Random Links

Well, not so much random as diverse.  Just a few interesting things I've come across recently.

1. If it happened there - how the media might report the US government shutdown if it were happening in another country.  We Americans could only benefit from occasionally engaging in the academic exercise of judging ourselves by the same standards that we judge other countries.

2. 19 everyday situations that are impossibly difficult for the socially awkward.  I can identify with almost all of these, and think Chandler Bing's quote at the end sums it up perfectly.

3. Every LGBT person could use a brother like this.

4. Another case to be made that Romans 1:26-27 works best as a clobber passage when its context is ignored.

5. Finally, a bit of geekery: size comparisons for a whole slew of ships from various science fiction properties.

Myths of the Not As Good Kind

Twelve Myths Too Many Christians Believe, nicely deconstructed here:
Part 1
Part 2

It wasn't that long ago that I believed all of them...

Unfundamentalism

Lately I've been coming across a lot of good reading material at Unfundamentalist Christians (which I keep up with through their Facebook page.  Here are a few of those items of interest:

1. A post with a few thoughts on the doctrine of "Biblical" Inerrancy.  A watershed moment in my own journey was coming to the realization that this doctrine was neither biblical nor helpful.

2. This is the second time I've come across the blog Sacred Tension.  This post on the tragically high cost of forcing celibacy on gay people nails the problem on the head, through individual stories that deserve to be given a fair hearing by those who make that demand.  One of these days I hope to get around to writing about the compartmentalization I did in (and prior to) my ex-gay days and the ways that continues to impact my own life.

3. Finally, a quote:

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error…

- Benjamin Franklin, Speech before the Constitutional Convention, Sept. 17, 1787, recorded by James Madison

Misdirected

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless.  These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual."  But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story.  Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words.  The degree of their indignation is astonishing.  Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside,  They should direct their anger at themselves.  For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out.  The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.  Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.

-Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Heart and Mind

Recently some discussions have cropped up related to a book from the 1990s, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. I vaguely recall it causing a stir in the evangelical circles that constituted my entire world in the mid-90s, though I never read the book myself. But its message is still relevant today - perhaps even moreso as the rifts within the evangelical church begin to widen and the religious right wanes in influence.

The ever-thoughtful Rachel Held Evans offered a slightly different perspective, pointing out the state of the evangelical heart. Although the circles I ran in allowed for a degree of soul-searching over difficult issues like the advocacy of genocide in the Old Testament, there is still a point where a literalist, inerrantist approach to the Bible inevitably leads to some degree of cognitive dissonance. A paradox develops in which the God of love that Jesus and the prophets revealed is also a God of unspeakable destruction - a paradox that leads not to wonderment and deeper spiritual understanding but to fear and a dehumanizing of those seen as deserving of God's wrath.  Obviously the Canaanites deserved to be exterminated, the literalist concludes, so why should we worry about it?

Because that cognitive dissonance lies at the root of Evans' dilemma, however, I cannot give greater weight to her concern than I can to the Deeper Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, as Peter Enns labels it.  What we believe intellectually doesn't always match up with how we treat others, but the former cannot help but influence the latter. And while genuinely compassionate people who hold to a literalist, inerrantist view of the Bible do exist, they seem to do so in spite of their beliefs.

I have many positive memories of my years at a Christian college; while academic freedom was limited in many ways, it is still the place where I first began to learn how to think for myself.  Compared to the fundamentalist churches I'd grown up in, it was positively liberating.

At the end of the day, though, the situation at my alma mater was (and is) as Enns says; academic inquiry and independent thought are only tolerated as long as one reaches the "correct" conclusions with them. Another Christian institution I'm familiar with advertises that it encourages freedom to think "within the limits of Scripture." To an evangelical that sounds very generous; students and faculty are allowed to disagree on many theological points where more conservative schools and churches might try to squash any dissent. When scrutinized, however, that motto is reminiscent of the constitution of the former Soviet Union, which made sweeping statements about various human rights that were officially recognized - only to render those protections meaningless by declaring that exercise of those rights "must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state," while leaving the government free rein to determine what constituted its interests.

Freedom of speech, as long as you say the right things.

(The above motto also fails to genuinely engage with the fact that "Scripture" is not nearly as clear-cut as conservative Christians so casually assume it to be, but that's a separate discussion.)

