There's More Than One Way to Be "Born Again"

In this week’s posts, I have been sharing about how there is more than one way to understand basic ideas of the Christian faith.  The dominant American Protestant narrative is in large part a conservative Evangelical one, and many who end up rejecting that narrative feel they have no choice but to reject Christianity as a whole.  Yet, Christian tradition and scripture offer many different ways for a person to remain Christian without holding on to a narrow and exclusive perspective.

This week I’m sharing my reflections on Marcus Borg’s book Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost TheirMeaning and Power—and How They Can be Restored.  I’m not a fan of all of Borg’s writings, but I do feel this book is a great resource for people who are looking to expand their understandings of some of the central terms of Christianity.  

I grew up Southern Baptist and proudly understood myself to be “born again.”  By this, I understood myself to have made a “profession of faith” in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  This understanding was in opposition to Catholics and some Protestants (I had no idea what the Orthodox church was) who taught one was a Christian when they were baptized as infants or young children.  The profession of faith was made when one reached “the age of accountability” or when one was old enough to make their own decision about what they believed.  I don’t recall ever learning about the idea of confirmation in Catholic and Protestant churches which is largely the same principle.  When I did learn of it, confirmation was dismissed as not a true “profession of faith” but just something people raised Catholic were expected to do.  It was an empty ritual, just another box on the checklist of sacraments needed to get to heaven.

In time, I began to see that most of the criticisms leveled at denominations who practiced infant and/or child baptism along with confirmation could likewise be leveled at traditions like mine which emphasized professions of faith (often described as “getting saved” or being “born again”).  Southern Baptists and other denominations have “baby dedications” in which a new child is presented to the church, thanksgiving to God for this new life is made by parents, family and congregation, and then commitments are made by parents and congregation to raise that child in the faith until they are old enough to make their own decision.  This is essentially the same thing that happens in an “infant baptism” just under a different name.  Of course, Catholics have a different meaning for “sacrament” than most Protestants, but in terms of function and purpose it too is largely the same.

A problem with the “age of accountability” is nobody can agree when that actually occurs, since some children develop faster than others.  Being the son of a Southern Baptist minister, I recall praying with my father to “accept Christ” and be “born again” at the age of 4.  Later on I had to admit I didn’t fully understand the decision I was making and so on multiple occasions I “rededicated my life to Christ,” which I guess means I was “born again” again and again.  Working in Baptist churches, routinely nervous parents would bring young children to me and other church staff anxious that their child was old enough to “accept Christ” but had not yet done so.  Would little Johnny or Sara go to Hell if they died?  I was grateful when I worked in Methodist and Disciples churches which had something like a “pastor’s class” or “confirmation” in middle school, so at least parents could rest easy before their children reached that age.  Similarly, I always enjoyed teaching confirmation classes as a United Church of Christ minister which usually happened in the 8^th grade.

All of these events I was a participant in or an officiant of tended to focus on beliefs.  Certainly feelings were involved, as an Evangelical/Southern Baptist I was relieved to be going to heaven.  Of course every time I committed a sin, I worried that I still wouldn’t get in the pearly gates.  When I heard sermons about being “born again,” described in terms of being a “new creation” in Christ I knew I continued to do the same “sinful things” as I did before.  There was nothing “new” about me.  I took my religion far more seriously than my peers, who considered themselves “born again” because they prayed a prayer at church or youth camp.  For them, it was a one-time thing that ensured they were going to heaven that they seemed to give little thought to as they went about their lives.  They said the prayer, said they believed the right things and they would go to heaven.

Sadly, I feel sure many of the kids I’ve taught in confirmation classes or pastor’s classes viewed it much the same way as my peers.  Although, the classes I’ve taught in more moderate to progressive Christian churches didn’t seem to produce any kids worried about going to Hell, as I did growing up, I wonder how many on-going transformations began at the moment those kids made their confessions of faith on confirmation Sundays. 

I find it helpful to read Marcus Borg’s description of being “born again.”  He notes that the words “born again” have become largely a negative term to people who are not members of the Religious Right.  It’s associated with a particular kind of Christianity rightly understood as intolerant, unwavering on particular political issues like abortion and homosexuality, committed to a literalistic reading of the Bible, and a militaristic understanding of the end of the world.  That’s too bad, because it is a beautiful and important Biblical image.

