A Time to Laugh

The One About the Rules (Part 3 of 4)

We make rules. We bend rules. Humanly speaking, there’s really no difference between ours and theirs except power. I know I sound like Nietzsche and Foucault. But those guys were right really. Without God, it’s all about power.

Recently I found a couple of ugly and public things said about me. Honestly, it hurt. I probably shouldn’t let it, but it did. In both cases, the commenters were imposing their rules of propriety on me. They were judge, jury, and executioner. In passing their judgment, they put me at arms length to improve their own standing with little empathy for me and mine.

And in my saying all that, I’m trying to understand how they came to those conclusions and to remember how often I do the same.

I’ve perceived a lot of rules lately. I’ve seen the irritation from people who were frustrated by my dear four-and-a-half-year-old when he dresses as Link and wears all his weapons at once. I’ve felt the disgust when I’ve taken my preschoolers for a walk where someone has deemed I shouldn’t. I’ve heard people complain about how ill-tempered those other children are. I’ve read Mommy bloggers who grouse about those horrible mothers who cut off the crusts from their PB&J sandwiches.

Even now, I’m sure some of you are constructing reasons I shouldn’t have a clip from Friends on my blog. “Dear me! Can you believe that? Doesn’t she know that that’s an anti-Christian show and that she’s promoting unholy living by posting it on her blog? ‘I will set no wicked thing before my eyes!’ I would never do that!”

Sigh. . . . We can so easily see the fleck of mascara on someone else’s face, but those rivers of black eye liner that are streaked down our cheeks? We’re oblivious to those. And I do the same thing.

Grant often repeats back to me, “S/he’s not evil, just mistaken.” When he does that, he’s reminding me of my own take on a Burkean principle and what I believe is a Christian ethic. He’s right — to nudge me and to bring me outside of myself. To steer me away from the fundamental attribution error. We all need that kind of help. That’s why God gave us each other because when one of us stumbles, we need our friends there to help us up.

Sanctification is a team sport after all.

The Fundamental(ist) Attribution Error (Part 2 of 4)

So a toddler’s-lifetime-ago, my parents gave us my old Fisher Price Little People toys. I played with these things for weeks at a time. I later graduated to Barbies, of course, and then the Sims. It’s especially hilarious to turn off the “free-will” setting on The Sims.

Now, let me tell you about my toy-friends. My Raggedy Ann met her alopeciac fate when she went crossways with the washing machine. My Barbies had similar trouble. Well, first of all, they weren’t actually Barbies per se. They were Barbie’s younger groupies, Francie and Skipper (all from Malibu). My mother believed that these models were more realistically shaped (I do agree with her there!). Now, Francie was known in my little world as “Francie the Handicapped Barbie.” Through some unfortunate accident that none of us remember, Francie lost an arm. Now, the other Barbies still loved her — Dorothy Hamill (whose Bicentennial Olympic duds were soooo cool), Quick Curl Skipper (whose hair I genuinely coveted), Growing Up Skipper (whose quick-change gifts were intriguing and quite disturbing), Ballerina (whose sparkly head gear wouldn’t. come. off!), Supersize (whose gigantic proportions frightened all humanoids — both petroleum- and carbon-based. Clearly my dear mother had given up her goals of realistic feminine models by 1978). You see, I had my own little rules I enforced in my created world of little people, and that included a sort of plastic kindness to the armless and balding.

I’m sure you played with your people similarly. You had rules — rules that made perfect sense to you. No, the Little People lady in blue is not the postal carrier. She’s the police woman!! Can’t you tell?? The African-American man is the dentist, not the barber. We’re trying to quash sexual and racial stereotypes in this town!! No, the bed in the castle doesn’t go there. The throne goes there. Can’t you see that you’re blocking the passage to the trap door if you put it there? No, no, no, Francie can’t wear that dress! It only embarrasses her because it highlights her handicap!!

So as Isaac and I sit down to play with my vintage Little People or with his cars or pirates or “red coats and blue coats,” the same thing happens. I sit there thinking, “NO! The teacher’s desk has to go here. It’s the only place it fits!” While Isaac says, “Mommy, you can’t park the green car here. It always goes here.” “Always?” I think. “ALWAYS?? Are you kidding me? I was playing with these toys before you were even born. I certainly know where everything goes!!”

Well, I don’t say that. I am 35 years older than he, so I can refrain.

But I remember the War card game we had played just a few hours before. He negotiates over seemingly arbitrary but actually objective rules while rigidly enforcing his own. Well, pardon me. . . . We negotiate over seemingly arbitrary but actually objective rules while rigidly enforcing our own. I do it as much as he does. I just have more rules and more “weight.” I’m the Supersize Barbie to his Little Person Mail Carrier. Life’s taught me subtlety not righteousness, and it’s given me a few-more-than-I-need extra pounds to enforce it.

We’re both playing, then, in our Mythic-Literal developmental stage. Isaac’s jumping ahead briefly, and I’m regressing. In Stages of Faith, James W. Fowler describes this usually school-age developmental stage as follows:

Stage 2 Mythic-Literal faith is the stage in which the person begins to take on for him- or herself the stories, beliefs, and observances that symbolize belonging to his or her community. Beliefs are appropriated with literal interpretations, as are moral rules and attitudes. Symbols are taken as one-dimensional and literal in meaning. In this stage the rise of concrete operations leads to the curbing and ordering of the previous stage’s imaginative composing of the world. . . . The limitations and literalness and an excessive reliance upon reciprocity as a principle for constructing an ultimate environment can result in either an overcontrolling, stilted perfectionism or “works righteousness” or in their opposite, an abasing sense of badness embraced because of mistreatment, neglect, or the apparent disfavor of significant others (149-50).