Even so, there are genuine intellectuals within the evangelical realm. One won't find them in the theology department (where free thinkers have a shorter lifespan than a piñata at a little leaguer's birthday party - and experience roughly the same fate), and even in other fields they don't always survive, but they do exist. It was my college history professor who first taught me that a real research paper interacts with multiple viewpoints and gives them a fair hearing, rather than just quoting sources that agree with one's conclusions and shooting down everything else. Granted, that professor was never completely happy at my alma mater and ended up leaving a few years later, but he was (at least when I knew him) a bona fide evangelical as well as a genuine scholar.

Another such scholar is Warren Throckmorton, whose commitment to pursuing the truth no matter where it leads has placed him in opposition to the many evangelicals who still believe that sexual orientation can be changed through prayer and/or therapy. He has added his own contribution to the above discussion.

Is there hope for reform within the evangelical church? It doesn't appear very hopeful; as Enns points out, "Evangelicalism is not fundamentally an intellectual organism but an apologetic one." Scratch the surface of nearly any evangelical organization engaged in any sort of research or scientific pursuit and that fact quickly becomes apparent.

But change is possible; the writers I've cited are all proof that some who identify with evangelicalism hope for its transformation into a more open-minded (and open-hearted) movement.  One can only pray that their voices won't be ignored.

Mythos

Earlier this year I finally saw the 1999 film Trekkies for the first time.  Despite being a lifelong Star Trek fan I'd never made an effort to see this documentary, in part because I was already familiar with the lengths that some diehard fans go to, and the laughter (not always kind) that accompanies their displays of devotion to all things Trek.

And Trekkies does introduce viewers to a number of fans whose lives revolve around Star Trek to an extreme.  Despite a handful of cringeworthy moments, however, the documentary also reminded me why Star Trek has such a devoted fan base (myself included, even if I've never worn a Starfleet uniform in my everyday life or learned to speak Klingon) in the first place.  Its positive vision of a future in which mankind has overcome the problems that threaten our present existence - racism, poverty, war, pollution, etc. - and joined with alien races to form a federation based on our highest ideals, has inspired hope in many who saw little reason for hope in the present-day world around them.

In addition to that reminder, the subjects of Trekkies point us toward an aspect of our humanity that sometimes gets forgotten in our age of science and rationalism: the power of myth.  For too long our modern world has conflated myth with fiction and thereby reduced it to mere entertainment.  Myth may not be intended to live up to the factual standards of literal history, but "real" or not it connects us with the deeper truths of human existence that aren't so easily quantified in textbooks and instruction manuals.

For some, Star Trek really is nothing more than entertainment.  But for others, it's the mythology that informs their lives and shapes the lens through which they interpret the world around them.  Religious or not, we humans long to be part of a greater story.  On an intuitive level the modern church has never completely forgotten that; even the most ardent literalists still teach their children the stories of Moses, David, Joseph, Esther and the other great heroes of the Bible.

Where we get tripped up is in the dichotomy that modern society has created between fact and fiction.  It's a necessary distinction when one is dealing with matters of science, but when we apply it to all realms of life we lose something vital.  A friend of mine who attended an evangelical seminary once took a class on the writings of CS Lewis that was taught by a theology professor who had never read the Chronicles of Narnia because he adamantly refused to read fiction.  Not coincidentally, this professor wasn't known for being a very interesting person when he wasn't standing behind a podium.  And no doubt he finds it exasperating that so many children love Aslan more than they love the God they hear about in church on Sundays.

Christian apologetics is still a highly popular pursuit in evangelical circles.  If we can just prove the Bible is literally true, the world will have no choice but to fall in line behind us - or so advocates of apologetics seem to believe.  All we have to do is win the argument once and for all, and anyone who still dissents will be exposed as a fraud.  Unfortunately, the stories and poems that encounter us through so much of the Bible don't readily lend themselves to this approach.

That's not to say that logic and reason have no place in theological discussions, simply that their use has been misdirected.  At the end of the day, which has the greater influence on our spiritual lives - debates over the age and authorship of the book of Daniel, or the stories of courage and wisdom that become part of our own stories as we read it?

Perhaps the church would be a more Christ-like place if we worried less about being right about everything.  As Rob Bell puts it, "a good story has a powerful way of rescuing us from abstract theological discussions that can tie us up in knots for years."  Rediscovering the Bible as Divine myth rather than as a book of facts and rules may seem an invitation to anarchy, given how a story can mean something different to every person who hears it.