It comes from John chapter 3 where Nicodemus misunderstands Jesus’ words about being “born of the Spirit” as literally being physically born a second time.  The Greek words originally translated as “born again” in many English translations really should be translated “born from above,” meaning born of the Spirit (which Jesus says three times in the chapter).  More recent English translations at least acknowledge this in a footnote and some actually translated it as "born from above."  

Borg notes what John calls being “born from above” is in many ways the same idea as what Paul talks about being “in Christ” or “dying and rising with Christ.”  None of these concepts refer to a one-time confession of belief in order to get a person into heaven.  Instead they are talking about a transformation of the self by God from a life lived for a person’s own benefit to a life lived for the benefit of others and all God’s creation.  In sum, this transformation is a movement from an unhealthy obsession with self to a healthy love for one’s self, others, Creation and most of all, God.

The New Testament writers understood this transformation happening now in this world but only completed when this world is totally transformed by God.  They understood that this transformation of being “born of the Spirit” or a “new creation” was not a finished product.  The people Paul called the “body of Christ” he also criticized for some pretty lousy behavior.  This transformation is not a one-time thing but a process that continues all our lives.

As I described, in my teen years, I “rededicated my life to Christ” again and again.  I took my religion way too seriously.  I thought I had to be perfect and I knew I wasn’t.  I thought I had to believe completely without doubts, but I had plenty.  So, I walked the aisle at youth rallies at Worlds of Fun’s amphitheater, at revival services, at youth camp, etc. because I thought being “born again” was a one-time deal that I had to get right or I might spend eternity in Hell. 

Along the way, various ministers tried to assure me of God’s grace, but the language of the Evangelical world we were in was absolute.  It wasn’t until my college years I met a minister who explained Baptists needed more options on how to respond to God.  In a typical service if one felt God move in one’s heart, there were only three responses one could make:

1. a profession of faith/accept Christ as Lord and Savior,
2. rededicate one’s life, or
3. accept a call to ministry. 

If I knew it wasn’t option one or three, I was left with only option two.  My minister friend said we needed a fourth option: “I want to be the best follower of Jesus I can be .”  That’s not a one-time decision to be “born again” but an openness to the new life God offers in new ways every day.

Borg notes that being “born from above,” “born again,” or “born in the Spirit” all points to participating in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  We become passionate about what Jesus is passionate about, namely being transformed by God in order to help the world be transformed by God.  This transformation from one identity to another happens every day, every moment we open ourselves up to God’s radical love for us, others and all of Creation.  It’s not a “Get Out of Hell Free” card but opening up to new life. 

That new life is available at any moment and all moments throughout our lives.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

There’s More Than One Way to Understand Faith

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.

--James 2:26

In this week’s posts, I have been sharing about how there is more than one way to understand basic ideas of the Christian faith.  The dominant American Protestant narrative is in large part a conservative Evangelical one, and many who end up rejecting that narrative feel they have no choice but to reject Christianity as a whole.  Yet, Christian tradition and scripture offer many different ways for a person to remain Christian without holding on to a narrow and exclusive perspective.

This week I’m sharing my reflections on Marcus Borg’s book Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—and How They Can be Restored.  I’m not a fan of all of Borg’s writings (see my post on July 7), but I do feel this book is a great resource for people who are looking to expand their understandings of some of the central terms of Christianity.  On Tuesday, I shared about Borg’s views on “salvation,” and on Wednesday I shared about his views on “the death of Jesus.”  Today I’ll be sharing about Borg’s views on “faith.”

Borg provides a word study of what we mean by the modern English words “faith” and “believe/belief” and shows that what we mean is different from what the writers of the New Testament meant.  In modern English usage, the verb “believe” means “believing that” a statement is true with varying degrees of certainty.  In religious contexts, the verb “believe” means “having faith” and “faith” becomes a collection of statements a person believes.  This understanding of the English verb “believe” as “believing that” a statement is true has existed only since about 1600 CE.  Prior to 1600 it meant “believing in” someone.  That preposition makes a huge difference! 

