On Quitting Christianity

Yesterday on her Facebook page, author Anne Rice announced that she was quitting Christianity. Rice is best known for her series of books on vampires, the best known being Interview with a Vampire. She returned to her Catholic roots and dedicated her writing to Jesus Christ, beginning a wonder series of historical novels on Jesus (Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana). Rice says that she is still committed to following Jesus, but she is done with following His followers. Here two Facebook posts were short and matter-of-fact--

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

These were posted without much context-- between observations on eBook publishing and the dangers of art being destroyed in times of war. There were thousands of replies (I didn't read all of them) which seemed split between people who agreed with her and many who did not. Her latest post seems to emphasize that she remains committed to Christ, but she seems done with the Catholic Church… and any other church for that matter.

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

Two thought came to me as I read this. First, I must confess that my first thought was, “Please don’t let this mean that you are quitting the 'Christ the Lord' series." OK, that is a little selfish, but I love those novels. Second, I thought about my post yesterday and how many people want to be spiritual (and Christian) but not really religious (or connected to a church). Anne Rice is a brilliant writer; her appendix to Out of Egypt does a masterful job dismantling Jesus Seminar dismissals of the gospels as reliable literature. The two Christ the Lord novels are obviously written by someone who reveres, respect and loves Jesus Christ. But in seeking Christ, Rice is no longer willing to accept the doctrinal, social, moral baggage of her church. And face it, when you are Catholic, there is a lot of baggage.

What should Anne do (besides finish the Christ the Lord series)? The Christian faith is meant to be lived in relationship with others. Maybe she could find a small group of Christ-followers and truth-seekers who share some of her concerns as well as basic faith in Jesus. Maybe she could meet with this loosely organized group to pray, study and encourage others. What the Bible calls a group like that is “church.” Anne, you didn't quit the church; you quit a church. We have all allowed the church to become a word with organizational, political and social baggage. But those original bands of brothers and sisters who huddled in catacombs to encourage one another to be faithful until Jesus returned had no baggage; they had each other. Anne, you don’t need to leave either Christianity or the church; you need to come back to it in its original form! In fact, maybe we all do!

Spiritual AND Religious

The fastest growing religious group in America is “none.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that people are en masse losing their faith in God. What it means is that people are choosing to become more private in their faith—they believe in God, but not the church. The way that this is most often expressed is someone will say, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” Of course, being “spiritual” can mean anything from believing in a mystic oneness with the life-force in nature (as in Avatar) or it can mean holding fairly orthodox beliefs about Jesus sans any connection to a church or faith group. Spiritual, but not religious. Kinda catchy, isn’t it?

It is also very postmodern. And very self-centered. One with spiritual beliefs that are uninformed by an external authority (Bible) or spiritual family (the church) is basically free to pick and choose the religious concepts that fit him or her at the moment. There is no obedience or discipline. There is only what makes me feel good right now, a Burger King religion that lets me have it my own way. The “organized religion” that we know as “church” has indeed spent too much time in the past arguing over intramural issues that really don’t amount to much. But at its best, the church encourages and emboldens us to be better than we would be if left free to choose to do what we want. As Jennifer Walters, dean of religious life at Smith College in Massachusetts, puts it--

Hymn-singing, forms of prayer and worship, teachings about social justice and forgiveness-- all these things are valuable elements of religious wisdom. Piecing it together by yourself can be done, but with great difficulty.

We need the church to teach, inform and encourage us. Or as Paul put it, “Reprove, rebuke and exhort.” Has it been true that many Christians in the past have settled for a religiosity of external rituals without a true focus on God or serving others? Sure, they were wrong. But what about the (post)modern spiritual guru who wants picks and choose religious concepts a la carte based on what best seems to fit at the moment? Well, they are wrong too. Amos condemned the Jews who pointed to their external religion without any life commitment. But Malachi condemned the Jews who had no problem at all with hearts mixed with idolatry but who didn’t show proper respect to God in offering their tithes and offerings.

It seems that God wants us to be both spiritual and religious.

Pattern: Breaking Bread and Preaching Until Midnight?