A tad revealing, eh? Wiki puts it this way:

In psychology, hypocritical behavior is closely related to the fundamental attribution error: individuals are more likely to explain their own actions by their environment, yet they attribute the actions of others to ‘innate characteristics’, thus leading towards judging others while justifying ones’ own actions.

Also, some people genuinely fail to recognize that they have character faults which they condemn in others. This is called psychological projection. This is self-deception rather than deliberate deception of other people. In other words, “psychological hypocrisy” is usually interpreted by psychological theorists to be an unconscious defense mechanism rather than a conscious act of deception, as in the more classic connotation of hypocrisy. People understand vices which they are struggling to overcome or have overcome in the past. Efforts to get other people to overcome such vices may be sincere. There may be an element of hypocrisy as well if the actors do not readily admit to themselves or to others how far they are or have been subject to these vices.

In other words, each of us earnestly believes that our own rules are good and required and even biblical (or based on biblical principle). Others’ rules are arcane, irrelevant, illogical, juvenile, or just plain stupid. And we follow our own rules just perfectly while all those other scofflaws are dooming themselves to perdition. Sure, people call us hypocrites, but they just don’t know the Rules like we do! Tsk-tsk. Well, we all know that we will be rewarded, and they will be punished.

Right?

The Art of War (Part 1 of 4)

But the idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men.

Augustine’s Confessions

I loved board games and card games as a kid, and I still do. I’m always willing to play Settlers or Dominoes or Rage (an acceptable-to-Baptists version of the old stand-by face card game “Oh Hell.” I didn’t name it, remember!). My older brother wasn’t always available to play games with me when I really started to understand them, but we did play more than our share of Battleship and PayDay. My mom was always willing to play Uno or Go to the Head of the Class or Chutes and Ladders, but she couldn’t stomach the Game of Life. “Too realistic!” she claimed. And I quickly found out that playing Clue with the cat just wasn’t going to work.

Isaac has just taken to games. He likes “Goggle,” “Hippos,” and, just recently, War. I think it’s as much the soldiers on the cards as anything. And you know, there are some big lessons there — turn-taking, counting, comparing numeral values, and following the rules.

It’s that last one that trips us up. Isaac, the just newly minted 4.5 year old, rewrites the rules as we play. I lay down a nine and he lays down a four. “Mommy, didn’t you want to trade that one with me first?” “Mommy, but this one has a sword, and I reeeeeally like swords.” I just stare and sigh and then grin and remember, shaking my head more at myself than anything.

I did the same thing. Maybe that’s why the cat was the most willing to play with me because she didn’t care if I took a peek at her next card or traded my Scrabble tray of vowels for some of her consonants.

And Augustine’s reminder plunks me between the eyes every time Isaac revises the game play. It’s not the kids are any different than adults. Adults bend or make up the rules as we go. It’s just kids aren’t as skilled at hiding it.

Life teaches us to be sneaky, not to be good.

Yadah, yadah, yadah

1 Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be— you get a fresh start,
your slate’s wiped clean.

2 Count yourself lucky—
God holds nothing against you
and you’re holding nothing back from him.

3 When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.

4 The pressure never let up;
all the juices of my life dried up.

5 Then I let it all out;
I said, “I’ll make a clean breast of my failures to God.”

Suddenly the pressure was gone—
my guilt dissolved,
my sin disappeared.

6 These things add up. Every one of us needs to pray;
when all hell breaks loose and the dam bursts
we’ll be on high ground, untouched.

7 God’s my island hideaway,
keeps danger far from the shore,
throws garlands of hosannas around my neck.

8 Let me give you some good advice;
I’m looking you in the eye
and giving it to you straight:

9 “Don’t be ornery like a horse or mule
that needs bit and bridle
to stay on track.”

10 God-defiers are always in trouble;
God-affirmers find themselves loved
every time they turn around.

11 Celebrate God.
Sing together—everyone!
All you honest hearts, raise the roof!

Psalm 32

I’m more than a little surprised at how different this Presbyterian thing feels. I mean, I’m not uninformed about American religion — especially among conservative Protestants. At least, so I thought. But now that we’ve attended several PCA churches locally and although their worship “styles” have varied, one thing is consistent and that’s the thing I find most startling.

Each service re-presents, rehearses, and reviews the Gospel. In my previous life, that might mean something heavily evangelistic. And I intimately know many fundamentalist ministries who are overtly trying to be God-centered (code for “Reformed”). All that aside, this Presbyterian thing is more deliberate, more routine, and, it seems to me, more tried-and-true. Dare I call it liturgical?

You often hear so-called non-denominational conservative Protestants scolding their more market-savvy brothers for being too man-centered in their worship. “Worship,” you’ll hear, “is not about you. It’s about God.”

Well, no. It’s not. It’s about both. Presbyterians get that. Sean Michael Lucas — fellow BJU alum and, I’m pretty sure, a former student of mine way, way back when because he looks so familiar — explains it this way:

Our belief [is] that worship is covenantal would mean that in worship there is a two way movement between God and his people. Some people have even suggested that in worship there is a dialogue between God and his church. God is the one who makes the first move toward us be calling us to worship, and we respond by invoking his presence in our midst. And the rest of worship is a movement back and forth between God and his beloved people, a movement in which God meets us in Word and sacrament and we respond to his presence with prayers and praises.

