When did outrage become a form of entertainment? The companies that govern our online worlds know that posts and videos that anger us are more likely to be viewed and shared than those that bring us joy. This is not a new phenomenon - I remember a producer for 'shock jock' Howard Stern explaining in the 1980s that people that said they hated Stern listened to him for longer than people who said they loved him. The desire to define and police our community boundaries is deep in our collective psyche, and sharing outrage reaffirms our collective bonds.
It's no surprise to me that Christian websites trade in outrage articles, nor that I click on them (sometimes) even when I could write the article myself, purely on the basis of the headline. One such article was outraged that a luminous model of the world, titled Gaia, was being exhibited in a cathedral. Gaia is the name of the goddess who created the earth in Greek mythology, as well as the name of a pseudo-scientific hypothesis that the world is a single living organism that will ultimately destroy anything that threatens its wellbeing (i.e. us). There's so much in there to upset a certain kind of Christian* that I completely understand the editorial decision to populate the universe with more anger. However, for me it raises the question of where the boundary between 'us' and 'them' lies. For the author of the article, 'us' means a certain kind of Christian, with certain kinds of beliefs and behaviours. 'Them' is everyone - and everything - else.
It's no surprise to me that Christian websites trade in outrage articles, nor that I click on them (sometimes) even when I could write the article myself, purely on the basis of the headline. One such article was outraged that a luminous model of the world, titled Gaia, was being exhibited in a cathedral. Gaia is the name of the goddess who created the earth in Greek mythology, as well as the name of a pseudo-scientific hypothesis that the world is a single living organism that will ultimately destroy anything that threatens its wellbeing (i.e. us). There's so much in there to upset a certain kind of Christian* that I completely understand the editorial decision to populate the universe with more anger. However, for me it raises the question of where the boundary between 'us' and 'them' lies. For the author of the article, 'us' means a certain kind of Christian, with certain kinds of beliefs and behaviours. 'Them' is everyone - and everything - else.
A very 'straight' and 'literal' reading of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which share some common sources, describes a younger Jesus who would completely identify with that sentiment. His ministry was to the people that YHWH loved: the Jews and only the Jews. Nonetheless, over time, Jesus comes to realise that God loves people who aren't Jews, and by the end of Matthew's gospel he is instructing his disciples to include people from every ethnic group in the world (28:19). There are key moments in which Jesus appears to be learning and growing in his understanding of God's love, something which many Christians find hard to understand, despite Luke specifically saying that Jesus 'grew in wisdom' (2:52).
My fifth and final characteristic of mature faith is the most contentious and complex. Just a couple of days ago I was talking with a fellow student of discipleship about whether or not it is really two different characteristics that should be separated out, but she assured me that they belong together. Let me explain.
The biggest church in North America is Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. It meets in a former sports arena and its lead pastors are Joel and Victoria Osteen. A few years ago Victoria preached this message:
The biggest church in North America is Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. It meets in a former sports arena and its lead pastors are Joel and Victoria Osteen. A few years ago Victoria preached this message:
I just want to encourage every one of us to realise when we obey God, we're not doing it for God - I mean, that's one way to look at it - we're doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we're happy. So I want you to know this morning: just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God, really. You're doing it for yourself, because that's what makes God happy.
Guess what? The internet went into meltdown with outrage-entertainment. I was outraged! Now, after several years of thinking about this, what I feel is more nuanced. I had a dramatic conversion as a teenager, and the gospel as I experienced it in that moment was all about me. I had fallen from God's standards, Jesus came to save me, even if I was the only person in the world Jesus would still have died for me. It's an individualistic, narcissistic gospel, perfect for a 15-year-old, and it's not wrong. It's just incredibly - incredibly - immature for me as a 54-year-old man who has been a Christian for nearly 40 years still to be clinging to such a self-centred worldview.
The problem I have with the Osteens and all their 'prosperity gospel' peers is the sheer smallness of their gospel. 'God wants you to be happy and the way God wants you to be happy is for you to have all the stuff you want.' Really? Again, a 'straight' and 'literal' reading of the gospels will find a frequently recurring message: the one who wants to save their life must lose it. Prosperity preachers want to bypass the whole 'dying to self' bit and get straight to the resurrection. Or at least they want to get to the mall.
What does dying to self (and rising with Christ) look like? If Jesus is our role model for a full life, it appears not to be a negation of the self, a self-hatred, but rather an expansion of love to include all things. When we are 'in Christ' (Paul's favourite description of Christians), we are no longer at the centre of the universe, but instead connected to a vast network of relationships. (In these days, I think it's vital that we accept that this network includes all things, although I accept that the biblical justification for this is thin on the ground.) My point is that as Jesus grew in wisdom, his 'us and them' boundaries just kept getting wider and wider. When that happens, it becomes harder and harder to see yourself as the centre of the universe. Cosmology teaches us the same lesson as Jesus: we are teeny tiny parts of an awesome whole, and everything is interconnected, interdependent.
