Categories: uncategorized
Date: 17 April 2008 08:17:42
**Rant warning**
Yesterday I came face to face with my faith and it wasn't a plesant experience. I realised that I am playing the same games as the majority of other Christians and the result of those games is everybody loses.
Now before I begin let me clarify, I am an institutionalised Christian in terms of the fact I have grown up around church and know no other way of life, although I come from a non-Christian home. The majority of my friends are Christians and outside of work the majority of the people I socialise with are Christians. I'll be honest whilst I enjoy the company of non-Christians they often end up talking about a world which I'm really not comfortable in. Equally the world I know and can talk about is alien to them and whilst they respect that's the world I inhabit it's a world they can't understand and don't feel comfortable in.
Normally it's fine for me to keep living in my cozy ickle Christian world, because whilst I get frustrated within it I know the way the world operates and generally what one can and can't get away with saying and I know the reasons we are careful to be sensitive to be people. Because I'm on the edges of the church in someways, due to having social characteristics which are under-represented in church, sometimes I can feel like I am a bit more sorted and in touch with "the real world" than others. I have to face facts though I'm not and I'm playing the same games.
These games are ok if we want the church to simply be a cozy little social club where we go to "worship" God and gain strength from others living in our reality. It's the place we can go to try and feel "normal" as we engage in our strange rituals. We might like to think that we being subversive occassionally and controversial in what we say but we're not because we're always being careful to chip away at the corners rather than kick down the doors of messed up thinking.
As I say I realised yesterday what this means. If I as an evangelical believe in the idea of hell and believe in the idea of people who haven't made real connection with God going to hell, (and that's a big one I'll be honest I'm not sure about), then we have a big problem. In addition if I have this idea of living by the gospel and taking the bible as my map for living we also have a big problem because the life I have just described of living in polite religious ghettos isn't biblical in fact it's positively against the gospel.
Now don't get me wrong I know church has a place, (Jesus went to synagouge) but equally we follow a God who, in earthly form, said some outrageous things and mixed with all kinds of people. I have realised if I am to follow that God then my life has to change, and I'm really not sure how. Equally I'm aware that the changes in my life, this summer, could drag me further into the realm of making compromises and saying what I think people want to hear, (in terms of what I choose to include and not include). I want to highlight good practice and reach the middle ground but I don't want to contribute to continuing to build the ghetto.
We have to face the fact that churches are as they are because we're comfortable with them being like that. We also have to focus on the fact that if we go down the route of just trying to make church relevant or reaching out to those "in need" we will still see, if we believe in hell, the majority of people in our society going there. The majority of people in the west today don't have social problems but wouldn't feel comfortable in church because our culture is so different to theirs.
How we change it I don't know, how to change my own life I don't know but I'm not sure how I can face God knowing that I have contributed to that culture. I'm fed up with playing a game where everybody loses but I don't want to leave the table. I want to find the God of the gospels.