Perhaps you have noticed a certain ebb and flow to many Presbyterian worship services:

• God calls us into his presence by his Word and Spirit.
• We enter God’s holy presence, are convicted of sin, and confess our sin to him.
• God responds by his Word with an assurance of his pardon.
• In prayers and songs, we praise our God for calling us into his presence and forgiving our sins.
• God speaks to us by his Word in the reading and preaching of Scripture, as well as through his visible signs of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
• We respond to God in thanksgiving with praise and offerings.
• God sends us away with his blessing (or benediction).
• We move back into the world for loving service, assured that we are God’s people.

That’s not just the Gospel in five easy-to-remember steps. That’s not just a revival service designed to get ‘em saved. That’s reminding me that the Gospel is for me. That’s rehearsing the Drama of Grace.

Starting with Confession, yadah. Surveying the Old Testament use of the word en masse implies that confessing our sin as sin and confessing our God as Lord are pretty much the same. Like inhaling and exhaling, crescendo and decrescendo. We are helpless and fallen, and God is powerful and good. We have broken the law, and God provides escape. Salvation and adoration. Repentance and praise. It’s all confession. In admitting our iniquity, we privilege God’s greatness. We are depraved and He is gracious. We are human and He is God.

Why won’t we confess? We believers should be the best at this since it most glorifies God. But in refusing to admit our own sin, we’re erecting our own towering, babbling ziggurats. David describes it as gnawing away at our insides, dehydrating our juices, and pulverizing our bones. Nothing sounds more maddening, more Pharisaical, more pagan, and more blasphemous.

We get incensed that Science denies God as Creator while we whitewash our sepulchers. We raise our fists and our voices in anger at politicians for sounding a tad too Marxist in describing our religious impulse, but we act as embittered as any failed revolutionary when it comes to admitting our wrongs. We stand without apology after all, and we think that’s a tribute to God when it’s nothing more than a tribute to ourselves.

Why not confess our sins? What are we afraid of? Making God look good?

Ebenezer — The Document

The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”

Acts 23:11

A sermon from the previous October on Acts continued to ring in my head. It was one of those room-spinning moments. Surely God didn’t want us to leave! I know now that He was holding our hand through the dark tunnel and, at times, yanking us through to the safe side. Just like a toddler who digs in his heels, we didn’t believe leaving would be best. Surely not! But like I learned way back when, God loves us and He carries us through to His best.

The rest of the semester was brutal. We had several painful meetings. It’s all too personal to describe here. I was just glad that it was over come Convocation.

But it wasn’t over at all.

Grant and I were called to a meeting the second week after school let out, this time in the Administration Building’s “holy of holies” with BJU’s first- and second-in-command. Were we scared? You betcha.

The tone of the meeting was very, very cordial. I was asked to take down a blog post on an old, abandoned xanga blog. I agreed and did so immediately following the meeting. Now, I mentioned in this meeting that I had recently edited the post to remove a particular person’s name. I had heard from a former student about a phone call she’d received from that particular person. He explained to her at length how frustrated he was with me. I had a range of emotions at that time — from anger to disgust to hurt to complete confusion to finally sheer pity (to be so obsessed with me!). I had an email all written to him to say that “a little bird told me that you were frustrated by this blog post. I don’t want to add to your busy load. I’ve removed your name. Take care!” But I never sent it. I just edited the post. I figured that it would only fan the flames.

With or without the particular person’s name, the blog post was too controversial to keep up, I was told. They were getting “several” letters about it. To their credit, they advised one letter-writer to go to me personally and discuss his concerns. He went to Grant (not me) and shied away pretty quickly from any actual discussion of the issues. I was now recognizing a recurring pattern of behavior in the culture: avoid controversy, avoid discussion, and avoid women.

The second thing on the agenda was presented as follows: “We still need to resolve this disagreement, so we’d like you to write a statement of your position.”

Grant turned very practical and asked pointed questions in follow-up emails. A statement on our position on what exactly? “Your position on sin.” Sin? Our position on sin?? What’s that mean? What’s that? You quote Romans 3 and maybe a couple of confessions, and you’re done, right? ::shrug::

Grant pressed for further clarification. “Your position on sin in the Christian life.” was the response. Ah. Gotcha. I had been clued in by another friend that those within that Chaferian view of sanctification believe that the standard “historical Protestant” (a euphemism for “Reformed”) position was “perfectionist.” Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. They were obviously trying to be vague enough, it seems, to uh . . . well, give us enough rope to hang ourselves.

What they really wanted, whether they knew it or not (and what we actually presented) was our view of sanctification. So we took a step back and set our sites on writing more of a “big-picture” document.

How would any of you feel if put into that kind of a position? We all know our theology in an “under the fingernails” sort of way: it’s woven into the moments of our lives and lived out in daily practicality. How many of us are ready to present a theological document that will stand up to the scrutiny of trained seminarians? Grant and I had four years of Bible classes under our belt, hardly a comprehensive view of systematic theology. But what I do know about is rhetoric, and I know from my friends trained in both rhetoric and religion that a good hermeneutic in one looks an awful lot like a good hermeneutic in the other.

Since I still had a task to accomplish, I did what any good researcher would do: I collected good sources and started writing. Right at that moment and through His providential care, God sent a complete stranger — or rather a friend I hadn’t met yet — to help. This gentlemen passed along a document that proved to be our chief resource. It was exactly what I was praying we’d find — a conservative, fundamental Baptist source. Anyway, I know that friend is reading, and I just wanted to tell him again how thankful I am for him and his listening to the Spirit’s prompting.

I wrote a rough draft, and then Grant dug in. We went through the usual back-and-forth approach we take with our joint writing projects. Then we had some friends read the document. An M.Div from Westminster. A few BJ Seminary grads. Another theology Ph.D. Other well-informed friends. One said quite concisely: “It’s a good summary of the standard Evangelical view of sanctification.” Good!

