne Ferguson). Simultaneously, I’m also tired of feeling irrelevant when I discuss the reality of sin with someone else of another perspective.
4. We— the church—do not take ourselves seriously. We don’t take the power of the gospel seriously. We are often too content to “play church” while we live off of catch phrases we throw around like old t-shirts, like “social justice” or “liberation.” Meanwhile, there are people sitting at the table with us convinced that their lives will always involve leftovers, people envying the meal we have. We talk about a feast that is real to us but crap to everyone else. We can’t even properly show who prepared the meal of grace. We are content to feed people with witty references, interesting comparisons and “new perspectives,” all the while forgetting that if salvation is up to us, we’re screwed.
5. I am tired of sacrificing piety for mercy or mercy for piety. The history and practice of the UMC has a lot to say about that separation, but since when is it the telos? And who are we to think that we can make such a separation? I think about it as sacrificing the crucifixion for the resurrection, or vice versa. They define each other. Sin and grace. Sorrow and joy. Why do we think that we can focus on one without the other? Is this not irresponsible?
6. I am tired of being pigeon-holed; of having to apologize for being open-minded when I see the work of the Spirit in different places.
7. I am tired of re-shelving book after book about clergy burnout because there are people in every congregation who treat their ministers like slaves through the sins of needless over-programming and an unhealthy understanding of service.
8. I am tired of being concerned about orthodoxy at the expense of orthopraxy. Right belief and right practice should be together. Right belief leads to right relationship, but it must always be held in check by the Spirit because we see dimly. Right relationship, if we are to live into it in this life, results in justice. Justice unites belief and practice. Faith without works is dead.
9. Although I referred to God as “He” for many years (and still do in knee-jerk moments), I still have a problem understanding why we must be so insistent on our own use of pronoun for God over someone else’s. Are we really so determined that our pronoun is worth hurting others in the process?
10. I’m reading a book now about doing the least amount of harm to others as a way of glorifying God. While I agree with that argument on a general level, I cannot say that it is enough to do the least amount of harm. We have to return to the idea that we have the power to do harm. We have to understand what it means that we have privilege of some kind, and in that privilege we have power that leads to harm. Once we see that we can inflict harm, we must repent. We absolutely, positively have to repent.
What we cannot do—what we must never do—is turn away from hope. We cannot turn away from hope because of the resurrection of Christ. We cannot turn away from joy, and we cannot turn away from faith seeking understanding. We do not have the liberty to check in our brains at the doors of the local church, tempting as that may be to some of us who would love to do so. God is not asking for the sum total of our interpretation. God is asking for fullness of life through love. God is asking for reconciliation. And if we are to ever be reconciled, we must first admit that our attempts to be clever or convincing are ill- fated.
The only way to ever live in a family is to see who you are in relationship to everyone else. My personal piety, my quiet times or moments of emotional prayer are pointless unless I realize that faith comes through participation in something bigger than myself with people surrounding me. For those of us who embrace the title “Christian” (or some new, catchy alternative way of saying “Christian” but meaning the same thing) that particular “something bigger” involves the witness of a God who emptied himself and willingly loved us. That “something bigger” is the reason why the church matters, the reason why any of us can ever contemplate it, and the reason why our lives together matter.
The church which Christ talks about—the one against which the gates of hell cannot prevail—seems like a nice story to me most of the time, particularly as I look around me and wonder about the new creation of the world. How long, oh God?
The church of mediocrity must die. The church of oppression, intolerance and arrogance must die. The church that relies upon itself as a glorified country club must die. The church of anything short of God’s vision for humanity must die, and it will.
We are afraid of death. We are also afraid of the ways in which we participate in death. What a paradox it is then that we, who are afraid of death, continue to perpetuate it by our polarization and arrogance. Luckily for us, God even uses our participation in death to work something incredible.
We love our polarities. We love our extremes. We are obsessed with figuring each other out and playing whatever card is needed to ensure our needs are met, even at the expense of others. But if we are to even ask the question about what it means to *be* church, we must realize that, somewhere along the way, we forgot the power of the gospel that transforms. And when it transforms, it makes all things new. My question is, must this new creation be ex nihilo, or will it happen with the death of our sinfulness? Will it happen with the death of this institutional Christianity we so love and hate to embrace?
I hope that our notion of church, church as ego-supplier and church as country-club will die. I hope that it dies, and that out of the ashes something beautiful arises. I am hoping for that resurrection. I have no other hope.
