End of Christian Church is Near! Well, Not Really.

Is it just me, or is all the hoopla over the Da Vinci Code making you sick too. No, I’m not talking necessarily about the hoopla coming from Hollywood, promoting the film. I’m talking about all the warnings, counter point books, and boycotting that the Christian Church is calling for. Call me crazy but, since all of Christendom is downing the movie and the book, I now drastically want to check out both. I’m afraid the efforts by Church leaders to squash the book’s and movie’s message will drive more Christians to do just the opposite, much like a teenager rebels against his or her parents simply because the parents are making a huge stink about it.

OK, so Dan Brown’s blockbuster fiction novel based on an oddball hypothesis makes some assumptions and proposes that they are the actual truth. So what? It’s not like Da Vinci Code is going to bring the church to its knees is it? Well, not if the Church is really doing it’s job of being salt and light in the world. Call me cynical (and I know many of you will, but I’ve learned to bear that cross), but the last time I checked the concept of being salt and light in the world meant more about revealing God’s passionate love to the world than it did about getting our underwear wadded up because a secular company made a movie based on a fictitious book postulating a concept they know nothing about. [sorry for the run on sentence, but it just seemed to work in this case.]

My mind goes back to the seventies when Jesus Christ, Superstar burst onto the public scene. The Church made a big deal about it because of the poetic license Andrew Lloyd Webber took with Scripture. But it slow down the Church? No. What about in the eighties when Martin Scorsese brought Last Temptation of Christ to the screen? Scorsese obliterated Scripture with his creation. The outraged Church called for boycotts and censorship of the film. Did it stop Christ’s Church? No. Somehow I doubt the Da Vinci Code will either. But thanks to the Church’s outcry, Da Vinci Code will likely drive people to the theaters by the droves curious about what all the whoopla is about.

But don’t we in Christendom do the same things as Dan Brown? By this I mean take Scripture, fictionalize it, and pass it off as fact? Need I mention the Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHay series Left Behind? Because it came from Christian writers we’re OK that Jerry and Tim took creative license with their mega-selling series. I can’t tell you the number of Christians I know that swear up and down that how LaHay and Jenkins lay is out is exactly how the Second Coming will transpire. It’s straight out of Scripture, right? I’ve got news for you folks. If you believe the Left Behind called it the way it’s going to happen when Jesus returns, then you are in for a major disappointment. Just like the Hebrew Pharisees in biblical times misinterpreted the Scriptures in how they viewed the first coming of the Messiah, so also the widely accepted version of how Jesus will return as recorder by Jenkins’ and LaHay’s books is undoubtedly wrong too. But we don’t make a huge deal about their fictitious accounting do we? Oh yeah, that’s right. We did. But just the opposite way. And like it is doing with Dan Brown’s novel, the Church made Left Behind one of, if not the top selling book series of all time.

Bottom line is I just wish the Church would give it a rest, do it’s job the right way by loving people into the kingdom, and let the secular world do whatever it wants to. To do otherwise simply detracts from our core responsibilities as the Body of Christ.

Upsetting the Traditions

Many of you who frequent my blog may not know that I co-lead a young adult Bible study every week. Yesterday morning we were having a pretty good discussion about habits, rituals, and what happens when we change things up in the church. We were working from Acts 3, where Peter and John healed the lame beggar on the way into the synagogue. Without detailing everywhere the conversation went, we ended up breaking the story down this way:

There were basically three groups of people represented in this account: the outcast (the beggar), the activist (Peter & John), and the status quo (those Jews in the temple). The outcast had accepted his position at the gate and had become comfortable with it. It was his tradition. The Jews in the temple had accepted their tradition of letting this needy man sit there day in and day out, the status quo of their lives, never reaching out. The Hebraic oral tradition held them to this tradition as well. But Peter and John were the agents for change. They weren’t willing to accept the fact that, despite what the oral tradition mandated, they could not speak a word and heal the man that day. So they healed him and upset everything by doing what God called them to do.

We batted the concept around for an hour, drawing various conclusions from our discussion. Our focus seemed to be placed on the traditions of the church and how we treat new people coming into the church. But as we were closing it up one of the ladies in the class, Marsha, made quite the profound statement. [Marsha has a skilled knack for keeping quiet the vast majority of the time and then pulling out the most incredible details when you least expect it—this time was no different.] She said something to the effect of, “All that isn’t the point. The most incredible thing to me is, spiritually speaking, that sooner or later, we each find ourselves in one of these positions: the spiritual outcast, the status quo Christians, or the agents for change. When we see others wrestling with spiritual issues, they often become outcasts, and we allow them to be that way. It’s just the status quo. What we should be is agents for change, helping them back on their spiritual feet.”

I was blown away. She was absolutely right. Somehow, we have the mindset that Christians don’t struggle with spiritual issues. To do so would mean that there is something wrong with them, right? It would upset the tradition of everything being hunky dory. We so easily lose track of the fact that Christianity isn’t a “one time and done” experience. Most of us wrestle with devout matters, questioning why. True, there are a few who have the unique ability to accept truth at face value and never doubt otherwise. However, we know those aren’t the norm. Yet we paint on the happy face weekly as we gather with other believers, never allowing them to know our spirit has actually been left at the door begging anyone to give us a hand up. To let on otherwise would be to upset the status quo.

I believe Christ has called the Body to be agents of change, not just for the lost, but for those within the walls of the Church who have left their spiritual selves at the front door, lame and questioning why they are even there that day. How that goes about happening I think must be left up to the leading of the Holy Spirit. However, when the Spirit does whisper direction in our ears, like Peter and John, we have no choice but to upset the traditions of the day.