A New Kind of Christian - Chapter Eleven

Some people come to religion for some certainty, some clarity, some simplicity. I guess they react when the thing they’re counting on for stability starts shaking them up instead of consoling them, and calming them. I think a lot of people are afraid. They’re afraid of heresy and sin creeping into the camp. So they want to keep everything safe and sanitized. It really is a legitimate concern. How do we remain open and accepting of people, without compromising and condoning sin? Every church should be struggling with this issue.
I tell our people that we don’t expect non-Christians to act like Christians, and we don’t expect new Christians to act like mature Christians, and that helps, but it’s still tough to function with people playing by different sets of rules. Maybe that’s why love is such an important theme in the Bible. Maybe the complexity and messiness is a sign that we’re continuing in the spirit of the early church.
Let’s say that most modern churches can’t or won’t handle that complexity. Let’s say they won’t accept anyone into their fellowship who does not already live by their moral code. Where does that lead?
Maybe a hundred years from now, the descendants of my fellow evangelicals today will be like the Amish, but instead of maintaining 1850’s German culture, they’ll perpetuate 1950’s American culture. They’ll still be thriving, or at least surviving, but as a kind of separated society. And maybe that’s O.K.
One of the problems with the modern view of sin is that it wants to make everything simple, universal, uniform, black and white. Life isn’t simple. Sin isn’t simple.
We need to be concerned about sin. One of the most dangerous things in the world is to define sin to suit our own tastes.
I think the view of sin given by our modern Christian heritage was well-meaning and sincere but downright dangerous. How much energy do we modern Christians put into condemning sexual sins compared to avoiding the judgmental spirit of the Pharisees? (The story of the woman caught in adultery) I have never been treated as badly by a single non-Christian as I have dozens of zealous but angry Christians. The whole judgmental thing is so contrary to the Spirit of Christ.
The only kind of sin we want to focus on as modern Christians are the isolated individual sins co individual sins committed by isolated individual people. We need to think more systemically. What sins are we ignoring in our culture and community? (The story of the Good Samaritan). The issue isn’t who is wrong or righteous. The issue is who is truly good. To be truly good means more than being righteously religious. To be truly good means being a good neighbor. And to be a good neighbor means recognizing that there are ultimately no strangers.
Modern Christianity has too often acted as if the only kind of righteousness that mattered was the kind of righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees – the righteousness of nice, clean, legalistic, monads who managed to stay disconnected and disinfected on the other side of the street. What responsibility do we have to make our community and world a better place? What responsibility do we have to address injustice around us?