Idols of the Tribe: Chasing Francis Series

Let’s call Sir Francis Bacon the father of the scientific method. We can do that without much exaggeration. He is the one who best articulated the process through which one tests a theory and supposition to arrive at fact.

In his book, Novum Organum, Bacon outlines the courses of study that would advance our scientific knowledge and technology. He invents academic disciplines that would not surface for another hundred years. And, he describes various intellectual traps that would hinder our progress. He called them idols.

Bacon calls our mental traps 'idols' because they capture our attention and devotion. Because we are emotionally attached to them, we refuse to question them. Indeed, it usually doesn’t occur to us to question them.

What Bacon calls idols, Charismatic Christians call 'strongholds'. Strongholds are complex systems of thought and habit that become dwelling places for powers of darkness that control or influence our lives. But let's stay with Bacon’s language for the moment.

Bacon listed his idols under four headings.

Idols of the Marketplace involves corrupt communication. We corrupt our communication when we use meaningless words, words that have a double meaning, and jargon that those outside our occupation do not understand. We also corrupt communication when we use inflated vocabulary to impress others because it actually obscures the conversation. Obviously inaccurate or inflated marketing corrupts human discourse. Anything that makes it difficult to arrive at truth through discussion, debate or conversation is an idol of the marketplace.

Idols of the Cave are obsessions with one’s own mental habits. An unreasonable conservatism or an unreasonable attraction to novelty, intellectual sloth, limiting one’s intellectual curiosity to his own small part of the world, and irrational appeals to authority are all examples of idols of the cave.

Idols of the Theatre are unreasonable attachments to the ideas and practices we receive from the past. Habits, protocol, and traditions can all become idols of the theatre.

I am ending this series on Chasing Francis with reflections on Bacon’s fourth category of mental traps.

Idols of the Tribe are the errors and limitations we accept from our society.

Common sense can be an idol of the tribe. Common sense is the collection of judgments and beliefs human beings throughout history have been gathering from experience. We absorb it as we grow from infancy to adulthood because all human families have at least a measure of access to this accumulated wisdom.  However, common sense is not always right, as discoveries such as the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have shown. Reality, as it turns out, is very different than what common sense suggests. As in the case with all these idols, the gifts we receive from our tribe are nearly always helpful unless they become idols.

Applying Bacon’s idea to spiritual life, I would suggest another idol of the tribe: sectarianism. This is the practice of honoring the beliefs and practices of one’s sect as though they are the final word in spiritual life. If one becomes sectarian, the ideas, vocabulary and habits of his sect set the boundaries of his relationship with God and with others.

A sectarian Christian cannot envision how other kinds of Christians might even be sincere or authentic. If one is radically sectarian, then the music of other Christians, or the way they organize, the way they practice communion, or even their architectural preferences can become insurmountable barriers for fellowship or friendship.

However, with few exceptions, doctrinal and cultural differences between Christians have arisen from their race, nationality and/or their language. This blog is too short to demonstrate why I say this, but I believe it can be easily proven.

I mean, how many African-American Presbyterian Churches have you visited?

How about Swedish Snake Handlers?

Have you ever met a French-speaking Amish believer?

Can you imagine a group of Arabs forming a Messianic Jewish congregation?

Our various Christian communities are rooted in a particular tribe. The tribe forms our theological language, our ways of worship and the practices of our faith.

That brings us to the most powerful stronghold of all the idols of the tribe: nationalism.

As a missionary kid, I used to hear older missionaries discuss nationalism. They viewed it as a spiritual problem because it so easily becomes an obstacle for new converts. Missionaries discovered that if the faith and the customs of the convert’s nation came into in conflict, it was often difficult for that convert to understand why it was such a big deal. Polygamy, the veneration of ancestors, nudity and many other issues come to mind here.

“He’s a good man and a great preacher", the missionary would say while shaking his head, “but he’s such a nationalist.”

It was years before I realized that the missionary’s own nationalism was often invisible to him. In fact, missionaries who confronted and deconstructed their own nationalism were usually viewed as odd by the other missionaries.

“Poor thing, he’s been here so long I think he’s gone native,” one might whisper to another.

Going native was such a dreaded thing!  Missionary kids were especially vulnerable to the sin of going native. They might even fall in love with a native girl. That serious sin could destroy decades of missionary service. It could undermine the essential difference that needed to be maintained between missionaries and native converts.

The missionaries were preaching the gospel, but the gospel as understood and practiced through their own nationalistic parameters.

Nationalism becomes an idol if it demands our deepest devotion and our highest loyalties.

