Here is the problem with saying this: its just more guilt and apologies given to the world. "Oh, so sorry World that some people have ignorantly done horrible things in the name of religion. What? You won't like us because of that one word: 'religion'? Okay, well dump it. It was a stupid word anyway. We're not about a religion. We're about a relationship. You like relationships don't you World? Those are happy things. So there, will you be our friends now?"
It is getting tiring seeing people make apologies for things that we don't need to be apologizing for and it is getting even more tiring seeing Christians being influenced by John Lennon's world view. No John Lennon, I don't think the world would be better if there were no religions, I think you were wrong.
The problem isn't just that we let our thinking be influenced by hallucinogenic induced hippys (although that is kind of annoying) it is that when we are influenced by them we become tragically correct in our semantics.
When we say we're not religious we are saying we are not attached to a system that for indicernable reasons brings about evil. I suppose because it divides people when we really should be united as one (ironically this is ideology taken from a... religion. But an eastern one so that seems cooler). Or maybe because rich people have used it as an excuse to do evil things (meanwhile other rich men used its absence as an excuse to do evil things, but thats besides the point isn't it Mr. Lennon?). But in that case it wasn't really religion that causes that evil, but man's corruption of that religion. So we should be more saying that we are a religion, but we are not in the habit of being those types of religious people who uses their religion to achieve personal (or evil) ends. But I'm getting off the point...
If we take our definition for being religious from the Bible and not from John Lennon or anyone else then our statement is still absolutely true. And thats the real tragedy in all of this. James 1: 27 says "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."
WE! ARE! NOT! DOING! THIS!
I know I'm not. This verse has bothered me for years because I know I'm doing next to nothing to help orphans and widows. I'm getting more and more of a feeling that this will have to change sometime soon, I don't know how it is going to look but things have to be different (see my post on abortion/adoption for one possible means of change). But what I am also bothered by is this idea of being unstained from the world. I don't do that. I don't hate the world so much that I try to keep it from affecting me. More often I try to indulge in as much of it as I can without crossing that imagined line into sin. I like the world, and as I grow older and familiarity grows too I learn to like it more and more. As I do so the imagined line into sin gets blury, then faint, and then it disappears.
I am aware this turned out to be a bit more intense than the rest of this series, but this sincerely bothers me. I don't believe its evil, I just think its misguided. My hope is that (this is a sincere hope, if all my ramblings come to nothing but this it will not have been a waste of time) the word "religion" and the desire to say the aformentioned phrase will send a flare in your brain to make you think of James 1:27 and be challenged to consider what true religion is defined as. And if you're not truly living a religious life that you will make the necessary steps to change that.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Christian Cliches That Need to End IV: Calling Me Brother
Spiritually speaking I understand doing this. I am a big advocate for seeing fellow believers as family, that the Church is a place to belong, a refuge and unit one can rely on. So I think an emphasis on the familial relationship is cool. Being reminded that we are brothers and sisters in Christ is an amazing thing. But this always feels weird.
Without exception these are the only times calling me (or really anyone) brother is acceptable:
1) If you're Scottish.
2) If you're saying it ironically with a Scottish accent (like if you're quoting Desmond from Lost).
3) If you're Jamaican.
4) If I am, in fact, you're sibling (Statistically this really only applies to 3 in ever
7,000,000,0000 people).
5) If you're quoting Cool Runnings.
6) If you (or I) are a Benedictine or Augustinian monk.
Without exception these are the only times calling me (or really anyone) brother is acceptable:
1) If you're Scottish.
2) If you're saying it ironically with a Scottish accent (like if you're quoting Desmond from Lost).
3) If you're Jamaican.
4) If I am, in fact, you're sibling (Statistically this really only applies to 3 in ever
7,000,000,0000 people).
5) If you're quoting Cool Runnings.
6) If you (or I) are a Benedictine or Augustinian monk.