Some may even think it reduces the Christian faith to the level of a fairy tale if we cannot state with certainty that every story in the Bible is historically accurate.  But perhaps the open-endedness of myth is the only way mankind can connect with the Infinite.  And perhaps that same open-endedness will serve to weed out those whose quest for certainty and rules is less about that connection than it is about attempting to control God.

And maybe the Bible would once again inspire Christians as powerfully as Star Trek inspires Trekkies.

Miscellany

A few random things that have caught my attention lately...

1. First, a belated nod to this post that nicely sums up why Jon Stewart has become my favorite TV personality.  If only there were more journalists ("serious" or otherwise) like him.

2. Ten Cliches Christians Should Never Use.  Seriously.  Some of these made me cringe even when I was a card-carrying conservative evangelical.

3. Rachel Evans reviews a book I really need to read.  Learning how to read the Bible on its own terms instead of literally has only made me love it more, so I'm happy to see more Christians waking up to the folly of treating it like a modern history book and instruction manual.

4. Finally, this picture, which could also be the motto of the religious right...

Food For Thought

The history of theology (Christian or otherwise) is the history of people desperately trying to fit the way things actually are into the way their holy books say they should be.  (Think of the billions of words written in tens of thousands of books on religion "explaining" pain and suffering in the light of God's purported goodness.)  So some people do what Mom [Edith Schaeffer] did: spend a lot of time making excuses for The-God-Of-The-Bible.  Others contrive their theology to make it seem more enlightened than it is: Roman Catholic medieval dogma is rechristened as "Natural Law," Creationism is rebaptized as "Intelligent Design," Islam calls the oppression of women the "protection of women," and so forth.

There is another choice: To admit that the best of any religious tradition depends on the choices its adherents make on how to live despite what their holy books "say," not because of them.  "But where would that leave me?" my former self would have asked.  "I'd be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty."  Yes, and perhaps that's the only honest place to be.  Another name for uncertainty is humility.  No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, "I could be wrong."

-Frank Schaeffer, Sex, Mom & God

At the very least, those of us who believe that the Bible is something more than just another book need to be willing to admit that we (and every other Christian who has ever lived) pick and choose which parts of the Bible to emphasize and which to downplay (or even ignore) when formulating our theology.  And that, therefore, we could be wrong about a great many things even if we're right about the Bible's unique significance.

Apocalypse

This week I came across news of a new book being published that takes a scholarly look at the Book of Revelation. It occurred to me that, for all the time I once spent studying Revelation, I actually know very little about the book's history and context, and even less about the apocalyptic genre that was popular at the time it was written.

Growing up I was quite fascinated by Revelation, which I had been taught was a literal prophecy of the violent end of the world that could begin at any time. I read dozens of articles and books and heard numerous sermons speculating on the meaning of every symbol in its verses and how they might match up with current events and people. Was the Antichrist a current politician? Was the European Common Market the beast with ten horns? Was the United States the great harlot? The conjectures were endless.

By my college years I'd heard enough false predictions about Christ's return ("88 Reason Christ Will Return in '88" was far from the first - or last) to dampen my enthusiasm for the subject. The final nail in the coffin was coming across a book in the university library's annual book sale, written in the late 1930s, that predicted that Mussolini was the Antichrist. By the time the first Left Behind book was published a couple years later, I was already done with the whole sideshow.

At that time in my life I still believed there would be a literal Tribulation (whether the Rapture happened at the beginning or end) and a literal Antichrist; I'd merely come to realize that God didn't mean for us to spend so much time and energy trying to pinpoint when and how it was all going to happen. Funny how so many Biblical literalists over the years have forgotten that Jesus himself said nobody would know when he was returning. Actually, it's more sad than funny.

Over the years since college, I've gradually come to see how a literal interpretation of Revelation has encouraged (or at least highlighted) so many of the worst traits that are commonly associated with American evangelicalism:

-A heavy focus on the next life (which we may be whisked away to at any moment) that leaves us disinclined - and even unable - to truly engage in this one.
-An "us versus them" mentality, in which "them" is everyone fated to take the Mark of the Beast.
-An arrogant attitude toward everyone in the "them" category.
-A view of Jesus as a macho, violent warrior with no qualms about killing anyone who doesn't believe the right things about him.
-An inclination to look for (and find) persecution around every corner.
-A lack of concern for making this world a better place, since we could be saying goodbye to it at any moment.
-A tendency to caricaturize every political opponent as a potential Antichrist.
-An all-absorbing fascination with scouring every world event for signs of the end times.
-A belief that our support for Israel requires absolute and unquestioned support for every action it takes even if it leads to endless preemptive war against the entire Muslim world.
-A mandate to proselytize aggressively in a manipulative, fear-based manner.
-A fixation on sin avoidance.
-A propensity to spend millions of dollars on mediocre books and fourth-rate movies and then praise them for their "message."

