I wrote a note that said, "If we're out to help people live into the Kingdom we'll act and approach life and ministry in radically different ways than if we're out to prevent mistakes (sinful acts)."
I've done a ton of thinking about the moralism of my holiness experience in recent years. I'm convinced, despite the good intentions of our parents, that my generation received a pretty crappy, harmful version of the gospel that's largely contributed to the extreme die-off in participation in the Church from people 35 or so and younger. In fact, part of the reason I haven't written and posted here as regularly is that I'm trying to spend my writing time writing something more substantial to address both those problems and their victims.
I don't use the words "trauma" and "victim" lightly, especially because I know how much it hurts those responsible. Our pastors and parents really did have the best of intentions, but, as my note indicates, they were perhaps more concerned with keeping us from making mistakes than actually teaching us how to live into the Kingdom of God.
A big part of holiness theology is the absence of intentional sin. It's often explained in the negative, though, with language about avoiding sin or being free from sin - which is elucidated in ways that neither the speaker of the hearer can fully comprehend. I prefer the more positive explanation of holiness: that we are partnering with God's Holy Spirit to grow into an ever-increasing Christ-likeness. We avoid and find freedom from sin only in that we're closer to the people God created us to be today than we were yesterday. This avoids the dangerous territory of "perfection" language that's been so troublesome in the past.
That notion of perfection has led us to pursue a mistake-free life. As a result, us grown-up evangelical kids were handed a faith that was primarily fear-based. Activity X, Y, and Z bring you perilously close to sin, so we'll avoid them altogether as way of safeguarding your purity.
Practically, that's not a terrible approach. I believe there are lots of problems I avoided because I just never had the opportunity to be exposed to them. The issue, though, is that, try as one might, you can't avoid everything and the avoidance itself creates problems later in life, especially when it comes to things that have a proper context for engagement.
This shows up most clearly when it comes to sex. Linda Kay Klein's book, Pure, does a bang up job of illustrating the real problems caused by the evangelical purity culture that largely demonized sex. You can replace "sex" with anything considered sinful (although, frankly, it was mostly sex) and you'll get a good picture of the kind of faith we were given.
Beyond any of the practical realities, though, this desire to avoid mistakes really stems from a terrible theology of salvation. We can say something different with our words all we want, but both us and our parents had (and may still have) the notion that if you let one cuss word slip out and get hit by a car before you apologize to Jesus, you're destined for an eternity in torturous hell.
This is the root of that obsession with purity (and not just the sexual kind). Our parents were so afraid we'd lose our salvation if we made mistakes they didn't help us navigate and make decisions about how we'd engage the world. We just got taught, with a heavy dose of fear, to avoid anything that might remotely be sinful.
Shoot, the word "shit" isn't sinful. It's crude, for sure, and it might make someone uncomfortable or offended in certain situations, which certainly wouldn't be considered virtuous. I don't fault any parent for trying to keep those words out of their child's regular vocabulary.
For many of us, though, that meant also avoided slightly less crude words like "crap" or, in some cases even "poop." You'd never really know what substitute words were acceptable in a given household; you might get scolded for saying "shoot" instead of "shit" because "we all know which word you were thinking," despite the fact that we'd been so scared out of saying something like "shit" we'd never, in a million years, even think it.
You get the overkill. If you're reading this blog, you've probably lived it.
All that to say, perhaps our job as pastors and parents isn't to keep our kids from mistakes, but to help them learn what it means to live into the Kingdom of God. Boundaries with no context teach nothing. If your kid doesn't know why they were sent to their room, all you've done is damage your kid.
I cringe even writing these things, because I was so formed in the "avoid mistake" culture that it feels almost sinful just to argue for a different approach. That's the residual effect that doesn't do any of us any good.
You know what, I'd rather my daughter not have sex before she's married. I think that's a healthier, more productive, less risky path in life, but I'm also not so naive to think that path will leave her with less sexual dysfunction than the alternative. It's really not about action at all, but the intentionality and control we have over the actions we take. Do you know why you use the words you use? Do you know how they affect you and the people around you? Do you have control over the words that come out of your mouth? How do you feel about the answers to those questions? What kind of person do you want to be with regards to language or sexuality or politics or violence?