Christian Cliches That Need to End III: Saying Brian Regan Is Funny.
He isn't.
Stop acting like he is.
Stop acting like he is.
Christian Cliches That Need to End II: Saying "Its God's Will" As A Reason To Break Up
The names in this little play have been changed to protect the innocent (and not so innocent-it would seem). Genders can be reversed depending on circumstances.
[in the living room of some non descript house, there is probably a Bible on a shelf nearby, very close to a collection of the Left Behind Series.]
Gwendalyn: We need to talk...
Fernando: ... Um... okay. We have been talking for like the last hour and a half. But I suppose you mean we need to talk about something other than how disappointing the last season of Lost was or the weird customers I talked to at work today.
Gwendalyn: Yeah.
Fernando: Okay. Let's hear it.
Gwendalyn: I've been thinking...
Fernando: [looks to ground, shoulders sink low, all hope is lost] Okay...
Gwendalyn: I'm just not so sure about... us... You know?
Fernando: We've been hanging out for the last hour. You couldn't have brought this up any sooner?
Gwendalyn: Sorry.
Fernando: You've been feeling this way for a while?
Gwendalyn: You must have too.
Fernando: No!
Gwendalyn: I just don't have any peace about us anymore. I've been praying about it and getting advice from friends.
Fernando: Like who?
Gwendalyn: Laquisha.
Fernando: You mean your over possessive friend who is always jealous whenever we hang out without her? That Laquisha?
Gwendalyn: Yeah! Her! Well I just don't think this relationship is God's will for our lives. I don't think we're supposed to be together.
Fernando: Funny God is only filling you in on this, you'd think he'd tell me too.
[awkward silence. gaze is averted by each individual]
Gwendalyn: I'm really sorry. I don't want to hurt you but...
[sound of vibrating phone]
Oh, its Laquisha... she is having a problem with her equally possessive, overly critical, emotionally unstable new boyfriend. I have to go. Bye.
[scene]
If you're not one of those strange people (yes, you are strange!) who married the first person who agreed to go on a date with you then you have probably had this conversation in some varying degree, whether you are the unsuspecting victim or the naive antagonist. If you have never been directly involved chances are you know someone who has (in my case I've know about 50 someones who have) and have gotten to hear the tirade that follows. This is the most common line in Christendom... I mean Christianity, when breaking up with someone and it needs to stop now!
Here is the thing about using this line on an unsuspecting boyfriend or girlfriend, it's the ultimate trump card. It cannot be beaten. It is like double-dog-daring someone, you can't go any further than that.* If someone you're dating tells you it's no longer God's will for your relationship to continue you have no course for debate. Because what you are now debating is the validity of the will of God in your own life. How do you go against the will of God? How do you fight for the relationship when so much stands against you? It's impossible. You really have no other option than to give in and accept what seems to now be inevitable. Because by fighting the proposition of the break up you're no longer fighting the person, nor are you fighting for your relationship, you're fighting against the forces of the universe (well, not literally, but this is the inevitable conclusion of this reason for breaking up).
There may be some truth to the fact that God does not desire for you to be together. I honestly don't know how that whole thing works and I am not going to pretend to**. But I am pretty confident that God makes that desire clear through varying means to show you you're not supposed to be together (i.e. you're lives going in different directions, or your personalities are too different, or the person chews their food too loud, or your parents hate them, or their bizarre fondness for The Incredible Hulk, or because they write an obnoxious blog, etc). Perhaps, out of respect for the break-y you can give those as reasons for breaking up. You risk hurting the other person but at least it is constructive criticism, which is painful but helpful.
*Some people will argue for the existence of a triple-dog-dare, those people are stupid and are not respecters of the institution of the dare.
**You're welcome.
[in the living room of some non descript house, there is probably a Bible on a shelf nearby, very close to a collection of the Left Behind Series.]
Gwendalyn: We need to talk...
