MEREST
CHRISTIANITY:
T.H.L. on
the Problem with my Christianity;
E.M. on the
Problem with American Christians
Dear Eric:
Let me begin this letter by stating that I respect your faith in Jesus and your interest in Him. On the other hand, as a fellow Christian, I must tell you that I think your writing shows you are missing the forest for the trees. Your essays show a mind that is losing the focus that one needs for a true Christian faith.
Your essay about Guy Davenport's book will be my main example. I think modern Christians often come too much under the influence of scholars, and this seems to happen to you in your unbounded admiration for Davenport. Why does Guy Davenport have the right to neglect nearly all of the Gospels? Did you ever ask yourself this when reading his book? And why do you, as a Christian, decide to come out in support of him? Do you really think his tools of the trade as a scholar are so reliable?
To read Davenport's remarks, which you
quote with approval, it would seem that Jesus was just a kind of smart
aleck. That is about all the
impression I can get of Jesus Christ from this supposedly poignant account.
Jesus was not a smart aleck or a tricky
weaver of riddles, and you as a Christian should know this. He was who He said He was: the Son of
God who died for the sins of the world.
If this truth about Jesus Christ is not remembered, then all the rest of
His words are misunderstood. They
will become merely riddles or word games for scholars like Davenport to write their
books on.
Thoughtful Christian writers have better
models than Guy Davenport or Elaine Pagels. Have you ever read the writer C.S. Lewis? C.S. Lewis was a great scholar and a
great Christian apologist for our modern age. He is the kind of writer who could inspire you in your own
essays, and he is one who surely keeps the whole Christian truth in mind in
everything he writes. If you
haven't read Lewis, I would recommend starting with Mere Christianity. If you
have read him, I hope you would write something about him. It would be more interesting for
Christian readers than these writings about Gnosticism or Guy Davenport.
There is very much at stake in the paths
we choose in modern times. I am an
American Christian. I see from
your webpage that you live in Taiwan.
But even in Taiwan you must see how much the world is in need of the
complete redemptive message of the Bible.
In America there is more and more divorce, more and more violence and
perversion and addiction of all kinds.
It is all because people are lost: their values are mistaken. Many of them don't have any values at
all. As a Christian, you should
see that such people don't need these supposed fragments and riddles that
Davenport tries to give us in his book.
They need the real message of Jesus Christ. They need the complete message. They need to know why He really came into our world.
As I said in my opening words, I do
respect your faith, but as a Christian I feel your writing needs more. I feel you have missed the forest for
the trees.
Sincerely,
Thomas H. L-----
* * *
Dear Thomas:
Thank you for your
thoughtful response to my writings.
I respect and understand your suggestions, and believe you touch on an
important issue: What might it mean to be a Christian and a scholar? Your letter suggests some of the
problems that immediately arise.
Though I myself am not a scholar, I am interested in scholarship and how
it illuminates Christian history, and so these problems are important to me.
As for your recommendation
of C.S. Lewis, I will definitely take it up. I've read some of Lewis, but not Mere Christianity. I've
wanted to read this book for some time, but haven't gotten around to it.
You say that in my faith or
at least in my writing I am missing the forest for the trees. I will take a sapling from your idiom
and watch it grow as follows.
Consider how you might respond to my assertion:
Most American Christians
believe they are wandering in a forest planted by Jesus Christ. But look! The forest they wander in is really one planted by American
social conservatives and the Apostle Paul. Jesus and his teachings are hardly to be found there.
Here is how I see the
crisis in American Christianity, or rather one of the main reasons for the
crisis. Jesus' teachings are not
acceptable to the churches. He is
hidden behind a more palatable Paul and the neurotic social attitudes of the
Religious Right. This situation
has occupied my thoughts for a long time.
So let me ask you: Is this
forest I've described the one you yourself prefer to wander in? I believe those trees planted by Paul
are certainly very important, but why is it they tower so high over the few
little shrubs of Jesus that are allowed to survive? And as for all those acres that come from the Religious
Right--if it were up to me, I would cut them down. And you?
So let me ask you: What
precisely is the Christian message
you think I should be pressing?
That Christ died for our sins?
Yes, I could focus on this message, but it is perhaps the only authentic
New Testament message that the American churches are good at preaching. And many of them stress it to the
exclusion of everything else about Jesus.
As a writer I don't feel the necessity of taking it up, of explaining
it. It is explained repeatedly by
firebrand preachers all over the world.
And nowhere more so than in America.
You mention America's
divorce rate. So should I focus on
"Christian family values"?
I hope you don't think so.
Because although American preachers go on and on about family values,
Jesus' statements show us that he thought of the family as a stumbling block:
one should step over it, never bothering to look back. Here are two examples of Jesus' family
values:
1) "Master, your mother and your brothers
are waiting for you outside."
Jesus: "Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers? Those
who hear and follow the words of God, these are my mother and my
brothers." (I.e.: the
accidents of birth do not determine any binding tie: it is only kinship in the
spirit that counts. Jesus clearly
rejects the traditional stress on family and lineage.)
2) "Master, I want to follow you, but let
me go and bury my father first."
Jesus: "Let the dead bury their own dead. Those who put their hand to the plow and turn back are not
worthy of the Kingdom."
