The other day in class, I heard a long spiel about all the good the mega-church does. For the most part, I would have to agree with him. However, there’s also a part of mega-churches that disturb me. I think they create a Christianity that requires very little of its parishioners. It’s a Christianity that they can just tack on to their life, in addition to the life they currently have. No change is required. Well, that is, instead of an abundant life, it becomes a more abundant life. It becomes a Christianity that makes no demands on you except giving to the church and joining small groups. And coming to be entertained by the pastor and band every Sunday. There is good reason though that mega-churches attract so many people. Sociologically, Americans tend to always weigh risks and rewards, whether consciously or unconsciously. At a mega-church, the rewards are very high because a church that size naturally has an overabundance of resources to use for its parishioners. And also, building on this very fact, the cost of commitment (the risk) is very, very low. If they join this church and after a while, no longer enjoy it, they lost very little or nothing. This is in opposition to a small church where abundant resources are difficult to come by. Naturally then, the requirements and commitments of its members have to be higher. Therefore, in a situation like this, the risk begins to outweigh the rewards. But it is a Christianity that requires commitment and a Christianity not built upon market principles. It is a Christianity that requires something of everybody, sometimes with very little to offer in return. You see this more and more in emerging congregations without a full-time pastor, especially those that are highly involved in the community. This type of church needs very high commitment level from its members, not to accumulate greater resources, but for mere survival. There is a reason that these communities tend to remain smaller – the risks outweigh the rewards. It requires something of you and more than likely, all of you to be a part of this group. You are not allowed to just add-on this type of Christianity . . . you must change. It’s not the gospel tacked onto your life – the gospel becomes your life and thus, everything you do has to change to correspond to this new reality.
A Reasonable Faith
Since beginning seminary, I have heard on numerous occasions the importance of establishing, defending, and articulating ones faith based on reason. I understand the reasoning (no pun intended) for the emphasis – amidst all the prevailing worldviews today, the Christian faith must be articulated in a logical way. But then, yesterday in class, we got into a discussion on reason and faith which led somebody to say that Christian reason and the world’s reason are two different things. They use the same processes; however, the contents of the two will differ. Somebody brought this into question but we were unable to address it in class as time ran short. However, I was thinking a similar question. If we are trying to articulate a reasonable faith to the world, wouldn’t we utilize reason in the same way they do? Wouldn’t our contents be the same as theirs?
I think it was Pascal who said that reason had its limits – it could only lead to an abstract God. And this is the very thing that we are trying to articulate through reason. All reason is able to do is create an impersonal God. And there is no mention of Jesus whatsoever in trying to articulate faith through reason. And with good reason. Because people don’t rise from the dead. They don’t. That’s absurd. It was then. It is now. Reason tells us that dead people don’t crawl out of the grave three days later. But faith can. Thus, there seems to be an end to reason, especially in the articulation of a distinctly Christian faith. Reason can establish a divine being and a religious system built around that being. But there is nothing distinctly Christian about that. And reason will never be able to fit Jesus Christ as the Bible portrays him into its motif. Reason cannot explain why a God would become a man only to die at the hand of his creation. Conjecture may; reason cannot.
The Christian faith is unreasonable. It is absurd, scandalous, unheard of. If we are to articulate a distinctly Christian faith, we must admit the vast shortcomings of the endeavor to prove Christianity through reason. Because if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, then the Christian faith is meaningless; thus, the Christian faith hinges on an unrealistic event of a human conquering death.
Adorning Testimonies
A few times in my seminary experience, I have found myself in the midst of people sharing testimonies. This is always a bit uncomfortable for me, not because I discount the validity of others’ experiences of God, but rather I think we have the tendency to embellish our testimonies to make them sound better. We decorate our testimonies by making our original situation (the state before being “saved”) sound much worse than it actually was. Then, we put God into the picture and because our situation was so terrible before, God comes out looking like a superman/woman. The reality of it though is that for most of us attending seminary, our backgrounds have been, well, easy. Many of us grew up in the church, had loving parents, good support systems, food, clothing, houses, beds, air conditioning, heating, schools . . . we essentially had everything that we needed to not only survive, but thrive. But we still tend to stretch the circumstances of our testimonies to portray God as more powerful when the only thing that has changed is the state of our heart. Many of the testimonies I am referring to involve a spiritual salvation, not a physical one. I concede that salvation in the world to come is much richer than the salvation we experience here on earth. However, I am not a proponent of making our situations sound worse than they are in order to portray God as more majestic. Once again, I realize that testimonies are subjective experiences, in which it is difficult to enter into the being of another to feel what they felt. But I do know that we arrange and tell testimonies to persuade and because of that, we make the product sound good. Really good. I remember sharing my testimony on several occasions in high school; I was guilty of the very things I now find repelling. I painted my situation as hell when in comparison to many people, it was anything but hell.
This is all to say that I wish testimonies were a bit more honest. That we would reflect on our situations in light of those who are oppressed, in light of those who did not grow up as privileged as us. Maybe life wasn’t so bad. God did save us, but not from the things we thought God did.
