More Christians or Better Christians?

One of my biggest problems as a Christian is the notion that I am a recruiting agent for my religion. It is essential to my faith that I try to expand my grouping, and therefore my grouping's power and profile and resources. I am encouraged to do this not just as a practical matter - our church needs more supporters - but as part of being Christian. I am always to be at odds with non-Christians, always struggling to defeat their non-Christianness. It is a matter of winning souls for Jesus, which is a very individualistic view.

Christianity is about saving your individual, personal, soul from its individual, personal, eternal punishment. I express Christian love by trying to spare you, who I am called to love, from such a fate. And I repeat the process on as many other personal, individual, souls as I can before I die. There are seven billion people on earth and I am already well past my youth - it is a monumental task. But I must try, because God and the Devil are keeping score: so many for Jesus, so many for Satan. Maybe they have money on this game. There is a precedent for God and Satan making bets.

I am drawn more to the vision of the kingdom of God than to the vision of a personal afterlife in heaven. The kingdom is a transformed earth, one of justice, peace, plenty, an absence of death and war and sin, a flourishing of life without conflict. Does that in any way sound like a world in which everyone is Christian? It doesn't to me. Christians fight in wars, abuse minorities, break into sectarianism, display greed, just like everyone else. Indeed we often say we are not people who don't sin, just people who are forgiven for our sins. In what way is, and does the bible ever say that, the prerequisite for the kingdom is everyone in the world converting to Anglicanism?

As a liberal Christian I respect and feel I can learn from non-Christians, not just pity them and try to change them. I do not see Christianity in individual terms, or in scorecard terms. I see it in terms of a way of life that requires faith, and love, and hope. Faith in Christ, love for all (and love respects other people's difference and does not just try to remake the other in my own image), and hope for the kingdom, trust in God. I do not feel I am being tested to see how many I can recruit to a given 'side'.

I do not think Christianity has all the answers because I know it does not have all the questions. 'Sin' is not an issue in other faiths, so a cure for sin is not a something they even seek. Before we can introduce the idea of the forgiveness of sins we have to introduce the idea, convince them of the idea, of sin. It may be an idea that grows naturally out of Judaism, but that only makes it more specifically Christian.

I struggle with recruiting, and it may be that I am just justifying my own reluctance to put myself forward and in people's faces. But is a Christian supposed to relate to non-Christians with pity, scorn, desperation, seduction, argument, and politics, even if those things are disguised as love, rather than respect, openness, dialogue, softness, explanation, example, and working together for that kingdom to  come? Is it really about increasing the number of Baptists in the world and decreasing the number of Buddhists, or about convincing God not to torture you - by getting you to agree with me?

The thing is, it may in fact be about those things. I may be naive thinking everything will be all right in the end, or that the struggle I engage in should be with harm, war, injustice, materialism, loneliness, poverty and fear, and not with atheists, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. Maybe my job is to increase the number of Christians in the world, rather than increase the quality of Christianity people who are already Christians practice. But Jesus, who was Jewish, criticized the Jewish leaders for the quality of Judaism they practised. That is one reason why I think too much emphasis has been placed on the number of people who are Christians, and not enough on the quality of the Christianity they
practice.

Managing Truth

Religion, like science, is fuelled by the sense that there is 'something out there'. The 'something' is known to both the scientific and the religious community as The Truth - whether we are called toward it by it, or strive for it with our own wits, it is our justification for what we do. The one equation, the Theory of Everything, the completion of that long list of all the facts there are to know about the universe, progress in the never-ending pursuit of 'pure' knowledge, or God, the pursuit of the elusive Goodness, or Peace, or oneness. 

Ask why we want to know how the universe works, or what value there is in scientific knowledge, and the answer is obvious: scientific knowledge lets us do stuff. If science had not given us things - measles vaccines, jet aircraft, microwave ovens, poison gas, automobiles and assault rifles, i.e., technology - we would think of it the way we think of Philosophy; a bunch of academics sitting around arguing about what the meaning of an 'atom' is. 

