Authenticity, Idols and Profanity – Part VI

Occasionally I pick up a free copy of a “Christian” newspaper published in our region of the country. Inside are articles and editorials and advertisements that supposedly are all tied in with its definition as a Christian publication. I assume the publisher means the newspaper is written for Christians or is from a Christian perspective, since a newspaper has no soul and cannot become “Christian” per se.

Invariably there are things I find in the newspaper with which I disagree. Naturally. Personally I find the letters to the editors espousing the flat tax as the only biblically sanctioned form of taxation as appalling as I do the advertisement for the “Christian Social Dance Association.”

When the label “Christian” is applied to this or any other newspaper, we run the risk of assuming by slapping a label on it that everything in that paper is “Christian” and everything written in so-called secular papers is non-Christian. This particular paper’s motto is “Where the (location) gets the news that matters most.” Does it indeed? Odd then that I find this particular newspaper quite lacking in areas I feel are dear to the heart of God. Of course, that is only my own humble opinion.

To take God’s name in vain or misuse it, to profane the name of Jesus, these are serious actions. But we fool ourselves if we think that such misuse applies only to casual expletives. I wonder, do more people go to hell because people swear or because things labeled as “Christian” bring disgrace to the name of God?

The same is true to building images out of wood or stone and then assigning those images supernatural or divine powers. While living in Taiwan, I discovered that a certain figurine became an object of worship only after a ceremony was performed in which a spirit entered that object. Otherwise, it was not an “idol”, to slap a Judeo-Christian label on it. But the general consensus was that the true god in those parts was the local currency, because that is what people really put their faith in. Funny how in recent days our own currency idols have been cast down.

Most things that are labeled idols don’t start out as idols. They become so because over time people begin to ascribe transcendent significance to them. This happens with governments be they Communist or Republican. And it happens, too, even with Christian objects, entities and ideas, be they some saint’s robe or a biblical value like “family.”

I flinch when I see an American flag placed on a pole above a Christian flag, not because I think the “Christian” flag as we know it is particularly sacred any more than the American flag is, but because of what it symbolizes. That somehow our allegiance to nation is above our allegiance to God. We may say “God and Country”, but often we get the two mixed up in order in our lives, just as easily as we do the flags on our poles.

And when we do, have we then crossed over into idolatry? For isn’t that what idolatry means? That idolatry has to do with allegiance, with giving some one, some thing, some idea in our lives ultimate priority or at least a higher priority than is biblically appropriate?

In this, the movement in our day away from traditional religious language is a good thing, for it causes us to reevaluate everything we hold sacred to make sure it deserves to be held sacred. In parts of Asia Believers wrestle with when their esteeming Confucius or their parents moves beyond appropriate honoring to worship. In countries like my own, we wrestle with when our patriotism or our belief in a certain form of government moves beyond honoring to worship.

In any case, we do well to use “Christian” as an adjective only sparingly. All that is called sacred is not and all that is labeled secular is not necessarily.

Authenticity, Idols and Profanity – Part V

In the last post, I was talking about how we tend to put people into categories when people don’t easily fit categories. This applies particularly to understanding where we are in relationship to God or whether we even have a relationship with God.

I find very curious the whole debate over what some people call “once saved always saved” or “eternal security,” referring to the idea that you cannot fall from grace, as opposed to the idea that you can keep falling in and out of grace. What’s odd about all the arguments on each side of the debate is that they are asking entirely the wrong question. We don’t need to be asking can we or have we fallen from grace as much as we need to be asking where we are in our relationship with God right now.

A similar question is whether you can do such-and-such and still be saved. It is a silly question, to say the least. It would be like a man asking his wife, God forbid, “how far I can go in committing adultery and we still be happily married.” Duh! If you have to ask, you’re in the doghouse already.

The walk of faith is not a category, like a club membership or some such. Either I am moving toward God or I am not. And the walk of faith is always a process that exclusive emphases on crisis decision-making or on experientialism denies.

Such is the dilemma of using the term “Christian” as an adjective, as in a Christian businessman or a Christian nation or Christian music or a Christian school. When we label something we do two things.

First, we arbitrarily define it in ways that may not apply. For example, what makes a businessman or a nation or a selection of music or a school “Christian”? I am not even talking about defining the world “Christian.” I am talking about defining these other things.

Take music. Does the style make it Christian, as in “gospel” music? What about “Christian” hymns written to old drinking songs? Is it Christian only if it refers to God or Jesus? The book of Esther in the Bible does not refer to God, whereas some “secular” literature talks about God a lot. Does that make Esther non-Christian in this sense? What about whether it espouses Christian values? Then we have to make sure we agree on what those values are, how they are to be espoused and so on. Oft times national or cultural values are confused with “Christian” in the larger world. Gets downright confusing.

Is a song “Christian” only if it is sung by a Believer in Jesus Christ? Does that make a Christmas carol sung by a nonbeliever a non-Christian song? What about a “secular” song like, say, “America the Beautiful” sung by a Christian in church on July 4 Sunday? I once heard of people in an international church in Taipei “getting saved” through a Filipina singing “White Christmas”. Does that also make Bing Crosby a Christian just because he wrote that song?

Second, and more importantly, we run the highly likely risk (which makes it less of a risk if it is highly likely) that we will dilute the term “Christian,” thus profaning it. For example, some people call America a “Christian” nation. What then happens when that nation does some very unchristian things? In such a case, the name of Christ is taken in vain, meaning we have profaned the name of Jesus just as much as if we were the proverbially drunken sailor stumbling down the street crying out “Jesus Christ this” and “Jesus Christ that.”

