On Making Rules

It is a common complaint about religion in general that "they" are trying to tell "us" what we must and must not do. The reasoning goes that each of us as adults should be able to make up our own mind about what is right for us without having some clergyman using his interpretation of a 2,000 year old book to moralize about our actions. And so the post-Christian West has largely thrown off the shackles of religious restraint. But there are a few problems with this moral liberation.

One is that, despite religion having relatively little influence on the daily life of anyone who does not prefer to be involved with it, there remains the sense that it does. There is a persistent annoyance for example toward the hidden moral agenda of the religious right. There is often a short fuse in someone who suspects a religious person of moralizing at him. Expletives  invoking a divine name still are thought to add some weight to a weak statement. Although the overt bonds of religion have been loosened, those who would be entirely free still chafe at them.

Another contradiction in liberation from religion is the vigor with which, at least post-Christian Canada has leapt headlong into more rules and moralizing than the church ever offered up. "Canada's Addiction to Rule-Making", an editorial by Joseph Brean in the August 7, 2010 National Post describes the phenomenon of creating a new law in response to every tragedy that makes news headlines. Having been taught in school for generations already that humans are only intelligent animals, and that our existence in the universe has no more significance than the rocks or trees or squirrels, we are now told that every unanticipated death must have a greater meaning, and that it can in some way be ameliorated by passing new laws restricting whatever behaviors might have been involved. This is in addition to the dizzying maze of unwritten rules about what may be said or done in particular circumstances. Religious restriction on sexual activity, that is limiting sex to a lifelong marriage between a man and a woman, has been a focal aggravation to those who crave liberation. But the often mutually contradictory rules that have replaced that one simple principle can keep teams of lawyers and politicians debating indefinitely. While the rules against speaking of sacred things in a disrespectful way have been discarded, we now must follow the rule of Politically Correct speech, or be in danger of committing a "hate crime", all to be defined again by teams of lawyers and politicians. We have rules about what we wear, what enters our mouths, what tools and toys we use, how we pass our work time and leisure time, with whom we may associate to what degree under what conditions, and what topics of conversation are to be praised or repudiated. Then there are the perpetual shrill demands of marketers to buy their products permeating all public broadcasting, print, and public thoroughfares. And as though in refrain, there is some state-sanctioned agency advising us which of those products we must or must not be using, this month. Remarkably, the same population who wanted freedom from religious dictums seems content or even eager to accept the far heavier and more complex yoke which the post-Christian moralizers offer in its place.

A third dilemma in this antipathy to religious rules is what actually does happen even within the halls of organized right wing fundamentalist Christian Evangelicalism, supposing that must be the worst case scenario. Having attended thousands of organized religious services within this and other Christian traditions, it occurred to me that very little time is spent telling us what we must and must not do in the sense that the critics are concerned. Now there is a heavy emphasis, as I was reminded just this morning, to serve and fear God rather than serving self and fearing man. The religion that has replaced this is indeed to serve self and fear man, which is not in the least liberating. The core of the Christian Gospel is that we are not, and cannot be good enough to come into the presence of a holy God, and that God himself, in the form of a mortal man, took all the evil deeds of mankind on himself. In response, we are invited to put our trust in him alone rather than in what we as individuals, or even as democracies, can muster up. Now that central issue is seldom mentioned by the critics, but I do suspect it is the one that causes the most offense.

Those countries with a free and open society today have generally received it as part of a Christian heritage. The concept of "freedom" so dear to western activists, is better addressed and developed in Christian thought than in any atheistic speculations. And the freedom that Jesus Christ offers is in a class apart from the whimsical tyranny of who can shout the loudest into the vacuum that is the alternative. -philw

Imagine

Hearing John Lennon's "Imagine" on the TV last night challenged me again to consider why it is so appealing to think of a world where everyone just got along instead of turning to "religion" for an external motivation.  One could go various directions with this, but it reminded me again of the difficult balance between loving truth and loving being right.
Christian faith has to rest on a foundation of what is true. That's why history is so important to us, with Scripture constantly linking its metaphysical teaching to real places, persons and dates.  That fact alone distinguishes the Judeo-Christian tradition from all others. So, assuming that premise, a simple answer to imagining John Lennon's idyllic world is that it is not true. Of course most people do not accept that assumption, and in fact find it the most obnoxious aspect of Christianity.
There seems to be a couple of easy distractions from our pursuit of truth. First is the idea that truth should work. If the J-C life is true, then it should work out the best in practice. Christians should be happier, healthier, and more successful than others. And, despite glaring exceptions, that is generally true. But that also becomes an enticement to become more concerned with what makes life go better for me, i.e. pragmatism, or "prosperity gospel" than what is actually true. We are more concerned with the benefits of the Christian lifestyle than the truth, or the Living God it is based on. And in that way, the successful Christian congregation is no different than any other sect or tribe, seeking to enhance its own position to the neglect or even at the expense of others.
The second distraction from loving truth grows out of the first. Being part of a group that seems to us to have all the correct doctrine, with prosperous lives to back it up, can lead us to the arrogance of assuming we are right. This is quite different from the humility of loving truth. We enjoy the happiness of a disciplined Christian lifestyle in a mutually loving, supportive Christian community, along with the health and economic benefits it brings. And in that protected context, we can further fine-tune our truth claims, alienating us not only from a skeptical non-Christian world, but even from other professing followers of Jesus who are doing the same thing we are doing.
And there is the difficult balance. If our belief is true, then it should work out well, and we will be right in believing it. But, as Satan's challenge over Job, we will be close to finding more pleasure and pride in our success and ideology than in worshipping our Creator and Saviour. The church needs always to be on guard against this, to watch for signs of pragmatism or arrogance displacing our central focus on the Living God. Our "Amen" needs to be an affirmation of God's goodness rather than our own having it right. -philw