following Christ

A wrong turn

/ W. Keith Brenton / Leave a comment

I think Christianity took a wrong turn, and much farther back than you might think I’m going to say. I think it took a wrong turn when it became a religion instead of a way of life.

After three years of abstaining from scripture, I’m going back a little at a time to see if what is imprinted on my memory and mind and soul is accurate, reliable, valuable.

I’m trying to divorce it from what I’ve been taught it says and told it means and drilled about its characteristics. I’m trying to just read it.

I’m starting with the gospels. And there I find nothing about Jesus expressing a desire to begin a new religion, but rather to fulfill an old one. I find no pleas from Him to build structures and governances and hierarchies and rules about what to do and how. I find no support for worship or rituals or traditions that lose meaning through repetition because they may be periodically spoken or sung but not LIVED.

Instead I find prophecy about how the old ends and the new begins. I find stories about accepting and rejecting grace; about accepting and rejecting others; about accepting and rejecting Him. I find teaching about how to live, how to be fulfilled, how to show grace and love and compassion for others. All interspersed with His example of living and doing these things as well as teaching them.

I find medicine for broken relationships.

I find promises of His presence.

I find guarantees of His grace.

In fact, the words of judgment that I find are for the religious, the ones who judge, the ones who reject, the ones who make it hard for others to access grace. The ones who are in bed with government they do not trust and will conspire to take His life because it is politically expedient — and will justify their judgment and conspiracy and lies and murder.

What I remember of the story after that is that it goes all right for a while. The story of His life and teachings is told far and wide, and people gather to hear it and keep gathering to reinforce their belief in a life that’s good and noble and gracious — even to the point of ultimate self-sacrifice. A perfect example of it.

The people who originally told the story chose the wise and most caring to shepherd the rest and moved on to tell the story in other places.

But, people remain people. Just like we do. Even if changed in heart and soul, it’s never complete. Gatherings became churches; synagogues with rules about who’s in and who’s out, who’s in charge, what does this mean or can’t mean, what worship includes and doesn’t, and so on and on.

And the letters we read from the people who originally told the story to the people-having-problems-with-being-people keep pointing them back to the “how-to-live” teachings of Jesus, though they sometimes stray into making new rules.

I think it’s natural and human that another religion resulted from the teachings and example about how to live. I’m pretty sure Jesus saw it coming. I understand that a lot of people benefit from the fellowship of shared belief with others; are uplifted and encouraged with worship together; are strengthened by messages that urge them on and reinforce their faith. Some folks need the ritual and the repetition. Church has its place in faith.

Probably in most religions, not just Christianity.

But if the focus is on self — even on the community of faith that one’s self is surrounded with — rather than living that story, that grace, that Jesus … then it truly is just another religion. Perhaps His name is there, but … His presence?

It’s the way of life that gives meaning to the religion.

Christianity can’t just be another religion, and still be Christianity.

It has to be a way of life.

His life.

Freedom to choose

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

What so many of my fellow Christians fail to understand is that freedom of religion and the separation of church from state in a democracy is the ideal environment for faith to grow.

Because our faith is based on choice.

Always has been. Always will be.

From the choice of fruit in Eden to “choose you this day whom you will serve” to the great and mudane daily choices we make to try and reflect the nature of Christ, it has been our freedom to choose that’s the key.

Not coercion. Not enforcement. Not Sharia-type law.

A choice that’s forced is no choice at all. It doesn’t create a change of heart, or compel a desire to live graciously, or inspire a devotion to truth or justice or kindness or respect.

And the attitude that Christians are somehow morally superior to make these choices for others through law or compulsion — simply because we’ve have been forgiven — is ludicrous on its face. No one should have that attitude because none of us has that moral authority.

Were we asleep when we read or were taught that we are not to judge, or do we just choose to ignore it in a consistently defiant way?

And how effective is that kind of arrogance in trying to attract people while we say we are imitating Christ? Surely that hypocrisy is transparent to the most casual observer!

Did we miss the fact that scripture teaches God gave law to a new and undisciplined nation emerging in a savage and primitive environment — but it wasn’t good enough long-term to draw people closer to His nature, so grace had to be brought by His own Son? How difficult is that to understand? Law can only do so much! It was the schoolmaster until the Master arrived.

We believers have inched away from who He is and what He taught until we are nearly as far away, savage and primitive as the early era of law was from its inevitable Successor.

I’m no preacher and not even qualified to play one on TV — but these truths ought to be taught and preached and insisted upon until they are so obvious that it’s an embarrassment to deny or ignore them.

Choice, not coercion.

Faith, not force.

Compassion, not control.

Grace, not governing.

