Chapter 1: Jesus isn’t safe
Bethke rightly points out in this chapter that American Christianity has made Jesus a vending machine of comfort where we put in x amount of effort and get out y amount of joy (which really means pleasure to most Americans). What’s more, the American Jesus is always there to comfort you in times of pain. In Contrast the Jesus of the gospels is incredibly intense and convicting demanding absolute obedience to God and condemning the Pharisees for not giving all of themselves to God and instead merely doing things to enlarge their own egos and status in society. So far so good, I agree with Bethke on this point.
Chapter 2: Religion verses Relationship?
In the authors experience it seems, Christians focused all their efforts on not cussing, not looking at porn, not drinking and not having sex before marriage. He rightly condemns this form of Christianity as a farce, it is a false religion and represents the attitude of the Pharisees. He gives many stories of people he knew in college who had these ideas about Christianity. They thought the center of Christianity was promoting wholesome family values and voting Republican. Indeed there is research to back up these suspicions. The Barna Research Group has conducted a fascinating study on the attitudes of Christians in America and their findings are unsettling to say the least. They found that at least 51% of Christians have more self-righteous attitudes and behaviors than truly selfless attitudes and behaviors. Granted, I would contest some of the fine print of how the study was conducted (I disagree with what they consider self-righteous in some instances), however, their conclusion does make sense of Bethke’s experience and it also makes sense of why so many Christians and non-Christians have desired to pit Jesus against religion. I however do not think this is a particularly helpful dichotomy.
In contrast to Jefferson, my experience was with Christians (including myself) who believed that the point of Christianity was to have an out of this world experience with God that was so transformative, so emotionally moving that we couldn’t help but obey God radically afterwards. It is this Christianity that I also affirm is a farce. I spent so much time recommitting my life to Christ, going to youth camps and mission trips all seeking after this experience. But it never happened, no matter how emotional it seemed, no matter how inspired or convicted I was, my emotions dulled and I went back to my sinful lifestyle. This appeared to be the same for the vast majority of my friends in high school. By college most of the kids I helped disciple in our church youth group had virtually forgotten about Christianity. Consequently, I cannot rationally believe Jefferson when he states;
Religion says do, Jesus says done.
Religion is man searching for God. Jesus is God searching for man.
Religion is pursuing God by our moral efforts. Jesus is God pursuing us despite our moral efforts.
Religious people kill for what they believe. Jesus followers die for what they believe.
Bethke here has fallen into the same trap as McVey and neglected the already but not yet tension in scripture regarding our salvation. Our past sins are forgiven at the point of conversion, we are baptized into the Church and community of the Holy Spirit. But we also have to continue the cycle of grace, we have to be on alert praying for one another and constantly seeking to grow in righteousness. Peter writes;
“Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in you ignorance; but as He who called you is holy you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “be holy, for I am holy”.
The model of so many evangelicals is to view rest in Christ as ceasing to put effort into, to relax and be at ease. But Peter and Paul describe it as disciplining your self and finishing the race, to continue the good work that has begun within you. Thus resting in Christ cannot simply mean being at ease that we DON'T have to work to become more righteous, rather it is resting in the hope that we CAN become more righteous because of what Christ has done for us. Given this, distinguishing between religion and Jesus seems to accurately represent Jesus transcendence over and above religion, but it doesn’t grasp the heart of the tension between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day. The tension was not us trying to seek after God but us seeking after a false God, a God we can control and who caters to our desires and needs, or worse just not caring about God and living as though he didn’t exist but in all of this claiming to be a true worshipper of God for selfish gain.