Fernando: ... Um... okay. We have been talking for like the last hour and a half. But I suppose you mean we need to talk about something other than how disappointing the last season of Lost was or the weird customers I talked to at work today.
Gwendalyn: Yeah.
Fernando: Okay. Let's hear it.
Gwendalyn: I've been thinking...
Fernando: [looks to ground, shoulders sink low, all hope is lost] Okay...
Gwendalyn: I'm just not so sure about... us... You know?
Fernando: We've been hanging out for the last hour. You couldn't have brought this up any sooner?
Gwendalyn: Sorry.
Fernando: You've been feeling this way for a while?
Gwendalyn: You must have too.
Fernando: No!
Gwendalyn: I just don't have any peace about us anymore. I've been praying about it and getting advice from friends.
Fernando: Like who?
Gwendalyn: Laquisha.
Fernando: You mean your over possessive friend who is always jealous whenever we hang out without her? That Laquisha?
Gwendalyn: Yeah! Her! Well I just don't think this relationship is God's will for our lives. I don't think we're supposed to be together.
Fernando: Funny God is only filling you in on this, you'd think he'd tell me too.
[awkward silence. gaze is averted by each individual]
Gwendalyn: I'm really sorry. I don't want to hurt you but...
[sound of vibrating phone]
Oh, its Laquisha... she is having a problem with her equally possessive, overly critical, emotionally unstable new boyfriend. I have to go. Bye.
[scene]
If you're not one of those strange people (yes, you are strange!) who married the first person who agreed to go on a date with you then you have probably had this conversation in some varying degree, whether you are the unsuspecting victim or the naive antagonist. If you have never been directly involved chances are you know someone who has (in my case I've know about 50 someones who have) and have gotten to hear the tirade that follows. This is the most common line in Christendom... I mean Christianity, when breaking up with someone and it needs to stop now!
Here is the thing about using this line on an unsuspecting boyfriend or girlfriend, it's the ultimate trump card. It cannot be beaten. It is like double-dog-daring someone, you can't go any further than that.* If someone you're dating tells you it's no longer God's will for your relationship to continue you have no course for debate. Because what you are now debating is the validity of the will of God in your own life. How do you go against the will of God? How do you fight for the relationship when so much stands against you? It's impossible. You really have no other option than to give in and accept what seems to now be inevitable. Because by fighting the proposition of the break up you're no longer fighting the person, nor are you fighting for your relationship, you're fighting against the forces of the universe (well, not literally, but this is the inevitable conclusion of this reason for breaking up).
There may be some truth to the fact that God does not desire for you to be together. I honestly don't know how that whole thing works and I am not going to pretend to**. But I am pretty confident that God makes that desire clear through varying means to show you you're not supposed to be together (i.e. you're lives going in different directions, or your personalities are too different, or the person chews their food too loud, or your parents hate them, or their bizarre fondness for The Incredible Hulk, or because they write an obnoxious blog, etc). Perhaps, out of respect for the break-y you can give those as reasons for breaking up. You risk hurting the other person but at least it is constructive criticism, which is painful but helpful.
*Some people will argue for the existence of a triple-dog-dare, those people are stupid and are not respecters of the institution of the dare.
**You're welcome.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Christian Cliches That Need to End I: Using the Word Christendom in place of Christians or Christianity
You've probably heard this term used by a younger (or trying to seem younger; we call these people "progressive") pastor or Christian leader. The goal in using this word is to sound more intellectual or historical, but in actuality it accomplishes neither.
Christendom (pronounced with the "t" silent) is used by these individuals as a more intellectual alternative to the word Christianity. They say things like "We in Christendom need to do blah blah blah," or "if those of us in Christendom don't begin doing such and such" etc. The word was never meant to be the thinking man's synonym to Christianity, In fact the use of the word denotes different ideas all together.
