A Personal Apologetic
Always be prepared to give a reason for why you are not enthusiastic.
I am sorry. Really I am. I don’t mean to upset people who love churchy things.
Let me explain.
It is not an unusual occurrence, in my life, to be in situations where someone is praising something from church culture and my reaction is reserved or even critical.
“Have you heard this worship song?”
“Did you see how that athlete spoke about Jesus?”
“Did you hear about the revival that is happening in Kentucky?”
“Look how God is working at such-and-such-a-church!”
It can happen in the negative as well.
This shows up as some lament on the part of another Christian or group. Expression is given to a sorrow about the state of the world, about how uninterested people are in God, or about how morally decrepit things are becoming. In those cases, I also find myself an outlier in many Christian circles. Most people are shaking their head in spiritual or moral condemnation or bewilderment and I reply, when asked (or sometimes not asked), that I don’t see what the problem is, or, even, that I support what they have just labeled as anti-Christian. The statements they are making that I am not backing up are some form of the following;
“This just proves that the government is anti-Christian.”
“Things are becoming worse and worse.”
“Our schools don’t teach Christian values anymore.”
“Those people are against Christians.”
My apologetic is twofold.
Firstly, I want to say sorry (in a way). I don’t mean to make you feel bad. I am not sorry for holding the perspective that I hold, but I mean no personal offence and in no way wish to injure or assault your joy. I also don’t mean to take the air out of, in the negative instances, what you must feel as a kind of spiritual devotion. It is, after all, religiously energizing to be against things. I know that you can feel very Christian when you are very angry or upset. I don’t want to quell your spiritual passion even if I don’t share your anger or consternation at the world.
Secondly, to the heart of the matter, apologetic as explanation. When I feel what I feel, that is, not really excited about some “Christian” cultural victory or not particularly upset by some secular advance, I am feeling that from my faith, not in spite of my faith. You may not believe that and I can’t convince you, but I am experiencing my motivation as a faithful motivation. That’s where the tension lies. I react against what has excited your faith because of my faith and we both call our faith Christian.
Tomaš Halík, in his book, The Afternoon of Christianity, has recently named what I have felt for quite some time. Halík uses the Jungian metaphor of a day representing a life to speak about the church and about Christianity.
Let me explain. You can think about a human life as made up of morning, afternoon, and evening.
The morning of a life is youth and young adulthood into adulthood. This is the time of life in which we discover who we are and establish an identity in the world. We might forge a career, find roles in life that matter to us, and seek to achieve financial security. We find ways to improve our image in the eyes of others. We establish relationships and, in some way, make a household. We become who we are in relationship and society.
There is nothing wrong with the morning. It is just a kind of illness to try to have a life that is entirely morning. This is a lack of growth, not an achievement.
The afternoon of life is the time of mid to late-adulthood. It should be a time of deeper peace and appreciation for the world and for other people. Often, the invitation to afternoon comes through crisis. This could be health related, or relational, or any event or time that brings an awareness of our own limitations, mortality, and frailty. Afternoon is an invitation to spiritual and emotional maturity. If we can get there, we find more peace and freedom and joy, not less.
In terms of psychology, many people never make it to the afternoon of life. There seems to be a constant temptation to return to the morning, even though this is an impossibility. Attempts to do so wind up looking as garish as some forms of plastic surgery on the faces of Hollywood stars. “I know that they are trying to look young, but what happened there?” Sometimes the successful plastic surgeries can be more jarring. “I know that she is 70 years old so why do I find it troubling that she looks 27?”
In human psychological and social development, we need people in the afternoon of life to help us see the beauty of the world in ways that we cannot possibly see in the morning.
We also need to go through the afternoon of life so that we can reach a maturity to be grateful for the evening. The evening is the time of old age, the time that death becomes more real, imminent even. I think that it is a fear of the evening which often leads us to reach back to the morning rather than entering the afternoon. We know that the very idea of an afternoon means that the evening is coming. Moral and spiritual development, however, shows us that the evening is not to be feared. It is as much a part of life as the morning and in the evening we can be overwhelmed by the beauty of the world and the blessing of God in ways that we never could be in the morning.
