Christianity is less a journey and more unrest

In college I had a notebook that I kept with questions and quotes. The blue ink contrasts with the yellowing paper and in college I had legible enough handwriting to make out the following question:

I am tired of the metaphor of a journey. Is there any other metaphor that can be used to describe the life of faith?

Even then I found the idea of Christianity as a journey to be somewhat accurate but also boring and overused. Clearly the metaphor works, but it also is limited. It suggests that we are always moving in our life of faith. I have not experienced. I have experienced long bouts of stagnation and even moving backwards. The journey metaphor not only suggests that forward or deeper is better, but also that the journey is a means to an end. It suggests the destination is more important or valuable than the journey itself. Who goes on a trip and talks about the journey unless the journey to get there was fraught with trouble, delays or mishaps.

We want to “arrive” and “get there”, and when there is a delay, it is something to bemoan. No one beholds a delay in a journey.

I just about gave up on the searching for an alternate metaphor when I came across a gem from Soren Kierkegaard who said:

The Celtic Christian tradition imagines the Holy Spirt like a wild goose. Talk about unrest!

“Christianity is the most intensive and strongest form of unrest thinkable. Christ’s coming is intended to disturb life. Where one want to become Christian, there will be unrest; and where one has become a Christian, there unrest follows.”

Christianity is unrest. That sounds more true to me than a journey.

Often times people turn to religion when they experience unrest. The idea is that religion will provide a sense of control or comfort. If I say the right prayers or go to worship then things will work out better for me. The reality is that in Christianity, unrest is a feature and not a bug. It is the unrest that follows Christian conversion that is key and different from other religions.

Other religions (and even shallow Christianity) suggests that the faithful will be able to remove unrest from their life. But authentic Christianity puts unrest at the center of the tradition. It is the unrest that drives us to reach out into the world to care for others. If we were content and “rested” we would not go out into the world and possibly upset our ease and comfort. Unrest comes with Christianity because Christianity forces us to confront the internal and external sin in our lives.

The unrest of Christianity is the itch. It is the very thing that pulls us to our knees in confession that we are not God and that we are in need. As the Amma Synkletike said, “Just as a vessel cannot be built without nails, so it is impossible to be saved without humble-mindedness.” The gift of unrest provides access to humility.

And so, if you are among the unrested of the world, give thanks for this gift from God. And if you are rested, then let us pray that God may give us the gift of unrest. As the desert story goes:

Abba Poemen told a story of Abba John the Short that he asked God for his passions [struggles] to be removed from him. God granted this prayer and Abba John became one without a care. Going to a teacher, John said, “I see myself satiated, with no battle to fight.” The teacher said to John “Go and beseech God for the struggles to come upon you because it is through struggling that the soul makes progress.” The struggle returned, and John no longer prayed for it to be taken away. Instead Abba John prayed, “Lord, give me patience in the struggles.”

What is the training of a Christian?

When I was younger I played soccer. I was above average, but no Messi. Becoming a soccer player required training: first I had to learn to dribble, then pass, then trap the ball, then pass with accuracy, then shoot, then learn to play with others, read the field, see the space, formations, timing, etc. This training took years to get decent at. Countless hours a week with coaches and others in practice and games.

And that was just something as simple as soccer.

Becoming a Christian requires more training than we are want to believe. (We forget that the disciple were with Jesus all the time for three years and they still did not get it.)

What is the training of a Christian?

John Cassian suggests that there is a training process that one engages to develop into a Christian. In the the fourth book of The Institutes he describes this process:

First it begins with the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10).  What this means is that one must come first to see they are in need. To put it another way, the fear of the Lord means that we admit that the current models of our lives are leading us poorly and we need a new model to guide our lives.

We cannot adopt a new model while holding onto our original model. We cannot worship two gods (Matthew 6:24). This is why we must renounce our first models/gods. We must repent. This repentance is total. It is a repentance of all the objects, values, teachings and ways of the original model. It is impossible to learn a new life while holding onto the “way we used to do it”. It would be like learning to play basketball while still using a soccer players mindset, skills, tools and techniques. It does not work that way.

When we renounce our previous ways/models we are like a beginner. And there is nothing more humbling than being a beginner at anything. Which may be why we do not repent or renounce totally. We hold on to some things so we are not tossed into beginner status. However, when we are able to renounce/repent our previous life, dreams and desires fall away and die.

As Jesus said that a seed must fall to the ground and die in order to grow (John 12:24). When our old ways and models have died, then we are able to receive what the new model has for us. This new model, Christ, trains us in virtues that produce the fruits of the spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The person who produces such fruits of the spirit has an altogether new heart, what we might call the purity of heart. It is, as Jesus says, the pure in heart that see God (Matthew 5:8).

