 Being
a professional Christian for over 25 years (ordained in 1982), and having
taught theology for about 15 of those, I am always amazed at the identity
confusion amongst Australian believers. Relatively few seem to be conscious of what their
union with Christ means, not only at a personal subjective level but in
all spheres of life. Many struggle,
self – confessedly, to live in a state of intimacy with God (contra, e.g.1
Cor 6:17, “he who is joined to the Lord
becomes one spirit with him.”). For
some time I have come to the conclusion that at the root of the problem
is not simply indwelling sin nor the forces of the world, but Christianity.
By
“Christianity” I mean the construct of organised religious practice that
developed in post – Constantinian Europe and was then progressively exported
around the globe. It is the dominant form of religion we are familiar
with to this day – church buildings, professional ministries, set services,
academic training for ministry and so on. My agenda here is not to go over the usual ground
covered by church renewal advocates, like the house church movement and
the “emerging church”. Rather, I am interested
in a more fundamental issue, Christian identity itself.
Disciples
of the Church vs Disciples of Christ
The Holy Spirit has been subjecting “Christianity” in Australia to humiliation
for some years. One incident particularly
comes to mind. In 2003 we had the
very public scandal of Archbishop Peter Hollingworth resigning from our
highest political office, Governor –General.
This was because of his failure to deal with clerical sex abuse
while he was archbishop of Brisbane. The list of scandals involving respected Christian
leaders could easily be multiplied, but few commentators touch on the
heart of the issue –we have become more focused on church culture than
Christ. I think we are making disciples of the church
more than disciples of Christ. This
became very clear to me during a recent pastors breakfast.
Generally
when the boys get together there’s talk about “who’s got the biggest”
and “who can do it the best”; things were a little different this time
as the guest speaker was not a church leader. His talk drew attention, amongst other things,
to the creeping dangers of secularism and Islam. These topics excited the audience to a palpable
degree, but I sensed their acute fear was not of Christ, whose “perfect
love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). In fact, the centre of the anxiety seemed to
be the loss of our “Christian heritage”. No one present seemed to imagine
that the kingdom of God could grow whilst the influence of Christianity
on state policy and structures be in decline.
We
Missed the Real Issue
While all this was going on I had an awareness that the Holy Spirit was
drawing my attention to an earlier conversation at our table. One of the pastors related how he had recently
taken the wedding of a divorcee whose first wife left him for another
woman. It turned out that the repressed thought that had been traumatizing
the man was, “Did I cause my wife to become gay?”
The entire situation was permeated with confusion about gender
identity – the woman was clearly not living in the truth of her femaleness,
and her previous husband was uncertain about his masculinity.
Gender
identity is generated in an oppositional or bipolar manner.
Adam becomes aware of himself
only after the creation of Eve, a helper “corresponding to”, or “standing
over against” him. “A helping being, in which, as soon as he sees
it, he will recognise himself.”
(Delitzsch, my emphasis). Before
the creation of a woman Adam is simply a name for humankind. It is in through the illumination, ““This at
last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.””
(Gen 2:23), that
Adam becomes a self – consciously male person and Eve a self –consciously
female. Whilst Adam was alone, it was impossible for
him to know through introversion his gender identity.
Counselling
experience reveals similar patterns. Where
the male-female pattern of intimate bonding is not imaged in a human family
the result is always some level of confusion about who we are as sexual
beings and how this can find genuine fulfillment.
Auto-eroticism in various expressions is a necessary consequence.
This is more pervasive than we generally imagine, as a (Christian)
psychologist said to one of my parishioners, “You need to stop masturbating
through your wife.” Since the “one flesh” of marriage is a type
of Christ and the church (Eph 5:32),
the divorce/gay situation immediately spoke to me about the real spiritual
crisis in our midst today that was being overlooked in the pastors breakfast.
Confusion
between Christianity and Christ
The primary spiritual struggle in contemporary Australia is not between
Christianity and secularism, or Christianity and Islam, but between Jesus’
kingdom and Christianity. At the root of the widespread apathy in the
church and the broadly acknowledged lack of intimacy with God, is confusion
between Christianity and Christ. Contemporary
Western Christianity largely defines itself by its relationship with itself
and its history. It is extremely
introverted. This is indicated,
for example, by the inordinate focus on leadership, ministry, church growth,
gifts, the Bible, anointing, prosperity, revival etc. rather than on the
person of Jesus and his living presence amongst us. “To
the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds
the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.””
(Rev 2:1)
The
people of God can only know their deepest inward identity as the Bride
of Christ through an immediate and passionate awareness, in the Spirit,
that Jesus is their Bridegroom (John 3:29; Rev 19:6 – 8).
Where this is lacking, much of what transpires as Christian spirituality
is simply “spiritual masturbation.” It may have the appearance of godliness, but
is part of a religious culture that lacks the interpenetrative power of
holiness (2
Tim 3:5). (For those with a
trinitarian bent, it is not a participation in the perichoretic glory
of God, cf. 2
Pet 1:4). Nothing less than
a back to Jesus movement that emphasises the mystery of Christ at the
centre of “our religion” (1
Tim 3:16) will see any significant change in the spiritual landscape
of Australia.
The
Jesus Test
On a practical note, for many years I have been teaching my students “the
Jesus test”. When you are listening
to a sermon pay attention to how long before the name of Jesus is mentioned,
and whether he is used as an illustration of the principle being advocated
or its substance. Practicing this
rule has caused many of them (especially in Charismatic – Pentecostal
congregations) much distress. “test
all things” (1 Thess 5:20).
The
greatest obstacle to the advance of the kingdom
of God in most of the West is not secularism,
religious pluralism or Islam, but a resurgent Christianity. By this I mean a religion dominated by mega
churches, super pastors and political influence. What we are most in need
of today is a post - Christianity church.
My
thinking on this was confirmed by a recent email sent out about the British
religious scene under the heading, “Excarnating
Christianity, Incarnating Islam”. The
Church of England Newspaper May 26, 2008 says, “Islam is being institutionalised,
incarnated, into national structures amazingly fast, at the same time
as …. the ‘excarnation’ of Christianity… out of state policy and structures”. Whilst this may be sad for those who sentimentalise
about the loss of the fides historica
(inherited conventional religion), it is surely a sign of the judgement
of God on the human construct of privilege and compromise called “Christianity”
and a preparation for a return to radical Christ- centred faith that disappeared
from Western society long ago.
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