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Religion Title: Why Evangelical Bible Idolatry Sucks and Why I Go to a Greek Orthodox Church Even Though It’s A Mess Too Why Evangelical Bible Idolatry Sucks and Why I Go to a Greek Orthodox Church Even Though It’s A Mess Too November 13, 2012 By Frank Schaeffer Having elevated the Bible — or at least the nicer bits that they like — to the status of a magic book evangelicals have demoted God. Their “god” is trapped in a book and kept somewhat like a tame rat inside the cage of “biblical inerrancy.” Since the evangelical/fundamentalists worship a book rather than God they can’t admit that the Bible has flaws and is just plain crazy in places. So they spend lifetimes working to make “sense” of something nonsensical, mean and stupid. Why Bible idolatry is a particularly evangelical/fundamentalist blind spot is that, unlike earlier Christianity—at least in the more enlightened non-retributive threads of church history, evangelical/fundamentalist Protestants have forgotten and/or banished the idea that an oral tradition coexisted with the Bible within the life of the Church. They also have forgotten that some of the earliest Christians wrote that God is not to be defined or hedged in by Bible-derived “theology,” even by descriptions about him in the Bible. And evangelicals have subverted the teaching and life of Jesus because the idea that love trumps theology makes them nervous. Love trumping theology is “why” I’ll be in my local Greek Orthodox church next Sunday with my grandchildren: Lucy age 4 and Jack age 2. Church is one of the places where my grandchildren can be lovingly swooped up. “Swooping up” covers everything from being waved to by choir members, picked up and/or patted by a multitude of “little old ladies,” offered snacks during the service when we wander to the church hall where coffee hour is being set up and start munching early, and of course going to our eccentric Sunday school where a friendly chaos reigns that — thankfully — precludes most teaching. This loving “swooping up” also changes brains by producing a sense of benign tribal belonging, in this case to a mostly benevolent tribe. It isn’t about correct belief, let alone if the Bible is “true” (whatever that means) but about the brain-changing effect of community and the humbling mystery of unconditional love experienced in the “ordinary” in a sacramental context. This isn’t a theological concept to which you must assent. It’s as practical and measurable as doing dishes for 10 hours after the annual food festival fund raising event. That’s where a “stranger” I’d seen around church but didn’t know became a friend as we worked together in 90-degree heat over a slop-filled sink. By the end of the evening, I’d told her more about myself and she’d told me more about herself than I would have thought possible, such as how embarrassed I was as a child victim of polio by having to wear an iron leg brace and how chagrined she was at having had 3 divorces. Somehow the context of working together for something bigger than either of us – sustaining our community – provided a free pass to sharing our inner selves. We did dishes and exchanged stories. I’m not as nice as my fellow dishwasher probably thinks I am, but since I’m a pretty good listener she never knew that I started out our time together not very interested in our conversation and inwardly cursing myself for volunteering for the cleanup crew. But I acted the part and she bought the act. Then somewhere along the way, I stopped acting and became the part. That’s been a pattern of Orthodox teaching: act right then get into the habit of actually being what you’re pretending to be. That is what the sacraments are: playacting at virtue until it is real to us and we “see” with inner eyes and perhaps encounter the divine. There are never good reasons for major choices. In fact there are no “good reasons” for anything, including what churches we join or don’t. Life is short and we humans are only minimally evolved. So between too few years and too few brain cells we don’t have enough information to make any choice. A best guess is all any choice really is. When it comes to buying household appliances I have reasonably good information. I can spend 10 minutes online and learn what washing machine to buy. But when it comes to the existence of God, what church to join, who to marry or where to live there’s never been a “good reason.” Life just happens. Grownups admit this. Only teens and theologians think they know anything. Our universe is old and we are young. Given that our life span is more like a fruit flies’ than a planet’s we have to settle for best guess intuition not facts. But because other people ask us why we did thus or so we invent “reasons” in hindsight to “support” our guesses. To believe something – rather than just stumbling into a malleable opinion — you’d have to have considered all the options. And that’s impossible. There’s always one more book to read. So what we actually mean by saying “I believe this or that” is “I think” or “I hope” or “ I’ve settled on this because my parents said so” or “I earn my living by being a pastor so I’m not about to question my creed” or “I have to believe this because my wife does” or “I need to hold on to something so I choose to believe this.” What we never can honestly say is “I believe this because I know it is true. I