This training takes a lifetime and it is not easy. It breaks us down into being a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). In this training, you may see that this does not begin by training people to just be better humans. It does not start with behavior modification to be more loving or kind or forgiving. It understands that we are unable to be loving, kind and forgiving as long as we living out of a sense of self and without seeing that we are in need. Without seeing that we are in fact in need we will reserve our love, mercy and forgiveness for only those who “deserve” or “earn” or who are “worthy”. Until we repent and renounce this way of living, we will not see God.

We will just see ourselves as god.

The Sensible Church

Church leaders are sort of freaking out these days.

There are many reasons for this, and I am sure you can relate to more than a few of them. The uncertainty of participation in a COVID world. The decline of membership. The decline of finances. The reckoning of Christian nationalism. The nationalization of everything. The intersection of justice and mercy. Denominational splits and local church infights. New theologies and new mediums for communication…

The uncertainty of the sea change prompts church leaders dive into the resource reserves in the hopes to find something to help navigate the choppy waters. The way we typically think about how to solve problems is to either look to the past or to the future. Generally, conservatives look to see what has worked in the past to solve present problems. Progressives scoff at conservatives and say something like, “what got us here cannot take us there.” And so, progressives tend to look to the future to solve present problems.

This way of framing things overlooks the flaw that conservatives and progressives share. If we look to the past or the future church leaders are looking for what is sensible.

And that is a problem.

Sensible is attractive because, well it is sensible. Our minds tend to gravitate toward what makes the most sense and go in that direction. The sensible option is often an easier option to “sell” to others and get people on board. That which is sensible is also well supported by loads of books and resources, so it gives the impression that the sensible way is the best way.

Of course what is sensible to a progressive may not be sensible to a conservative. The Bible is full of examples of people doing the sensible thing but it is not what God desires. And for as easy as it might be to “sell” the sensible, it also instantly sets up an us/them divide where the “them” are idiots because “they” don’t do what is sensible able. In fact we often look to the other and say that their actions “don’t make sense.” It is also unhelpful for church leaders to be looking for the “best” way when we should be looking for the “faithful” way. But these are not the deeper problems with the sensible church.

It does not take any courage to be sensible. Faith is not needed to be sensible. In fact, courage and faith can be liabilities to the sensible church.

The call of Jesus to the church is not to be sensible, but to have courage to be faithful. The way of the cross is not sensible. Trusting that God is alive is not sensible. Resurrection is not sensible. Unconditional Grace is not sensible. Forgiveness is not sensible. Rejecting many leadership principles is not sensible. Reconsidering the core mission of the church is not sensible.

Desiring to be the sensible church is the symptom to our lack of faithful courage. We look to the past and the future for what is sensible, but the Good News is that we are liberated from being the sensible church. We are freed from having the answers, the best plan, the business model, the strategic vision, the marketing campaigns or any other action an organization might consider sensible. We are freed to be the foolish followers of the folly of God in Christ Jesus.

Maybe Paul was writing to the Sensible Church in Corinth when he wrote 1 Corinthians 1.18-25:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

I Am Not Good Enough To Be Anything Else

There are a lot of reasons to be Christian, but there is only one reason that I have heard from another person that I deeply resonate with. She said, “I am Christian because I am not good enough to be anything else.”

I am too emotional to be a stoic. I am not very disciplined in my logic to be a philosopher. I am too jittery to be a Zen Buddhist. I am too theistic to be an atheist. I am too angry at injustice to be a hippy. I am too ignorant to be a social justice warrior. I am too privigleged to be voice from the margins but not famous enough to be a leading voice from the center. I am too unsure of myself to be a life coach and too hesitate to be a leader. I suffer from imposter syndrome most days and on the other days my head is larger than a balloon in a parade. I am too clean to be a shepherd and too dirty to be a priest. I am too happy to be a pessimist but not Pollyanna enough for optimism. I like to be a realist but find that I am not practical enough but still not intellectual enough to be thought leader. I don’t spell well and have all sorts of bouts and fits with grammar.

I have learned about many different religions and am just not good enough to make the grade.

I am not good enough to be anything else and so I give thanks for Jesus Christ who gives mercy and grace in more abundant ways than I could imagine. Christianity is the last best hope that I have to belong with others, discover God and receive Good News.

Maybe this is where Christian preachers fail. We have been preaching a gospel of striving, achieving and success and few people are good enough for that news. The Good News is that Christianity is full of sinners, losers, failures. Or as I like to call them, people like me.

If you are good enough to be something else, good on you. If you are not, then you might be the best Christian.