I didn't really confront those questions until well into college, when I was secure enough in my independence to even realize I had choices.
When I did, I had very few tools by which to even approach issues I could've been dealing with earlier.
I get that our parents didn't want to reveal our independence to us at an age when we might abuse it; it's a natural protective instinct. We want to spare our kids the mistakes of our own lives. What we often fail to realize, though, is that there is no age when we won't abuse our freedom.
The process of navigating ethical and moral waters is necessary for maturity. Some of us simply matured much later because of the sheltered environment we inhabited. Others never matured, because they lack the tools to even make choices, resorting either to indulgence or repression.
The truly tragic result of this misbegotten perspective is that faith became a hindrance to understanding freedom and ethics, rather than a foundation. God, Christianity, and the Bible serve as a barrier to engaging the practical issues of life rather than a guide. So many people feel they lack purpose and direction in life, that they're missing the moral tether faith is supposed to provide - and I suspect more of those people grew up in Church than not.
The defining revelation of my life is: if God is love and a perfect love drives out all fear (both direct Biblical statements), then things which make us afraid are not from God. We cannot be afraid, even of sin, even for the salvation of our children, because that fear itself prevents the grace and love and power of God's good news from transforming both our lives and theirs. We must instill in our children not a fear of sin or an avoidance of mistakes, but a profound trust in the grace of God to redeem the sin in our lives and make us - more and more each day - into the people God created us to be.
The freedom to sin empowers us to reject it; the fear of sin empowers it to control our lives. I think, by and large, we received the latter when we needed the former and it's incredibly difficult to pass on something different to the next generation. They don't need help knowing who not to be, but it's really hard knowing who we should be and even harder to become that person. That should be the focus of our life and ministry.
In my evangelical world, science is still sometimes at argument. Yes, it manifests itself in specific subjects, but, for the most part, it is the idea of science itself that seems to be at odds - as if somehow it's sacrilegious to think God could communicate knowledge to people outside the Bible.
Obviously it's not always so bad, but a lot of times it is.
Don't get me wrong, it's a rough slog that needs to be waded through. While the rest of the world is actually engaging science on its own terms, so many evangelicals are becoming less and less relevant to the world. People do very much need to understand that some approaches to scripture, even very old, traditional ones, come with their own assumptions and biases that aren't inherent in the text.
I don't even care so much if people still choose to form scientific opinions from religious or theological beliefs. I wish they wouldn't, but I'm not going to kill myself to change it. I do think it's important that there is at least respect in the areas of our disagreement. We can think each other stupid morons, so long as we don't treat each other that way.
Still, as I approach the debates that exist within the evangelical world around science and religion (particularly a certain kind of literal, fundamentalist religion), I more often cringe at those with whom I agree.
I know the arguments that Ken Ham, say, or some Intelligent Design officianado will put forth to defend their position (or attack mine). I get the reasoning behind it and I understand pretty clearly why I've chosen differently. Hearing those ongoing arguments make me sad, but they do not upset me.
I'm not really upset by the other "side" either. I think, for the most part, the Christian defenders of science are robust, thorough and graceful (or at least more graceful than they should probably be expected to be given the abuse they so often endure).
It's got to be tough for someone who could easily walk away from the evangelical tribe, to stay and attempts to present alternatives, counter-opinions, true Christian challenge, all the while being vilified and called enemy.
At the same time, I often regret how little emphasis is actually placed on scripture by those in the "science" camp. (And please, know it pains me deeply to even be talking about this as a "debate," but reality is as reality does - the same goes for unreality as well, I suppose.)
Sure, there is debate about the ways in which scripture is used and approached by the seven day creation camp or the ID perspective. There is a presentation of alternative perspectives and approaches to interpretation. That's not absent. What I don't often see is an affirmation of the primacy and importance of scripture for those who choose to put stock in the study of the physical world.
Now this is sort of an awkward critique. I went to school at Eastern Nazarene College and took a class from Dr. Karl Giberson, who's sort of become a leading engager of such debates and a convenient whipping boy for the most militant of evangelicals and literalists. I know Karl - not in some super close way, but we're friends on Facebook; I've been to his house a couple times. I find it hard to talk about such discussions without thinking of him.
