Salvation vs. Seeking

I was at a "Christian" concert the other night and afterward there was the obligatory "saved" speech.

Know for sure where you'll go when you die?

None of the students in the room looked at all interested. In fact, the guy doing it was almost apologetic about the whole ordeal.

Just real quick…

We really do live in a Christian culture. Within the broader Christian culture is the evangelical culture. And that culture is inbreeding.

They way I explain it, there are only two kinds of people, those seeking after God and those not. There are just as many people seeking after God outside of the church, or even traditional religion, as there are in the church or religion. There are as many people not seeking after God in your pews every week…tithing, leading bible studies, singing worship songs…as there are outside of the church. Maybe more.

I want to be associated with those seeking.

The Bible vs. Faith

Many people believe the bible to be either infallible, the foundation of our faith, or at least the word of God or "the truth." I too held this view at one time. However, the bible is even more important and more powerful to me now that it doesn’t have to be any of those things!

The scriptures started out as an oral history that at some point was written down. Logically, there are many levels of error between that oral history and what we read today. Instead of fearing this possibility or explaining it away, for me the scriptures are more valid now because they are awash in the human condition--that human condition of transcendence and existential crisis that marks real lives in search of a real God.

The bible itself teaches faith; but the church, in its own teachings about the bible, teaches anti-faith--that faith is a belief in the bible as the complete revelation of God and the working out of faith as one's ability to read and understand those words. Faith is at once much more and much less than that.

The bible is first and foremost the story of redemption. It’s not a textbook. It doesn’t tell me that 1+1=2, that prayer and bible reading make a good Christian. It barely tells me how I even get redeemed! When Jesus did spend the time to just talk, it was mostly about social issues and getting by day to day while we’re here! Every time someone pressed him on the "heaven issue," he gave them a different answer! Can you believe the nerve?

Your faith, if it is to be true, cannot rest on anything. Faith is not a thing that needs backing up--that would violate its own essence. Faith is a stand-alone system. It either exists or it doesn’t. I don’t have faith that 2+2=4 or that H₂O is water; I was taught that. I was told that. I have faith that I will go to heaven and be with Jesus when I die. The bible didn’t tell me that. It hinted at it; Jesus said some hopeful things; but in the end, I haven’t been there. I can’t prove it. It’s faith.

Organization vs. Organism

People in the church talk good about it being this abstract thing, a nebulous group of people, a loose network of believers in similar things. But it’s never really happened.

Because people need organization. People need structure. People need governance. And the idea of government has seeped from our civil structure--where, I submit to you, it is indeed necessary--down into our social structures, church included, and finally into our families.

If you take even the briefest glimpse back into the early history of the church you will find that you are practicing a Roman, state controlled religion.

Go back one step from there and you find loose groups of believers so ramshackle that Paul had to write sometimes deriding letters to try and keep them in line.

One step further back and you just have a bunch of people getting together over dinner, with very little networking besides a couple crazy apostles traveling through the region every year or so.

One step even further back and you have a rebellious social group/movement that has to hide out to keep from getting arrested and killed.

One step farther back and you have a cult of personality. A personality with no marketing, no technology, doing nothing beyond living his own life and teaching a very small group of friends along the way. 20 or so people and no-one else in the whole world.

No money. No fund raising. No full-time ministry support network. Certainly no bookstore full of advice, truth versions, and doctrine!

No positions. No hierarchy.

That church was indeed a nebulous group; and even when Paul began putting their practice into more concrete terms, they were still that. He did not write to a group with historical or strong doctrine, structure, or hierarchy.

He actually was writing about the same issues we face now, if we choose to pursue church outside of a modern, Roman model. Outside of hierarchy, money, and groupthink.

The church at its start was a seditious, rebellious group of activists and outcasts. Eventually it recruited enough outcasts to make a problem. Rome ultimately assimilated it. Assimilation meant control.

And control they did, until now, when the authority, hierarchy, and structure of the institutional church is seen as biblical and from God.

Finally

Rome left us the idea of man as God.

America is leaving us the idea of brand as God.

The church is leaving us the idea of man’s God-brand as God.

All bow down and worship the new technology pastor’s well-funded multi-media cutting-edge super-cool world-renown projection of God on the wall. Once you get your Starbucks in the lobby why don't you meet with one of our counselors up front here?

this article is part two of a multi-part series published randomly throughout cyberspace. you can check out another part also published this month however that link won't take you there. daniel's life is much too mundane for a proper bio, so the editor of Next-Wave has provided this stock bio for him: