The church, no matter what community you find, packages God into something that can be controlled for human use and whim. This sort of package is not all evil or disreputable – all of the time. God has been a source of divine legitimation for human power that people have used to kill and torture people under the despotic rule of fear and oppression. Still, the social packaging of God that is the church can be a source of grace for people which is also true. Regardless, as H.R. Niebuhr argued in 1929, the church is a human social creation that ought to be given life by God. All religious and church structures conceal and distort the presence of God even as they work to be so many media to reveal the reality of God.
However, as Jesus said, the presence of God is simply in a community which does not have to be formed by doctrine, polity, law, and God forbid property. God is not just in the Tabernacle, God is everywhere.
Perhaps our faith has been distracted by our religious institutions and we fight so hard to maintain those institutions, that we forget how frail, tentative, and distorting they are to the very presence of God. The medium of the church itself has to be transformed from the inside out if it is to transform the hearts and minds to do the basic things that Jesus commanded: love God, love neighbor, heal the sick. When we fail to do these basic things and instead begin to love the institutions that are nothing but media to accomplish this task, we may as well craft a golden calf since this is exactly the function the church then serves.
Why is your church worth saving if God is indeed everywhere? What profit do we gain to preserve the media of human invention if that media is no longer a source of revelation people are currently receiving through other means? This is no longer a question of people being "spiritual but not religious." Rather it is the offspring of those "spiritual" baby boomers who are asking: I want to be religious, but it is hard to find the God that has been revealed to me in the churches where my parents worshiped when they were children.
For this and other reasons, I often find God in my backyard, in a conversation with my wife, in the giggle of my sons, the cool fall breeze, a note from someone expressing care for me or someone I love, my dog running through the snow, the smile of an elderly person who is lonely most of her life, gratitude for healing in sickness and in death, and a song. I find God in these places more often than in a pew. After seminary, I had to leave church for a while to find God again. I continue to ask where I see God. The clarity I receive in return is this: Go where God is, not where you believe God ought to be.
After years in and out of church, and now even as an elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the lyrics and aggression of the song below continues to capture my feelings about religion and the church, and I find God speaking to me through it every time I hear it.
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Run (1996)
by King's X
Yeah she told me, that if I wasn't good
He would get me, make me pay for
everything I did, and she said
that everybody bad would burn in Hell
I did what she told me and I became
someone else.
I had to run
I had to hide
In the world outside
A better chance, out there
If God is everywhere.
I wait for nothing, take my chances let it ride
maybe there's an answer but it's buried by the lies
Somebody told me that it's just a waste of my time.
But I can't get rid of all those bags I left behind.
I had to run
I had to hide
In the world outside
A better chance, out there
If God is everywhere.
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Wow. This matches my experience so well. I left church at 13, because people required me to believe things that just seemed crazy. I was a Secular Humanist (Atheist/Agnostic) for years. Came back to God, but every attraction to Jesus got smacked down by Christianity.
It was finally Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis, with its beautiful heresy, that convinced me that I don't have to let "them" define what it means to love God & Christ.
I love what you've been doing. Can't wait to see what's next, friend.
I am reading John Shelby Spong's latest book: Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. One line (I am half way done) struck me deeply: "Truth is not religion's ultimate agenda; security is." I, too, am becoming "post-religious".
i don't think we become post-religious as much as differently religious. peter berger uses the term "plausibility structure" to describe a social structure in which certain kinds of belief and expressions of belief are more plausible than in other structures. what many post denominational or ex-churched christians are looking for is a religion that is a better plausibility structure for the reception of revelation as they have experienced it. it is what defines the post boomer generations. we deeply yearn for traditions that do not seem to exist. i think we are in the process of creating them and building our own plausibility structures now hence the ambiguity and sense of disconnectedness.
i can't really do bell all that well. very choppy stuff. if god is contained in human religious structures, then god is not real. god truly is dead because we killed god. what i have found to my delight is that this is not true. religions clip the wings off of the divine hoping that the bird will stay caged like a pet. fortunately this bird keeps growing the wings back and escaping from our grasp.
I simply love this post, Drew. I think the church is a wonderful thing because it provides much needed social connections that our local communities don't easily provide, and because, when it's done well, it can provide gentle and loving prayer support and comraderie on the difficult path of a life lived in humility in the Presence of God… but I no longer believe that church offers some sort of special access to the Presence of God… unless He chooses to show up there.
Rob Bell? Heresy?
Is Berger utilizing Michael Polanyi in this? Or is "plausibility structure" simply a general sociological / philosophical term that I've only, until now, encountered in Polanyi?
Great post! As a youth minister, I often become painfully aware of my own attempts to "take God where I believe God ought to be" instead of helping the youth in my church & my community experience God where God already is (namely, everywhere). I am consistently challenged by your posts! Keep em coming!
Bell's choppiness is a challenge for me, too, but I push through it because I love what he's saying.
@andrewtatum I meant it in the nicest possible way. Seriously, my gratitude toward him is immeasurable.
Rob Bell? Heresy?
Is Berger utilizing Michael Polanyi in this? Or is "plausibility structure" simply a general sociological / philosophical term that I've only, until now, encountered in Polanyi?
Great post! As a youth minister, I often become painfully aware of my own attempts to "take God where I believe God ought to be" instead of helping the youth in my church & my community experience God where God already is (namely, everywhere). I am consistently challenged by your posts! Keep em coming!
Bell's choppiness is a challenge for me, too, but I push through it because I love what he's saying.
@andrewtatum I meant it in the nicest possible way. Seriously, my gratitude toward him is immeasurable.