Believing that a statement someone said is true is different from believing in or having confidence in or trusting that person.  A person I don’t trust can still say something true.  “In a Christian context,” Borg says of this pre-1600 understanding of the verb, “it meant having confidence in God and Jesus, trusting God and Jesus.”  The English word “believe” comes from the Old English “be loof” which means “to hold dear” or “belove.”  So, prior to 1600, the English word “believe” actually meant to “belove” and in a Christian context it meant holding God as one’s “beloved.”  The roots of this Old English word comes from the Latin word “credo” which means “I give my heart to.”  (Interestingly, most ministers who attend seminary are required to write a “Credo” or statement of beliefs, but nowhere in that assignment was I ever asked to state what “I give my heart to.”)

Borg notes that when New Testament writers are talking about “belief” and “faith” what they had in mind was closer to the modern English words “loyalty” and “trust.”  When Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Why do you worry, you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:25-34) he is not talking about a lack of belief in particular statements but a lack of “trust” in God.  Similarly, when James is talking about “faith” without “works” he is talking about a “faithfulness” or “trust” in God resulting in a transformed way of life.  

Borg references the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who described “faith” in terms of buoyancy.  A person in deep water sinks when they thrash around to keep themselves up, but they float when they trust the water will do so.  This image brings to mind Jesus walking on the water and Peter joining him but then sinking.  Jesus says to Peter, “You of little faith” (Matthew 14:31).  Jesus wasn’t referring to Peter’s lack of belief in a group of statements, but a lack of trust.

Borg sums up the problem with the modern understanding of “faith” as a collection of statements one believes this way. “To put the contrast very concisely, it is the difference between:

Believing that a set of statements about God, Jesus, and the Bible are true.

Beloving God—and for Christians, this means beloving God as known especially in Jesus.

For some, perhaps a majority of American Protestants and some Catholics, the former is what “saves us.”  But does believing that a set of statements are true save us, transform us?”

From the beginning of Christianity, there has been a problem: people who say they are Christian but do not act like it.  In Matthew 7:21, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.”  One can say all the right things, but act in all the wrong ways.  One need only look at recent polling data that shows so many people who consider themselves to be “Christian” in America today simultaneously approve of policies that harm the powerless such as separating children from their parents and detaining them on the southern border, a criminal justice system that imposes harsher sentences upon non-white people, and a denial of basic scientific facts at the cost of elderly, sick and impoverished people’s lives.  

Clearly believing a set of statements to be true is not enough to transform us in ways that result in the kind of compassion and love Jesus demonstrated.  One can believe all kinds of statements about God to be true without ever trusting God with one’s life and death.

Grace and Peace,
Chase 

There’s More Than One Way to Understand the Death of Jesus

but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles
1 Corinthians 1:23 NRSV

In yesterday’s email, I shared about how there is more than one way to be Christian.  The dominant American Protestant narrative is in large part a conservative Evangelical one, and many who end up rejecting that narrative feel they have no choice but to reject Christianity as a whole.  Yet, the tradition and scripture of the Christian faith is a deep well with many different perspectives that allow one to remain Christian without holding on to a narrow and exclusive perspective.

This week I’m sharing my reflections on Marcus Borg’s book Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—and How They Can Be Restored.  I’m not a fan of all of Borg’s writings, but I do feel this book is a great resource for people who are looking to expand their understanding of some of the central terms of Christianity.  Borg feels there is a two-fold crisis in American Christianity: religious illiteracy and a literalism which distorts Christianity by narrowing down the possible understandings of what it means to be Christian.  Yesterday I shared about Borg’s views on “salvation,” and today I will share his views on “the Death of Jesus.” 

In the dominant American Protestant (and Catholic) narrative of Christianity, Jesus died for our sins in our place--a substitution.  This view is often called “substitutionary atonement.”  It comes as a surprise to many (if they ever learn of it) that this view of Christ’s death is less than a thousand years old, which means Christianity existed for over a thousand years without any Christians holding this view!  A theologian named Anselm of Canterbury first wrote about in 1097.  Anselm wrote that God’s justice requires someone to pay for sin and only a human death can pay that price.  Since humans are sinful, only a perfect human would do, so God came as Jesus Christ to die and pay the penalty for our sin.

Just because the “substitutionary atonement” view of Christ’s death isn’t ancient doesn’t automatically make it invalid.  The Holy Spirit is still at work in the world and many changes in theology through the centuries are good ones—think of changes like considering slavery to be wrong, gender equality, and inclusion of LGBTQ people.  Yet, “substitutionary atonement” has a number of significant weaknesses that make it problematic.

