MORAL ESCAPISM AND DEALING WITH GUILT

Nobody like being told that they are wrong, even less, that they have done wrong. Why? It’s shame and guilt provoking – painful feelings. It is easier to escape and to deem those churches causing this pain as “judgmental” or “repressive.”

Usually, the next stop is at the seeker-sensitive church. Although these churches still believe in that archaic, demeaning, and guilt-provoking concept of sin, they are usually less outspoken about it, not wanting to turn seekers away. They major in grace and minor in grace.

However, it eventually becomes clear that they too will provoke guilt, and so, on to the Unitarian Church. This church might not believe in the concept of objective sin, but they do believe in things like human responsibility and social justice. Their sermons are filled with “oughts” and “shoulds” and only convey a fluffy message of grace. They will tell you about how you are a good person. Meanwhile, you know that you flunk even their moral standards. Consequently, guilt and shame continue to cling to you like a ball and chain.

Next stop is to the local atheist association. There, you will hear the ultimate solution in guilt-reduction – that you are only a wet machine, determined by bio-chemical reactions. Therefore, you do not have freewill. But here’s the good news – any basis for guilt and shame is “eliminated.” After all, you could not have acted differently. Puff! No guilt.

However, this solution comes with a great price-tag. Psychologist James Hillman observes that we can deaden our lives through the way we interpret them:

·       We dull our lives by the way we conceive then… By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents. (“The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling,” Random House, 6)

Perhaps there is no better way to dull our lives than to dismiss the fact that we are free moral agents. But what do we do about those life controlling feelings of guilt and shame? Simple! We receive the forgiveness of Christ, who died to pay the price for all of our sins – past, present, and future!

Inclusiveness, Brian McLaren, the Emergent Church and Hypocrisy

 When I go shopping, I go with a shopping-list. It enables me to do the shopping quickly without thinking about every item I see in the store. When we go shopping for a religion, we also have a shopping-list. On most modern religion-shopping-lists is the requirement that religion unites people and not divides them. It must embrace all worldviews, lifestyles and orientations. It must affirm everyone and not cause anyone to feel marginalized, judged, or degraded. It must provide a safe and nurturing place. In short, true religion must be inclusive and not exclusive.

This is the religion on the shopping-list of Emergent Church guru, Brian D. McLaren. He argues that Christianity is characterized by "hostility to the other”:

• Christians have been taught to see in "us vs. them" terms for centuries, and it will take time to reorient faithful people in a new direction -- "us with them," working for the common good. (Huffington Post Religion Blog, 2/19/03)

I’m not against “working for the common good.” My wife and I do this all the time, even though we continue to disagree about certain things. Differences need not equate with “hostility.” If they do, then McLaren and his Emergent Church must lead the hostility list.

In support of his indictment, McLaren cites two students:

• “People don't want to have to side with the church and against their friends who are Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish or agnostic."

• “We can't find a church that doesn't load a bunch of extra baggage on us. We tried, but they all had this long list of people we had to be against. It's just not worth it."

However, now they are against the Christian church! McLaren argues for a new Christian identity – one that is defined by what is positive and not by what is negative. At first, this sounds wonderful – an item that should be included on every religion-shopping-list. However, it seems as if McLaren fails to see that he too is negative and critical.

In fact, to be in favor of something means that we must also be against its negation. To be in favor of justice means that we are also against injustice. To be in favor of truth means that we must oppose what is not true. To love the truth means to hate the lie. I don’t think that there can be any way around this conclusion. Nor did Jesus!

Meanwhile, I can sympathize with students who are reluctant to stand “against their friends” who are of a different persuasion. I certainly wouldn’t! However, if I really care about them, I would have to ask myself, “What is the most important thing that I can give them?”

If a friend tells me that he intends to join the Klu Klux Klan, what should I tell him? – “Well, you’ve got to do what feels right for you!” No! Instead, I must somehow tell my friend that everything that seems right might not be right. There are certain things that are right and certain things that are not. I must become critical and negative. Okay, I can merely talk about the positive things that he has in Christ. However, he might agree and insist that he can also join the Klan. At that point, I am left with little recourse but to show him how the Klan and Jesus cannot be combined. I must become critical!