“Relationship” oddness yet again;
Oh and of course Bethke, like every single other popular Evangelical writer today talks about how Christianity is about "your personal relationship with Jesus”. I swear I’ve heard that phrase so much it makes me sick. This isn’t idea that’s contrary to scripture (and 2000 years of Church history for that matter) but one that is completely alien to it. When the New Testament speaks of “knowing God” it means understanding who God is and what He wants for our lives (understanding God’s nature and will) not only on an intellectual level but experiencing it by living it out and seeing God work through you. But this is a far cry from modern sentiments of getting to know someone. It has nothing to do with chilling out or hanging with Jesus. It doesn’t mean getting emotional messages from God or personal messages from scripture as though the Bible is Jesus’ email. Being close to God does not mean having intense feelings for God but having strong commitments to follow Him and serve Him in all that He asks of us. This can’t be done without the all sufficient grace of Christ and the infilling hope of the Holy Spirit.
The conceptual difference between these to frameworks may seem subtle but their implications are very different. The former implies that getting closer to God means having a more intense experience in worship, Bible Study etc whereas the latter means being willing to do things that could get you killed regardless of how you feel. And this is exactly what we see in the Church, Christians either seeking to obey rules without commitment or seeking emotional support without commitment. In both cases the focus is on putting in effort for personal benefit, Bethke is merely trading one form of legalism for another. When the importance of Christianity is based upon our emotional state, it makes sense that Christians would turn to private devotions, contemporary worship and inspirational speeches as the center of the Christian life. All these activities are purposed towards producing and manufacturing encounters with God through our emotions.
Notice also that the focus in the modern conception of a personal relationship with Christ is communication, and communication for its own sake. “We just need to spend time with Jesus” Christians say. The problem is that neither God the Father in the Old Testament, Jesus in the gospels nor the Holy Spirit in Acts ever just stops to have a chat with people. There is always a lesson being taught, a mission being given, a problem pointed out and/or a punishment administered. Thus communication with God is not the end all be all of the gospel, that would be what God has done for us and how He commands us to respond. Yet again, to make speaking with God the center of the gospel we turn the mission of the Church into a therapeutic system of prayer, devotion and worship to God with some volunteering mixed in. This is the essence of legalism by Bethke’s definition; you put in x amount of effort and get y amount of satisfaction.
In conclusion then, framing Christianity as a relationship with Christ is at best redundant and at worst invites heresy. If it is only meant to say that we need to communicate with God to learn what His will for our lives is and the hope that we have in Him, then it seems kind of benign but pointless. If it is rather trying to say that Christianity is all about having deep intimate and emotional experiences with God then it seems to either swerve to legalism (you need to do this this and this if you want to reach an emotional high with God) or antinomianism (salvation doesn’t require you to change anything about yourself, just talk to Jesus and He’ll make you feel better).
Chapter 3: Fundies and fakes
Bethke doesn’t really add much here. But he does talk about Christians who reduce Christianity to spirituality with the goal of avoiding accountability. He gives the example of a college friend he had on the baseball team who always wore a cross, had Christian themed tattoos all over his body and regularly participated in the Church but also drank heavily, had regular casual sex and partied in excess. His excuse was that he had put his faith in Christ as a child and gone to church his whole life so he should be able to live how he wants. So it seems that Bethke is trying to make the point that we do have actual obligations to God and things we have to do, he just seems too engulfed in the popular caricature of legalism (its either you have to or you get to) to realize this.
Chapter 4: Jesus making friends?
In this chapter I was expecting more emotionalism, but here Jefferson surprised me. He actually made some good points and kept to a Biblical framework for understanding salvation. And I’m glad he’s kept his rhetoric against religion in balance. He doesn’t argue that we need to stop judging people and just make friends with people. At least not quite, rather he questions our obsession with certain sins at the expense of others. For instance, while Christians often picket gay pride events and will not hesitate to get rid of a pastor who has had an affair we hardly ever condemn anyone for gluttony or greed. But the New Testament spends way more time on these sins than homosexuality (which isn’t to say that the gay lifestyle isn’t sinful). And yet we have no context for even understanding the sin of gluttony in our cultural context! No one seems to be talking about it, its like the massive elephant in the room nobody seems to know is there!
I’ll also give Jefferson props for saying this;
“But let’s also realize that we do have hope and victory and are called to take sin very seriously, doing anything and everything to run from it and to Jesus. The writer of Hebrews makes it clear by saying we should “also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and… run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and protector of our faith.”