• It obliterates the historical meaning of his death.  Jesus was crucified, a particular form of execution reserved for those who opposed Roman imperial rule.  In the Gospels, when Jesus predicts his coming death it is always because political and religious authorities will cause it not because he must be a substitution.
• It makes God’s character primarily about judgment and punishment rather than love.  Although this view is often “spun” as loving (i.e. God loved us and sent his Son to die in our place), but even then God’s judgment and punishment is greater than God’s love.  This type of God will not be satisfied except with blood.  I’ve often heard this view of God sending his son to die described as “divine child abuse.”
•  It distorts what Christianity is about.  This view says Jesus’ death was merely part of God’s plan to get believers to heaven.  It says nothing about transforming people’s lives now nor about transforming the world here and now.

In the New Testament, Christ’s death by crucifixion is at the heart of the message but not as a substitution.  Borg supplies several of the most common understandings.

• Christ is crucified, a particular form of death reserved for offenders against Roman rule.  If authorities wanted Jesus dead, they could have done so any number of less public ways, but they wanted him dead to communicate a message: “This is what happens to those who oppose us.”  So when Paul emphasizes Jesus crucifixion, his readers would have held this understanding of what Jesus’ death was about (e.g. 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, Philippians 2:3-11).
• Dying and rising with Christ was how early Christians described a personal and communal transformation.  In Galatians 2:19-20, Paul writes “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”  This image was and remains the meaning behind Christian baptism (see Romans 6:1-4).  In the Gospels (see Matthew 16:24), Jesus urges his followers to “take up their cross and follow me,” an invitation for followers to die to themselves and serve the greater cause of the Kingdom of God rather than any earthly kingdom.
• Jesus’ death is described as a “sacrifice,” but never a substitution.  In Judaism, there were many sacrifices: thanksgiving, petition, purification for sin and even a communal meal with God.  None of these sacrifices required the one making the sacrifice to God to die.  Often the idea of the “scapegoat” ritual is compared with Christ’s death, but that animal was never killed but rather was sent out from the community.

Borg urges readers to think of Jesus as a “sacrifice” but not a substitution for our own deaths because a punishing God demands it be so.  He notes how people often sacrifice themselves out of love for others.  A soldier may die for their country or a firefighter dies rescuing someone from a fire.  He gives the examples of three Christian “martyrs” of the 20^th century: Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed for resisting Hitler’s Germany; Martin Luther King, Jr. who was assassinated for advocating equal rights for African Americans; and Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated for standing with the poor against El Salvador’s military government.  We would describe each as sacrificing their life, but we would not describe them as substitutions.

Borg says the most important way to understand the death of Jesus is as a revelation of God’s love.  In Jesus, Paul and the early Christians believed, we have “the decisive revelation of God.  In Jesus, “we see what God is like.”  “Thus, in Jesus’ passion for the Kingdom of God and his challenge to the powers at the risk of his own life, we see the depth of God’s love for us. . . not a punitive God who sends Jesus to die for our sins, but a God who is passionate about transformation of the world.”

Grace and Peace,
Chase

There is More Than One Way to Be Christian

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

    whom shall I fear?
--Psalm 27:1 NRSV

I was raised with one understanding of Christianity, a conservative Evangelical view.  To be Christian meant “to be saved” from Hell and to have eternal life in heaven.  I was “saved” by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.  Jesus died for my sins and everyone’s sins, because God was above all just.  The penalty for our sins (which meant individual actions contrary to God’s will) was death.  God loved us, so God’s son Jesus was sent to die in our place.  This was a free gift of God, but I had to accept Jesus Christ as my “personal savior” to escape Hell  Any form of so-called Christianity that did not teach the faith this way was not “true” Christianity.  Needless to say, any other religion was also “false.”  Our job as “true Christians” was to convince others they were wrong, so they wouldn’t go to Hell.

Along my faith journey, much has changed in my understanding of Christianity.  The biggest change of all, probably, is my understanding that the Evangelical Christianity I was raised in is largely a modern invention having been created in the last several centuries.  A Christianity concerned chiefly with individuals and their individual choices leading to an eternity in heaven was not the primary concern found in scripture.