Christendom, throughout history, has had two meanings that need to be distinguished so this mistake can stop being made:
1) Christendom refers to all united believers from the three religious sects that confess Christ as Lord and savior: Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Protestants. This really has no Spiritual connotations at all. It merely addresses the three entities as one. In the sixteenth century when the Turks were moving west into western Europe all of Christendom had to be united to defend their land. This is not a spiritual word, and it does not mean an ecumenical union, it is meant to differentiate one group of people (Europeans who grew up under Biblical teachings) from another (Muslims who posed a military threat or Jews who denied the teachings of Christ as canonical).
From my experience most speakers using this word are not considering all of Christendom when they use it. If you aren't even aware that the Greek Orthodox believers exist (much less what they believe or how they are distinct from the other branches of Christendom or why they branched off in the first place) you probably shouldn't use that word.
2) Christendom also refers to a nation specifically guided under Christian principles by professing* Christians who believe themselves to be doing the Lord's work throughout the world. It is a government institution. When speaking about Christendom you are talking about Rome under the leadership of Constantine in the fourth century, not a body of believers who are united by faith throughout generations. Christendom can also refer to the Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages, where the ruler was connected closely with the Pope, often doing the will of the Roman Catholic Church (loosely speaking the HRE provided the RCC with an unofficial military) and many European countries (such as Denmark) up until the end of the nineteenth century when Neitzsche's, Freud's, Kante's (et al) teachings dominated scholastic thinking. That's why the use of the word can be dangerous, Christendom carries with it baggage of military conquest more than it does the spirit of the teachings of Christ**.
Constantine was convinced he was helped in uniting all of Rome (through many battles with three different armies-each ruling a section of Rome at the time) by Christ. When engaging with the other potential rulers of Rome he claimed to see a sign in the sky that said "by this sign conquer" and then he saw either (I've never been sure of which one for sure, different historians have said different things) a cross or the chi-rho (the first two Greek letters in the word Christ, basically a P and an X where the P stems out of the top of the X. You can see this tattooed on a lot of "hip" kids who work at coffee shops and such, to my knowledge none of them have been too aware of what it means or the fact that it is connected with the military conquest of Rome in the early fourth century). The chi-rho became Constantine's emblem that he placed on shields and... pretty much everything. And he won! So then he claimed to become a Christian and made Christianity not only legal*** but mandatory. The number of Christians under Roman rule skyrocketed because to be Roman meant you were Christian. This decreased Christian persecution exponentially but also diluted the Christian institution, rather than being filled with sincere believers who followed Christ at the risk of death it was filled with true believers and those who followed Christ because it was the (for lack of a better word) trendy thing to do. Christendom in this sense (and Constantine's rule in general) was both positive and negative.
I won't deny it, Christendom is a cool word, it sounds cool (especially since you make the "t" silent, for some reason that just seems more intellectual) and its even fun to type out here. But that doesn't mean it can be thrown around to mean something it doesn't. For the sake of simplicity and the literary assumption that words should be used with their proper meaning in mind, just say Christianity or Christians, and stop trying to force Christendom into your daily vocabulary, unless you're an historian (or a nerd like me) it doesn't need to be there.
*I say professing because it's up for considerable debate the validity of their confession of faith.
**For more on how awful us Christians were in the crusades see Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven or Robin Hood, which do a fine job making the audience feel guilty for having ancestors who were from Europe in the middle ages.
*** up to this point you could be killed, or imprisoned, or at least moderately harassed for being a follower of Christ. This was because if you were a Christian you refused to bow to Roman gods or follow the gods' yearly celebratory/sacrificial calendar. Therefore you could greatly anger the gods and call their wrath down upon everyone around you. If there was a bad crop or no rain it was the Christian's fault. Under their religious system Christians angered the gods and put everyone else's lives at risk.
Christendom (pronounced with the "t" silent) is used by these individuals as a more intellectual alternative to the word Christianity. They say things like "We in Christendom need to do blah blah blah," or "if those of us in Christendom don't begin doing such and such" etc. The word was never meant to be the thinking man's synonym to Christianity, In fact the use of the word denotes different ideas all together.