To determine if you worship your nation, just ask yourself this: are you an American who happens to be a Christian? Or are you a Christian who happens to be an American?

If someone walks down the aisle of your church with an American flag are you surprised? Offended? Delighted? Moved?

What if someone walks down the aisle of your church with a cross? Are you surprised? Offended? Delighted? Moved?

Do you find yourself having two different reactions to those two scenarios? Why? Does your imagined reaction to each reveal anything about your deepest loyalties?

And how do you feel about other types of Christians? Is it possible for you to receive ministry from Christians who practice their faith a bit differently than you? What do you think are the essentials of your faith? What sorts of things create the boundary and border that defines where your faith ends and begins? Do you know the difference between a sect and a cult? Can you learn from a person of another religion without blurring the lines of your own faith? Can you honestly listen to and process a challenging question posed by an atheist? Do you react in such situations with fear or anger?

In Chasing Francis, the pastor of a nondenominational mega church hits the wall. He learns that his faith has been too limited by trite answers to serious question. His observations about the world have proved superficial. So he goes to Italy and explores the history of his faith. He realizes that although he is a Christian, he has been experiencing Christian faith as an expression of contemporary American culture. He learns that becoming a Christian involves stretching beyond ones own time and place to become a citizen of the Timeless Kingdom of God.

The pastor meets a fellow citizen of God’s kingdom named Francis. The saint just happens to have been born in a different country and a different century than he. After walking with Francis for a while, the pastor discovered that he too is now living by a different set of values and reaching toward different goals than what he had known while he had worshipped the the idol of his tribe.

He doesn’t become a Roman Catholic. He doesn’t become an Italian. He doesn’t become a medievalist. He remains a contemporary Evangelical American. But these things are now the spice rather than the substance of his identity.

Because they are no longer idols, they become adornments, baptized elements of a faith that receives the gifts of every tribe, kindred and nation and lays them down before the One we call King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Holographic Jesus : Chasing Francis Series

It is the year 2030.  

Most American cities have one church, to which most professing believers in the area attend, at least a few times a year. At Easter, one of these city churches puts on an amazingly spectacular laser show, complete with live tigers and bears. At the end of the presentation, a holographic Jesus walks on water and rises into the heavens.

One can always expect a marvelous performance whenever his schedule allows him to attend...but never anything like this. This takes worship to a whole new level! The church world is abuzz about the holographic Jesus. Hundreds of churches are already planning to do it next year.

Aspiring Christian leaders in 2030 carefully study the techniques and performances of the most brilliant and creative pastors. They realize that only the best will emerge from the steady dying out of the less talented. They diligently apply themselves. They focus their drive toward success. They work hard to continually improve their presentation. They realize that holography has now become an indispensable part of their work.

The churches in 2030 require leaders with superb organizational skills. They must maintain the financial wherewithal to build state-of-the-art facilities capable of continual technological adaptation. They know the competition is fierce. They understand that some young upstart may draw away their crowds at any time with an exciting innovation.  Church leaders stay on their toes. In this environment, there is room only for the quick or the dead.

A few church leaders still know something about the Book of Ruth and the meaning of the word Logos from St. John’s Gospel. However, no congregation expects their leader to use company time for such arcane and irrelevant studies. A consultant gently reminds one pastor that his audience has become bored with his references to the Sermon on the Mount. “Save that sort of thing for academic conversations at the pub,” the consultant says to the pastor. “Get back to those great messages on topics that are more....relevant. After all, that is what built your church!”

Of course, this is only one possible future of American Christianity. We may experience a more European one, in which immigrants from other countries go to worship in old strip malls. As they drive to the worship service, they pass old church buildings used as restaurants, art galleries or theatres. If that is the future, churches will lack enough resources to offer a holographic Jesus.

We hope to avoid both of these scenarios, of course. If we do however, we must become aware of how secularism has already eroded our faith. For some time now we have been headed toward a future in which “church” will mean something very different than what it has meant for two thousand years.

Christians on the theological left have openly embraced and celebrated this shift. Indeed, they articulated its course and organized its advance. We wise, conservative Christians know this.

Christians on the right have experienced the shift without premeditation or even an acknowledgement that it was occurring. That is because there is not much of an ideological structure left in conservative churches. Existing structures simply have us do whatever we must to keep the people coming in the doors and the money dropping in the plates.

Indeed, if a church in 2030 puts on that laser show complete with live bears, tigers and a holographic Jesus, the people who attend it will likely think of themselves as conservatives. If there are any liberal Christians left by then, they will be meeting in an old church building to chant beautiful passages from the Baghavad Gita.