I came to this broader understanding of Christianity through being a religion major in college, attending seminary and spending several years in a New Testament Ph.D. program before I turned to local church ministry.  A common refrain among clergy is that this broader understanding of Christianity is taught in most non-evangelical seminaries but never makes it to church pews.  I believe the Evangelical worldview is deeply embedded in American Protestant Christianity, and most clergy value job security over doing the difficult work of teaching and leading their congregations to consider a different way.  Also, tools for Christian education from a non-evangelical perspective have largely ceased to exist—Bible study guides, Sunday School literature, and individual devotional guides have largely become the province of Evangelical Christianity alone.

As a minister to congregations who are theologically middle of the road to progressive, I have struggled to find resources for church members who essentially have a reactionary faith.  By reactionary faith, I mean they know what they do not believe (Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity), but they are hard pressed to articulate their faith in terms of what they do believe.  It turns out, there are a multitude of ways to articulate Christianity in terms that are not the same words as the Religious Right, but unfortunately, you have to work hard to discover them. 

This week, I am going to share ideas from one resource for Christians looking to articulate their faith in new ways: Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their meaning and Power—and How They can Be Restored by Marcus Borg.  This is one of Borg’s books at a popular, rather than academic, audience.  It’s accessible and I think it’s solid, unlike much of Borg’s more scholarly work.

Borg would summarily be declared a heretic by Evangelicals, and truth be told, I’m not a fan of much of his academic writings.  Borg, who died in 2015, was a part of The Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars active in the early nineties who sought to discover the “Jesus of history” rather than the “Christ of faith.”  The problems with this effort are too many to list here, but I’d simply say it is fraught with logical inconsistencies and a general lack of self-awareness.  I wouldn’t recommend any of Borg’s stuff on the so-called “historical Jesus” (e.g. Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary)

Yet, later in Borg’s career, he became a popular writer and speaker who did a very good job of articulating a form of Christianity that I believe is more faithful to scripture and Christian tradition than most of what is preached and taught in American Protestant churches today (e.g. The Heart of Christianity and Speaking Christian).  In these later works, I read a pastoral sensitivity and desire to redeem Christianity from its current American form rather than merely deconstructing it.

In Speaking Christian, Borg notes the crisis in contemporary American Christianity and says its causes are two-fold.  The first cause is illiteracy, or a lack of knowledge about basic symbols, language and scripture.  The second cause is a form of literalism that distorts Christianity by narrowing down the possible understandings to a select few.  The result is an exclusive faith focused on individuals getting eternity in heaven rather than a communal faith focused on transformation of the world here and now.  The former version, the version taught by Evangelical Christianity, is being rejected by younger generations at a dramatic rate, and because those younger generations do not know there are alternative forms of Christianity to choose from, they are thus rejecting Christianity altogether.

An example of the alternatives Borg describes comes in his chapter on “salvation.”  Borg notes that “salvation” expressed as only eternity in heaven comes with a negative flip side, the majority of humanity spending eternity in Hell.  Even in churches that downplay this side of “salvation,” many who are taught it experience anxiety, fear and in some cases spiritual abuse due to feeling responsible for getting “saved” and making sure their loved ones are “saved” too.  This limited view of “salvation” is being roundly rejected, and I would argue rightly so.

Instead, Borg argues we should look to scripture where “salvation” is primarily described not in heavenly terms but in down-to-earth and here-and-now terms.  Borg lists the following dominant understandings of “salvation” in the Bible.

• Salvation as liberation from bondage—the “primal narrative” of Israel is the Exodus, the freeing of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, bondage that took economic, political and religious forms (e.g. Exodus 13:2, Hosea 13:4);
• Salvation as return from exile—the second greatest narrative of Israel is the return from Babylonian exile, the prophets described God, the savior, as loving, present on their journey and providing freedom from fear (e.g. Isaiah 43:1-4, 45:17);
• Salvation as rescue from peril—the Psalms especially speak of God rescuing Israel from immediate threats to livelihood (e.g. Psalm 27:1, 65:5);
• Salvation as deliverance and transformation—the New Testament occasionally is concerned with afterlife but much more commonly describes “salvation” as the movement from death to life, blindness to seeing, infirmity to well-being, and fear to trust—all in this present life (e.g. Matthew 23:16, Romans 6:3-11, John 3:1-10, Luke 12:22-31, 1 peter 1:7); 
• Salvation as justice and peace—throughout scripture God’s “salvation” in this life takes the form of justice for the oppressed, as well as peace, more than the absence of violence but the world operating according to God’s intentions (e.g. Isaiah 2:3-4, Micah 4:2-3, Luke 19:41-42. 

