I recently attended the funeral of an elderly person who died of natural causes. At the close of the eulogy was this statement: “B… did have a faith in God and she wore a St. Jude’s medallion which gave her great comfort.” This brief statement was like a flash of light in my mind.
Some say St.
Jude is the patron saint of those in need. If you watch US police dramas on TV, you may have heard a reference to St. Jude as 'the patron saint of lost causes'.
On the St. Jude Novena website (www.stjudenovena.org) as at July 2012, I
found this statement: “If you feel desperation or hopelessness in your life,
you have just found a friend. The St.
Jude Novena Site is dedicated to spreading the message that by praying a novena
to St. Jude, you can experience a powerful fellowship of comfort, support and
peace in your life.”
According to New
Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia website, a novena is “A nine days' private or public devotion
in the Catholic Church to obtain special graces.” “Vocal” prayers
are used, meaning that the person or group uses the vocalised (and often
written) prayers of others – the famous prayer of St Francis of Assisi, for
instance.
So … just as there is a significant
distinction between church and ecclesia, between gospel and evangel, between
sermon and kerygma, there is a significant distinction between ‘a
faith in God’ and faith as understood by Jesus and Paul. The church has gospel and sermon (or homily)
and ‘a
faith in God’ expressed through repeated prayers – often to the church’s saints
– and through religious exercises. On
the other hand, ecclesia has the evangel, the kerygma and living faith directly
in the Christ of God, without any recourse to historic saints, repeated prayers
and religious exercises or sermons. That
is a stark and stunning difference.
I want to focus a little on this latter
distinction: between ‘having a faith in God’ and ‘living faith’.
Generally, when a person is described as
having a faith in God, it means they believe in God, as distinct from not believing in God. Generally, it means they have decided that
behind everything and ahead of us there is a god-being: a being other than
human and beyond, above and surrounding us humans. Generally, God is the creator, giver and
sustainer of live; God is bigger, grander, more powerful than us. But this god-being is also a mystery; he (or
she or it) can be found in religion and is generally accessed via a priest or
mediator of some sort.
In fact, if you read through the Old
Testament and draw a picture of God from what you read, it is the kind of being
most humans conjure up to be their God – admittedly, allowing for the fact that
most people rely on the church and the priest or mediator to interpret the Old
Testament for them and tell them what it says and what it means. And generally, there is one god-being, not
many.
This is what theologians call a mono-theistic
religion: a ‘one-god’ religion. It is
generally understood that there are three main ‘one-god’ religions in the
world: Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
However, as you will see, I and others conceive of things differently.
I am a man in some respects a bit like Dr
Greg Boyd. He wrote a book called The Myth of a Christian Religion
(Zondervan, 2009). The rear fly cover of
his book I believe sums up well his main thesis: “Between passivity and
politicised holy war lies the one true way to make a difference. The kingdom of God is a beautiful
revolution. Marked by the radical life,
love, servanthood, and humility of Jesus, it stands in stark contrast to the
values and ways of the world.”
I am also a bit like Boyd as he spoke
about himself in the book’s introduction:
Once upon a time I
embraced the Christian religion.
Frankly, I wasn’t very good at it.
Religion just isn’t my thing.
Some religious folk consigned me (and still consign me) to the fire.
But over time I’ve come to see my religious failure as a tremendous
blessing. Because, when I lost my
religion, I discovered a beautiful revolution.
This may surprise or
even offend you, but Jesus is not the founder of the Christian religion. True, a religion arose centuries after he
lived that was called “Christian”, but as you’ll discover in this book, in many
respects this religion was antithetical to what Jesus was about. In fact, as you’ll discover in this book, the
very concept of a ‘Christian religion’ is something of a myth when understood
in the light of what Jesus was about…
What Jesus was about
was starting a revolution. He called
this revolution “the Kingdom of God.” (p.
9)
Probably the only point in that where I differ slightly from Boyd is
that I believe the “christian religion” as we have come to know it, was already
living in Paul’s lifetime. It is clearly
visible in Acts 15. I actually believe
Jesus had foreseen its arrival and he spoke about it in his parable of the
wheat and the tares. The outcome of the
Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 did not prevent the Pharisee sect of believers
from forcing their religious accoutrements onto every gentile believer they
could influence. And Paul described
their message a “different good news” and no good news at all.