One of the things that is distinctive about worship in my religious tribe is that we eat the Lord’s Supper every Sunday morning (and on Sunday evenings for any who are “providentially hindered” Sunday mornings). Most churches have communion on a more infrequent schedule-- often once a month or once a quarter. Some (even some in my church) suggest that having communion every Sunday makes it less special and more apt to be done by rote or remote control. I’m sure that is true to a point, and we have to make effort not to fall into auto-pilot mode when the trays are passed.

The text to which we normally point to “prove” that communion must be done every Sunday is Acts 20:7 (our reading for today), “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight.” Every week has a first day, so if we are to follow the New Testament pattern, we should have communion every first day. We do know there was a collection every first day, at least at Corinth during the time Paul was raising funds for needy saints in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:2).

But Acts 20:7 doesn’t work too well as a pattern. This text takes place in the middle of the Luke’s travelogue as he describes what Paul and his fellow wanders did on their mission trip. Paul certainly didn’t go through Troas on every first day of the week. On the Sunday that he did go there, the church was meeting together to “break bread.” What we know for sure is that one time when Paul was passing through Troas, the church met to break bread. And we don’t know for sure what exactly Luke means by “breaking bread.” In Acts 2:42, “breaking of bread” seems to imply communion, but in Acts 2:46, they “broke bread” daily, referring to common meals together. In Acts 20:7, the church met on the first day of the week “to break bread” but they didn’t get around to “breaking bread” until after Paul preached to midnight and Eutychus was raised to life after falling out of a window… because Paul preached to midnight. Maybe Luke was using Jewish time here so that the first day of the week began Saturday at sundown. Or maybe the church met to eat communion on Sunday night but didn’t get around to it until early Monday morning? Or were they gathered just to eat a meal together and that’s when Paul met with them? It COULD be a lot of things. That’s why Acts 20:7 doesn’t really make a good pattern. We certainly don’t take it as a pattern for how long sermons must be!

So what about eating communion on every first day of the week? I’m 100% all for it. Why? Not because of Acts 20:7. At the center of Christianity is the cross. Jesus died on the cross for us; he calls us to the cross to die for each other. The church is the community that is shaped by the cross and should be shaped like a cross. If indeed the cross is who we are and what we are called to be, then it should be central to our worship. And what better way to keep the cross at the center of our worship and our corporate life than to remember it and participate in it in precisely the way Jesus teaches us—through the Lord’s Supper?

BTW, there are many Christian groups that have communion one a month, once a quarter, and even once a year. But they take up a collection every week! Does that say something about priorities… or am I just being snippy?

A Debt of Honor

Another year at camp has come and gone for me. Together with 40 wonderful campers and 18 super staffers, I spent the hottest week on record (109 degrees heat index) at Camp Idlewild in Surry County, VA. Camp Idlewild and I go way, way back. My first year was as a 9 year-old in 1966... which was also Idlewild’s first year of operation. Lynn’s first year was also at age 9... and my mother was her first counselor. In fact, camp was such a big part of our lives that I drove us to camp to give Lynn her engagement ring. (OK, we broke the camp rule against kissing that one time). I once turned down the chance to speak in a lectureship in Germany because I had already committed to direct camp. Some of my best friends in ministry have worked with me on the “Idlewild Bible Faculty” during camp. I was at Camp Idlewild for 30 straight years before taking an unplanned hiatus several years ago. Three years ago, Denbigh took charge of the Middle School Week and Idlewild and I renewed our old acquaintance.

As I've gotten older, I look forward to camp with a little less enthusiasm. I don’t have the wheels I used to and the camp hasn't gotten any smaller. There are fewer and fewer churches in our area supporting the camp, so the work is harder for those who are still involved. There is never enough money and never enough volunteers.

But working at camp during the camp week is pure joy when I see the enthusiasm and delight on the faces of these kids. Camp is still the highlight of the year for some of our kids... just like it was for me. Some examples of how some of these kids feel about camp—

• Rachel planned her baptism at the because somehow making the commitment to follow Jesus for the rest of her life seemed more special because she did it at a place and surrounded by the people that were so special to her. (Two other campers were also baptized).
  
  
• Netanya fell off the slide in the pool and gashed her arm and needed 8 stitches. She was very upset… until she found out that she wouldn't have to leave camp early. The stitches were no big deal; she was extremely brave through that whole ordeal. But she wasn't going to leave camp early!
  