Unfortunately, holding to these broader and immediate understandings of “salvation” will result in any who accept them being branded ‘liberal” or “politically correct.”  I would argue, however, that taking back the word “salvation” from the Religious Right is actually a more conservative position, if one understands “conservative” as meaning faithful to tradition and scripture.  Of course there is the very real danger of Christians reading contemporary movements into ancient traditions and texts, but I feel the greater danger is a Christianity that is largely irrelevant to the social, political, economic and environmental crises of our day.  Worse still is an exclusive Christianity unconcerned with the problems of real people that contributes to today’s problems of oppression and injustice. 

The choice between the Christianity of the Religious Right and no Christianity at all is a false choice.  The well of Christian tradition and scripture is deep and offers room for many different perspectives that have everything to do with the problems we struggle with as individuals and societies. 

Grace and Peace,

Chase

Community is More Difficult During COVID-19, but It's Still Essential

Let’s hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, because the one who made the promises is reliable.  And let us consider each other carefully for the purpose of sparking love and good deeds. Don’t stop meeting together with other believers, which some people have gotten into the habit of doing. Instead, encourage each other.

--Hebrews 10:23-25a CEB

This week I have been sharing reflections on Parker Palmer’s book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.  Palmer asserts that inside each of us is our “true self.”

Philosophers haggle about what to call this core of our humanity, but I am no stickler for precision.  Thomas Merton called it true self.  Buddhists call it original nature or big self.  Quakers call it the inner teacher of the inner light.  Hasidic Jews call it a spark of the divine.  Humanists call it identity and integrity.  In popular parlance, people often call it soul.

Throughout our lives we are forced to become internally divided in order to protect our true selves.  We build a wall around our true selves, and sometimes that wall is so strong we lose track of our true selves altogether.

Some children, sadly, need this wall at home.  Others do not need it until they get to school.  But sooner or later, everyone needs a wall for the same reason, to protect our inward vulnerabilities against external threats.

More than discovering our “inner child,” Parker describes a journey we undertake to discover who we were originally created by God to be.  He does not advocate a return to childhood, but rather finding an “adult wholeness” where we are no longer alienated from our true selves and manage a healthy interchange between our inner selves (who we were created to be) and outer selves (how we negotiate a world often hostile to our true selves). 

Parker is clear that in order to discover our “adult wholeness” we need “spaces within us and between us that welcome the wisdom of the soul.”  We need individual times of solitude and spiritual work as well as communal work in relationships of trust.  This is where the church comes in; a healthy church equips us for our individual spiritual work and provides opportunity for communal spiritual work in worship and group study.  During this pandemic, we all have had plenty of time to practice solitude and individual spiritual work, but the communal part is hard to come by, especially if you are in an at-risk group.

Even though it may take more effort and come with more frustrations, we neglect this communal spiritual work at our peril.  Parker explains:

A strong community helps people develop a sense of true self, for only in community can the self exercise and fulfill its nature: giving and taking, listening and speaking, being and doing.  But when community unravels and we lose touch with one another, the self atrophies and we lose touch with ourselves as well.  Lacking opportunities to be ourselves sin a web of relationships, our sense of self disappears, leading to behaviors that further fragment our relationships and spread the epidemic of inner emptiness.

Do your solitary spiritual work, but don't neglect your communal spiritual work.  It's more difficult to do so right now; technology can do a lot, but it can also provide frustrations.  However imperfect, whatever communal work we can do together matters just as much as it always did--maybe more so now after months of quarantine.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Divided Individuals, Divided Churches

If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

--James 4:17 NIV

Yesterday, I shared about our need for wholeness and the struggles we face in our attempts to avoid leading divided lives.  By divided lives, I’m referring to our actions and the outward presentation of ourselves which are in conflict with our true or inner selves and convictions.  More than mere hypocrisy, a divided life is a violation of who God created us to be or a desecration of the “image of God” in each of us—what has sometimes been described as the true self, the divine spark or the inner light.  I am depending heavily on the writings of Parker Palmer, especially his book A HiddenWholeness: The Journey Toward and Undivided Life. 