Christendom, throughout history, has had two meanings that need to be distinguished so this mistake can stop being made:
1) Christendom refers to all united believers from the three religious sects that confess Christ as Lord and savior: Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Protestants. This really has no Spiritual connotations at all. It merely addresses the three entities as one. In the sixteenth century when the Turks were moving west into western Europe all of Christendom had to be united to defend their land. This is not a spiritual word, and it does not mean an ecumenical union, it is meant to differentiate one group of people (Europeans who grew up under Biblical teachings) from another (Muslims who posed a military threat or Jews who denied the teachings of Christ as canonical).
From my experience most speakers using this word are not considering all of Christendom when they use it. If you aren't even aware that the Greek Orthodox believers exist (much less what they believe or how they are distinct from the other branches of Christendom or why they branched off in the first place) you probably shouldn't use that word.
2) Christendom also refers to a nation specifically guided under Christian principles by professing* Christians who believe themselves to be doing the Lord's work throughout the world. It is a government institution. When speaking about Christendom you are talking about Rome under the leadership of Constantine in the fourth century, not a body of believers who are united by faith throughout generations. Christendom can also refer to the Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages, where the ruler was connected closely with the Pope, often doing the will of the Roman Catholic Church (loosely speaking the HRE provided the RCC with an unofficial military) and many European countries (such as Denmark) up until the end of the nineteenth century when Neitzsche's, Freud's, Kante's (et al) teachings dominated scholastic thinking. That's why the use of the word can be dangerous, Christendom carries with it baggage of military conquest more than it does the spirit of the teachings of Christ**.
Constantine was convinced he was helped in uniting all of Rome (through many battles with three different armies-each ruling a section of Rome at the time) by Christ. When engaging with the other potential rulers of Rome he claimed to see a sign in the sky that said "by this sign conquer" and then he saw either (I've never been sure of which one for sure, different historians have said different things) a cross or the chi-rho (the first two Greek letters in the word Christ, basically a P and an X where the P stems out of the top of the X. You can see this tattooed on a lot of "hip" kids who work at coffee shops and such, to my knowledge none of them have been too aware of what it means or the fact that it is connected with the military conquest of Rome in the early fourth century). The chi-rho became Constantine's emblem that he placed on shields and... pretty much everything. And he won! So then he claimed to become a Christian and made Christianity not only legal*** but mandatory. The number of Christians under Roman rule skyrocketed because to be Roman meant you were Christian. This decreased Christian persecution exponentially but also diluted the Christian institution, rather than being filled with sincere believers who followed Christ at the risk of death it was filled with true believers and those who followed Christ because it was the (for lack of a better word) trendy thing to do. Christendom in this sense (and Constantine's rule in general) was both positive and negative.
I won't deny it, Christendom is a cool word, it sounds cool (especially since you make the "t" silent, for some reason that just seems more intellectual) and its even fun to type out here. But that doesn't mean it can be thrown around to mean something it doesn't. For the sake of simplicity and the literary assumption that words should be used with their proper meaning in mind, just say Christianity or Christians, and stop trying to force Christendom into your daily vocabulary, unless you're an historian (or a nerd like me) it doesn't need to be there.
*I say professing because it's up for considerable debate the validity of their confession of faith.
**For more on how awful us Christians were in the crusades see Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven or Robin Hood, which do a fine job making the audience feel guilty for having ancestors who were from Europe in the middle ages.
*** up to this point you could be killed, or imprisoned, or at least moderately harassed for being a follower of Christ. This was because if you were a Christian you refused to bow to Roman gods or follow the gods' yearly celebratory/sacrificial calendar. Therefore you could greatly anger the gods and call their wrath down upon everyone around you. If there was a bad crop or no rain it was the Christian's fault. Under their religious system Christians angered the gods and put everyone else's lives at risk.
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