I have been doing some 'research' (googling) on the history of an idea that is now so prevalent that it feels like it has biblical precedent (it doesn't). The idea is this: when Jesus instructs us to love others as we love ourselves, this is in reality a command for us to love ourselves first. How can we love others like we love ourselves unless we love ourselves first? The Staple Singers expressed a parallel thought in the classic song 'Respect Yourself': 'Respect yourself/If you don't respect yourself/Ain't nobody gonna give a good cahoot.' Yet the song is actually much more nuanced than it seems:
What does dying to self (and rising with Christ) look like? If Jesus is our role model for a full life, it appears not to be a negation of the self, a self-hatred, but rather an expansion of love to include all things. When we are 'in Christ' (Paul's favourite description of Christians), we are no longer at the centre of the universe, but instead connected to a vast network of relationships. (In these days, I think it's vital that we accept that this network includes all things, although I accept that the biblical justification for this is thin on the ground.) My point is that as Jesus grew in wisdom, his 'us and them' boundaries just kept getting wider and wider. When that happens, it becomes harder and harder to see yourself as the centre of the universe. Cosmology teaches us the same lesson as Jesus: we are teeny tiny parts of an awesome whole, and everything is interconnected, interdependent.
I have been doing some 'research' (googling) on the history of an idea that is now so prevalent that it feels like it has biblical precedent (it doesn't). The idea is this: when Jesus instructs us to love others as we love ourselves, this is in reality a command for us to love ourselves first. How can we love others like we love ourselves unless we love ourselves first? The Staple Singers expressed a parallel thought in the classic song 'Respect Yourself': 'Respect yourself/If you don't respect yourself/Ain't nobody gonna give a good cahoot.' Yet the song is actually much more nuanced than it seems:
If you disrespect anybody that you run into,
How in the world do you think anybody's s'posed to respect you?
If you don't give a damn about the man with the Bible in his hand,
Just get out the way and let the gentleman do his thang.
You the kind of gentleman that want everything your way;
Take the sheet of your face, boy, it's a brand new day.
I have a feeling that the 'love yourself first, only then can you love others' message emerged in the 1970s and 80s, around the same time as the prosperity gospel.
I have a feeling that the 'love yourself first, only then can you love others' message emerged in the 1970s and 80s, around the same time as the prosperity gospel.
If loving ourselves means closing in the boundary of our care to include just ourselves and our nearest and dearest, we will never understand God-love at all. It's only as we extend the boundary of our care that we realise the inherent value of each and every person, each and every thing. Then we can understand our own value as part of this wonderful creation that we inhabit.
This is a complex yet beautful dance - it's in dethroning the self and including all things within our love that we learn about our own worth and lovableness. When we move ourselves away from the centre of our universe we open ourselves to the opportunity to live in community with people who are trying the same thing.
Only loving our closest family and friends is not bad or wrong, it's where we all start. In fact, as babies, it's just us, and then mother emerges out of the fog as the first foundational relationship. We know that if this attachment is not made, we will struggle to extend our boundary beyond our self our whole lives. The psychotherapist and neurotheologian Jim Wilder describes maturity as the person you could be today, given all your yesterdays. It is different for every single person. For some of us, we are working with God to include our parent or spouse in our circle of care. For others, it might be caring for those who live in our street. For others still, non-human persons. This isn't about reaching a goal or crossing a line, but rather who we are becoming.
Only loving our closest family and friends is not bad or wrong, it's where we all start. In fact, as babies, it's just us, and then mother emerges out of the fog as the first foundational relationship. We know that if this attachment is not made, we will struggle to extend our boundary beyond our self our whole lives. The psychotherapist and neurotheologian Jim Wilder describes maturity as the person you could be today, given all your yesterdays. It is different for every single person. For some of us, we are working with God to include our parent or spouse in our circle of care. For others, it might be caring for those who live in our street. For others still, non-human persons. This isn't about reaching a goal or crossing a line, but rather who we are becoming.
How does this dethroning of the self (yet still loving the self in an honest way) relate to a realisation of our interdependence with all things? I don't know. But I don't see how they can be separated into two different characteristics - they are a beautiful two-step of growth in love.
*Other gods? Check. The sacred feminine? Check. Humans not the centre of the universe? Check. Eco-warriors? Check. The list goes on...
