Too churched to be Christian?
Recently I’ve been pondering the notion that I might be a better ‘Christian’ if I stopped having any church involvement. This has come from thinking about The Ranter’s deconversion (which I don’t share) and a comment from a friend in the pub. The comment was about how they now avoid any church involvement because their past involvement with churches has shown them that all churches did to them was to ‘suck out all their energy’. The Ranter has also made past comments about how the church actually takes from the local community, as opposed to giving to it, because the local people who might be inclined to be actively involved are involved in church paraphrenalia instead.
My idea also comes from the context of having limited energy to do activities outside of work. When you have involvement with churches or Christian groups (which may or may not be defined as ‘church’) there is an expectation of a certain level of commitment, even if this is not explicit. My worst experiences of this were in an Evangelical Charismatic church where the church ended up becoming my whole life. I didn’t really know anyone outside of the church and most evenings were taken up with prayer meetings etc. There was no time or space to have any involvement in anything unrelated to church. An illustration of this is that after the Ranter and I left this church, it was very difficult to meet with people from the church because they were tied up with so many meetings. They were supposedly very ‘concerned’ about the Ranter because going to an Anglican church was seen as losing her faith (at the time this didn’t actually reflect anything about her faith other than that she was pissed off at them and their worldview!) but they couldn’t even keep an invite we had planned around homegroups etc. They were too busy being Christian in a busy way to be Christian in a way that they themselves would see as Christian…
I see much the same thing happening in my present life – even though I have left that lifestyle and my current involvement with my Anglican and alt_worship groups involves a lot less commitment. The Ranter and I have moved to the nice side of a rough area, and our Anglican church is now no longer our local church. The community around here has a very active group to assist regeneration etc but the meetings always seem to clash with my Emmaus homegroup, so I have yet to go. I also feel too tired and busy to commit to any active responsibility in the local area. Is the Christian thing to do to give up church involvement so that I can actually make a difference to my local community?
You may answer that I should join the church that is for my present parish, but the problem with that is it is led by a homophobic vicar who would consider my blessed, permanent, legally binding relationship sinful. I don’t think this would solve the issue!
There could actually be a new Christian Movement to give up Church to be better Christians. We need to stop being too busy ‘doing’ Christian to be Christian!
Deconstructing the wisdom of the wise – Weak Theology
My previous post complained that my life is ‘data protected’ so there is not much I can write about. I realised today that I can write about what I am reading and thinking (not a right that everyone around the world has – see irrepressible.info).
I have just started reading ‘The Weakness of God: a theology of the event’ by John D. Caputo (2006). At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to understand it, but once you get past the introduction it is much easier to read (although some background knowledge of philosophy and theology is probably required). In this book Caputo is attempting to read St Paul and the Prophets of the Old Testament through the ideas of Derrida (a post-structuralist philosopher). The result is Weak Theology. The best way to explain this is probably to quote excerpts from the book (which could be relevant for the next Foundation Big Service?):
“Can anyone imagine any more sovereign power than God’s? Can one imagine anything more supportive of the established order, anything more top-down, more entrenched in the status quo, anything more immobilised, actualised, contented, than religion and religion’s “God”? Pro deo et patria (for God and country?): is that not a lethal combination, literally a deadly, ultra-divisive call to arms in whose ungodly name more blood has been spilled than just about anything else we can imagine?… How often has the “reign of God” meant a sovereign reign of theocratic terror? What has been more violent than theocracy? What more patriarchal, more hierarchical? What more authoritarian, inquisitorial, misogynistic, colonisalist, militaristic, teroristic?
But suppose all this power mongering is just rouged and powdered theology?…
Suppose, then in short, and contrary to the expectations of religion, mainstream theology, and the vested interests of His Reverance, the name of God harbours an event that is as at best a ‘weak force’ and that the ‘weakness of God’ is, nonetheless, the only thing that is strong enough to save us, which is why we want to save this name?…
God’s transcendence is the power of a spirit, not of the sword…” (excerpts from pages 32-35).