This isn't really something that applies to Karl. He's a scientist. He really does well when he's talking (and even better when he's writing) from the scientist's perspective. He speaks well to his own religious experience, but honestly, religion is not his field and the times I'm most uncomfortable with what he has to say are the times he addresses religion more deeply - again, it's not his field.
It might be more a critique of the silent majority of those for whom religion is their field than it is of Jesus-loving scientists. Religion, theology, happens to be my field and it seems sometimes like we've hung those scientists out to dry. And, in doing so, have done a real disservice to the conversation.
You see, when there is a debate over God and science, rightly or not, the perception is that one side takes scripture more seriously and the other side is perceived to argue that perhaps they're taking it too seriously.
In many cases, though, this couldn't be further from the truth.
I believe people willing to engage so strenuously in debate (on any side of any issue) probably care pretty deeply about the subject matter. Yes, some people use a non-literalist interpretation of scripture to justify ignoring sections they don't like. But to categorize all science advocates in that vein is silly.
But it might be justifiable, especially if people who really do take scripture seriously, but find themselves in an alternative position to traditional evangelicalism refuse to speak up.
I wish the conversation would continue - beyond why one perspective on scripture is inadequate for some and onto alternative ways scripture can be taken seriously.
I grew up in a pretty conservative environment. I suspect it was my own natural contrarian proclivities that kept me from jumping hook, line, and sinker into literalist, fundamentalist beliefs. I had a lot of thinking to do in college to evaluate new information I received about science. What I didn't get until Seminary, though, were the tools to do a similar evaluation and recalibration on how that new information effected my views of God and scripture. Those tools weren't present in the science debate.
It is a scare tactic to say that evolution or serious science is an attempt to move our children away from proper doctrine or that the study of science in standard academic terms will steal a person's faith. It's not entirely wrong, though. People do encounter science and lose faith from time to time. Others find resonance with a more liberal perspective on science and faith, but lose the fervency they once had for God. It happens. It's far from inevitable, but it's not non-existent.
I wonder sometimes, if Christian kids aren't getting turned off to Christ because we're not equipping them with the tools necessary to process theology in light of science. If, by omission, we're teaching them to take scripture less seriously when we counter dearly-held childhood beliefs with alternative perspectives.
In my case, the pathological need for order drove me to deep study (well beyond anything required in any of my academic programs) to try and answer some of these questions. I know a lot of people just don't feel the need to do the same thing.
In my case, the need to incorporate scientific revelation into a life of faith lead me to an even more serious treatment of scripture than I had before. If I have one critique of the Ken Ham ilk, it's that they don't take scripture seriously enough.
I don't think this perspective on the matter gets discussed enough. It's not the job of scientists - even Christian scientists - to do it. It's my job, and really the job of anyone who's ever put in an effort to reconcile new information with ancient faith.
I've written about my continuing struggles with this reconciliation here. I will continue to explore because it's a whole lot of fun, but also because this journey has led me to some amazing discoveries about God and the world that reach far deeper and with more beauty than anything I've experienced before.
I think people encounter this kind of science everyday - it's more than biology, but sociology, history, economics, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and more - information that doesn't immediately fit into the religious or theological framework they've been given.
I think, for a lot of people, the default position is just to devalue scripture. They just don't have the tools to do otherwise. They simply say, "well, if my understanding of scripture was wrong in this area, I guess it must be wrong here, too," and leave it at that. That's certainly where I was for many years.
As Christians, scripture is the tradition of God's people passed down through time. It may not be a verbatim dictation of thought and practice from God's mouth to your ears, but it's amazingly, profoundly, life-alteringly important.
Reconciling the two, or, especially, giving people the tools to reconcile the two, is not the job of scientists - it's the job of pastors and theologians. My people.
Too often, and I am certainly guilty of this as well, we remain silent when we should speak for fear of entering an argument that could be avoided. When we do so, we hurt ourselves, the people with whom we converse, and also those "scientists" out there, in a wide variety of fields, who've dedicated themselves to increasing knowledge and learning more about this unbelievable world God shares with us.
I'm not sure if there's a point to this whole essay - and it's about five times longer than I've intended it to be -but I've been thinking about it recently and I thought it might do some of you some good to think about it, too.
