One of those fun things to do after church, as a child, when the adults had left the auditorium, was to go up and play preacher. We could mimic the motions of our elders in a convincing enough way to be funny and yet really had no idea what we were doing. And this reality would be quite obvious the moment we were asked a serious question.
Part of becoming an adult is the realization that many don’t really know what they are doing. Sure, some might enthusiastically perform their roles, and they have the necessary qualifications, but they either lack practical experience or simple aptitude. Not every doctor or engineer is equal, for example, some are more competent, and others—not so much. But none of these ‘professionals’ have an authority that should be unchallenged.
Reflecting on the priorities, and performative religion, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that some are really only concerned about looking the part and lack any real spiritual substance. It is disheartening when getting customs right is of greater importance than welcoming children. When leaders can answer on matters of trivia but are unable to offer any real wisdom or direction when it comes to the practical application of the clichés they preach, they’re phonies.
I’ve concluded that many participate in church as a sort of social club. And it goes all the way to the top. They have clout in the organization. They can wear the costumes and get the recognition that they so desperately need. But, in the end, they are empty vessels, a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. It would be better to be a child going through the motions, in play, than to take yourself seriously and offend the little ones in the faith. Jesus wasn’t talking about pedophiles in Matthew 18:6.
The title of this blog is a repeated line from a popular song, “Personal Jesus,” covered by Johnny Cash. According to the writer, this song is “about being a Jesus for someone else” and more specifically the mentoring role Elvis Presley had played in the life of his wife Priscilla. The power of these words is how they change meaning depending on the artist who sings them. When it was covered by Marilyn Manson they came off as being mocking and derisive.
My own thoughts, hearing the song, always brings me to the popular Evangelical phrase “accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior” and the theological implications. Unintentionally, it is a commentary on how the Christian religion has been reinvented in this consumerist and individualistic age. It is all about you. Jesus is now personal, like a boyfriend, and pretty much whatever you want him to be. There is no obligation to others, no real need for self-sacrificial love, or becoming part of the body of believers, only to hold a kind of positive sentiment in your heart.
And this is what I encountered in the church of my youth. Except for those few symbolic expressions of community and caring, carry-overs from those radical Anabaptist roots, it was pretty much everyone for themselves—which is how most of us preferred it to be. I mean, sure, we would tell the other guy we would be praying for him after ritual foot washing, some would still call you brother as if simply saying it made it true, but that was generally the extent of it. We all had our own families if there was ever a real need, the church projects were generally for the elderly and those few favorites.
Saved Together
Orthodoxy has a more robust view of Holy Communion and could, in theory, answer the overly independent view of salvation. At the very least, with our partaking of the body and blood together central to worship, this puts to rest this idea that the internet preacher is enough. Life in Christ is about His body and His physical presence, not only something we hold in our minds as true. It is not only our knowledge of Christ and mental assent but is also about making His example the basis of our actions—being an incarnation.
Faith is not about what we claim to believe, it is about how we act:
Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. […] Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
(Galatians 6:2, 7-10 NIV)
Carrying of burdens is about more than mere “thoughts and prayers” or those mostly empty expressions. No, it is all about providing real relief to others, being that ‘neighbor’ like the good Samaritan or the true advocate like St. Paul was for Onesimus. It is not enough to only say “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” without ever helping others with their actual needs as we read in James 2:16. It is our job to be our brother’s keeper, that is to look after their needs like we would our own or that of a family member. This is what a community of faith is supposed to be about and also key to our salvation.
“If anyone falls, he falls alone. But nobody is saved alone.”
—Alexei Khomiakov
For some, their salvation comes from the hand we offer. For others, their salvation comes from offering that hand. The early church had this saying, “unus Christianus, nullus Christianus.” That is to say that one Christian is no Christian. This is what it means to follow Christ, this is what being in Communion is really about. Sure the ritual and religious practice matters. But the true substance in the blood and the flesh we are to consume is in how we become the hands and feet of Jesus. To do otherwise, to only partake without acting in genuine love is to drink unworthily and bring damnation upon ourselves:
In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. […] So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
(1 Corinthians 11:18-21, 27 NIV)
Stay In Your Lane
Sadly, within Orthodoxy, for some, it is about lighting a candle, making a sign of the cross, paying their membership dues (tithes), and regular church attendance. In other words, all about going through the motions. They don’t want to be bothered by real relationships or overcoming differences—let alone be concerned with the salvation of their fellow parishioners.
