Christianity is Unrest

There are a lot of us who look to religion as a source of comfort and security. It makes sense because we all feel a sense of dis-ease in our lives. We all are looking for stability and an anchor. We all need a steady foundation to jump off from into this world of adventure.

The problem is that Christianity is not, despite what it looks like, a traditional religion. It is the one religion that attempts to dismantle religion by undercutting the notion that religion saves. It is, as Christians say, Grace that saves us - not our own actions or works.

If Christianity is not a traditional religion that attempts to get people to do the right things in order to save themselves, what is Christianity? Søren Kierkegaard called Christianity a state of unrest. That may only be mildly surprising. Perhaps you have heard it said that Christianity comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable? Hearing that Christianity is really a state of unrest is not what is necessarily notable here.

What is notable is what Kierkegaard points out to us: this unrest is initiated by God: “Christianity is the most intensive and strongest form of unrest thinkable. Christ’s coming is intended to disturb life. Where one wants to become a Christian, there will be unrest; and where one has become a Christian, there unrest follows.”

Here we are confronted with the idea that God is the one who gives us this unrest. But why? Why would God initiate a state of unrest in us? I thought God was in the work of rest and peace not unrest and restlessness.

It is this state of unrest that is the engine of our lives. The unrest is the point. The point is to see that in all of life, the thing that gives energy to us all, is an unrest or what we might call a contradiction. No matter where you look, outside or within, contradiction is woven into the fabric of creation. We are busy trying to root out this unrest/contradiction all the while the fabric frays. The more we try to root out the unrest or contradiction in our lives, the more it will explode in the world and many times it explodes in unhealthy ways. You see the unrest is the very engine of our lives, it is the thing that gives us energy. Until we come to peace with the unrest in our lives then we will erupt with violence.

When Lack Becomes Loss

Peter Rollins continues to be a thinker that challenges me beyond what I am capable of thinking. While I listen or read him I feel like I understand in the moment, but as soon as try to explain it I fall apart. Not unlike when I walk confidently into a room only to enter that room and instantly forget what I came into that room for.

Rollins mentioned that there is “lack” and “loss”.

Both lack and loss are about an absence in our lives. Lack is about an absence that was never present, loss is about an absence that was present. I lack about a foot in height and overall skill to play basketball well. I never had that height or skill to begin with. However, I can loose my car keys that I thought were in my pocket.

The Bible speaks of humans created with lack, not loss.In Genesis at creation it is said that when God blew into the nostrils of the dirt, the dirt became “nephish.” Nephish means a bundle or collection of desires or appetites. The human being has appetites not because we lost something (like food) but because we have a lack that drives us (hunger drives us to find food). We can address the lack with healthier or non-healthier things, but the lack is not something that can ever be extinguished.

Someone can lack acceptance, and no matter how many awards they receive there is never enough. This person never received acceptance to begin with, it cannot be lost because it was never acquired in early life.

The problem is when we think our lack is a loss. That is to say, if we think that there was a time when humans were once complete, whole and without lacking anything, but then we lost it - we are mistaking our lack for loss. If we think that we can go back to another time (Eden, 1950’s, 1990’s, etc.) and “rediscover” what we lost - we are mistaking our lack for loss. If we think that our individual lives was without antagonism at some point in our past - we are mistaking our lack for loss. We have not loss anything, Jesus reminds us the Kingdom of Heaven is here and to come (unfolding). We never lost it, we only lack it.

Treating our lack as a loss means that we live our lives seeing the lack within us is a problem to resolve, rather than a source of energy. If we were to resolve our lack, it might be the most miserable thing we could do. As it is said, the only thing worse then not getting what you want is getting it. Because once you get it you realize that “it” cannot meet the lack within and you will be crushed. It is crushing to discover that the thing that you want, that you think will fill the lack, does not exist. The quest of life to fill the lack is revealed as a sham and so we fall into dismay.

Like the end of the movie The Graduate. The two went through hell and back in order to fill the lack in their lives. Then as they sat on the bus with the one they thought would fill the lack, they discover the lack is still present (“Hello darkness my old friend…").