know that because I’ve explored all other possibilities completely and lived every sort of life in every place and time, including the future and I’ve proven this is true. There are no other alternatives.” Since we don’t like to admit that our mortality and primitive half-baked brains preclude fact-based certainties, we invent theologies both religious and secular that are closer to superstitions than facts. Then we assure ourselves and others that we have “good reasons” to believe this or that. We say things like “I married the woman God led me to.” Anyone even minimally honest knows that what we really mean is: “Out of the tiny fraction of women I met I married Genie and things have worked out well so I like to dress this lucky break up by saying ‘God led me to Genie’ because that sounds better than saying, ‘I happened to meet her because she hadn’t yet listened to the Beatles’ album ‘Abby Road.’ I had the record and that’s how I lured her to my room, slept with her and 43 years later found myself with 3 children and 4 grandchildren and a life. But the fact is I never did get to sleep with all the other women in the world let alone buy them each a cup of coffee so I have no idea who else I could have been as happy with or even happier with.” Which is a roundabout way to admit that I have no good reasons — other than grace — for why I’ve been going to my local Greek Orthodox church for the last 25 years or why I’ve been married to Genie for 42 years. That said here are some random hindsight self-justifying thoughts in no particular order of importance on what is less a “free will” choice about where I go to church than something to do with genetics, psychology and brain chemistry and where I happen to live and in what time. Since the answer “I haven’t a clue” to the question “Why did you leave the evangelicals and join the Orthodox Church?” isn’t going to provide much satisfaction to readers I’ve come up with a few random reasons. First, Mom and Dad conditioned me to feel guilty if I don’t go to church. Second, these days I like church because I love taking my grandchildren and Orthodox liturgy is aesthetically pleasing: no guitars or histrionic preaching, lots of candles to light, incense to smell, things to kiss stuff to march around with in processions and no one cares if you arrive late. Third, since I’m no longer a Protestant let alone an evangelical I’m working to get the ringing out of my ears caused by too many sermons and great liturgies reprogram my brain. This is something like moving from a Chicago winter to the Bahamas. Fourth, I encounter God in the liturgy– or rather “encounter” the part of my brain that feels like its encountering God. Fifth, anything religious that dresses up faith in the garb of mystery is a welcome break from the rationalistic absurd entirely circular Calvinistic “certainties” on which I was raised. Sixth, in the Orthodox Church I’m free to pick and choose how I interpret our traditions since our worship is liturgy-based rather than theology-based. Theology is defined as prayer, not rules about belief because salvation is seen as a journey not a series of one time juridical events – in or out “salvation” experiences. Who you are, not what you believe is what’s important. In that sense you could be a “good Orthodox” and also an atheist– at least some of the time because doubt is not looked down on. What the evangelical/fundamentalists (of the kind I used to be myself) rarely seem to admit is that by necessity fundamentalists also pick and choose what they believe. In that sense everyone is a liberal. Fundamentalists’ commitment to truth is as fluid as anyone’s. They just lie about it. Their claim of consistent belief in the Bible is two-faced. If fundamentalists didn’t pick and choose by omission if not by commission, they’d all be in jail— literally. Seen any adulterers stoned to death in a church lately? And if they all “believed in the Bible” there would be no denominational splits because the Holy Spirit” doesn’t lie (they say) and so all sincere Christians would be guided to the truth and agree on what the Bible “says.” Above all the Bible-worshiping evangelicals have ignored the fact that – ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN THEOLOGY — there is a supreme lens through which to edit the meaner stupider bits of the Bible. Jesus is the lens. If Jesus is God then Jesus has the right to contradict the very imperfect book in which he has the misfortune to have his biography trapped. Jesus transcends the book he’s trapped in. He does this because he is the perfect fulfillment of an imperfect human tradition. And the book in which his story is told is only enlightening when read retroactively through the eyes of Jesus. We need to read the Bible beginning from the gospel narrative not from the book of Genesis. If Jesus is Lord only reading the Bible backward starting with him makes sense. Jesus does not “fit” any “biblical interpretation,” which makes the text less important than him. Jesus introduces the transforming possibility of nonviolence and forgiveness to our retributive primate way of being human that ensnares the rest of the Bible. See more at link. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 4.
#4. To: mininggold (#0)
Pretty good opening line.
There are no replies to Comment # 4. End Trace Mode for Comment # 4.
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