Sheesh, let the priest do his job! Mind your own business! Don’t you have enough sins of your own to attend to?
I’ve even heard clergy give advice like “stay in your lane” as if there’s no difference between confrontation of lingering issues and petty fault-finding…
I’ll back up a second and agree fully that we should be “work[ing] out [our] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:13), which does imply some introspection and that we start first with the beam in our own eye. But, that said, even this admonition is addressed to “my dear friends” or the church body and not as a personal note. So even this could be used to further the view of salvation that is about collective effort and not some sort of personal experience we have while sitting in the pew deliberately not noticing elephants in the room as our penance.
There are some who do not seem to realize that their mother’s scold, “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all,” isn’t written in Scripture, but this is:
“‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.“ ‘Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt. “ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
(Leviticus 19:16b-18 NIV)
Speaking the truth is not always pleasant to the ears of those hearing it and yet it is part of what love does. It is not that we should never confront, rather it is the SPIRIT of how we approach these sins or shortcomings of others. So, sure, staying in our lane is good, but that doesn’t mean we should never alert someone driving with their headlights off at night since we have also done the same in the past. It may feel like ‘keeping the peace’ to sweep everything under the rug or let the ‘problem’ go away by ignoring it—but it’s also an unloving attitude.
“Church is not a social club…”
I’ve now encountered it in two very different religious traditions. When that cry is made for real brotherhood, deeper connections or genuine relationships are met with the strong suggestion that you’re not spiritual enough and a reminder that church is for worshipping God and superficial interactions. If you expect a little more then you’re turning it into a social club. This is an inversion. It is a psychological projection and a garbage excuse. It’s telling a person seeking medical care that hospitals are about the awe of the building and reverence for the institution, that they should go to the dance club if they so desperately want to be touched by someone.
These phony physicians only add insult to injury, they are exactly the type of religious authorities that Jesus rebuked:
“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
(Matthew 23:2-4 NIV)
For them, it is all about the right image, the dress standards, and keeping their perfect attendance record. Basically, they check all of the right boxes. Performative religion. And who knows? Maybe their Bible study and prayers, ten hours a day, really does it for them? Who am I to say that their mission to Uganda was entirely a self-indulgent display of privilege and a waste of resources? But I’ll also say that those who travel the world while doing the bare minimum for those whom God put right at their own doorstep are condemned as hypocrites by Jesus.
The church is established by the same God who told us that it is not good for man to be alone. Good for you if you need nobody in your life. Jesus is your homeboy? But most of us need those meaningful and sometimes messy interactions with other humans. That is what family is. That’s what hospitals are built to facilitate. And that is what a church is literally supposed to be. If you don’t need a doctor maybe you are the doctor and your salvation requires you to show up to attend to those sick and suffering? Why call would we call each other brothers and sisters in Christ if this weren’t the case? If the church isn’t at all about social interactions—why do we waste the gas?
Those who say that church isn’t a social club are right. It is also not an art museum where pretentious people go to engage politely and then share a light snack. It should be much more than that. It should be a refuge we can flee, the juniper tree where God sends angels to comfort and attend to the physical needs of Elijah, a garden of Gethsemane where the disciples are not sleeping in hours of need, it should be intimate and practical, a hospital or home. A place to be ministered to and minister to each other. It’s both where we share our moments of happiness and also mourn with those who mourn.
Church is a family or it is just fake.
Post Script: Those who personalize Jesus tend to depersonalize their religion. Protestant or Orthodox, it doesn’t matter, they want to claim their great devotion with their embrace of abstraction and their own prescribed practices, but seem to forget that pure religion is about the human touch (James 1:27) and what they do materially for others is how to show their love for Jesus. Our salvation does not come apart from the body of Christ. Communion isn’t only what we partake of on a Sunday morning, it is what we participate in as far as loving others and, in particular, the community of believers. You cannot stay in your lane, avoiding people in a pretense of righteousness, and also love God.
There is an intermediate step between our own lonely individualism and some sort of wonky religious or hippie flower child 1960s-style communalism. There is plenty of room in between the extremes.
My thoughts about this ideal were sparked again by my interactions with a young woman, on the anxious left-wing activist side of things, thinking to declare as a philosophy major, who wanted me to check out some websites about cooperatives.
While I do not embrace the full package of left-wing ideology, I do see the huge deficit of viable communities and the economic forces that are behind this erosion. We have traded the mom-and-pop stores downtown for the corporately owned big box.