Not that Revelation itself (or John of Patmos) is to blame for the many ways in which our misinterpretations of its rich imagery have transformed the faith of many into a tragic parody of the message of Christ found in the Gospels. But in that same vein, perhaps Revelation does us a favor (even before we mine its depths for the riches we have overlooked for so long) by forcing us to confront the folly of interpreting the Bible in an overly literal manner rather than letting it speak to us on its own terms.

Pendulum

On a few occasions I've come across comments by writers musing over the fact that the Christian church has a tendency to swing back and forth between liberalism and conservatism, permissivism and legalism, never finding a middle ground that can satisfy both. It's a dilemma I've pondered myself more than once. Theology is neither as static nor as consistently progressive as most would like it to be.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of this in modern times is the rise of American fundamentalism. The term 'fundamentalist' was originally coined in the early 20th century by those who wanted to reassert a relatively simple list of doctrines they considered to be fundamentals of the Christian faith, in response to the theological liberalism that had swept most of the mainline denominations in the late 19th century. It was a conservative movement, but a fairly straightforward call for doctrinal reform at the start.

By the 1920s, however, the fundamentalist movement had been taken over by the extreme legalists we now associate with the term. Fundamentalists became reactionaries who vocally condemned science as well as nearly every aspect of American society, advocating cultural isolationism and rigid codes of conduct. Evangelicals have since tried to extricate themselves from this portion of their history, with varying degrees of success. At present, the evangelical movement appears to be veering toward open schism between those that have thoroughly repudiated fundamentalism and those that have merely sanded down its rougher edges.

Even within the last half a century numerous movements have risen (and in some cases run their course and faded away again) within the Christian church, each one reacting to whatever trends preceded it. And so it's gone throughout church history, which is rife with schisms, heretic hunts, heated debates and even literal wars. No matter how reasonable the cause, we never seem to find that elusive center.

But what if in all of that we've missed the point? What if the real problem isn't heresy, but our driving need to be right? Don't get me wrong - at the end of the day we have to be able to reach conclusions on at least some matters, or else we'd be left with nothing but chaos and paralysis. But when the subject at hand is the Creator of everything, a being who exists beyond time and space and above dimensions we can only abstractly apprehend in complex mathematical models, how could it be anything other than the ultimate in hubris to claim that we could ever have such a One all figured out?

Perhaps the center eludes us, because in infinity there is no center. If we are all created in the image of God, perhaps every one of us is needed so that we can add our own unique reflection to the larger picture we're trying to create (and even then, it would be a picture that told only part of a far greater story). Acknowledging that doesn't have to mean that we think all forms of religious expression are equally valid; one need look no further than Fred Phelps or Osama Bin Laden to see the limits of such an absolute relativism.

Taking the humble stance that we need to learn from those outside of our own belief system may seem like a sellout - and it does require that we surrender our right to be right. But for those who are truly confident in their beliefs, it costs nothing of real value to admit the limits of one's own knowledge by humbly listening to other perspectives. It costs very little, but the potential rewards are vast.

The real danger lies in insisting that we have all the right answers, and need no further input. By doing so we devalue others who bear God's image by dismissing everything they have learned and experienced that we don't personally agree with, and by placing greater value on ideas and dogma than we do on people.

For those of us who believe that the Bible was in some manner inspired by the Infinite that we most commonly nickname God, the challenge is to rediscover that even a book so inspired is still finite and not to be conflated with the God it points to. By using the Bible as our starting point for learning more about God - as the foundation for that building rather than the entire structure - we open ourselves to discovering the wonders of a universe that's far larger than we dared imagine it could ever be.

Links

It's been a busy week in the blogosphere - not here, perhaps, but elsewhere. Here are a few pieces that resonated with me...

1. Rachel Held Evans slides down the slippery slope, and discovers a far different destination than the one she'd been told she was headed toward.

2. Speaking of different destinations, a former Exodus leader finds change and freedom - just not the change and freedom Exodus likes to proclaim.