There are all kinds of things labeled as Christian these days that have nothing to do with Jesus and there are all kinds of things not labeled as Christian that have everything to do with Jesus. I may call my school or my club or my newspaper or my song or even myself “Christian.” But if I do so, I better be sure I am not breaking the 3rd Commandment.

Authenticity, Idols and Profanity – Part IV

I often joke that there are two kinds of people in this world, those who put people into categories and those who don’t. I may joke that way, but I really do not like labels. On myself or anyone else for that matter. Sometimes labels are helpful. When you go to school it can be useful to know whether you are in the fifth or the sixth grade.

But most people do not precisely fit the labels they are assigned. For example, I may be placed in the sixth grade because of my age or when I started school or because I sufficiently passed the fifth grade or because my fifth grade teacher dreaded the thought of having me again. For whatever collection of reasons, I am in the sixth grade. But emotionally I may be a fifth grader and in math I may be an eighth grader and in reading I may be a sixth grader and physically I may fit more with the seventh graders. On it goes.

No individual fits any humanly-defined categories exactly for the very reason that no two individuals are alike. There’s an old joke that goes along the lines of “when God made so-and-so, He broke the mold.” Truth is, that applies to every single person that ever lived.

In three ways are we all alike. One, we were made in God’s likeness, Two, we have fallen from that likeness into what theologians call sin, meaning we have gotten off-centered in God and are operating out of a self-centeredness that is destructive both to ourselves and to all those with whom we come into contact. And three, even in that state of fallenness there is an insatiable hunger to know God.

Now some people teach that there are many paths to or back to God or that you don’t need to try to get “back to” God at all, either because He doesn’t exist or because it doesn’t matter. Others teach that there is only one way back to God and we better find it. At least to a certain extent, all these ideas are wrong. For one, they are all very human-centered as opposed to God-centered, meaning they are idolatrous. For another, they fail to take into consideration the sheer diversity with which God has created mankind.

I do believe, and this is one of the few absolutes I adhere to in life, that the way to God is through Jesus Christ. By this I mean, that because of our self-deception (our idolatry), God has chosen to reveal Himself and His love through His son, Jesus. But how He works in each of us to bring us to truth and life is as varied as the spectrum in which we were created by God.

I was just writing to a friend about the odd expression, “It’s not over till the fat lady sings.” The ring of truth in that awkward metaphorical mix of opera and sports echoes what Jesus taught. Don’t pull out the weeds until harvest time, he tells his agrarian-based audience, or you’ll mess up the wheat. On another occasion, he says, that while some of us plant and others water, God is responsible for producing the harvest, meaning that only in the end will it all be sorted out and by God alone.

People often ask, what about those who have never heard? What about the person who commits suicide? What about the infant who dies before reaching the age of accountability? What about my grandpa who died in a coma and we weren’t sure if he was saved? What about my dog? Will they make it to heaven? Best to do all we can in life to make sure we are ready and leave the rest to God. In the case of dogs, leave them all to God.

Authenticity, Idols and Profanity – Part III

So if idolatry is more than just manmade figurines like we saw in National Geographic when we were kids and profanity is more than just using swear words, what are they?

In Jesus’ day, there were plenty of people walking around saying they were fully devoted to God. They spent lots of time doing spiritual things, like praying and going to synagogue (their equivalent of our modern-day church meetings) and even giving to the poor. They were careful not to break any of the Ten Commandments, including and especially the two commandments dealing with making “graven images” or idols and with taking God’s name in vain.

And, yet, after all that, Jesus tells these religious people that their righteousness is as filthy rags (which has a rather vulgar connotation, I might add) and that God won’t even recognize them when they try to get into heaven, thus implying that they won’t be able to do so.

Now, why are their attempts at doing right so wrong? Much of it has to do with motive, with intent. You can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Their righteous behavior was actually a form of idolatry.

Today there is much talk in the secular world about spirituality. By “spirituality” people mean something that is other than material, but also other than religious. There is a great recognition in our day and age that materialism in all its many forms is wholly inadequate for satisfying the spiritual hunger of us mortals. So people are returning to a search for spiritual fulfillment. But in doing so they are looking for avenues other than the traditional religious ones, recognizing, rightly so, that these routes can be as useless as material pursuits.

The problem such people are having is that they are attempting to build a spiritual “house” without a God-foundation, something that cannot be done. For any attempt to be other-focused apart from God will inevitably turn into self-focus, which as we’ve said is the spiritual equivalent of a black hole in outer space.

Oddly enough, religious people are attempting the same thing. They are trying to use the secular spiritual terminology to appear contemporary, but it feels very inauthentic to their nonbelieving neighbors, and sometimes rightly so. For that secular spirituality is a spirituality that tries to bypass God and you can’t have a God-centered spirituality that at the same time bypasses God. Such is the definition of a non sequitor, something that doesn’t line up.

So these attempts at spirituality, by religious or by nonreligious people, are just as idolatrous as the attempts by religious people to appear religious for selfish reasons. The least that can be said for the nonreligous attempt at spirituality is that it can at times be a more honest attempt.

An honest nonbeliever is a whole lot more pleasing to God than a dishonest believer. An agnostic who says she really doesn’t know and yet is earnestly seeking to know is headed in the right direction. A self-proclaimed atheist and a smug Believer are two peas in the same pod. They’ve stopped asking questions and in so doing are deeply dishonest and have fallen into the worst form of self-deception – idolatry.

Smugness, by the way, is a very intense form of idolatry, for it says that I am right beyond all doubt. In other words, it is a rightness which cannot be questioned. By removing my rightness from questioning, I put myself in grave danger of being very wrong and not having any awareness to reverse direction. I therefore damn myself beyond hope. Thus the reason Jesus says that some very highly devoted religious people will lose it all in the end.