Words At War

It should strike us as ironic that Christianity is so thoroughly centered upon creeds and doctrine. Consider for a second how Christian conversion works these days:

- if you are church of Christ, then you stand before the congregation, give your stamp of approval to those magical words in the question "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?" You passively receive the act of baptism and the deposit of the Spirit, and the deal is done. You are now a Christian . . . provided you regularly attend, and more importantly from the preacher's point of view, tithe.
- if you're a Baptist, you say the sinner's prayer. Fill out a registration card, and the church computer database declares your faith 'up and running'.
- if you're 'Spirit-filled', you receive the various baptisms, speak in tongues to prove it, and you should be good to go.

And, in all these instances, faith in some way is based on church membership, and more importantly verbal formulas. Do a little dance, say a certain prayer, get saved tonight . . . hooray for disco Christianity.

I read this today: "Certainly, all Christian confessions of faith - both old and new - must be held in honor, but something else is more important for being a Christian. Jesus nowhere said, 'Say after me', but rather 'Follow me'. That means that Jesus did not first require a confession of faith from his disciples, men or women, but rather called them to utterly practical discipleship. The important thing is not to say 'Lord, Lord' but to 'do the will of the Father who is in heaven'."

When I consider all the service I have seen in church, all of it shares that it was done in order to live out the doctrines and creeds that my congregations actually considered to be most important. In other words, we practiced faith to prove our creeds. Our doctine, not our love for God or our compassion for humanity, was the source and motivation for our service and life. It was also why we were conveniently, and obviously, right, and all other confessions were wrong. In this, I think we have missed the grace available through doctrine, and more tragically I think we have missed what it is to be a Christian.

Christianity is unquestionably a communal faith. It is not a faith that respects rugged individualism. It is a faith that seeks in every possible instance to integrate humanity as much as possible. The NT states plainly that prerequisite to being reconciled to God, one must be reconciled to his brother or sister. We cannot hate each other and love God. And this is where I think our idea of Christianity has been perverted. The last thing that the world needs is a another cause for division. Humanity on the whole was doing quite a good job at dividing itself before Christianity came on to the scene. If all Christianity offers is another cause for division, then the human race has little need for it. The market for sectarianism was, and still is, totally saturated without Christianity. Humans don't need help dividing. We're really, really good at it already.

Unity is a different story. We can't seem to unite around anything for very long. In America we declare "United we stand!" Yet it seems often that we're not very good at standing. In fact we stagger and stumble quite often. When we do stand it's very rare that we do so because we're united. We typically are divided into a thousand different factions, and we stand only because we are conditioned not to kill each other when we don't get our way. We stand because we grit our teeth, and we are united only in so far as minorities are willing to consent to the often mindless majority. This is the but one of many mediocre attempts humanity has made at unity, and any who would be honest in their evaluation of it, would admit that it appears far from stable. America stands purely by the grace of God, in the midst of screaming tensions that appear poised to take the country down at any given second. And, ironically this unity borrowed heavily (and is still heavily in debt to) the attempts of Christians to provide bases for unity to the sectioning process that has been ongoing in the Church for centuries. And here is where we have betrayed the grace present in creeds:

We have made creeds/doctrine the basis for unity, instead of letting them arise out of the unity that is already present in a given body of people. Instead of finding our common ground and together confessing it in a creative declaration, we approach our brothers and sisters with the common ground predetermined in advance. We put the potential for unity solely in the hands of our competing faith statements, and watch as our words go to war. The effect on Christianity has been devestating. Doctrine has been perverted from grace to cancer.

When we approach another believer of a different confession than our own, with our doctrine as the measuring stick to hold them to we are attempting to short-circuit their free will. I think we should realize this and take it seriously. Instead of viewing our creeds as warring statements, we should see them as declarations of praise, or as one person put it "doxilogical knowledge". They are not molds to fit into, but acclamations from the heart of God's people. In this difference of attitude we can see them transformed from constricting traditions, to proclamations given to God from the freedom he has provided us. If another believer does not share a certain confession with us, then we respect them with the understanding that it is God's Spirit that leads people to proclaim truth, and as they understand, they will confess what the Spirit has shown them.

Lastly, Jesus never intended for our unity to be based on verbal formulas. This is why he never wrote a book. This is why he spoke in parables. This is why he calls us to 'Follow', instead of to 'Say'. The mark of a Christian is to quite literally see what Jesus does, and go and do likewise. It is by the Spirit that we are enabled to see Jesus still today. We can discern his actions, and follow.

That is what God has been communicating to me the past couple months. A church I would be satisfied with is one that sees doctrine and creeds in a very secondary manner. One that is more focused on doing than saying. This is the biggest detriment to my own spiritual growth at the moment: my life is deficient in service, and I have received an over-abundance of words. I don't need Bible studies, classes, sermons, or guidance. I need to be amidst the struggles of the world, watching Jesus serve and doing the same. I haven't a clue where to start, and I'm reluctant and scared to actually do it. But, I know this is true. Christianity is not abstract. It is not a religion of debate. It is without question, a faith in action. But what are we doing . . . . ?