What is missing from my futuristic scenarios is not conservative or liberal churches but orthodox ones; communities which teach and practice “that which has at all times and all places been believed by the whole people of God.”

A church, you see, is meant to be a spiritual family. Eccelesia, after all, means “called out.” That implies a deliberate movement of a people out of an earthly kingdom into a heavenly one.

Church should be an embassy of heaven; a place one goes to breathe the air of his eternal country.

Church should be a school, one that teaches us the structures of Christian thought and trains us how to apply what we learn to everyday life.

These impractical but indispensable things are the essence of what we mean by “church.” When they become secondary, or when we eliminate them altogether – whether by neglect or by design -- the institution that survives is no longer a church. It may be large. It may be rich. It might have laser shows with bears and tigers. But it is not a church.

Unfortunately, for several decades we have been eroding or eliminating the spiritual components of church life.

Worship, meant to offer transcendence and to provoke awe – meant to lead us “to taste the powers of the world to come” -- has become entertainment. In fact, the word “worship” now means “musical performance” to great numbers of believers. Worship in that case, is a product we observe and judge, not an entrance into heaven’s court.

We have replaced biblical and theological training. Where we once grappled with concepts to transform us by renewing our minds, we now focus on practical life skills and the maintenance of traditional culture.

Instead of thinking of the members of our congregation as parts of a spiritual family, we now tend to treat them as stakeholders of a corporation. Pastors have become CEOs rather than fathers. Evangelism has become marketing.  Spiritual direction has become counseling.

In short, we have been steadily replacing our spiritual quest with technique. We have become religious consumers rather than spiritually hungry souls. We are a backslidden nation, much like the people in the Book of Judges, in which “everyone does that which is right in his own eyes.”

Ours is a world in which orthodoxy has become an unspeakable form of radicalism.

In Chasing Francis, the pastor shocks his congregation by saying such things out loud. He discovers his path by following a saint rather than a rock star. He walks away from the idols of the age. He turns his feet toward Zion.

One hungers for such courage. Then...he wonders if he just might become the first great innovator to offer a holographic Jesus, complete with bleeding hands and feet, ascending into the air as thousands gasp between their sips of award-winning coffee.

Bad Religion? : The Chasing Francis Series

                

        Today, I found a book I read in 1993,  The Summa of the Summa. It is a brief summary (consisting of merely 532 pages!) of the most famous work of the great theologian, Thomas Aquinas. Peter Kreeft prepared the summary and his notes are a vitally important part of it. If one reads this book with Timothy McDermott’s paraphrase of the Summa, he may begin to understand Thomas Aquinas’s mind.

                

          I picked that old book up today because I realized that Thomas Aquinas may be  another Italian lurking in the shadows of Chasing Francis. I’ll tell you why in a moment. First, I’ll share what I wrote nearly twenty years ago about Kreeft’s book:

“The central issue in any discussion about Christianity involves deciding whether it is true. Most people understand that believers find faith comforting. The question is whether it is true. Aquinas’s common sense test for determining whether we know the truth about something is to learn whether the thoughts in our heads about it correspond with reality. This is a vital test, because Christianity cannot be comforting if it is not true. If it is not true, it is a form of madness. For mature adults to order their lives around some ‘universal end’ or ‘in hope of the general resurrection from the dead’ is a willful delusion of self if none of these things are true. In that case, Christianity exists to maintain an intellectual dysfunction we need to outgrow. I enjoy the likes of Robert Schuller and his message of positive affirmation. However, his success is based on a strategic and thus deliberate avoidance of the uncomfortable question every intellectually honest person must ask of the ideology he embraces: ‘is this based upon something real?’ If it is not, Schuller and Christianity’s other inspiring speakers are making a living inspiring people with amusing speeches about nothing. That even Christians have become uninterested in asking tough questions about what is real reveals that believers have been silently concluding that Christianity will cease to comfort us if we ask it or its defenders serious questions. We are afraid to accept the answers. So we have come to accept a version of our faith that is superficial, insipid, intellectually vacuous and ultimately meaningless. Either that, or we are slothful about being transformed by the renewing of our minds. In either case, popular Christianity has become, as our critics claim, a sort of mild morphine we embrace for no greater reason than that we find it comforting.”  

Why would Aquinas, one of Christianity’s most passionate defenders, provoke such a response? 