3. Tired of people who use the world "biblical" to shut down debate over their agendas? So am I, and so is this guy. (Hat tip to Craig)

4. Finally, if this post describes your evangelism style, please reconsider...

Fullness

A much-cited text in the New Testament has frequently been misinterpreted in a pernicious way. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus is reported as saying: "You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect." The passage is sometimes interpreted as demanding a kind of moral perfection that is impossible for humans to achieve. Gays and lesbians are particularly susceptible to being caught up in the pursuit of an unobtainable perfection as a way of compensating for their difference.

But the Greek word used in the original text, teleios, does not imply moral perfection. The term, as used by Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, derives from biology and describes an organism that has come to its full potential; for example, an oak tree that has reached maturity is the teleios of an acorn.

What we are being told then, is that we must become what God intended us to be. We must become self-realized, as God is. Paul uses the same word when he exhorts us to come to the same fullness of mature humanity which was to be found in Jesus. The healthy implication of this text for gay people is that God wants them to become precisely what they are: healthy, mature lesbian women and gay men.

-John J. McNeill, Taking a Chance on God

Links

Apologies for my longer-than-expected absence from the blogosphere. Between the job search and my recent trip (to attend GenCon, thanks in part to the generosity of a good friend) I haven't been feeling particularly inspired lately. So here are a few links to items that may be of interest...

1. It's nice to see that more evangelicals are beginning to challenge the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis. In my experience, the Bible only truly begins to come alive when you free it from the demand that it function as an encyclopedia and rulebook.

2. A friend pointed me to this story, which resonates with my own experience. From his boyhood crush on C. Thomas Howell to his concern that he may be incapable of a romantic relationship at this point in his life, I can relate.

3. Speaking of stories, there's still a little time to submit yours to John Shore for his upcoming book project on gay Christians. I've sent mine in - which is part of the reason I haven't had as much to say here in recent weeks.

4. Finally, a dissenting opinion on the latest book in George Martin's Game of Thrones series. I still plan to read the book for myself, but it's actually a little reassuring to know I'm not the only fantasy reader who isn't completely enamored with the series. It's a great and groundbreaking epic in many ways, but even the best books have their flaws.

Imagery

"I can never know beforehand how God's image should appear in others. That image always manifests a completely new and unique form that come solely from God's free and sovereign creation. To me the sight may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every man in the likeness of His Son, the Crucified. After all, even that image certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What Matters Most

If I'm to pass some sort of exam on what it "means to be a Christian," theology and belief aren't relevant to the test. What is relevant is what Genie and my children can tell you about what I'm like to live with, and whether my years spent on a sacramental path have made me less of a self-centered idiot. That is what faith in God is about, just as that is what being a moral atheist is about.

-Frank Schaeffer, Patience With God (page 44)

Put another way:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3)

Upside Down

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." - Isaiah 55:9

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." - 1 Cor. 1:25

"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools." - Romans 1:22

In these and many other passages, the biblical authors remind us of the limits of our own intellects and of our need for God in all things. Although these verses often use nonbelievers as object lessons, it would be a dire mistake for Christians to view them as cause to look down on those who don't share our beliefs (as Romans 2:1 vividly reminds us). If nothing else, the countless disputes that have occurred over the millennia over every conceivable point of doctrine should remind us how prone we still are toward error and short-sightedness.

How sad is it, then, when we conscript verses meant to call us to humility into the service of our pride by using them as weapons to silence those who disagree with us. How tragic the irony, when reminders of our own fallibilty are used instead to bolster our faith in the infallibility of our doctrinal positions. Instead of engaging in meaningful conversation with those who disagree with us and humbly considering evidence that may contradict our interpretations of God's will, we close our ears to all of those voices, attributing anything we don't want to hear to the machinations of the devil.

At the same time we demand submission from everyone around us, and cry "persecution!" when they refuse. Our self-inflicted isolation further reinforces our belief in the absolute rightness of our own dogmas, and distracts us from noticing our hearts growing cold as our own certainty replaces God as the focus of our devotion. In time we become the very nonbelievers we think we look down upon, all the while believing ourselves to be wise.

Weekend Reading

Fortunately other bloggers are feeling more prolific than I am at the moment. Here are a few items of interest that are well worth the effort.

1. Wendy Gritter on creating space within the church for disagreeing over whether God blesses same-sex unions. Part 1 can be found here.

I've long wondered whether a day could come when the church matured to the point of allowing this issue to be a matter of personal (or at least congregational) conscience rather than one that divides. It still seems like a pipe dream, but seeing others come along to champion the cause of unity gives me hope.