Our humanity is as much about letting go as it is about acquiring. Check that—our humanity is much more about letting go than it is about acquiring. When we drop our expectations or judgments of other people we become open to seeing who they really are. When we let go of the morning stage of our lives, we see that we ourselves are more than our achievements or our projected image into the world.
Halík argues that Christianity has had a morning stage. This was when identity was established, cathedrals were fashioned, and empires were built. The morning stage became known as Christendom, a kind of political power and cultural dominance. Christianity started to strut.
Christianity was impressive. Eventually the crises came.
Often, secularism was viewed as a crisis. More and more people rejected the claims and culture of the church. Entire denominations, ministries, and movements were built in reaction to this. Rather than leaders helping Christian faith enter the afternoon they reached back instead to the morning. In my experience as a pastor, I think that I have heard more voices of leaders calling us back to the past. Many people seem to love big crowds and treat the cultural visibility of Christianity as if that were evidence of its legitimacy. There can be an assumption that Christians are supposed to fight for their voice in society. Where does this come from? I don’t think that it comes from Jesus. I do think that it is part of an idolatry of the morning. Is the world more Christian if Christians have more power? Is that what Jesus taught us? Was that the mission of his life? Is that what we observe in Lent and on Good Friday and Easter?
To go back to the psychological idea of morning and afternoon, it is “bad-aging”. This is a term that Halík uses to identify what the longing for youth means. As Halík wrties, “Bad-aging breeds rigidity, emotional upset, anxiety, suspicion, pettiness, self-pity and terrorizing one’s environment.”
So here is where my personal apologetic comes into view (I hope). When I react without enthusiasm to much of what is being called Christian it is, largely, because I see it as a kind of attempt to “return to the time before”. I don’t want that for the church and I don’t want that for you. Some of the most glittering and apparently impressive expressions of Christianity strike me as simply new decoration for theological paralysis. God is the same yesterday today and forever, right? Yes, but our understanding of God grows. The way that we believe changes. Is what you believe about God the same as common belief in the 12 Century, or in the 1950’s? My faith has no interest in and finds no energy from returning to a time before. I am not attacking the morning of Christian faith to say that I am glad that it is over. I don’t want to go back. I need faithful voices to help me to see the more mature afternoon of faith.
There is a verse in the book of Ephesians in the Bible that sounds beautiful and clunky at the same time. It also contains the word “head” as meaning “over all” which can cause some people to give up on the verse before hearing it.
“But let us follow the truth in love, and in all things, grow up into him, which is the head, that is, Christ.”
Our lives, and our faith, and even Christianity as a religion, are called to grow up.
The voices calling for this are most certainly not the loudest religious voices.
The morning of Christian faith might have been great for some, but it was not the full expression (and often it was the opposite) of who Jesus is. It is my opinion that the afternoon of Christian faith will celebrate smallness instead of crowds, giving up power rather than attaining power, and becoming less rather than becoming more. There are many inspiring examples of this in Christian history. Signs of afternoon are present even in the morning.
One more note—on the negative expression, an apologetic for why I don’t get upset about “the secular”. I think that without the secular we might be stuck in the morning of faith; and that would be grotesque. The secular was and is, as I see it, a gift and work of God to move us to greater spiritual maturity—to a faith that is not reliant upon division, fear, and childish declarations as to what is holy and what is profane.
Some of the most Christian things I have ever seen are apparently anti-Christian.
I don’t feel the need to explain myself and I don’t demand to be understood. I write this apologetic in the hope that it might help some of you who can identify with my feelings. It might also help some of you who wonder why people in your life don’t share the same joy or consternation that you hold in terms of religious matters. It might not mean that they are spiritually uninterested. They just might not want to go back to a time before.
I will end by saying that I am totally okay with people finding joy in the things in which I do not find joy. I mean no personal attack or injury. I often find myself inspired by the joy I see someone else feeling over something that I really don’t like. I try to listen at such times. I try to be open to the possibility that I might well be wrong and that even if I am right I do not want to quelch the joy of someone else.
God is good.
We are consistently given the opportunity to grow up, in our lives and in our faith.
And growing up, as it turns out, is pretty great.