The idolatry of 'relationship but not religion'

 

Remove the 'not' in both of the above memes and we're doing fine.  The internet teems with sentiments like those above, including, "I'm spiritual, not religious", and "relationship not religion".  And while these thoughts appeal to those who have been hurt by, or disappointed in, a particular manifestation of the Church, they are misguided at best, and dangerous at worst.  This is not in any way to dispute the valid criticism of the actions of those who represent the Church, whether that be a local independent church where judgmental attitudes have replaced the spirit of grace, or an institutional church where self-protection has protected child predators.  The Church, both historically (see for example the martyrdom of Jan Hus) and today has much to answer for, flaws both mundane and monstrous, both isolated and systematic.  The Church is far from perfect.  Christianity without the Church, or following Jesus without Religion, thus has an emotional appeal, but it has one fundamental, inescapable problem.  Christianity, or even more simply, following Jesus, without the Church does not exist.  Temporarily, through difficult circumstances, a follower of Jesus might find him/herself disconnected from the Church, but long-term the option of going it alone has not been given to us by God.  We are both incapable of thriving as disciples of Jesus apart from the regular support and encouragement of fellow believers who will share our faith journey, and cut off from the commands of God that we serve one another when we decide to put our own, perceived, spiritual health above the needs of the many.  The Gospel was not given to me, it was given to us.  Discipleship is not my task, it is our task.  Worship is not individual people approaching God with praise, it is his people gathered together in community uplifting his name.  The grace of God is manifested in the shepherd's willingness to leave the 99 and seek the 1, but the glory of God is maximized when the entirety of those redeemed by that grace gather together to praise his name.
Throughout redemptive history God chose to work through Israel, an entire nation called to be holy before the LORD, and the Church, a gathering of people from all nations called to be united in their devotion to Jesus.  The elevation of my own spiritual pursuit, or my own spiritual need, above that of the other people who I should be in community with, and whose needs I ought to be prioritizing, is a form of idolatry.  Individualism above community is idolatry.  To find this sentiment growing in post-modern Western culture is hardly surprising.  We have journeyed a great distance in our worldview from the much more collective/community outlook of our ancestors.  We have staked out individualistic positions in economics, law, politics, and even marriage and family obligations.  It should be no surprise that the Church, as collective an organization as can be imagined, would eventually receive a backlash against its call to subsume the ego-centrism of post-modernity beneath a life of service to others.  {FYI, the Prosperity Gospel, with its focus on what God wants to do for you, rather than what God requires of you, fits well with this, 'its all about me' attitude.}
I understand why people want to emphasize their relationship with Jesus, or even their 'spirituality' above commitment to, the easy to find flaws with, 'organized religion'.  To be a part of the Church is to rub elbows with flawed people.  To be a part of the Church is to risk getting hurt.  As long ago as St. Augustine it was necessary to defend the idea that the Church is made up of people who are being made holy, not people who are already holy.  And yet, in the end the solo path leads nowhere.  Hermits were never the path to holiness that their admirers claimed them to be.  To be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to journey with other disciples, to be a part of a community, and to serve that community.  You may not love religion or the Church, but you certainly need it, and it needs you.

A final thought, if you reject religion/the Church, you're also rejecting the sacraments/ordinances.  There is no baptism or communion without the Church, for baptism is a rite of initiation into the people of God, and communion is a communal meal with the people of God.

For a selection of Scripture that informs this topic, consider these verses below:
Matthew 16:18 New International Version (NIV)
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
John 13:14-16 New International Version (NIV)

14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 
John 17:20-23 New International Version (NIV)

20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Galatians 5:13 New International Version (NIV)

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
Ephesians 1:22-23 New International Version (NIV)

22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
 Hebrews 10:24-25 New International Version (NIV)
24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Sermon Video: Building up the Church - 1 Corinthians 14:1-12

In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul established the supremacy of Love, but how would one rank/evaluate the lesser gifts of the Holy Spirit?  In order to impart perspective, Paul compares the efficacy of two of these: prophecy and speaking in tongues.  Prophecy is designed to encourage, strengthen, and comfort, it 'edifies the church' by sharing with the people of God the Word of God.  Speaking in tongues (foreign languages) has potential, but without an interpreter it can only benefit the one to whom the gift is given.  Thus comparing the effects of the two upon the Church, Paul strongly prefers gifts that are outward focused, rather than inward, and gifts that help the many, rather than the few (in this case individuals).  This then is our principle: seek gifts from the Spirit that build up the Church, by building up the local church, through help that is truly beneficial, in particular the sharing of the Word of God.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Fight or Flight? Self-Segregation is the death of the Church's Gospel mission

