The New Reformation 2nd Installment

With all the rain and flooding in Georgia over recent weeks, this image came to mind, and I thought it was an appropriate analogy. If I was in the middle of a flooding river, barely keeping my head above water, and an expert swimmer in full gear arrived on the scene and offered to pull me out, how would I feel? What would I say? I imagine most people would say they want to be saved. People who have lived through these kinds of events form a strong bond with their rescuers, a bond of grateful appreciation and deep love, and a respect for the rescuer's willingness to risk their lives for the sake of the one in danger.

Is this the way Jesus is presented to those drowning and lost in darkness?

Or have we replaced His offer of love with a threat?

Consider for a moment the difference between the loving and confident offer of the rescuer described above, and the fear-provoking threat of "if you don't get saved you are going to die!" First of all, the fear-based threat focuses on what I do instead of on what the rescuer does. Will I take him up on it or not? It is up to me! Now I might take the rescuer up on coming to get me, but I am not going to feel very close to someone who threatens me in a time of great peril. So a second difference is how I feel about the rescuer when it is all over. Finally, the threat shifts my thoughts from the act of salvation to the consequence of drowning - in other words, it keeps the focus on my interests instead of the love behind the offer. Perhaps you can think of other differences, but I am left with a sense of sadness that the church for many years has resorted to threatening people to "scare" them into salvation, keeping them distant from their Savior and focused on themselves. Some people even turn down the rescue because they are angered by the threat, and feel controlled and manipulated instead of loved.

But who would turn down a loving offer of help in a time of need? Let's return to the original offer of Jesus, called "Good News" for a reason! We are all drowning. He offers to come and get us out of the flood waters, and to put our feet back on solid ground. Thank you, Jesus.

The New Reformation

I just sat through a movie called "The Invention of Lying." The premise of the movie was not bad; in fact, C. S. Lewis had written a book with a similar premise. In the Lewis book, a world exists where the first man and woman made a different choice and sin did not enter the world. Someone from our world of sin came to this world and brought sin into it, and the story unfolds showing the horrible consequences of sin coming to a world. In the movie, no one knows how to lie - apparently, the ability to lie was left out of the genetic code. The main character, while watching his mother die in agony and fear, feels so bad he makes up a story about a wonderful place you go when you die, where everyone gets a mansion and no one is ever sad or suffers. (As an aside, he is supposedly a writer, and the worst writer in the world as we are told - so of course his "story" he tells his mother is supposed to be a stupid one). But since no one lies, the doctors and nurses believe him and the story spreads as if it is truth. Then thousands of people come to him to tell the "rest of the story" and he makes up a whole tale about the man in the sky who controls everything. Suddenly "churches" pop up as places to think quietly about the man in the sky, etc., and you can imagine the rest of the movie.

I am not here to recommend this movie - in fact, for a supposed comedy it wasn't very funny, nor was the premise cohesive or believable. It was fairly poorly written and acted. However, the main content of the character's "lie" was a direct reflection of some of the current church-held beliefs about God, namely that He controls everything, causes all good things (and all bad things) to happen to people, and therefore is kind of a jerk who tests us to make us do good because we are afraid of going to the "bad place." After watching this movie, and seeing the responses of the people in the movie to this story about the man in the sky who is in control, I was left with a single thought: we need a new Reformation.

The movie does make the point that there are a bunch of holes in our present-day theology. It also makes the very valid point that no one would really want to know or love a God who is a controlling jerk; instead, the people followed out of fear. Is that who our God is? Have we, as Christians, really evaluated our beliefs lately, to see what it is we are saying to people about God's nature?

Perhaps every few hundred years, the church needs to go back and reclaim our roots. As happened in the Reformation, when the Catholic Church had strayed so far from Jesus's original teachings, we may need to go back to the foundations of our faith and start again.

Here are my beginning proposals for the New Reformation:

1) Drop all conceptualization of God being "in control" - instead, remember that God is sovereign, which means He rules as King and Lord, but not as dictator or controller. In other words, reclaim the idea of free will choice.

2) Remember that God is love - and love does not bring harm. In other words, recall that there is nothing in common between God and Satan.

3) Stop attributing suffering to God - and remember we share an enemy with God who is about destroying us, thereby hurting God. In other words, stop seeing suffering as a test from God or "allowed" by God, but as something brought upon us by our sin, the sin of others, sin in the world, and/or our common enemy, and return to seeing God as the Redeemer.

4) Remove all ideas of God as a police officer or Santa Claus - and remember He is our partner and friend, not our punitive, abusive parent or our "Disney" divorced dad lavishing whatever we ask for upon us. In other words, see the supposed OT God of "judgment" and the supposed NT God of "grace" as One, by going back to the idea that God's justice is: "you sin and I pay for your sin on the cross," making justice and love the same.

5) Discard all ideas that it is not about us - and go back to the foundational idea that He died for us, so that we would not have to die but would be with Him in loving relationship for eternity. In other words, stop this "purpose-driven" mentality of God having an agenda and replace it with the relationship-focused premise of Jesus, that we ARE His "agenda."

Here are my starting premises for the New Reformation: God is sovereign (not controlling); God is love (not bringing harm); God is our Redeemer (not causing or allowing suffering); God is One (not justice and judgment in one form and grace and mercy in another); we are His (not puppets acting out His agenda). What do you think? Want to be a part of it? More to come!

***If you like this post, please email the link to all of your friends and ask them to email it, if they like it, to their friends. Take a stand! Restore our faith! Start the New Reformation! Spread the Good News!