Month: July 2024

When Christ Becomes Cordial Drivel

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

“The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet.”

This quote from Soren Kierkegaard captures much of my experience with church and religion. For some of us, when we have most desperately needed rescuing, we have had to turn to sources other than organised Christianity.

Sources, as it turns out, that do not always speak in the language of Christianese.

That is not to say that organized Christianity never addresses the core issues of human existence. And, crucially, just because the alternate sources we turn to don’t speak Christianese, it does not mean they are not “bringing forth treasures old and new from the Kingdom” (Matthew 13:52).

In the first of Jesus’s Eight Woes (see Matthew 23) he challenges the religious experts and tells them that they have not truly entered the kingdom of heaven. Not only that, said Jesus, they are trying to lock out those who wish to enter.

How might that happen today?

Obviously, the examples are myriad, but here’s an interesting one: find the people who are most deeply invested in some form of organized Christianity, and ask them if God is male or female. Almost always, they will answer that God transcends gender and is neither male or female. Next, ask them if it is okay to refer to God as she, and they will shift uncomfortably and tell you it is not okay and that God must remain a he. Why?

Or ask a gatekeeper of Christianity about experimenting with the format of a worship service. Could our worship services be more participatory, for instance, or take place outdoors? After all, Jesus said originally that what matters is that 2 or 3 are gathered in his name.

Or ask how best to understand the behaviour of addicts. Are they godless and reprobate, or are they behaving this way because of pain inflicted on them by their families and religious and governmental institutions? Have dysfunctional people made bad choices or are they canaries in the coal mine? If the latter, perhaps the church should be more invested in understanding human psychology and less invested in calling down curses on the un-churched.

I do not believe we have to make God trendy, or even that we have to make God palatable, relatable, and teddy-bearish. God is ever greater. God is wild. We will never get a handle on God. In the words of Augustine, if we understand, it is not God. And I am not trying to shame those of us within organised religion; very often, we are simply trying to curate the cumulative wisdom of saints from the millennia before us and that is a noble pursuit.

But if we cannot bring God into the everyday needs of everyday people, then we have failed in our duty as a “royal priesthood.” If we set God apart under the sanctimonious language of, “God is holy and cannot tolerate sin,” then God will never transform anyone. We will lock seekers, and ourselves, out of the kingdom of heaven.

In the words of Randal Woodley, “Since Jesus is active everywhere, the first responsibility of mission among any culture is not to teach, speak, or exert privilege but to discover what Jesus is doing in that culture.” The New Testament repeatedly insists that God is bringing all things together in Christ. If Christ is to be more than cordial, sanctimonious drivel, we have to open our eyes and see what God is doing and where.

For me this has meant temporarily replacing Christ’s name so that I can rediscover its original, most real meaning. I like to use 8 other words, each of which also begins with C. Where is Christ? I will find Christ wherever I find  Curiosity, Compassion, Clarity, Connectedness, Creativity, Courage, Confidence, and Calm (see Richard Schwartz’s No Bad Parts). Where you find these, you find something of Christ.

You find Christ where people are putting their neighbour before themselves, longing for personal growth, enjoying nature, sunbathing on the beach while their kids build sandcastles. “The glory of God is a human fully alive” (Irenaeus, 2nd century).

Is there a danger of reducing Christ to some New Age woo-woo? Christ is the sunset, for instance, or the marshmallows on my s’more. Perhaps, but I wonder if an even greater danger is, as Kierkegaard believed, reducing Christ to the cordial drivel of Christianese. May God shake us out of that drivel and show us where Christ is saving the world. Thankfully, God’s salvation does not depend on our sanctimonious prattle. Thankfully, it will go ahead whether or not those of us in within organised Christianity are there to bear witness.

How to Get Fired from Calvary Messenger

Gideon Yutzy7 Comments

Five years ago, I was dismissed from the Beachy Amish periodical, The Calvary Messenger. In noting that milestone, I have no desire to lick my wounds or make myself out to be a martyr; I am as flawed as the next person, may the record stand, kind stenographer. I guess I am only processing and looking back. Usually when I read something I wrote 5 years ago, I cringe in nearly every paragraph and want to make significant changes. Surprisingly, with the article that led to my removal, I don’t know what I would change. Here it is in its entirety:

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All That Is Certain

This article was originally published in the Calvary Messenger in May of 2019.

Sometimes I am surprised at how little I know.

I was instructed—zealously catechized, more like—in a Christian home. Besides that, we live in a time heralded as the Information Age. What went wrong? Do I just need to spend more time on Wikipedia?

Years ago, I heard a quip about child training that went something like this: “Before I was married, I had six theories about raising children. Now I have six children and no theories.”

As a father of four gloriously multifaceted daughters, I can identify. And, to tell the truth, I feel as if I have fewer and fewer theories about everything.

Theories about what is most important in life, for instance; theories about happiness; theories about myself; theories about God.

On such foundational points as these, it can feel at times as if I know almost nothing.

But then I consider the Book of Job. Wisdom is hidden from the eyes of all the living. Wisdom is not found in the land of the living.

What? No pat answers?

Or I consider the words of the Trappist monk Basil Pennington. “We don’t have all the answers. There are lots of questions. And it is good to live in the question.” A pat answer, the monk went on to say, does not leave any room for mystery. Our faith, though it is solid, is also full of questions—and therefore full of hope for further revelation.

And I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, my decreased certainty and increased age is perfectly normal and even healthy. “It is better to have a little faith dearly won,” said the Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond, “than perish on the splendid plenty of the richest creeds.”

Paul gave Timothy a list of foundational beliefs, a kind of creed, if you will. But notice how short that creed is. Notice that it contains only six statements: God was manifest in the flesh; justified in the Spirit; seen of angels; preached unto the Gentiles; believed on in the world; received up into glory (1 Timothy 3:16).

Why is it, then, that subsequent creeds grew steadily longer? The 4th century Apostle’s Creed is still limited to around 100 words, but the 1527 Schleitheim Confession of Faith has over 3,000. It is noteworthy that the 1632 Dordrecht Confession of Faith and the 1963 Mennonite Confession of Faith both have more than 5,000 words.

Perhaps as more and more distortions of Jesus’ gospel came along, the formal statements of faith also had to grow.

Perhaps. But could another explanation be that we have created an idol of certainty where God envisioned a shrine of mystery?

We say, correctly, that the Bible is our sacred text, our written revelation from God. Unfortunately, thanks to millennia of cumulative misinterpretation, many people assert as nonnegotiable a host of stances only vaguely supported by Scripture. In reality, there are many issues on which the Bible gives us clues but no hard, fast answers. Theories of atonement, eschatology, cosmology, and soteriology are all interesting and, I will be the first to say it, worthy of study. But are they worthy of our over-certainty and divisiveness?

Imagine a church that dedicates minimal energy agonizing over speculative issues. Imagine a church that instead pursues the things the New Testament wants us to guard jealously, such as practicing hospitality, sharing our possessions, forgiving those who mistreat us, praying for one another, and pursuing humility. Who wouldn’t want to join a church like that!

Isaiah 57:15 tells us the two places where God dwells: in the highest heaven, and in the contrite heart. Regarding doctrinal certitude there is not a mention.

In fact, to complete the journey of faith only three things are really needed: humility, embracing mystery, and gratitude. Humility causes us to acknowledge how little we do know. Embracing mystery makes us aware of how little we can know (as St. Augustine said, “If you understand, it is not God”). And finally, we are grateful that God has revealed what we need to know, more than enough to equip us for loving Him and our neighbors.