The list of companies being boycotted by various Christians and/or conservatives has grown rather long: Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, CSV, Disney, Nascar, Amazon, Google, basically the biggest and most popular corporations in America, all having done something regarding guns, homosexuality, or politics to put them on "the list".  No, I'm not going to enter into the boycott argument, and yes, a similar list exists among liberals listing different companies (or sometimes the same companies for different reasons).  What do we make of this, and how does it impact the Church and the Gospel?
We are currently trending, heavily, as a culture and a country toward greater degrees of self-segregation.  Not the old-school racial segregation enforced by zoning laws and bat wielding rednecks, but instead a version we are choosing to embrace based upon politics/morality/religion, which is showing itself both in the urban/rural divide and in the coastal/interior divide.  The Red areas are becoming deeper shades of Red, and the Blue areas are becoming more uniformly Blue.  People are moving within their communities to neighborhoods were people are more like them (it can mimic racial segregation in that people who look like us are more likely to think/act like us, but it has now transcended that as well), within their states to areas where people are more like them, and within the country to states where people are more like them.  We are more likely to live in an echo chamber, massively assisted by social media and cable news/talk radio, where the only voices we hear are ones that reinforce what we believe and demonize what "they" believe.  Some of our politicians are thriving in these chum-infested waters, some talking heads are getting rich off of it, but the American Republic is much worse off.  {FYI, gerrymandering is a symptom of this, making primaries the only race that matters}.  I won't tell you how to solve this problem on the political/national level, but I can intelligently (I hope) ponder what this is doing to the Church.
In 1 Corinthians 15:33, the Apostle Paul quotes the Greek poet Menander when he writes, "Do not be misled: 'Bad company corrupts good character.'"  In that particular context Paul is discussing the resurrection and those who disbelieve it, people we would call heretics or apostates.  He utilizes a Greek poet to remind the Christian minority in Corinth that they can be negatively influenced by those around them.  In his next letter to that church, Paul broadens the warning a bit in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 when he writes, "14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” 17 Therefore,“Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord.  Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” 18 And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”  Twice then, Paul warns about becoming too entangled, "yoked together" with unbelievers (whether the Lost or those who have walked away from the Light, i.e. apostates).  At the same time, the Apostle Paul spent decades risking his life to take the Gospel, as an observant Jew, among the Gentiles to show them the light of Christ.  Certainly Paul did not withdraw from the world, enter a monastery, and seek to be free from the 'infection' of the pagan culture that he lived and worked within.  Paul was aware of the danger, yet it didn't stop him from seeking the Lost where they were.
What then is the answer?  Jesus also highly stressed the need for purity, even emphasizing that our thoughts count as well as our actions, and yet he ate with 'tax collectors and sinners' as recorded in Matthew 9:10-17 (and Mark 2:15-22, Luke 5:29-39) 10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  Nobody has lived a pure life of comparison with Jesus Christ, and yet he was willing to be scorned by the Pharisees, the group who stood for strict adherence to the Law of Moses and the rejection of Greek culture, in order to minister to the outcasts of society.  In fact, Jesus reprimanded the Pharisees for focusing on ritualistic purity without having hearts of mercy.
This seems like a contradiction in the Scriptures, a gotcha moment for agnostics and atheists to laugh at our silly devotion to 'God's Word', but it isn't.  Instead, it is something extremely profound and often overlooked by Christians (and Judaism before us): purposeful tension.  That's right, the Scriptures contain opposed but complimentary ideas that are designed to be held in tension.  It was a college professor of mine, Dr. Ronald Mayers, who first introduced me to the idea of a Both/And rather than an Either/Or perspective in Scripture. {Both/And: A Balanced Apologetic by Ronald B. Mayers}  Not all issues, to be sure, but many of them contain a Both/And element.  For example: As Christians we are already saved, and yet we are not yet what we will be for we our sanctification is ongoing.  We are already in Christ, but not yet Christ-like.  Likewise, we believe in the sovereignty of God and the freedom of human beings to make real decisions, both God's will and human freedom.
Which brings us to the current situation in America and within the Church.  At the same time we are called to be pure, 1 Peter 1:16, " for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy.'" AND Matthew 5:13-16, "'You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."  We must be 'in the world, but not of the world' (An attempt to summarize the teaching of Scripture on this issue), a delicate balance but one we must not shrink from finding.
This is our challenge as the Church in America in the 21st century.  We are interacting less and less with those who are non-Christians, and even those who are fellow Christians, but who disagree with us.  We are called to be salt and light, but within our own echo chamber, what good are they?  We are called to not be "yoked together" with unbelievers, but also to eat with "tax collectors and 'sinners'".  As much as we might want to retreat into our own world, to wall ourselves off from that which makes us uncomfortable and that with which we disagree, we cannot.  We must be pure, but not at the cost of disengaging from those who live in darkness. {As some are calling for us to do, see one popular version of the retreat strategy: The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post Christian World - by Rob Dreher}
Our mission is not to save ourselves, our mission is not to save our church, our mission is not even to save The Church, our mission, given to us by Jesus Christ, is to use the Truth of the Gospel, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to save the World.  Salt must stay salty in order to be effective, but salt left in the salt shaker doesn't help anyone.

Sermon Video: The Greatest of these is Love - 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

In the culmination of his ode to the supremacy of Love, the Apostle Paul emphasizes the permanence of love by comparing it to the temporary nature of three other spiritual gifts: prophecy, tongues, and knowledge.  These gifts exist because of the flawed nature of humanity.  In order for the Church to function, it needs spiritual assistance from God, but this will not always be the case.  After the establishment of the Kingdom of God, when humanity is fully reconciled to our Creator, there will no longer be a need for assistance in bridging the current gap between God and man.  Yet in that day, Love will not cease, but fully come into its own.  Rather than a limited version of God's love, in imitation of Jesus, the children of God will have and experience love in its pure form, no longer marred by the selfishness of sin.  Finally, while faith and hope are also foundation with love, Paul declares love to be the greatest of these, for one day faith will be sight, hope will be fruition, but love will be fully realized and once more in its glory as it was within the trinity before Creation.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Sexist Gospels? Another reminder that Inspiration and Inerrancy matter

In a recent essay entitled, Toward non-gendered language for God, that was published in The Christian Citizen, which is a publication of the American Baptist Home Missions Societies (I am an ABC pastor, serving an ABC church), Dr. Molly T. Marshall who is the president of Central Baptist Seminary, argued that the Church's historic emphasis upon male language (pronouns, imagery) when speaking of God is exclusionary and thus harmful to women.  This particular point is controversial, and is of course wrapped in all manner of cultural and political debates beyond this specific point that Dr. Marshall is advocating.  That being said, a Bible-based conversation about gender equality can certainly be both helpful and necessary; for example, a discussion based upon Paul's words in Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Or perhaps a discussion pondering God's intentions for gender roles that examines texts like Genesis 2:18 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”  There is room within the Church for various understanding of the role of women in ministry, the way in which husbands and wives complement each other and work together, as well as what a Biblical view of gender within society as a whole ought to be.  That Dr. Marshall is advocating a particular view on these things bothers me not at all.  That others might see things rather differently is also not unexpected nor particularly worrisome provided that we can appreciate our diversity of viewpoints within the Church and still both love each other and work together for the sake of the Gospel.
So, that being said, why am I mentioning the article by Dr. Marshall at all?  The essay contains one paragraph that strays from the issue at hand and instead becomes her commentary upon the creation of the Gospel accounts about Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), and in particular a critique of the authors.  In this paragraph (below), it becomes clear that Dr. Marshall's viewpoint of Inspiration and thus Innerancy {A definition: "The Bible, when correctly interpreted in light of the level to which culture and the means of communication had developed at the time it was written, and in view of the purposes for which it was given, is fully truthful in all that it affirms." - Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctine} does not seem to be within the bounds of the traditional/apostolic Church.
{Dr. Marshall readily admits to not accepting the doctrine of inerrancy in this essay: The peril of selective inerrancy , While I eschew the proposition of inerrancy,  believing that it claims for Scripture something it does not claim for itself}

In addition, the language Jesus used for God is warrant for many to speak of God only as Father.  Jesus’ language is much more about filial intimacy than ascribing literal gender. It is easy to see the growth of a tradition from Mark to John. In Mark, Jesus names God Abba 11 times; by the time John is written, this naming for God occurs 120 times. In the midst of great strides to include women begun by Jesus, the writers and editors of the Gospels wanted to ensure that a masculine vision of God safeguarded men’s prerogative and that women would remain secondary. We can see this effect by comparing the treatment of Peter and Mary Magdalene. Recent scholarship suggests that there was a concerted effort to subordinate her leadership to her male counterpart. - Dr. Molly T. Marhsall

Dr. Marshall is operating under the presupposition that the Gospel accounts are not the product of the authors that tradition ascribes to them, but rather an ongoing process of writing and editing that was affected by tradition, resulting in the earlier Gospel, Mark only using Abba 11 times, but the Gospel which was written last, John, using it 120 times {while there are various theories about the dates of the writing of each of the Gospels, John is generally understood to be last}.  Rather than wondering why the term 'Abba' might have more significance for John than Mark, as all 4 Gospel account are only snapshots of Jesus' life and hardly exhaustive {thus all 4 had their own moments and ideas to emphasize drawn from the larger tapestry of Jesus' life, ministry, and teaching}, Dr. Marshall instead chooses to see this 'growth' as the result of an Early Church tradition that was hostile to women, even ascribing nefarious (and sinful) motives to these unknown editors as sexist men who decided to warp Jesus' message in order to keep women in their place.  In other words, the writers/editors of the Gospels were unrepentant sexists opposed to the message of Jesus, working against his efforts, NOT honest and sincere chroniclers.  In addition to the 'evidence' of the use of Abba, Dr. Marshall also offers and argument from silence (a logical fallacy) in which the role of Mary Magdalene is alleged to have suppressed by these same wicked Early Church leaders in favor of elevating Peter {Set aside for a moment the actual portrayal of Peter in the Gospels, it is more often embarrassing than flattering}.
Where do these ideas for analyzing the text come from and what do they tell us about Inspiration and Innerancy?  Treating the text of the Bible like this is not new, it began to pick up steam in the 19th century and has since become the hallmark of liberal (not the political use of the term, think Bart Ehrman or John Shelby Spong as current examples) interpretation of Scripture.  What was once a 'high' view of Scripture, has become an extremely 'low' view.  What was once considered the sacred Word of God, as Paul declares it, 'God-breathed' (theopneustos in Greek, 2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,) and created when its authors were 'carried along' by the Holy Spirit in Peter's description of it (2 Peter 1:21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.), has now become the work of various writers and editors according to their own agendas and steeped in their own sinful attitudes which must, presumably, then be purged from the text.  The Word of God, has become the flawed words of men.
The traditional view of Scripture, emphasized by the Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, is by contrast a 'high' view, one in which the Scriptures are suitable to be the sole source of faith and practice (Sola Scriptura) precisely because they are God-breathed and thus not subject to the same errors and biases as the writings/utterances/ideas of sinful men and women.  God used the human authors, purposefully choosing to work through their viewpoints and vocabulary, but NOT allowing their flaws (for all of the authors of Scripture were sinners needing to be saved by grace) to be transmitted into what they wrote.  It thus remains a divine document, one central to our faith, and one worthy of our trust.
Once the Scriptures have been downgraded from a product of the human/divine partnership described within Scripture itself, all bets are off regarding which can be called into question and thus targeted for removal/dismissal.  Let me emphasize this: These are not questions of interpretation, places where Christians who hold equally high views of Scripture can strongly disagree {a famous example in our generation has been the debate about the intended meaning of the Creation account in Genesis: Was it supposed to be a 'literal' account of events that occurred over a 6 day period 6,000 years ago, or a symbolic/allegorical account emphasizing God's role as Creator without answering questions of how or when?  Both interpretations come from a high view of inspiration and inerrancy, neither is treating the text like a myth or fairy tale}, but rather more fundamental questions of the nature of Scripture itself.  Using the methodology that influences Dr. Marshall's conclusions about Abba and Mary Magdalene, how could one defend against Bart Ehrman's contention that Jesus never claimed to be God, didn't believe himself to be God, and didn't rise from the dead?  Ehrman believes these elements were added to the Gospels centuries after Jesus lived by a militant Church hierarchy intent upon squashing disent (contentions based upon Ehrman's conjecture and anti-supernatural presuppositions, but lacking in actual historic evidence) and thus we should view Jesus as a good ethical teacher, but nothing more.  If Scripture represents the flawed views of its authors, what in it can be taken at face value?  On what basis do we declare any portion of Scripture to be Truth and not simply the opinion of one man?
We can, and should, have conversations within the Church about our failure to treat everyone equally, failures regarding both race and gender.  We can, and should, seek to be more Biblical in our understanding of how we ought to treat each other.  These things are necessary.  What we cannot do, what we must not do, is jettison the bedrock belief in the Inspiration and Inerrancy of Scripture simply because flawed human beings have failed to properly interpret and apply what God has written.  The Word of God was here before us, and it will be here after us, we cannot tear it down to compensate for our own mistakes or to make it conform to our opinions.