This is as unhealthy an arrangement as the mass-produced junk food many Americans choose. And yet, if you question this regime of suburban sprawl and consumerism, you’ll get a response similar to the dialogue, in the movie Idiocracy, when Joe suggests using water rather than Brawndo, an energy drink, for irrigating the crops:
“Community, like a cult or Jonestown?”
If you bring up the word commune there will probably be a strong visceral reaction on the part of conservatives. There is this delusion of independence, a crucial component of the American cultural mythos, which is what drives many to trade community (and potential for their greater success) for a payment plan.
Whereas a generation or two ago, there was the church and social clubs to provide some level of mutual support, now we have a class of some who make it and others who are an unforeseen circumstance and paycheck away from dependence on welfare programs. We have traded flesh and blood relationship for faceless state or corporate bureaucracy and a truckload of paperwork.
The current system is so woefully inefficient that we’re probably working twice as hard for half the rewards. Governments, banks, and big corporations are profiting massively by keeping us divided up and dependent on their systems. Many believe that they are free because they can watch smut or own a deadly weapon, but they’re really slaves to debt and tossed about by entities that have no actual concern for their well-being or wellness.
But, despite their slavery to this system, the moment you suggest that they consider an alternative, working together with those of like-mind towards a common goal, there is strong resistance. I mean, how dare you suggest that they give up their own property (that the bank owns anyway) or learn how to share anything?
Reducing the friction of commerce…
The reality is, unless you live alone on your Alaskan homestead, you are dependent on other people. And my thought here is that we should be more intentional about this and choose what makes the most sense.
The idea of a cooperative is basically to remove the dead weight of a business and distribute profits more evenly amongst the employed. It means that all involved in the enterprise share in both the risks and the rewards. Instead of paying interest to banks or making dozens of taxed transactions, all of this cost can be eliminated. What it all means, in the end, is working less for more in return.
For example, instead of everyone buying their own lawn mower or hiring someone, why not have one person do this for the community and earn credits?
My own vision is a mix of both cooperation and autonomy, which is negotiated between the members and the group. There would not be everyone living in some kind of compound or anything like that, everyone could have their own residence. There would simply be more shared space for all, fewer redundancies, and potentially more access to costly tools or equipment.
The economics of this kind of cooperative arrangement is so superior that once it was started it would vastly outpace those trying to do it on their own through the currently conventional means. Ever wonder why so many motels and gas stations are owned by immigrants? It is because they are financed through their ethnic communities and have eliminated the friction of interest.
Americans, by contrast, always seem to see everything as a competition. They’ll buy the biggest most ridiculous SUV, they truly can’t afford, to keep up with the Joneses and the only real winner is the financer of this silly display of excess. We would rather sacrifice our time so that the boss can get his hunting land or an executive makes their bonus than give up this faux image of self-reliance and work together.
Finding our commonality…
A successful cooperative arrangement does require some sort of connection or common purpose to unite the individuals. In the early Church, their having “all things in common” was a byproduct of faith and a commitment to Christ. The ideological left, on the other hand, begins with a different moral premise and that is the abolition of private property or Capital. In both cases, there is a shared identity that is the glue.
That is the biggest roadblock in the rapidly atomizing West, where Protestantism has led to a proliferation of denominations with competing claims and now the dissolution of a shared or universal purpose. Everything is about us now, about our own opinions and wants, to the point that many marriages end in a protest called divorce. We can’t sacrifice anything in the present, even if our greater integration as a whole would be better for us in the end.
But there is a huge potential upside. If we could find a way to look past ourselves for a moment and understand how cooperation is a means to reduce friction or cost. However, the real need is for more people to let go of this delusion that they are better off on their own and that security comes only through money in their bank account. The absurd part is that we already do lend our time to many people, for a wage, their services, or whatever, and would do better to choose better partners.
If there was a way to make cooperative arrangements more palatable I would. The real problem is that anytime we gain the slightest advantage over our neighbors we would rather keep it all for ourselves. Many cannot see past this pointless competition and appreciate the great gain of voluntarily distributing costs or sharing responsibilities. Perhaps this is why we can’t have nice things? I know it is why so many are lonely and discontent. They are looking in the wrong direction for fulfillment.
There are always tradeoffs for every arrangement. And yet there are also things that we are biologically wired for and denying them is to our detriment. We are social creatures. We have a neurological reward system built around having positive meaningful interactions with other people. The economic benefits of greater cooperation, at a local level, would be enormous and the social benefits even greater.
Irregular Ideation 