So some time in early June, we submitted our position statement on the doctrine of soteriology.

And then we waited.

A Touchstone: Defining Fundamentalism in the 21st Century

Recently Touchstone Magazine asked the following questions about Evangelicalism with the intention of asking other “pundits” from other denoms the same. How would you answer them for your slice of the world? Here’s mine:

• How do you define “Fundamentalist” in a way that distinguishes Fundamentalists from other believing Christians? And has this definition changed over the last several years?

I know the textbook answer. I know that a Fundamentalist believes in the fundamentals of the Faith. Over the years, as I’ve shown Christians in other denominations my fundamentalist creed, I’ve been a little stunned, peeved, and over time tickled at how many of them say, “Oh! Well, I believe that too!” Uh . . . no! You can’t. Those are MINE! . . . As if Statements of Faith are proprietary marbles I bring to the religious playground.

More specifically, I know that a Fundamentalist is a person who believes in the fundamentals of the Faith, but especially privileges separation as the distinguishing doctrine.

I learned all that intuitively in my first 30 years in fundamentalism. And I learned it academically at Indiana University. Since then, I’ve learned a little more.

I now know that a Fundamentalist is a person who believes in the fundamentals of the Faith, but especially privileges separation as the most distinguishing doctrine, and who elevates certain unwritten notions to the level of the fundamentals themselves. These things don’t appear in any creed, but Fundamentalism passionately defends them as Gospel Truth: a pre-trib dispensationalism, an authority fetish, a Keswick/Chaferian soteriology, and a punitive, behavioristic childrearing ethic.

I do believe it’s changed in the last 50 years, but many disagree with me. I sense that fundyism has grown more people-pleasing, and because people can be fickle, it has become more calcified, less able to do the right thing. It’s not independent anymore. I covered this in the expunged chapter of my book. BJU Fundamentalism was always articulated as a beautiful thing that woos the unsaved to Christ. That’s a good thing! But after the Campaign 2000 debacle, things changed. They talked less to those to the outside and more just to themselves.

• Has Fundamentalism matured since the 1950s, and if so in what ways?

No.

I have a friend of a friend who graduated from BJU in the 1950s. He always teases my friend and me that “He went to BJU when it was more liberal than Wheaton!” ;) I have since figured out what he meant by that. Wheaton, especially then, was a haven for pietism — for Keswick theology. Bob Jones Sr. founded BJC to be different from the so-Heavenly-minded-they-are-no-earthly-good “higher life” Christianity expressed in Keswick camps. In Standing Without Apology Dr. Stenholm is quoted as describing the Moody grads similarly — “dowdy,” I think was her term. Within early 20th-century evangelicalism and because of the liberal arts curriculum, BJC was unusual. Jones, Sr. had a common-sense trust in the study of the humanities since the best of humanity reflects the image of God we’re all created in.

Now? The oldest fundamentalist school with the most humane roots talks most like the Keswick/Chaferian theology its founder opposed. It’s not totally a surprise. The Keswick/Chaferianism sells very well because it imitates capitalism’s story. And it’s hard to not bring that sort of commodification into the Christian faith.

The metaphor I used to describe this change is that BJU went from actively wooing their secular Other to continually recasting themselves. Their talk turned narcissistic. It was a kind of Extreme Makeover.

When you talk with the old timers at BJU, you get a clear sense that there were many more personalities back in the day. More quirks and idioscincracies. More conflicts too! But now, for that iteration of Fundamentalism at Bob Jones University, at least, it’s very homogenous. Very artificial and manufactured. In other words, 1958 Fundamentalism is to 2008 Fundamentalism what Jessica Tandy to the Olsen Twins – the older version might have a few more age spots, but she’s the one going to the Oscars (not the eye candy)!

• Has Fundamentalism lost anything in the process of maturing (if it did)?

Since the 1950s, BJU turned into a corporation. Losing the tax exemption is just one piece of that. It is bigger and more corporate than its post-war self.

• Are there any fundamental differences within the Fundamentalist movement today, and do you think they will deepen into permanent divisions, or even have already? How might they be healed?

Usually Fundamentalism is criticized as being unable to “think outside the box” or live “outside the bubble.” Most often people say that it’s obsessed with control. Some accuse the movement of a Pharisaical, works-based righteousness. All of those descriptions are accurate. But I think something more comprehensive is going on that includes all of those criticisms, and I describe it in an earlier series of posts. In sum, Fundamentalism is no different from its less separated sister Evangelicalism. Both have unwittingly and uncritically reified the capitalist story and knitted it to their reading of Scripture. Their bickering between themselves has become nothing more than a cola war — each scrambling for their share of the market.

There’s lots of talk about the “Young Fundamentalists.” And I have nothing but admiration for these (now) under-38 set (I am barely one year their senior). They were my students and I now am honored to call them my friends. They tend to be more optimistic about political involvement, more skeptical of authority, and are trying to articulate a more Reformed soteriology. I wish them the best.

The “Old Fundamentalists” consider their heirs to be lazy upstarts and obnoxious rebels. There’s no surprise there. The biggest insult lobbed at their “sons” and younger sibs is “You’re just an evangelical.” Many younger fundamentalists leave in frustration or, as I know first-hand, are pushed out against their wills. Some stay to try to reform while others still stay to keep it the same. This last group is more cunning than their fathers with their Fundamentalist tropes. While repeatedly insisting that they are “loosening up,” they are actually increasing penalties for noncompliance. Their luster can only stay shiney so long. The optimism will wear off soon, I’m afraid.

One thing that Fundamentalists must learn to do, if they hope to keep the movement from atrophy, is read. I know that sounds simple enough, but for too long I’ve seen too many of the brightest and best just glaze over when presented with any text — Scriptural, Fundamentalist, or otherwise. Their habit is to passively accept the words and the worlds they make. Most don’t even read the best-selling books from their own presses. But to read authors just outside their denominational lines — still believing and orthodox and within their conservative hermeneutic — would be a healthy start to broaden and deepen their thinking.

When we talked about these sorts of transitions, my professor at Indiana always quoted his professor — “All you have to do is outlive the bastards.” I’m not sure that’s the solution. I am watching these Young Fundamentalists carefully. If they will win the day and honestly change the movement, they must find a better way to deal with difference. A long life span is not the solution that will edify the Saints. I find too many well-intentioned young men, who have bristled for too long under their father’s charismatic but oppressive personalities, only resort to the same tactics when confronted. I fear that their rearing has permanently crippled them, and it will take an extra resilient and perceptive group to persevere inside the movement and foreground the Gospel. I don’t see it happening. But I do pray I’m wrong.

• What does your movement, speaking generally, fail to see that it ought to see?

That it’s not the movement that is god. God is God. The Body of Christ is more important than creeds, alliances, and organizations.

• What would you say to a Fundamentalist tempted to become Catholic or Orthodox?

I know that Fundamentalism has driven away scores of its followers into a more mystical, more liturgical, more exotic, more Old World religion. Fundies are still assuming that those who leave go so they can consume seeker-sensitive services. Nothing can be further from the truth. People are leaving for something much, much older.

I responded to that exodus in another blog post. The gentlemen that responded to this question at Touchstone are much more informed and gentle than I. I’m still a little exasperated at the whole thing. Probably because I find myself at a crossroads.

• What has Fundamentalist to offer the wider world that it will find nowhere else?

I had a professor at Indiana University in my American religious history class who, when the question was asked about the Parable of the Ten Virgins, looked to me for the facts. He knew that I knew. Even though he was a seminary-trained, Missouri synod Lutheran, he knew that I’d know the Scripture because I was a fundy. That’s a good thing. Fundies will always win the Bible categories at Jeopardy!

I joke that Fundamentalists are the ISTJs of Christendom — earnest, hard-working, duty-bound, a little clueless about politics, oblivious to cultural shifts and nuances, uncomfortable in large groups, and somewhat anti-social. They are the Hank Hills of the neighborhood. The Jack Bauers in the Faith. Sure — they are hard-nosed and difficult to cuddle, but when you need someone reliable to rescue you from your latest mishap or to destroy the terrorists, you call the ISTJs!

John Piper says as much when he calls them the “backbone” of the Body. I couldn’t agree more.

• What else would you like to say?

I may no longer be inside, but I know that God’s people are inside the movement and that He will continue to take care of them as He has with me and mine.

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Touchstone Magazine, Bob Jones University, Young Fundamentalists

Operation Romans 8: “I’m a very good man. I’m just a bad wizard.” (Part 3 of 3)

Coming from — Dorothy vs. The Great Oz

Only after the Great and Powerful Oz is face-to-face with the individual is he pressed to admit: “No, my dear. . . . I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.”

God’s power isn’t like human power. At all. Ours is grounded in showmanship, fear, bravado, tradition, and competition — agon. God’s power just is. Look below at how the Dreamworks creators communicated that difference between God’s miracle and the Egyptian charmers’ production. Rough-and-tumble, just-came-from-the-dessert Moses vs. the slick and snarky magicians.

There’s a reason the charmers had to dim the lights and fog up the room. Sunshine and transparency would ruin their illusion. Their humbug thrived on obfuscation. They had to control the environment and distance themselves from their “audience.” The crowds ooh-and-aah for them, but we know the end of the story.

There’s something that happens to contemporary Fundamentalists when they get together in large groups. They think they must imitate the pagan’s show. They try to build what amounts to ziggurats for Christ. Just as Moody leveraged the Press, they find legitimacy from the Press for their elaborate evangelistic productions. In the end, however, Fundamentalism isn’t very good at wizardry. It’s actually merciful that stitching a human ideology to Scripture ends up with so many knots and holes and crooked seams. It’s good that the ziggurat crumbles.

You just can’t sell the Gospel with humbug. The two conflict.

After all the smoke has cleared, it’s just not our show, and it’s not our battle. God doesn’t need the illusion. He doesn’t work in agon. The battle is God’s, and He’s already won. We just enjoy the victory.

A few posts ago, I included an interview with Benjamin Barber — a political theorist who just released Consumed. In this his latest book, he contends that American capitalism infantilizes the American consumer into buying more and more. He reminds us that it’s only just recently that risk has been socialized: corporations can’t stumble anymore for their financial goofs. And, like a good productive critic, Barber urges us to restore our civic community and make capitalism give us what we need (rather than make us need what it wants to give us).

His critique of capitalism easily fits the problems in American conservative Evangelicalism. Try it on for size. . . .

Fundamentalism infantilizes the believer. We’re treated as pre-redeemed or heathen or unregenerate. That keeps us coming back to church and keeps us participating whole-hog in para-church organizations. And it keeps us consuming more material religion so that we feel temporarily sated. Risk for our religious leaders is socialized — sins (for the prominent) are swept under the rug — while the solitary human things are exaggerated into destructive sins. We think we have a church body, but what we have are groups of silenced, hurting individuals threatened into denial, all to preserve the precious image of the movement. Transparency is forbidden since the public might get a peek at our human foibles.

We don’t have a religion designed to help believers grow in Christ; we have believers scurrying to protect a commodified religion. Barber argues that the Market is supposed to serve the consumer, but it’s been juggled so that the consumer serves the Market. And I’m afraid that it’s the same in Fundamentalism. The Fundamentalist believer is cornered to serve the movement. Barber’s right: for the Market, the Civic Sphere, and the Church. We are consumed. I wish he were wrong.

Capitalism is too easily knitted together with conservative Evangelicalism. We shouldn’t see the Church in a political theorist’s correction for capitalism. In his seminal work on Fundamentalism, George Marsden said that modernity created Fundamentalism. And it seems that in the 21st-century, we may well conclude that capitalism created contemporary Fundamentalism.

But think about it. Go look at the books on your shelves or listen to the evangelistic slogans you’ve absorbed over the past year. Some Fundamentalist “self-help” books sound no different than the ones on Oprah’s Book Club. It’s all Prosperity Gospel. The push-pull “let go and let God” is just like “Stop eating! EAT THIS!!” of a diet fad. Bible verses have actually become weight loss slogans! Church signs make God’s House look like a check-cashing joint.

Capitalism and conservative Evangelicalism share the same sawdust, hawk the same wares, silence the same naysayers, adamently defend the same reputation, polish the same insincere veneer, and tell the same tragic story.

And we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to sell God. We don’t need to pawn the Faith.

Believers don’t have to try so hard to be beautiful. We don’t need to “work it.” God living within us makes us beautiful. We don’t have to struggle to be separate. God has already set us apart, sanctified us, made us peculiar. Just like a wife doesn’t need to have an Extreme Makeover for her husband to love her or a child doesn’t need to ride his new two-wheeler perfectly to guarantee his parent’s approval.

God loves us. His love makes us beautiful.

I had always been a little mystified by why God picked circumcision for His people. What a strange sign to communicate to the pagans that these people were set apart! . . . Did they all walk around half-naked?

Then a friend explained it to me: no, it wasn’t an external sign to the pagans; it was an internal sign to the Hebrew!

The “sign” of our sanctification is to us — it’s private, internal, quiet . . . small! We know we’re His. We don’t have to flaunt it or defend it. It would be immodest to do so! We don’t have to fight for or against it. That’s just unnecessary. Romans 8:5-11 contrasts the obsessive flexing-your-own-moral-muscles humbug with the Christian life like this:

Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!

The war’s over. God won. And now, while we join God in cleaning up the muck left from the battle, while we struggle and gradually progress from our sinful nature toward Christlikeness, we’re not in a continual fight with God (His Son reconciled us). We’re not at odds with our world (just a little out of step). We don’t need to cut off our fellow believers (we’re all part of the Body after all!). And we’re not in turmoil with ourselves either since God redeemed all of us and is progressively sanctifying us until we’re in Glory. We don’t need to struggle to look saved. It’s not a competition.

No, we’re not salesmen or show windows or wizards or charmers or humbugs. We’re not soldiers. We’re actually more than conquerors.

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Bob Jones University, Benjamin Barber, Prince of Egypt, Keswick theology, Chaferianism, Humbugs, The Wizard of Oz

Operation Romans 8: God vs. Me (Part 2 of 3)

Coming from — “Bah! Humbug!!”

Implicit in the interaction between showman and pigeon, there’s agon — a contest, a debate, a struggle. It doesn’t work without that difference and distance and antagonism between the humbug and consumer, the “cast member” and the “guest,” and even the revivalist and the revived. The best peddler of humbug leverages that antagonism, skillfully wielding it to his own advantage. Sadly enough, the showman often winds up fooling himself. The illusion is so all-consuming, the illusionist himself becomes an unwitting dupe.

I’ve come to realize in the last seven years that purveyors Fundamentalism are not much different. After years of fighting the evolutionists, the higher critics, and the “modernists,” after wholly digesting urban revival á la Moody and Barnum as their raison d’être, they pick up their well-worn Scofields (for the older set) or ESVs (for the young ones) and see nothing but agon. In other words, Fundamentalism goes to the Text Itself and reads every story in the Bible as the same kind of contest, debate, or struggle. It’s all a fight. The fight is not between Good and Evil, not between Christ and Satan, not between the Oppressors and the Oppressed. No, Fundamentalism reads every story as a fight between God and humanity. Or better yet, as a fight between God and the individual. Or even more directly, between The Omniscient Almighty Power of the Universe and little ol’ you. The divine vs. the self. The Infinite Creator vs. the lowly creature.

Fundamentalism easily views Scripture through this lens. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is a story not about God’s promise to provide the End of Sacrifices, but about Abraham’s submission. The three Hebrews in the fiery furnace is a story not about God’s salvation, but about three young men maintain their shining testimonies before their pagan audience. Jonah is a story not about a merciful God acting through a nationalistic prophet, but about a disobedient man. Prophetic passages about wicked heathen are (mis)read as direct condemnations of contemporary believers sitting in the pew. The Prodigal Son is not about a gracious, always-loving Father, but about two selfish sons. Paul’s warning that legalism wrests us from grace and his command that we “bear one another’s burdens” are met with complete confusion since the well-honed legalistic cudgel of agon must be dropped when in an unguarded embrace. The Fruit of the Spirit is not the work of that Spirit living within you, but God’s divine character qualities that you must struggle to grow in your own life.

In the end, the entire canon of Scripture is not God’s Book about His Son, but merely a book about us.

So Isaiah 55:8 is then predictably mangled to read: “For my thoughts are incompatible with your thoughts, And my ways conflict with your ways, declares the LORD.” That’s not what the Text says! God doesn’t say we believers are at odds with Him any more than the salt and pepper on the table are at odds with the banquet being served. He says: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, And my ways are not your ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God’s saying that He’s not as short-sighted as we are. Although He’s infinitely bigger than we are, He harbors no belligerence towards us. He sees the pattern in the tapestry that we can’t see.

And so it goes. . . . In Fundamentalism even the Christian is at odds with himself. Sure — the Holy Spirit lives within, but every believer also supposedly has a “clone of Satan’s own nature” that “violently opposes God.” Strangely enough, Fundamentalist theology allows for the tables to be turned, creature controlling the Creator as he “lets go” and “lets God” in and out of his life like air from a balloon. Even while recognizing God to be all-powerful, this approach places the believer on an equal footing with his Sovereign God.

Reading God’s Book as an epic war story between God and man trickles down into everyday life. Everything’s agon. It’s all a fight. Husbands end up quoting the “submission” passages to their wives more than they remember the “love” passages God has written to them. Masters forget that God is the premier no-respector-of-persons since they are too often preaching “You will respect my authority!!” Parents and in loco parentis, albeit without a whiff of anger, literally and emotionally whip their charges into a learned helplessness, completely ignorant of the seething ire such rituals induce.

Sure — God’s sovereignty and His grace do mercifully pop up every now and then. But it is, unfortunately, the exception rather than the rule.

And it gets worse.

Since the Bible is always viewed through the lens of agon — a contest between God and human beings — normal anxieties and conflicts are condemned. Any human attribute that is “not-God” is sinful. Being silly is a sin. Being sad is a sin. Thinking too much is a sin. Feeling too much is a sin. Overeating is a sin. Undereating is a sin. Worry is a sin. Apathy is a sin. Sleeping too much is a sin. Not sleeping enough is a sin. Trying too hard is a sin. Giving up is a sin. And the myriad variations between those extremes are muddled with the ever-present and totally subjective appeal to “balance.” Whenever you do one thing, you get scolded for not doing the other. It’s a push-pull. A Catch-22. You can’t win.

Essentially, being human is sin.

It seems like a tolerable enough read on the Scripture. What’s wrong with a little unselfishness, right? But when you live it out in the nitty-gritty of daily life, it becomes nothing more than a sublimation of God-given personhood and, worst case, a squelching of the Holy Spirit.

Since being human is a sin, then the most human among us — the small and the weak — are the most sinful and the most dangerous. Even our children are our enemies — “vipers in diapers.” Read the prominent texts on child-rearing recommended within conservative Evangelicalism. Read them with your eyes wide open and don’t miss a word. There’s a war presumed to be raging in our homes. And the littlest one is the biggest threat.

So when life gets complicated, contemporary Fundamentalism isn’t teaching its followers to be like its founders — to be the rugged individual who will resist the wrong and the choose the right in spite of the culture. No, we’ve been trained that the self is wholly sinful and, by extension, the singular and the small is sinful, leaving the corporate as the only alternative. So whenever a believer faces opposition with someone or something more powerful or more popular, he must acquiesce. He has been trained to follow the corporate over the small and the quiet. It’s not “do right ’til the stars fall.” It’s “do right because we say it’s right.” It’s “peace at all costs.” How far we have strayed from the roots of our faith!

All of these tropes and habits are so prominent that I can easily predict the Fundamentalist’s response to my words. It won’t be a head-to-head clash (which is what I relish and welcome!). It won’t be, “Mmmm. . . . I’d like to see more proof.” It won’t be a shrugging it off and saying, “Whatever.” No, the response will be to make me small — to presume the worst about me, to shame, to insult, to name-call, to question my character – ad hominem responses which are far from necessary or logical or Christian. Some will say, “Well, you aren’t being gracious by saying all this. By talking about such things, you’re just revealing the seething bitterness in your heart.” And I must beg this last person, whom I know is a friend, to understand that I believe keeping quiet would be the most ungracious, embittering, unChristian thing I might do.

Then again, you may be muttering under your breath: “So what? What’s the big deal? That’s what everybody does. Every group does that.” Well, yes, groupthink is a problem among many gatherings of people. But this particular gathering is the one I care about, and this group or movement is most obviously losing its moorings. The consequences in this instance is that the groupthink will continue until Fundamentalism’s followers are unique among their contemporaries — uniquely miswired, unable to communicate with those around them, incapable of seeing the right choice when powerful hegemony looms.

What happens is that a Fundamentalist child becomes most vulnerable to sexual predators since he doesn’t know how to listen to the small voice bellowing inside to “RUN!!” from stranger danger. His wiring has taught him to mistrust his inner voice, and the adult authority must be obeyed at all costs.

What happens is that a white, middle-class, conservative Evangelical co-ed, who would always vote pro-life, is the most likely person in Upstate South Carolina to resort to abortion because appeasing the overwhelming, punitive culture is easier than listening to the small, thriving life within her. Yes, you read that right: it’s not the lack of religion that pushes many young women to kill their babies; it’s too much bad religion.

What happens is that a young man who is asked to give his credit card number to the mysterious voice over the phone — even though his gut is screaming to “STOP!!” — can’t resist since to do so would be impolite and contrary.

What happens is that a new mother prematurely stops breastfeeding (or never even starts) because so many have told her that it’s a sexual stumblingblock to men.