  
• Tia asked me on Wednesday not to use the microphone during my devotional talk. She said that the microphone reminded her of me doing the closing ceremony on Saturday and she didn’t want to be reminded that camp was going to end.

The reason I go to camp every year is not because I enjoy it as much as I used to enjoy it… but because our kids enjoy it as much as I used to enjoy it! I have a debt of honor to people like J.E. Thompson, J.L. Thompson, Steve Pugh, Maggie Dossett and a host of people who gave a week of their lives to make camp a sacred place for me. I hope last week was a great week for our kids. I hope it stays an important week of fun and spiritual growth for many generations to come.

728-B

My friend and former fellow member of the Bible faculty at Camp Idlewild has a great blog he calls “Acceptable Offering.” In a recent post, he told about how powerful an impact the song Our God, He Is Alive had on his life. No matter what the number is in our present hymnal, this will always be song # 728-B and, as Bob suggests, the unofficial Church of Christ anthem.

Bob says that his first church home didn't have the right color hymn book and thus 728-B wasn't there, neither the number nor the song. And it was such a great song. I don’t remember whether Bob was on the bus that went from Freed-Hardeman to Denton, Texas to hear Thomas B. Warren debate atheist Anthony Flew on the existence of God. We sang 728-B over and over again after the debate all the way across Texas and Arkansas.

But the song wasn’t in Bob's hymnal, and back then you just didn't sing songs that weren't in the hymnal. Then he learned that you could buy sheet music of Our God, He is Alive the right size to paste inside the cover of the hymnal. He went to the elders to tell them about this wonderful discovery and looked forward to soon singing his favorite in church. The elders told him that they would have to have a meeting to discuss whether or not the song was scriptural (after all, it wasn’t in the book).

I’ll let Bob pick up his story at this point--

And then the next Sunday the minister approached me and said we needed to talk.

“The elders told me you want to paste that new song in the back of our hymnal.”

“Yes, it’s a wonderful song!”

“Well, did you know it was written by somebody in the ‘anti-cooperation’ church of Christ? It would send the wrong message if we sang that song. The answer is ‘no,’ and please do not ask again.”

That day I knew something was wrong. Terribly wrong. That day I began realizing that everything was not 100% perfect at that church. That day the scales fell off my eyes. And as the scales fell, I began a new season of searching.

A lot of people have special memories of “728b.” The catchy tune. The inspiring words. That wonderful bass line. But for me, it was the song that opened my eyes. I will always be grateful.

I had an epiphany story very close to Bob’s story (so close it happened in the same church building, but that is another story for another time). Once you dispense with the dangerous fiction that your church is always right because it is, after all, the one true church, then you are free to move in a whole different direction... even if you stay in the same place.

Risky Business

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. (Acts 9:15)

Jim Woodroof once suggested that had it not been for the apostle Paul, we would still be drinking the blood of our enemies out of their skulls. What he meant was that it was largely the work of Paul who carried the gospel to the pagan world. Without the influence of Christ, we would all still be pagan, and it was Paul who was Christ's messenger to the non-Jewish world. The impact of this one man on history cannot be over-emphasized.

And it almost didn't happen! After the baptism of Saul of Tarsus, the church was hesitant to accept the former persecutor into its midst. Yes, he had debated the Jews in Damascus; yes, he had to flee that city because of persecution. But the Christians were afraid that it was all a ploy to allow him to infiltrate the church so that he could do more harm to Christians. When Saul came to Jerusalem, no one would have anything to do with him. No one, that is, except Barnabas, the "Son of Encouragement."

26 When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. (Acts 9:26-27)

Without the willingness of Barnabas to take the risk to embrace Saul and make use of his many gifts, Saul of Tarsus may have never become the apostle Paul.

What risks have you taken for Christ and on other people? Chances are you will never have to take a chance on a converted terrorist. But what about reaching out to someone at work, in the neighborhood or even at church who does not seem to have many friends? Are you willing to take a personal risk in associating with someone upon whom you can have a great impact. Sure, pouring yourself into the life of others is always risky business. It was risky for Barnabas to embrace Paul and take him under his wing. But it is possible that Paul would have never been able to go across the world with the gospel had not Barnabas been willing to go across the street with encouragement and acceptance. Think about it.