2. Rob Tisinai has begun responding in depth to the latest arguments against same-sex marriage. Part 1 is here. His explanation of rationalism vs. empiricism in Part 2 is particularly useful; without understanding the lines of reasoning employed by the former approach, one can never understand fundamentalist thought.

3. On a different note, this is a beautiful story. And it's an outcome that I suspect is considerably less rare than ex-gay advocates would like it to be...

Happy New Year

"My Uncle Kenny made me read an author named Wendell Berry. Here's what he says: 'The significance - and ultimately the quality - of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.' For years I thought of the Bible not as a story but as a black-and-white photograph, something you could use in a court of law to prove that our doctrines and propositions were rational and true. Talk about trivializing and holding back the beauty of the Bible!

Now I see the Story more like a painting filled with glory, poetry, and even blurry lines. Paintings are trickier than photos. They're open to a wide variety of interpretation, depending on who's looking at them and the situations those viewers live in. Seeing the Bible this way could lead to things getting messy from time to time - but the Word is living, not static. Our job is to invite people to inhabit our story, to be part of what God's doing in history. And we don't need to feel constant pressure to defend it against its critics. Truth doesn't need defending. It is its own witness."

-Chase Falson in Chasing Francis, by Ian Morgan Cron

Here's to another year in the great Story that we find ourselves a part of.

Maturity

[I]f we were studying the Bible together over a period of time, we could trace the maturation process among biblical writers regarding God's character. In some passages, God appears violent, retaliatory, given to favoritism, and careless of human life. But over time, the image of God that predominates is gentle rather than cruel, compassionate rather than violent, fair to all rather than biased toward some, forgiving rather than retaliatory. In this more mature view, God is not capricious, bloodthirsty, hateful, or prone to fits of vengeful rage. Rather, God loves justice, kindness, reconciliation, and pace; God's grace gets the final word.

People who are part of what is often called fundamentalism today, whether Christians, Muslims, or Jews, often find it difficult to acknowledge this kind of progression in understanding across the centuries. If anything, they feel obliged to defend and give priority to the early, raw, more primal, less-tested and -developed views of God, minimizing or marginalizing what I am calling the more mature and nuanced understandings.

So the God of the fundamentalists is a competitive warrior - always jealous of rivals and determined to drive them into defeat and disgrace. And the God of the fundamentalists is superficially exacting - demanding technical perfection in regard to ceremonial and legal matters while minimizing deeper concerns about social justice - especially where outsiders and outcasts are concerned. Similarly, the fundamentalist God is exclusive, faithfully loving one in-group and rejecting - perhaps even hating - all others.

The fundamentalist God is also deterministic - controlling rather than interacting, a mover of events but never moved by them. And finally, though the fundamentalist God may be patient for a while, he (fundamentalist versions of God tend to be very male) is ultimately violent, eventually destined to explode with unquenchable rage, condemnation, punishment, torture, and vengeance if you push him too far.

-Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pages 101-102

The fundamentalist God is also a being that can ultimately only be feared, not loved. Under such a deity every activity of the Christian life - worship, evangelism, charity, etc. - is an act of appeasement, driven by the need to escape unspeakable punishment (or to rescue others from that doom). Even the most conservative Christian would never verbalize it in that way, but when Hell is defined as an eternal state and salvation is viewed as the "fire insurance" that must be obtained to avoid it, declaring one's love for God becomes first and foremost an act of survival and only secondarily one of devotion.

In most evangelical churches the reality lies somewhere in between; the New Testament is given enough weight that God's love can sometimes be understood. But the Old Testament's God of wrath still lurks just beneath the surface, unwilling (or unable) to show any mercy to anyone who doesn't offer verbal assent to the correct creed. The perceived need for an inerrant Bible precludes the possibility that its early books might be the product of a more primitive understanding of God, rather than a timeless portrait to be placed on an equal plane with the example set by Christ.

If perfect love casts out fear, then perhaps any doctrines that lead to fear need to be reconsidered. Such growth in our theology need not suggest that God has changed, merely that our understanding of God has matured.

Links

A few links worth sharing:

1. Philip Yancey visits a fully affirming church, and comments on the issue of homosexuality with humility and grace.

2. A lengthy but interesting examination of the doctrine of hell and its origins.

3. You've probably seen it already, but just in case you haven't: Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns' moving contribution to the "It Gets Better" series.

4. On a lighter note: via CrackerLilo, an entry for the "what were they smoking?" category: the 20 Most Hilarious Company Names on Earth.