No one can be completely inclusive. One church in my neighborhood flies a banner reading something like this: “An Inclusive, Loving and non-Judgmental Community.” However, from their pulpit, they pleaded for volunteer teachers for their education program, from 4^th grade all the way through adult ed. I therefore emailed the pastor and the education director as instructed:

• I will gladly teach any class or grade. However, I need to be transparent about the fact that I am Christian (this is a Unitarian church) and this would influence my teaching. However, I am willing to be amenable to your oversight and feedback.

The education director responded with a flat-out “No!” There was not a hint of, “Well, let’s sit down and talk.” I then wrote to the pastor to point out the gross discrepancy between the message on their banner and the message I had received. No response!

I don’t blame this church for not being entirely inclusive. No church is nor can be. However, I do blame this church and McLaren for their hypocrisy. While claiming to be all inclusive, they are not! There are many who are excluded from such “communities,” but they are not honest about this fact. Meanwhile, they flaunt their inclusiveness while they bash those non-inclusive, judgmental evangelicals.

McLaren does his share of bashing:

• Religious communities often take a short-cut to building a strong group identity -- by defining themselves in opposition to others. Muslims, atheists and gays are high-profile "others" which can be scapegoated to build a strong "Christian" identity.

Admittedly, we all have the sinful tendency to bond at the expense of others. However, some struggle against this sin of “scapegoating,” and some don’t. Evidently, even as McLaren issues his indictments, he regards himself far above this struggle.

We need to have our shopping-lists, but we need to re-check them every so often to see if they contain items that are truly rational and even needful.

Integrity and the Unitarian Church

The church was dressed in the banner, “Community of Love,” and the sermon was exquisitely crafted. She argued in favor of the need for integrity. Our insides had to match our outsides - what we say and do. Anything less is hypocrisy, and it can be smelled for miles.

How to achieve integrity? This is where things got a bit fuzzy. The preacher admitted that she didn’t always carry herself with integrity. Sometimes, the image that she was presenting to the world didn’t match the internal substance, but this dissonance is just an unavoidable product of the complexities of the age.

However, she did finish her sermon with some admonitions about acquiring integrity – walk in the rain, feel the wind and even taste some soil.

Perhaps it was only me, but I found something lacking and wondered if others sensed as much. I approached some of the congregants as winsomely as I could, although I’m sure that others would have performed much better than me.

After assuring them that I really was very impressed with the sermon – and perhaps this was somewhat lacking in integrity – I asked if they were satisfied with the pastor’s final admonition? However, they seemed to be a bit confused by my question, and so I spelled it out:

• By advising people to merely feel the wind and the rain, even though she just meant this poetically, do you feel that she was able to give the congregants something that they needed?

The first two gentlemen were evidently not intrigued by my question and promptly excused themselves. The third gentleman was more patient. He explained that she was trying to be a peace-maker, rather than instructing people what they had to do. Perhaps, puzzled by m question, he asked about my religious background, since I clearly wasn’t a Unitarian.

I explained that I am a Christian, although I had been raised Jewish. I was hoping that he would have asked me for my testimony, but instead he asked, “What type of Christian are you?”

I didn’t want to be overly provocative by answering with that despised term, “Fundamentalist,” and so I answered, “Evangelical.” I went on to explain:

• It is so true, as the pastor had preached, that integrity is so elusive. There are just so many things pulling upon us – so many psychological forces that prey upon us.

He nodded approvingly. I wrongly took this as encouragement to continue:

• Integrity had been completely unreachable for me for many years. I so desperately needed the approval of others that I could not longer distinguish façade from the reality of who I was. It was only through the assurance of the love and forgiveness I have found through Jesus the Messiah that I have been able to accept the truth about myself – that I am not the deserving person that I had tried to believe that I was.

The gentleman cut me off:

• Although I can respect the fact that this has worked for you, everyone you see here is unable to accept this answer, and you can’t expect them to!

I wanted to explain that some realities are just so forceful and pervasive that we aren’t free to choose our own ways. Instead of inventing another more congenial way, we have to conform to that one reality. Like\wise, we are not free to re-envision the laws of physics to suit ourselves. Instead, we have to conform to them. We can’t jump off of a building, expecting that gravity is going to conform to our tastes. Instead, we have to conform to the workings of gravity.

However, with a good-bye touch to my shoulder, he too was gone, and I also left the church, passing the “community of love” banner. I guess it was "just an unavoidable product of the complexities of the age.”