The chapter I am currently reading talks about the cross as central to the ideas of weak theology. “The power of God is not pagan violence, brute power, or vulgar magic; it is the power of powerlessness, the power of the call, the power to protest that rises up from innocent suffering, and finally, the power to suffer-with (sym-pathos) innocent suffering, which is perhaps the central Christian symbol” (p43).
There are a variety of Biblical quotes which support these ideas e.g. First Corinthians 1/Isaiah (‘God chose what is weak in the world…’). The bit I’m up to translates this through Derrida to be “I will deconstruct the wisdom of the wise” or “I will deconstruct the metaphysics of presence of the strong onto-theologians, sayeth the Lord God”!
I am enjoying the sacred-anarchy that this book proposes as an interpretation of the Kingdom of God. I’m optimistic that somewhere later in the book, there maybe some revelation of the point of what Jesus was saying. I always have a feeling that the church is somehow ‘missing the point’ but haven’t found a way to articulate this yet myself. I will let you know if there is any further insight into the ‘point’ when I get further into the book.
Does someone at Googlemail know me?
I have just set up a new Googlemail email account (people who know me please ask for this). I was intrigued the other day when I noticed that all the sidebar adverts were relevant to me! This spooked me out a bit – did Googlemail actually know me? Was someone sitting in the Google office reading my emails so that they could target me specifically?! The sidebar read: ‘Metaphor therapy…’; ‘cultural software: a new theory of cultural evolution explains ideology in terms of memes’; ‘ Forgiveness and acceptance: roles of forgiveness and acceptance in dissolving resentment…’; ‘Emotional literacy thesaurus and vocabulary’.
I was sufficiently freaked out to look this up on the internet. It turns out to be ‘Contextual advertising’:
I decided to test it further by faking an email (to myself) using alt_worship terms. Unfortunately contextual advertising isn’t quite up to this yet, all it gave me was: ‘Quality Celtic shop’, ‘Train wicca – enroll free’; ‘Kit Heath Jewellery’. I was slightly surprised by this because I thought that Christian subculture would have latched onto taking advantage of this device. Of course the other alternative interpretation is that alt_worship has more in common with Wicca than with mainstream Christianity!
Gifts
January 6, 2008 at 8:11 pm (alt_worship, cultural comment, poignant) (buddhism, Christmas, the gift)
Having been given the book What Would Jesus Deconstruct? as a gift for Christmas, I want to blog about the concept of The Gift (as explored in this book). Unfortunately, I also got a nasty flu virus as a ‘gift’ for Christmas and still don’t feel well enough to blog thoughtfully. Instead I will copy a story about presents from another website, even though it makes quite a different point from the one I am intending to make!
A Buddhist Christmas Story
A Christmas Story from the Lotus SutraOne time a young man inherited 4 farms from his father. He also married his childhood sweetheart. He celebrated his good fortune by building a great house with servants and many rooms.
As the children were born the man bought many toys. He filled the children’s rooms with toys of many colors and sizes. The children loved to play for hours in their nursery.
One day a fire broke our in the house. The father shout, “Run everybody.” Naturally he expected his children to run out of the house with them. But they didn’t follow the mother and father outside to safety. The parents called and called to the children, but they did not want to leave their wonderful toys.
A neighbor who had come to help out with the fire suggested that they lure the children outside with more new toys. “But we don’t have any,” said the father. “We’ll just make them up,” suggested the tear-faced mother as the flames grew hotter and hotter. “Come on out,” shouted the father and mother together. “We have horses, carts, jumping frogs, mechanical dolls, bows and even a monkey.”
The children left the burning house and their beloved toys to see the new ones and thus were saved. When the smoke cleared from their eyes they saw the house destroyed. They also noticed that there were really no new toys to be seen at all. For the first time in their lives they knew what it was to have nothing and be very grateful indeed.
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