Be mindful of the preacher or prophet who preaches that your lack is a loss and that they have what you have lost. You will not find it, because it was never lost to begin with.

Satisfying Our Dissatisfaction

listening to Peter Rollins talk about different philosophical ideas always makes me long to be as smart as he is. The other day I heard a lecture he gave and he was talking about being so many of us are dissatisfied. He spoke of two postures of how we address our dissatisfaction - Conservative and Revolutionary.

The conservative is dissatisfied with how life is and believes the way to satisfaction is somewhere in the past. Be it a certain decade or a time in the persons life, it sounds like the conservative is not so much a person as it is a tactic to satisfy our dissatisfaction. I act conservative sometimes when I think of how much “better” and “simpler” life was when I was in high school. Of course, there is no way for us to go back in time and so being conservative means we are trying to bring the past into the present in order to satisfy our dissatisfaction.

The revolutionary is also dissatisfied but this posture is one that believes satisfaction is not in the past but in the future. We act like the revolutionary when we believe that life will be better when we get “over there”. Be it with a different house, job, government, afterlife, or whatever, the revolutionary tries to bring the future to the present. Of course, Rollins points out, that most revolutionaries that succeed in their task are often among the first to be killed by this new reality.

Rollins’ point is not that conservative or revolutionary is better over the other, but that they are two sides of the same coin. They both believe that life is about satisfying our dissatisfaction, they just disagree on the tactics.

Rollins says there is a different posture, a different coin if you will, that both the conservative and revolutionary are suspect of - the Rebel. The rebel is not seeking to satisfy dissatisfaction but to be satisfied with dissatisfaction.

The rebel shows us that being dissatisfied is a feature and not a bug to the human condition. Dissatisfaction gives us energy and that energy, if ever satisfied, would be hellish. It may be difficult to imagine, but if your sports team won every game they played and it was a forgone conclusion they were going to win, then sports would be boring. You would loose the energy to participate in the game because you know you will win.

The rebel does not play the impossible game of trying to satisfy dissatisfaction but plays a new game all together and learns to be satisfied with dissatisfaction.

Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash

While the religious leaders of his day wanted Jesus to look to the past to satisfy their dissatisfaction, the zealots desired Jesus to bring the future kingdom to the present. Jesus resisted the conservative and the revolutionary postures toward the dissatisfaction in the world.

Jesus was a rebel who showed us the way to address our dissatisfaction - by being satisfied with it.

The Problem Is We Practice "No Other Gods Before Me"

Of the “Ten Commandments” perhaps you can name a few: Don’t steal, Don’t murder, honor you mother and father, keep sabbath. Many of these are straight forward, but Peter Rollins mentions an interesting point from philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The point that I gathered is Zizek argues that commandment “You shall have no other Gods before me” might me that we should not have gods “in front” the God of the Bible. As in physically before, in front of. The idea being that we all have little gods and perhaps the commandment is saying, keep your other little gods, just don’t worship them in before (in front of or prior to worshiping) God.

This may sound odd but the Bible does not begin at monotheism. Monotheism says that there is ONLY one God. However, when you read the Bible you will see that there are in fact many gods. For instance, Psalm 82 assume there are many gods: God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment (82:1). In a monotheistic worldview there is no need to mention other gods.

However the Bible does not stay in the polytheistic world very long before it makes a theological step toward monotheism. Before arriving at monotheism, there is a long stop at something called henotheism. Henotheism might admit there are other gods, but that our God is the best. Psalm 95 says, For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

This is where Zizek’s observation comes into play. The Ten Commandments is in the era of henotheism and thus having no other gods before the God of the Bible makes sense in a henotheistic world.

But today we are supposed to be monotheistic. That is we are supposed to understand that there is only one God. No others. This God is the Alpha and the Omega - the greatest and the weakest. God is all there is.

However, a case might be made that we are stuck in the henotheism. We live our lives taking the commandment “no other gods before me” very literally. That is, we worship our little gods of power, money, ego, prestige, nature, resentment, and envy but we don’t do it “before” we worship God of Jesus Christ.

The problem is not that we worship God, it is that we practice having no other gods before God.