Dogmatics or Dynamics (Essay by Bob Racine)

A close friend of mine not too long ago accused all Christian liberals (of which I am one unashamedly) of destroying Christianity.  We are murderers of the pure thing, spreading a slow poison across our nation.  He is one of thousands who insist that only the so-called “born again” believers are the rightful offspring of the religion’s founder.  Let me put it in more earthy language: One only comes to God by way of Jesus Christ; there is no other access route.  So it was no surprise to me that in an editorial in the Sunday New York Times on Christmas Day a questioning writer for that paper with a Christian background interviewed an Evangelical pastor and asked him outright, “Pastor, am I a Christian?”  It seems this editorialist is an admirer and to some extent follower of Christ but had some trouble with a few orthodox doctrines – the Virgin Birth, a literal bodily Resurrection, some of the recorded miracles, etc.  When a sizeable segment of professed Christian advocates lays down hard and fast tenets to which all must be accountable, it is not surprising that many on the margin of the Church are going to question how genuine their own Christianity really is.

Sometimes I wish that the word Christian as a noun had never been invented.  If you search the New Testament, you will note that that noun never shows up in the writings of the Gospels or in the epistles of Paul.  The only reference made to that use of the word can be found in the book of Acts, where we are told in passing that followers of Christ “were first called Christians in the city of Antioch”.  They were called that by citizens of the surrounding society as well as by each other.  It was a label that was attached to an early, radical and revolutionary form of Jesus discipleship.

Yes, it is true that at the Ascension Jesus urges the people gathered about him to “go into all the world and make disciples of all nations”.  But what is a disciple?  A blind follower?  A sign-on-the-dotted-line convert?  An enlisted person radicalized for a prescribed set of rituals and hands-on functions?   Look at the twelve men Jesus gathered around him, his inner circle and others who strolled the land with him.  Did he organize them into a clique or club?

Jesus never built an edifice; he did not write out an epistle or draw up a charter.  He did not conduct a meeting of elders to lay out specifications for behavior.  All his words were spoken from heart to heart, his heart to the hearts of the world, directed at human need, some of them meant to challenge the existing order.  Many of them sound a bit mysterious, and they remained mysterious to people in the early Church long after Jesus was gone.  Many of them are multi-layered.  And these two thousand years later we are still groping to understand how they must apply to the way people treat each other and themselves.

I am sad and distressed that after so many centuries we still have those dogmatic leaders and followers who believe they have the license to hold others to account for the purity of their beliefs.  Look at me; look at us; we have it all wrapped up.  We have a pipeline directly to the Almighty, and you are either with us in our army or you are lost and drifting.  And with this attitude goes a kind of unwritten Litmus Test.  The Inquisition is past history, but the notion of checking each other’s beliefs for “accuracy” or authenticity is still rampant in many quarters.

I no longer use the term “my Jesus” as I once did.  The Christ of the New Testament is a figure of powerful charisma but great mystery at the same time, so how can I profess any ownership of his person?  That so-called Jesus of mine would at best be merely a mirror of my own assumptions.  It is tantamount to confusing him with what he represents, confusing form with essence.  Jesus pointed the way for a lot of people, myself included, but instead of directing our gaze at that to which he is pointing, many get distracted by the pointing finger.  They have learned to suck on his finger and nuzzle it instead of lifting up their eyes to see where he is directing them.  We confuse the message with the messenger.

In my prayers I never even address Jesus anymore.  I direct those prayers  toward the Creative Power behind the universe, toward the Spirit that I believe resides in every human heart and surely resided in his, whether that Spirit has ever been called forth by many persons or not.   To say that Jesus Christ is the only way to God is absurd.  Would those who so believe repeat those words to a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Jew?  What would such a contention mean to any of them?  It would be alienating; it can only be heard by them as a claim to exclusive privilege.  It would render their entire religious and spiritual histories bogus.

For me a Christian (if you want to use the word) is a pilgrim, a seeker of truth, one who moves in the direction in which Jesus pointed, not someone who has the gospel truth carefully packaged.  And the search, the pilgrimage goes on and on.  The essence of what Jesus declared and encouraged is what I now embrace.  Following the light of that essence takes many structural forms, all the way from the simplest community meeting in an attic or basement to the towering cathedrals and their formality and every shape and size and style in-between.  There is no one way to appropriate the teachings of the Galilean, no one way to institutionalize them or systematize them.  The essence of what Christ represented can often be found incarnate in the lives of people who do not name his name, those of non-Christian persuasion.   My wife and I live next door to a Muslim family who practice neighborliness and kindness in ways that sometimes exceed our own.                                          

The Christian I strive to be is a person who endeavors to live according to the spirit and the essence of the Christian faith as it derives from the records of the historical Christ.  I strive (do not always live up to, but I strive) to live by the things that in my mind Jesus valued – peace, love, compassion, joy, honesty, kindness, fair dealing, justice, sharing, humility of spirit, love of beauty, depth of devotion, commitment to the welfare of my neighbor as much as myself and a supportive community to foster any and all of these values.

People in my home church who nurtured me and encouraged my preparation to be a minister would be disturbed to read this essay.  They would see that I have moved some distance away from the thought forms that were handed to me in the beginning.  But I am more grateful to those early instructors than I can ever say.  They might not have given me all the answers, but they gave me something more important than the answers – the questions.  Those in this world who are lost are not the people without answers; they are the people without the questions – questions not yielding to a simple, one dimensional answer that compel us forward. Those first nurturers of mine gave me a foundation on which to build.  And I am still building, still examining, still exploring.

A few days ago we read that Jimmy Carter has broken his ties with his native Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.  He too has moved away from the nest, but I doubt if he speaks or thinks harshly of the nest itself.  He too was built upon a foundation of inquiry that was inculcated into him by his instructors in his native church congregation.  And now his pursuit of truth has compelled him to move in another channel.

In the movie version of “Inherit the Wind”, there is a poignant scene in which the two opposing attorneys, one prosecuting a young teacher for teaching Evolution and the other the attorney for the defense, have a conversation way off the record in private.  They have known each other for decades and have worked together many times, and now they find themselves political foes.  The prosecutor wants to know how the defender can have moved so far away from the “True Word”.  The defender answers, “Motion is relative.  Perhaps it is you who have moved away by standing still”.  The understanding of divine revelation is dynamic, on the move, and to grow in understanding of it one must be dynamic as well.



To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.