“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.