Science is credible, important, demands recognition and priority, because it allows us to do things, and have things (with which we can do more things). Thus the question 'how' can we do it lends itself almost entirely to science. The question 'should' we do it, or 'why should we', is harder to answer scientifically. Give us your goal and we can help you reach it. Ask us what your goal should be and we say can only say to "learn more facts". Because if we say anything else, such as, "enhance human flourishing" you will ask us why you should value that, and then what will we say? 

What will we do when we have all this knowledge, when we know so much? Probably the same things we are doing now, only more so. Even faster travel, and travel even farther. Even more efficient ways to make war. Entertainment that is even more entertaining. Stronger medicines than the medicines we have now (and stronger poisons, of course).

Science has the sense of something big going on in the universe and says what is going on is knowable, reducible, pin-down-able, intellectually own-able, and therefore finite. It is a matter of listing all the facts we know. Literalists who absolutize their religion are in kind with the scientific impulse of the knowable: explicable, hard fact, controllable, own-able. Science is about managing. We know so that we can do. When we absolutize religion we are mimicking the scientific need to manage.

What This Religion Is To Me

I saw a production of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot at Stratford once. It was both dumbfounding and thrilling. I sat enthralled, excited, quickened, eager, daunted, happy -  in short I had a heightened and intensified version of the reaction I have to life in general. Enthusiastic bafflement. As great a piece of theatrical experience as it was, it was not a clear or straight-forward one. My excitement came from the fact that while I was absolutely convinced something brilliant and profoundly meaningful was going on, I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. That, I think, sums up my religion, or at least my spirituality. 

Without a religion, spirituality would be formless. It would amount to "what a pretty flower," or "I had such a nice time," - and what can I do with that? Religion provides bones, scaffolding, structure, stories, characters, values, words, themes, writings, a community and yes, God - a spirituality I can process in, engage in, grow in, toward. Dwell in. My religion is Christianity because it works for me. Had I been born in Iraq instead of Canada I'd probably be Muslim, or India, a Hindu.

The only reason to be anything, Christian, atheist, Buddhist, farmer, accountant, sailor or scientist, is that it suits you. The question is what sort of life do you want to live. If I choose life lived in the Christian community of Anglicanism, it is because it provides some subjective sense of benefit to my life. If billions of people subjectively say their religion adds something valuable to them, it is not for anyone else to say they are wrong, or stupid, or lying. You are, subjectively, the only authority on your own subjectivity. 

If you absolutize that, however, and project it into places and onto people without that subjective, personal, shareable-but-not-enforceable, sense that you can't quite pin down what it is you mean, and try to browbeat others, or indoctrinate, or trick, or use sophistry to 'win' another person or a contest over some idea, then expect to be called out. The fundamentalist believes the bible is trying to answer scientific questions and its answers are right and should be taught in school. The atheist believes the bible is trying to answer scientific questions and its answers are wrong and religion should be done away with. It will be my belief that the bible is not trying to answer scientific questions, that it is a theological work. That is step one. 

Step two is that religion only matters, only works, as religion. Translate it into science and you get nonsense. Translate it into philosophy and you get axioms. History and you get a movie. Politics and you get wars. Jesus walking on water, what it means and how we respond to it, is important only from inside the religion. How can it have any meaning or value for someone outside of it? It is in what it says to me as a Christian, not you as an atheist, that its importance lies. 

Always I will remind myself Christianity is a religion. A direct, subtle, nuanced, strong, broad, valuable, old, tangible, honest, powerful religion. One that sees God as love, and people as compassionate and as treasures, the future as light and hope, and puts it all and so much more inside my heart and head and hands, places it in life and this world, in a way that only religion can. The Bible is not true, because I don't know what 'true' means. Christianity is not fact, because what are 'facts'? They are defined as "truly existing or happening" (Webster) and again, what does 'truly' mean? There may be more than one way to be true. We could argue that for a long time. But is Christianity good? Well, that depends on Christians, doesn't it?