(I.e.: your father is dead, and so what? Family ties mean nothing to me or my ministry. Until you recognize that the work of
the Kingdom is more important than any respect for family ties, you are not
worthy to be a disciple.)
And these two instances are not all. I could offer more quotations from
Jesus that show contempt for the family as an institution. The conclusion is inescapable: for
Jesus the family is irrelevant.
The only relevant thing is the work of the Kingdom.
So what gives with the Bible belt and this
"family values" song and dance?
I can tell you one thing: it has nothing to do with Jesus or his
teachings. Where then do they get
it? From themselves, that's
where. The same place they get
most of their sordid preaching.
Jesus was a radical, something the Bible belt cannot stomach.
And they rail on and on about sexual morality, as
if they were all obsessed with sex sex sex, whereas Jesus almost never talked
about sex (I can find only two instances in the Gospels: two sentences out of
hundreds and hundreds). And they
are so certain that homosexuality is un-Christian because, they insist, it is
against nature, whereas there is no record of any reference to homosexuality
ever coming from Jesus' mouth: not a single word. So given this repeated and hysterical concern with 1) family
values and 2) sexuality, why don't they just call themselves The American
Church of Social Conservatism because, to tell the truth, Jesus probably
wouldn't recognize their movement as his, and he doesn't have a very large
place in their movement in any case.
I'm sorry to quote Jesus in so
"offensive" a manner on family values. It's just that I tend to stick with this annoying principle:
If you want to teach something in Jesus' name, you should show that it goes
back to Jesus himself. In other
words, in trying to assess whether or not the family values movement in America
is Christian or not, I think it's important to search out what Jesus himself
said. Although Pat Robertson is
respectable and all, I do think Jesus' words have precedence even over those of
Pat Robertson.
Jesus preached a doctrine of open sharing of
goods. The open sharing of goods
was how one demonstrated that one understood the Kingdom; it was also a means
of helping the Kingdom grow. This
is one of the most oft-repeated of Jesus' themes: that one should not collect
goods in preparation for the future and that one should share openly and
always. This teaching, although
repeated in all four Gospels, is never stressed in American churches. It is far easier for the churches to
dwell on the abstract things offered by Paul. This is the route the churches chose long ago: it is an
effective way of avoiding Jesus himself.
I hope I am not being misunderstood here. That I explain this core part of Jesus'
doctrine, namely his teaching on property, isn't to imply that I claim myself
to have the strength to follow it.
I am not strong enough to follow it. But at least I recognize what this weakness of mine
means: not strong enough to follow
Jesus' teaching on property, I can hardly be righteous by Jesus'
standards. By Jesus' standards,
after all, anyone with a bank account is hardly righteous.
And another thing. Although I disparage parts of the stress put on Paul in
American churches, I would not be confident asserting that Paul misrepresented
Jesus' teachings. We cannot really
be sure about this. All we can say
with confidence is that the voice of Jesus we know from the Gospels and the
voice of Paul have certain differences.
Certainly that is in part a matter of the genre of the writings in
question. But isn't it also
possible that the sayings of Jesus preserved in the Gospels are more crucial
than the letters of Paul? Wouldn't
it be better for us, as Christians, to quote Jesus, say, three or four times as
much as we quote Paul? I don't
think I'd be exaggerating if I said that many Protestant churches give Paul
just as much if not more space than they give the man Paul proclaimed as
Messiah.
I believe I recognize much of the essential in
Jesus' message. And what I see
convinces me of the following: Those American Christians who think of sexual
behavior or sexual orientation as a major Christian concern have not read the
Gospels. Those Christians who feel so righteous that they give themselves the
right to rail against their neighbors' sexual mores--but who still themselves
have bank accounts--are hypocrites who have not read the Gospels. Those Christians who worry constantly
about how the media is infecting youth but then teach their children to be
materialistic and to judge success in life by income--such Christians have
obviously not read the Gospels.
Jesus behaved like a vagabond and a hippy. He and his followers refused to settle
down, refused to acquire property (he told them they must not) and preached
among the outcasts and the marginal .
If Jesus showed up in Texas or Utah or Florida or Alabama--if he showed
up in any "good neighborhood" at least--I can assure you he'd be
arrested within a few days. If he
came to your door or my door with James and Peter in tow and asked to stay for
the night it's more than likely neither you nor I would let him in. This is something a Christian should at
least recognize: That we ourselves do not live up to what is expected, that
we are far from the mark, that in fact many of our supposed Christian values
would be scoffed at by Jesus himself if he were here to see us.
So, my friend, to conclude: You may believe that
my interest in a writer like Guy Davenport shows that I can't see the forest
for the trees. But I feel the
truth of the situation may be quite different. The truth may be that you and I are not exactly in the same
forest. I may be wrong about this,
for I can't be quite sure from your letter just how you understand Jesus and
his words. But this at least is my
suspicion, given the tone and concerns I note in your letter.
Are you sure that you as a Christian have really
taken Jesus' teachings into account in your remarks about America?
I will take up your suggestion to finally read
C.S. Lewis' book. And I welcome
any reply you may have to my remarks here.
Sincerely,
Eric Mader
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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