One of the books that has had the greatest impact upon my own spiritual journey and sense of identity is a different book by Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.  Until I read this book, I did not trust anything that came from inside of myself.  Growing up Southern Baptist, I had been taught that I was a product of a “fallen world” and was utterly corrupt in my sinfulness.  As a rather nerdy and non-athletic child with a low self-esteem, this negative description of my spiritual identity fit like a hand in a glove.  Well, of course I was a sinful mess, because I felt awful about myself anyway!  So, I probably bought into this understanding of the wretched state of my soul at a much deeper level than my well-meaning Sunday School teachers ever intended.  I learned not to trust any kind of inner voice and depended only on sources of truth outside myself for guidance and direction.

Thanks to Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, I began to understand there was something inside of me, something I had been created to be, that I could trust.  He writes:

Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become something I am not.  It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God. 

In his writings, Palmer differentiates between the “true self” and what we might call “ego,” “arrogance,” or “vanity.”  These latter things are not “true” but merely false understandings of who we are and why we matter.  Palmer quotes the great spiritual writer Douglas Steere, who “was fond of saying that the ancient human question “Who am I?” leads inevitably to the equally important question “Whose am I?”—for there is no selfhood outside of relationship.”  A healthy understanding of our true selves can only be found with a balance between inner individual work and outer accountability in community.

In A Hidden Wholeness, Palmer moves from discerning one’s true self to creating communities (congregations, workplaces, institutions, etc.) where people’s true selves can flourish. The costs of living a divided life are not paid by individuals alone but by everyone in relationship with a divided person.  Parker writes that we grow into adulthood and become alienated from who we were made to be.  He says

Dividedness. . . comes highly recommended by popular culture.  “Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve,” and “Hold your cards close to your vest” are just two examples of how we are told from an early age that “masked and armored” is the safe and sane way to live.  But our culture has it backward.  The truth is that the more dividedness we perceive in each other, the less safe we feel. . . The perceived incongruity of inner and outer—the inauthenticity that we sense in others or they in us—constantly undermines our morale, our relationships, and our capacity for good work.  So “masked and armored,” it turns out, is not the safe and sane way to life.  If our roles were more deeply informed by the truth that is in our souls, the general level of sanity and safety would rise dramatically.

The alienation we feel from our true selves becomes manifest in our relationships with others.  Our personal alienation becomes an interpersonal alienation.  People who feel alienated from themselves are alienated from others who in turn feel alienated from themselves.  Unhealthy individuals create unhealthy communities which help create unhealthy individuals.  It is a vicious cycle: no wonder we need God to save us! 

Parker illustrates what our true selves look like by reminding us of our childhoods.  A starting point for getting back in touch with our true selves is asking what delighted us as children?  The messages of our culture that demand we stop being “childish” and “grow up “can cause us to lose track of delight, awe and joy.  Yet, discovering our true selves is no easy task.  Palmer writes,

Occasionally, I hear people say, “The world is such a confusing place that I can find clarity only by going within.”  Well I, for one, find it at least as confusing “in here” as it is “out there”—usually more so!—and I think most people do. 

He describes his love for C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series of children’s books and uses the children of the novels’ trip through the wardrobe as a positive image of our own experiences of childhood delight.  Yet the world they find through the wardrobe is not all paradise; there are trustworthy voices (e.g. Aslan the lion) but also voices of “temptation, deception, darkness, and evil” (e.g. the White Witch).  How does one discern between the two?  Only relationships of trust provide space for people to allow their true selves to flourish.  This is the goal of all healthy relationships.

It is a strange paradox (another subject Palmer haswritten a book on) that for communities (workplaces, congregations, institutions, etc.) to be healthy they require individuals who act out of their true selves, the image of God inside of them; yet at the same time individuals seeking to act out of their true selves require communities that operate in a spirit of trust and support.  One cannot exist without the other.  For a church to be healthy, it requires spiritually healthy individuals; and for individuals to be spiritually healthy they require spiritually healthy communities of faith.  Both are necessary.