I won’t bore you with my reflections on what I have learned trying to read Aquinas. He was Italian. He was born in 1225 into a family known more for producing military officers than saints. However, he was drawn to his uncle’s way of life, who was an abbot. And, he utterly reordered European thought.

In many ways, we could say that Reformed theology was a reaction to some of his ideas. At the same time, his work helped form the intellects of the very reformers who challenged him. Behind both Aquinas and the reformers was Augustine, but that is a theme for another day! What I want to make clear about Aquinas in this blog is that people still study him; not only for his theology but for the philosophical structures he developed. He remains formidable, even after one discounts the limitations of his medieval understanding of science. He believed Christianity was true and his reasons for thinking this still shakes the foundations of secularism.

Not many Christian leaders, Protestant or Catholic, wrestle with the likes of Aquinas now. We study trends, demographics and management theories. We argue politics. We do fund drives. Then, one day, we ask ourselves why we are doing all of that. The malnourishment of our soul erodes the energy to keep it up.

The elders of the church in Chasing Francis thought their pastor was losing his faith. What was actually happening was that he was recovering his faith. What he was losing was faith in a form of Christianity American believers have found increasingly attractive, but which only superficially resembles any form of the faith embraced and confessed by past generations.

Whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant, Christians throughout history have offered a robust structure of thought that one could examine, debate, and if he accepted it, embrace. In place of these structures of thought, lifestyle and spiritual formation, we have been steadily remolding our faith into a market-driven product for consumers. As a result, many of us are only marginally interested in whether those who preach Christianity actually live it. We are not at all interested in studying it ‘when we rise up and when we lie down’. We are downright hostile to the idea that Christianity might more important than our money, our chosen way of life, or even life itself. The faith is peripheral rather than central to our lives, and this shift mutates the faith into something historically unrecognizable.

This pastor in Chasing Francis discovered he could no longer sustain the ever-maddening competition for America’s diminishing Evangelical population. He was tired of clichés, silliness, masking political commentary with a religious veneer and turning the house of God into a flea market.

Were John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas, John Wesley, Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards to enter one of our market-driven churches, they would find plenty to disagree about among themselves. But all of them would be horrified to discover that the people on our pews no longer know what Christianity teaches. They would be more horrified to learn that many of our preachers do not know what Christianity teaches. But they would not even begin to comprehend that our loss of biblical, theological and intellectual formation has been a deliberate part of a strategy to attract religious consumers into the church.

If schools granted medical degrees to people whose real specialty was business administration, marketing or entertainment, there would be a public outcry. We know it may be possible to amuse a cancer patient, become his personal friend, and make his hospital experience pleasant without ever curing his disease. A hospital that operates by such priorities might teach us there are things we can do to make a patient’s experience more comforting and that would be profitable for everyone. However, we would think it grossly unjust for doctors to stop treating disease in order to be liked, or worse, in order to gain more patients.

            

       The elders of the church in Casing Francis were horrified when their pastor realized he was doing precisely this – pandering to religious consumerism while neglecting the people’s eternal needs. What the elders could not grasp is that their pastor had awakened from a spiritual stupor. He wasn’t going crazy. He was becoming a disciple.

               

      I read a book review this morning on the Amazon site. It is about a new book on the state of American Christianity and is called Bad Religion. I have not read it.  For all I know, I may I disagree with every word in it. I just know I deeply resonate with the review. So I end my blog by passing it along to you. I believe it deserves our careful consideration. 

“As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails—and why it threatens to take American society with it.

Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of American decline, Douthat exposes the spiritual roots of the nation’s political and economic crises. He argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, it’s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses.

These faiths speak from many pulpits—conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably “spiritual”—and many of their preachers claim a Christian warrant. But they are increasingly offering distortions of traditional Christianity—not the real thing. Christianity’s place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, Douthat argues, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption.

In a story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, he brilliantly charts institutional Christianity’s decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith—which acted as a “vital center” and the moral force behind the civil rights movement—through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s to the polarizing debates of the present day. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Barack Obama, Eat Pray Love to Joel Osteen, and Oprah Winfrey to The Da Vinci Code, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel’s mantra of “pray and grow rich,” a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach, and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country’s ability to confront our most pressing challenges and accelerated American decline.

His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity is sure to generate controversy, and it will be vital reading for all those concerned about the imperiled American future.”

This is what the pastor in Chasing Francis discovered. Christianity is not only a communal experience and a weekly comfort. It is a structure of thought. It is a system of belief that must be deliberately taught, learned and adopted. If Christianity no longer offers this, then many now wonder if it offers much of anything; except, perhaps, a living for those of us who market it.