God did it October 5, 2007
Posted by Zack in Georgia , trackback
This conference is basically one sermon after another, all day—preachers preaching to preachers. They’re fascinating and entertaining.
But I keep laughing at places in the sermons here where no one else laughs. The preachers are saying really funny things—things which they mean to be funny, but things that are so profound, and so challenging to the “churched,” that the crowd softly gasps instead of laughing. Good preachers are great at using humor to get people to listen. And you can feel the minds opening and changing here.
That’s what these pastors and church leaders came for. It’s usually true of why people go to church too, as it turns out. I know that’s the opposite of the stereotype—you thought people were going to church to be reassured of their world view, right? But it’s true.
A pastor named Erwin McManus is on now, and a lot of those gasps are taking place.
He’s challenging this audience of 11,000 on all sorts of things. Here’s one. It’s become a universal habit among Christians to verbally attribute everything good that they do and everything good that happens to God. I’ve given this a lot of thought because it’s so unusual to me, being still pretty “unchurched,” as I am.
On the one hand, “giving it to God” can be a wonderful thing. It makes Christians who believe it very humble—no matter how big their accomplishments, it wasn’t them. Moreover, it sometimes gives them great strength and confidence, because they believe (so long as they’re doing good works) that God is working through them. But best of all, it makes them accountable, in their personal judgements to God. And since these sorts of Christians believe that God just wants them to love and serve others, it’s a win win for everyone.
But on the other hand, it can cause Christians to absolve themselves from getting involved in bigger-picture social change. It’s common to believe that if “I just do God’s will”—by helping at the homeless shelter, adopting, giving away 10% of one’s income, etc.—then God will work the rest out. (Interestingly, this theology of social change has been adopted by a lot of the left too, but without God in the equation.)
So, Erwin has just taken on that whole notion in a pretty edgy and confrontational way. He began by reading from Ecclesiastes 1, where Solomon laments, that “everything is meaningless” and that there is nothing new under the sun—with the implication: just stop trying to change the world. Erwin is talking to a stadium in which probably 99% read the Bible “literally.” The concept of Biblical “inerrancy” is a complex issue that I’ll deal with in the future, and I don’t want to over simplify it here. But Erwin starts out by shouting, “Solomon was wrong!” And he backs it up with about 10 Bible verses—many in the voice of God and Jesus—that contradict Solomon’s bar on history-making.
That’s when one of those jokes came up, when I laughed and others gasped. He hollered, “God must’ve forgot to read Ecclesiastes 1!” It was funny. But, really, no one laughed. They were too busy thinking about it. Same thing happened over and over through Shane’s sermon—and almost every one that’s happened here.
And really, that’s why these folks are coming here.
After telling some stories of history-making beautiful moments made possible by Christ-like behavior by humans, Erwin closed with this:
Tag: Catalyst conferenceIf God could step into human history, and take on flesh and blood—then I have a feeling that the best thing we can do is to accept that we are human, and to step into history ourself and start making those beautiful moments.
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Sorry if this is a bit OT. But I have to respond to Phil.
I don’t think it’s really odd that a person who was a Christian would feel they have a lot in common with Dennis Kucinich. (Even if by some fluke I know your dad, Phil, I won’t tell him!)
On the surface, political progressives sometimes seem more in line with Christian values than political conservatives in the U.S. The progressives are all about “be good stewards of the environment” and “help those who can’t help themselves.” Sounds good to a Christian!
The only difficulty is that progressives think these noble agenda items must be implemented using government force. Jesus said, “Feed the poor.” Progressives say, “Take part of your neighbor’s paycheck from him by force and use it to feed the poor.” This, to me, twists Jesus’ message. Jesus didn’t enforce morality through fear of punishment; he went for life-change and moral behavior followed as a result.
(The down-side of Jesus’ approach: Some people refuse to change their hearts, and as a result, the poor don’t get fed. But when this happens, should we abandon Jesus’ methods and go for the top-down, enforceable approach? Or should we redouble our efforts to encourage heart-change?)
But of course, you can say the same thing about conservatives. The progressives have a strong streak of sexual and cultural libertinism in them: “Anybody should do anybody and nobody should get in their face about it.” Doesn’t sound very Christian. Conservatives would apparently use government force to limit sexual misbehavior, obscenity, and the like. Since these are not good Christian behavior, it sounds reasonable to say Conservatives are more Christlike.
But, once again, Jesus didn’t threaten people into being good. He loved them until their hearts changed and they sought to be good in response. So, maybe Conservatives, like Progressives, are also pursuing Jesus’ goals using Satan’s methods?
Of course, government force isn’t always “Satan’s methods”; imprisoning a rapist is a clear moral good. But the rapist initiated the use of force; society can respond morally. Only a pacifist thinks it’s immoral to respond to an evil initiation of force. (And they’d have trouble explaining why Jesus didn’t instruct Roman soldiers to resign their commissions!)
But both sides are guilty of saying they want to pursue morally good results, but doing so in un-Christlike ways. God wants heart-change (with grateful obedience resulting); government is about social order and rights-protection by force of law (and the state if the heart is neither here nor there). The two intersect, but infrequently. So I think most folks are ready to get over the idea that God is a Republican. Or a Democrat.