Love. Not law.

Your neighbor. Yourself. Your enemies.

No exceptions. No excuses.

If we want others to live changed lives, we need to live lives that are changed, exemplary, gracious, forgiving, generous, lovely.

You can’t make that a law.

It has to be chosen.

And maybe we need to be looking into the faces and hearts and lives of people around us who don’t believe, but live that kind of life, and we need to see Jesus there instead of in the mirror and we need to ask ourselves why.

Your religion

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

I guess you can keep on making your religion unattractive if you want to, by forcing your morality on others through law and government — rather than feeding the hungry, helping the poor, seeking justice for all, fighting for everyone’s rights and lives and health and well-being. Hey, it’s your religion, and if you want to turn people away in disgust instead of welcoming them in, I guess that’s up to you.

In the meantime, there will be a lot of us pointing out that Jesus of Nazareth never said we should judge or hate others, ignore or insult or disfranchise them; take away their voices or their votes; or that any person or group of people was better — or more loved by God — than anyone else.

He did say we should love our neighbors as ourselves; do good to those who use us in spite; to show mercy; to control our anger and our urges to say “You fool!”; to seek reconciliation; to give to the one who asks; to love our enemies; to stop worrying about food, clothing and self; and to not judge others — except in the way we would want to be judged.

And He even said that not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord” would really be a follower of His; but rather those who do the right thing.

That’s what He said, and how He lived, and since I find that very attractive, that’s the way I want to live. You can make up your own religion, and call it what you will, but if it doesn’t do the right thing, then it’s just your religion and it’s never going to be more attractive than your own heart.

Hey, I don’t make the rules. That’s just the way it is with people and religion and the way we live and stuff.

‘Lost’ and ‘Saved’

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

Honestly, I don’t think folks are as interested in being “saved” as they are in having a significant, purposeful life.

I think if we Christians were living significant, purposeful lives that were winsome and loving, we’d have something to talk about without ever resorting to words that hold no meaning or attraction.

“Saved” is a church term that means little or nothing to someone who doesn’t believe, especially if they don’t have a church background.

It may have meant a lot to those using the term in Acts 2 — who were familiar with God’s wrath and prophecy; who felt guilty because they were complicit in the murder of the Messiah — but it doesn’t particularly hold weight today.

I think it would take a long time to set up as a meaningful term, or at least one with which people would identify.

They are already wary of the idea of a wrathful God who judges and damns nearly everyone He made and claims to love; wary of that love that seems conditional upon a litany of specific responses, but no seeming emphasis on continuing to grow better, stop judging others, accept others, forgive others, love more deeply, help others, be generous, etc. It’s not what they see in us.

And “Lost” has long felt like an insult to me. An assessment. A judgment. The very thing we’re specifically told not to do.

It’s a term that sounds like it comes from a place of superiority, even if not earned (or actual!). It’s an instant turn-off.

And “saved” is the flip side of that coin. What does “saved” mean to someone who’s been termed “lost?”

Does “saved”
mean being in the position of moral authority to judge others to be “lost?”

How attractive.

The rest of the Story

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

If the gospel you hear is all about Jesus dying and being resurrected but nothing about how He lived what He taught, you’re missing the part of the story that really changes your life.

Because it tells and shows you how to live what He taught.

How to love others as yourself, show grace, forgive, be generous, be compassionate, feed others, wash their feet, help them heal, and be self-less.

If the whole story doesn’t make you want to change your life to reflect that, then all the faith and confession and water immersion and ritual-observance is just a way to spend some time.

The whole gospel changes you. Who you are. Who you want to be. The kind of person you want to live as.

If you didn’t hear that in the good news you heard, you were cheated. You were misled. You were misdirected, maybe for the sake of conversion numbers and goals; maybe just from being taught by someone who was mis-taught and under-informed. You got a little good news, and it may have sounded like the whole thing, because life-after-death is a pretty spectacular idea.

But it’s not the whole idea. THIS life matters NOW. Other people matter NOW. How you live and who you are matters NOW.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with first framing the saying about people who are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.

And there’s a point there. That outlook comes from buying into half-a-gospel; the gospel that’s good news for ME. A death and resurrection that means I get to live again.

But that doesn’t really have any meaning if life isn’t lived fully — “abundantly” is the word Jesus of Nazareth uses — right here and now. So that others whom He loves (and we should love) can benefit from that life here and now as well.

I mean, how are people going to be convinced that they matter in an afterlife if they don’t feel like they matter in this life?

Sorry to sermonize on a Sunday. I’m still no preacher. But sometimes I see other posts that feel like what Brian McLaren called “Adventures in Missing the Point.”

Rant over.