His point about Jesus making friends is about Jesus only classifying people into 2 groups; the repentant and the unrepentant. If you had sinned horribly but desired to turn away from your sin regardless of the cost no matter who you were Jesus was on your side. But if you were a stuck up rich dude who thought he was better than everyone else, Jesus wanted nothing to do with you. By contrast, churches today seem to aim their guns at everything non-Christian aka “secular” when these same churches have struggled with the same problems that they are condemning in the so called secular world! I agree with Bethke, whatever negative connotations have been heaped on the Church in the West is largely the doing of the Church.
I could go on but having read the rest of the book, Bethke pretty much continues on solid points while making some mistakes that I’ve already pointed to above. However I did want to discuss more about the issue of what I call emotionalism in the Church.
The implications for worship;
One thing that sickens me deeply is when Christians say you have to raise your hands during worship and sing loudly and be crazy and undignified for Jesus! They think that churches which don’t do this are dead churches. This is just absurd, for 2000 years the Church was very sober in worship, the point has always been seen as a sobering encounter with God where we meditate on His holiness in comparison to our sinfulness and to be grateful for His grace. Worship isn’t a time to party its a time for reflection on the glory of God and meant to be an act of unity in the Church. To claim that churches who don’t worship with excitement just points again to how deeply emotionalism is rooted in evangelical culture. The underlying current of thought seems to be “without getting that emotional high how are you supposed to evangelize or make disciples?” Well Paul certainly seemed to do it just fine and so did the rest of the Apostles.
I also don’t particularly like the idea that we should all worship the way we feel called to. This again privatizes worship, as though its all about you and God alone. If that’s the case then what is the point of worshipping in a church? Why not just have everyone go home and worship by listening to music on their i-pods? On this view worship becomes divorced from the Church. The Biblical view seems to be that we should sing together as one, and seek to be of one mind and purpose in the Spirit through worship.
Implications for Theology;
If Christianity is all about encountering God in the here and now then it seems that what God is really like and what He has really done in the past is of no consequence. Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolph Bultmann both took the view that the only matter of any importance in Christianity is your present encounter with God through worship, sermons, prayer and Bible study. In fact, many have argued that evangelicals individualistic and pietistic attitudes sprung from the work of these men. The problem is that they both rejected the vast majority of Christian doctrines from the divinity of Christ to the inspiration of scripture. Even worse they both taught that it doesn’t really make any difference whether or not these teachings are true as long as the people who believed they were true had a life changing experience.
While I by no means think that the evangelical church has adopted this way of thinking, it does seem to be headed in that direction. For the evangelical the only purpose of theology is to help us in our daily walk with Christ. Theology is only as important as it is practical, this is heard every sunday by every pastor who bothers to preach theology; it has to be practical. Devotionals and Bible commentaries go through innumerable pains and spill gallons of ink trying to point out how doctrines like the Trinity or the incarnation are “practical”. But when I read any part of the Bible, theology is inextricably linked with ethics. One of my favorite examples of this is in Colossians 1:15-23
“15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”
Note how Paul speaks here; what matters is the big picture, he seldom speaks about the individuals experience or talking about what it feels like to be enfilled with the Holy Spirit. Theology just is how he speaks about God and how he understands the Church! Theology isn’t just practical, its what makes Christianity matter in the first place. Notice also that Paul doesn’t fit his Christology into his personal life, but fits his life into the bigger picture. I don’t think Paul would see much use for the personal devotions and popular Christian self-help books we grovel over today. Paul’s approach is that the truths we affirm about God are all consuming realities! Indeed what we affirm to be true about the world as Christians is our reality and we understand everything through it. So I am truly shocked at how willingly Christians just give up studying doctrine and theology and just claim its all a mystery, all they need is Jesus.
I still could say more, but hopefully this gives you an idea for how dangerous overemphasizing our emotional and personal connection to God can be. I sincerely believe it is the single greatest challenge to the Church today.