And others get strong-armed into submission as well. Bullied into dropping out of school. Shamed into silence about a contrary opinion. Blacklisted for not continuing to maintain the image. Shunned for speaking out about injustice. None of these stories are exaggerations. All have recently happened to real people fully committed to Fundamentalism — over and over again. And all for the same reason — to squash the small self and defer to the powerful, popular, dominant culture.

The single group member, we’re told, can mar the reputation of the movement. The baby’s wiggles are clearly “defiant” and make us all look bad. The individual, no matter how small, speaks for the whole group, right? Unless that individual is very powerful and prominent; then he only speaks for himself.

So the hegemony rules. The big, the corporate, the loud is most important. The god-like becomes God.

At that point, the Great and Powerful Oz needs Toto as much as Dorothy does. After all, he’s not a bad man. He’s just a very bad wizard.

Next — “I’m just a bad wizard!”

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Bob Jones University, Keswick theology, Chaferianism, Humbugs, The Wizard of Oz

Operation Romans 8: “Bah! Humbug!!” (Part 1 of 3)

P. T. Barnum was the Prince of Humbugs. He sold what amounted to nothing to the public and made his customers feel it was worth every penny. He hawked “curiosities” — albinos, giants, midgets, “fat boys,” jugglers, magicians, and “exotic women.” He defended these hoaxes or “humbugs” as “advertisements to draw attention . . . to the Museum. I don’t believe in duping the public, but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them.” For him, hype was no problem; it was bald-faced deception that rankled him (since, of course, it would only hurt his business).

Barnum distinguished himself from the real con artists in The Humbugs of the World. He describes Grizzly Adams’ bears, the Davenport Brothers’ spiritualism, Mr. Pease’s Horehound Candy, Benjamin Brandreth’s Sarsparilla Pills, Joanna Southcott’s prophesies, and Robert Matthews’ elaborate religious cons (you may also know him through his most famous follower/slave, Isabella, a.k.a. Sojourner Truth). The most amazing example he describes is the Miscegenation hoax. The pamphlet was a fraud – a complete fiction created by the then-Democratic party to ruin the anti-Slavery platform and the Republican party candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in the 1864 election.

The circus came late in Barnum’s career. That’s when he built the Hippodrome. But in America’s centennial year, the building didn’t house “the greatest show on Earth.” Instead, it hosted a Dwight L. Moody revival. In the midst of New York City’s surging unemployment and inflation, increasing domestic violence and drunkenness, Moody came to Madison Avenue.

So did 150 policemen, 500 ushers, 1200 choir members, and 1000s of listeners. Reporters saw lawyers, doctors, scientists, presidential press agents, clergy, and pickpockets in attendance. Now, it wasn’t until the Chicago revivals to follow that Moody, near the end of that stint, invented a special Prostitute night. You’ve heard of Goldfish Sunday? Well, this was a little different.

Bruce Evensen describes it all. In New York, street vendors sold counterfeit Moody and Sankey pictures for five and ten cents each to people who had never seen the revivalists’ faces! The Times reported that $40,000 was spent on the revival — two-thirds of a million in today’s dollars. Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians came. All entered through Barnum’s big doors . . . on Madison Avenue.

In the midst of Barnum’s sawdust, the press puffery, the teeming masses, and the fake merchandising, here was Moody’s forehead-poundingly-ironic message:

We have to sink the self. We have to get our eyes off these things and toward the Cross.

Surprisingly, Moody’s pitch is not much different from Barnum’s. Evensen, too, connects the Revivalist Moody and the Humbug Barnum. Go read it for yourself. Both cut their professional eyeteeth in sales — Moody pushing shoes, Barnum Bibles. Both advertised aggressively. Both get lampooned by Harper’s. Both advertised aggressively. Both used the press skillfully. And the success of both “enterprises,” it seems, depends on the same suspending of the self.

Let me explain it another way. . . . We visited Walt Disney World this summer. Enjoying the whole park through the eyes of a 3.5 year old and a 1 year old is a scream although the heat, the crowds, and the prices do tarnish the fun. Grant and I tried our best to keep our 30-something sarcasm at bay, and Disney does pretty well at curing the Gen-X jaundice with attractions like Soarin’.

I still get the most giggles when Disney’s slip is showing — The Tiki Room and the Carousel of Progress, for instance. When you enter those now-quaint attractions, you have to work a little harder at enjoying the illusion. You have to give up more of your 21st-century sensibilities to enjoy the squawking toucans and corny humor of the jerky animatronics. With both Soarin’ and the Tikis, for the illusion to work, you have to give in to the fantasy. You have to detach yourself from reality. You have to let yourself go or, as some might even say, “sink the self.”

When Dorothy opens the curtain and confronts the Humbug, when you MST3K your way through Disney’s vision of the future, when the individual dialectically stands face-to-face with the corporation, when the sunlight shines on the smoke and mirrors, there’s no more “self to sink” since the humbug is sinking pretty fast on its own.

That’s why, when we’re in the middle of the humbug and working so hard at “sinking the self,” we might get a little peeved at the yappy Toto (who cares very little for humbug) as he races to pull back the curtain on the Great Oz. It’s startling and disconcerting and even disappointing to see the humbug for what it really is.

Next — Dorothy vs. The Great and Powerful Oz

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Dwight L. Moody, P.T. Barnum, Wizard of Oz, Humbugs

Invisible

“But he has nothing on!” a little child cried out at last.

“Just hear what that innocent says!” said the father: and one whispered to another what the child had said.

“But he has nothing on!” said the whole people at length. That touched the Emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but the thought within himself, “I must go through with the procession.” And so he held himself a little higher, and the chamberlains held on tighter than ever, and carried the train which did not exist at all.

“The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Anderson