Crossing the Rubicon

The Rubicon is a river in northern Italy that flows from the Apennine Mountains into the Adriatic Sea. It also once marked the northern border between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy proper. Roman law forbade any general from leading a legion across that border. Following the victories of Julius Caesar in Gaul and his rise to popularity and power among many in Rome, the Senate ordered him to disband his army and return to stand before the Senate. Caesar decided instead to return to Rome with his army and become, well, Caesar. When he took his army across the Rubicon River, it was his point of no return. The expression “crossing the Rubicon” is stilled used as an expression today when someone reaches a point of no return. Actually, Caesar gave us another expression at the crossing of the Rubicon. He is reported to have said, “The die is cast” as he went across the river.

The fledgling church of Jesus crossed a Rubicon of sorts in our reading today from Acts 8:1-3. Stephen was killed by mob violence at the end of Acts 7. The days of “enjoying the favor of all the people” in Acts 2 has passed. Now the unofficial opposition by Jewish people has become an official persecution by Jewish leaders. Christians have reached the point where they must decide HOW MUCH they believe in Jesus.

And Saul approved of their killing him. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. (Acts 8:1–3, TNIV)

Saul of Tarsus (who I believe is brought up later in Acts) leads the effort to round up and imprison believers in Jesus. There will be no more gathers of thousands in the open to worship God in the name of Jesus. Now that name puts a price on their heads. Christians could give up the name of Jesus and go on with their lives or they could risk their lives for the name. What most decided was to take the name of Jesus on the road, “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (Acts 8:4). The Rubicon was crossed, the decision was made and the church grew throughout the world.

When we accept, confess and act on the name of Jesus, we cross the Rubicon and reach the point of no return. To be honest, we would like to have it both ways—to be have the favor of all the people AND be faithful to Jesus. The world doesn’t let us do that, at least, not for long. We have to decide who is Lord. But then, if we are Christians, we have already decided that!

No Freedom Without Sacrifice

Sunday's service focused on freedom. After all, it isn't all that common for July 4th to fall on a Sunday, and we decided to use that emphasis to our advantage. We sang some patriotic songs (a medley of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "America). We even had a flag up on the podium. I must confess that both of those make me a bit uncomfortable. I think its too easy to entwine God and country to the point where we get the two confused. It's easy to think that "God is on our side" politically and then justify what we do as a country as "God's work." But at the same time, the freedom's that our country afford as gifts from God and it is right and just that we thank Him for those... and occasionally doing that in church is probably a good thing.

Freedom always means responsibility. Freedom is never free. Peter tells us to "live as free men" (1 Pet 2:16). Paul says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free" (Gal 5:1). Christ gave us freedom at the cross, and we are to live that freedom. But we often assume that freedom means that we can do what we want. When we say, "Hey, it's a free country," we often mean, "I can do what I want and I don't have to care what you think." Freedom means that I am free for myself.

Peter and Paul both beg to differ. Peter says, "Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God." Paul says, "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love." (Gal 5:13-14). Freedom means that we have been set free (from sin) to serve God. And am not free FROM others but free FOR others. Big difference. When we understand the price Jesus paid for our freedom at the cross, that places us under an obligation. We are free, but freedom has an obligation, a responsibility, a price.

The 1998 Steven Spielberg movie Saving Private Ryan is a powerful parable of of this message of grace and freedom. Two Ryan brothers died during D-Day invasion; a third had died earlier; their mother would receive all three death notifications on the same day. The Chief of Staff learned that her fourth son James Ryan (played by Matt Damon) is behind enemy lines. He decides that a fourth Ryan son is not going to die, so he sends Cpt. John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) and either Army rangers to find him and bring him home. One by one, the Rangers lose men until Miller himself is mortally wounded. As he lay dying, Miller pulls Ryan close and says, “Earn this… earn it.” Pvt. Ryan is given the gift of freedom, but freedom is never, ever free. He now has the responsibility to live in wuch a away to respect the sacrifice. Years later, Ryan stands at Miller’s grave and wonders if he has indeed lived up to that sacrifice. It's the most powerful part of the movie.

We owe Jesus everything. OK, Jesus never says it us “Now earn this.” We can’t do that. But Jesus does say, “Follow me.” There is no freedom without sacrifice, and freedom for Jesus meant a cross. And that is exactly what freedom means for all of us. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). There is no freedom without sacrifice— no freedom without a cross.