So I stand with Greg Boyd: the idea of a Christian religion is a myth,
and antithetical to what Jesus was about; I actually see it as an
oxymoron. You get an oxymoron when you
throw two words together to create an exaggerated effect or to make a point,
but the two words are actually mutually exclusive – one excludes or negates the
other. In this case, if it’s Christian
it cannot be religion; and if it’s religion it cannot be Christian. That’s an oxymoron.
So I disagree with the theologians.
I see two mono-theistic religions: Judaism and Islam. I don’t believe the so-called “christian
religion” is mono-theistic and I don’t see it as in any way truly Christian –
that is, like Christ. I agree with Boyd
that it is antithetical to what Jesus Christ was about.
And I believe that most people in this religion actually have multiple
gods. For most in it, life is
compartmentalised into at least three segments: home-life, work-life and
religion. And commonly, there is a
fourth segment: sex-life. There is a god
of the religion segment – the creator or ‘the big man upstairs’. There is a god of the home-life – often children-family. There is a god of the work-life – money-security. There is a god of the sex-life –
pleasure-distraction. These gods are
generally kept quite separate and one does not influence the other. In effect, I believe the situation is mostly
a matter of ‘gods made in the image of man’ instead of man made in the image of
God.
Hebrews 11:6 says that he who comes to God must believe that He exists
and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. The first phrase is as far as it goes for
many people: they believe God exists.
This is what ‘having a faith in God’ very often means:
it’s not a living saving faith, it is a belief that God exists. This is then mediated through a priest or
pastor and through an institution called a such-and-such church.
Greg Boyd correctly says of the revolution that is the Kingdom of God:
This revolution isn’t
centered on getting people to believe particular religious beliefs and engage
in particular religious behaviours, though these may be important, true, and
helpful. Nor is it centered on trying to
fix the world by advocating the “right” political causes or advancing the
“right” national agendas, though these may be noble, righteous, and effective.
No, the Kingdom of
God that Jesus established is centered on one thing, and one thing only:
manifesting the beauty of God’s character and thus revolting against everything
that is inconsistent with this beauty.
The Kingdom of God is centered on displaying a beauty that revolts
The Kingdom of God,
in short, is a beautiful revolution. (p.
9-10)
In saying that the Kingdom of God isn’t
centred on these things, we can note that these are precisely the things this
so-called christian religion is
centred on. And the role of the church
is to house these beliefs, practices, behaviours and political action, and for
the ‘hired-holy-men’ (and women) to administer the rites of these houses of
religion, often called houses of worship.
To ‘have a faith in God’ is, in effect, to believe that God exists and
then to submit to the priestly mediation of that belief by means of the
beliefs, practices, behaviours and politics of one’s chosen institution. In the case of ‘B’ above, one of the chosen
beliefs was trusting in Saint Jude as the patron saint of those in need. Wearing the medallion might well have been an
act of “christian religion”.
For me, what this does, is highlight the stark difference between
‘having a faith in God’ and faith – pure and simple.
At the end of his introduction, Boyd concludes:
So you see, the
Kingdom has nothing to do with religion – “Christian” or otherwise. It’s rather about following the example of
Jesus, manifesting the beauty of God’s reign while revolting against all that
is ugly.
It’s a beautiful
revolution that we’re all invited to join.
But to do so, you’ve got to lose your religion. (p.10)
I go even further and suggest that the Kingdom of God is about a
first-hand experience of the beauty of Jesus in that, by living, saving faith,
the Father adopts us into His household and begins the process of transforming
us into the very image of His son Jesus.
Submitting to this process kills religion, just as submitting to
religion kills God’s transforming work in us. Religion, “christian” or otherwise, is a
burden we are not meant to submit to or carry – as Acts 15 makes abundantly
clear.
Sadly, the ‘church’ has done an excellent job of convincing us that we
need this priestly, religious mediation, contradicting the plain statement of
scripture that there is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus
(1 Timothy 2:5). And we humans have done
an excellent job of avoiding God’s face; mostly, I believe, because our
theology is basically ancient Hebrew (you cannot see the face of God and live),
contradicting Paul’s revelation that we can approach God with freedom and
confidence (Ephesians 3:12).
What all this says to me is that the church’s ‘gospel’ is just that –
its favoured story of God. And the
church isn’t going to let the truth get in the way of a good story. The good news of ecclesia denies all these
dogmas of religion and insists not only that we can we have a close, intimate,
face-to-face relationship with God through Jesus, but that He – God, our Father
– wants it so and put His son through death to make it so.
The church’s gospel and ecclesia’s evangel are vastly different
creatures – as are ‘having a faith in God’ and living, saving
faith. We will come to that next.
Cheers,
Kevin.
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