When Jesus said, “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’be ‘no’” he was inviting us to step out of our divided lives.  Making the same point, the writer of the Letter of James says, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”  The way out of our divided lives—ways of living that Jesus and the early church condemn--requires individual spiritual work and the work of spiritual communities. 

I have no idea what the future of churches in America will look like, but I unreservedly believe that communities of faith that create what Palmer calls “circles of trust”--spaces where individuals can be in touch once more with their true selves rather than the facades they have taken on--will always remain necessary.  Churches who make this kind of work their priority will flourish and those who focus on other things will die.  They will die, because they are more concerned with external and superfluous things that contribute to rather than lead us away from divided lives.  Just as divided individuals lead lives that cannot be described as really alive, so also divided churches are likewise not really alive.  One needs only to look at the astounding number of dying congregations and the number of church buildings now on the market for sale to see what happens to churches who live acting contrary to their true purpose for being in the first place.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Our Divided Lives

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,

but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.
--Proverbs 10:9 NIV

This week in my e-mails I will be reflecting on the book A Hidden Wholeness: TheJourney Toward an Undivided Life by Parker Palmer.  Palmer is one of the authors who has guided my own faith journey, and I often recommend his writings to people questioning the direction of their lives.  In this book, he describes the costs of compartmentalizing our innermost identities and beliefs away from the outward actions and false identities we present to others.

In A Hidden Wholeness, he writes,

Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other.  In the process we become separated from our own souls.  We end up living divided lives so far removed from truth we hold within that we cannot know the integrity that comes from being what you are.

When our lives become divided, our inner self and real convictions separate from our outer selves and actions, we pay a price and so do those around us.

Palmer provides examples of living the divided life:

• We refuse to invest ourselves in our work, diminishing its quality and distancing ourselves from those it is meant to serve
• We make our living at jobs that violate our basic values, even when survival does not absolutely demand it
• We remain in settings or relationships that steadily kill our spirits
• We harbor secrets to achieve personal gain at the expense of other people
• We hide our beliefs from those who disagree with us to avoid conflict, challenge, and change.
• We conceal our true identities for fear of being criticized, shunned or attacked.

He describes how these examples come from something deeper than a lack of ethics.  In today’s culture, ethics can become merely an external code of conduct, a “moral exoskeleton” that we can slip off whenever it suits us.  Inner integrity is necessary to join our actions to our deepest selves.

Palmer wrote A Hidden Wholeness, about fifteen years ago when the news headlines still featured corporate scandals like Worldcom and Enron, the financial crisis was only beginning to reveal the extent immoral lending practices by the nation’s largest banks would have on the economy, and the clergy sexual abuse scandal was revealed with its horrific consequences for thousands of children.  In our present time, things have not become any better.  In a world of “alternative facts” where blatant deception is presented as “truth,” our culture demonstrates the consequences of people living divided lives.

Palmer uses the image of a blizzard to describe the confusing times we find ourselves in. 

The was a time when farmers on the Great Plains, at the first sign of a blizzard, would run a rope from the back door out to the barn.  They all knew stories of people who had wandered off and been frozen to death, having lost sight of home in a whiteout while still in their own backyards.

The blizzard of our culture “swirls with economic injustice, ecological ruin, physical and spiritual violence.”  The confusion of our times may leave us thinking there is no hope for things like “truth and justice, love and forgiveness” to guide our lives.  Yet, Palmer declares we remain in “the soul’s backyard, with chance after chance to regain our bearings.”  The guide rope in our “blizzards” comes in the form of “trustworthy relationships, tenacious communities of support.”  Such relationships should happen in a faith community (sadly the often do not), but also come in support groups, faithful work colleagues and healthy friendships and families.

Most of all, our ultimate guide rope comes from the One who created us and in whose image we are made.  God knows our true selves, because God knows us best of all.  The God made manifest in Jesus Christ does not stand apart from us as a punishing judge but comes near to us offering grace upon grace to guide us back to who we were created to be.  As humans, we may always struggle to discover the wholeness God offers us, choosing to live with our actions divorced from our deepest truths, but God remains with us along the way assuring us we can discover ways of being that cause less pain to ourselves and others, new ways of peace and joy.

Grace and Peace,
Chase