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4 February 2004
Alpha Talk 1
“Christianity: Boring, Untrue, and Irrelevant?”
Javier
A. Viera
Today we begin what I hope will be a very
honest and frank exploration of the Christian way of life. I say “way of life” very
purposefully because I believe that is exactly what it is. Over the next ten weeks we will
engage one another in an extended conversation about ideas, beliefs, and theories. But I think
it is only fair for me to say to you right up front that I’m not interested in convincing you
that one idea is more interesting than another, or that my belief is more righteous than someone
else’s, or that a particular theory can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. What Jennifer and
I will attempt to do in our brief time up here is to introduce you to a way of life that we hope
you will find compelling and life changing.
We live in a world that is increasingly
suspect of religious belief, and in our cultural context Christianity is the most suspect of all
religious beliefs. It brings with it a lot of baggage, much of it well deserved and much of it
misappropriated. The events of September 11 made Islam as suspect as Christianity, although for
very different reasons, and by association all religious belief is now seen as potentially
dangerous. What we learned as a result of September 11 is that religious belief isn’t a benign
anachronism from a less enlightened time; rather, we realized that it matters what one
believes. What one gave one’s life over to suddenly had immediate consequence.
It will be nearly impossible for me to
address many of the objections to religious belief, and Christian belief in particular, in the
short amount of time I’ve been given. Instead, I want to address three claims that seem to
haunt the Christian faith: that it is boring, untrue, and irrelevant. These seem to be the most
persistent objections that modern day men and women have, and so we might as well start there.
A few months ago while shaking hands at the
main door of the church a man and his son walked out together and approached me. The son shook
my hand and headed down the steps, but his father lingered for a second. He said to me,
“Javier, every Sunday when it’s time for the sermon [Tommy] gives a deep sigh and puts his head
down on the front pew. ‘This is so boring!’ he says. But he really listened this week. Good
job.” I guess I was supposed to feel good about that comment, but I didn’t. It stayed with me,
and it is an issue that others and I have wrestled with for a very long time.
My instinct tells me that what we need to do
is make worship more exciting. Make it more interactive, more media friendly, less rote, with
more upbeat music and theme-based sermons. And, truthfully, that may help Tommy feel as if
worship is not boring, but I doubt this is the best direction in which to move, and I’ll tell
you why.
A few years ago, Neil Postman, a professor of
Communications at NYU, wrote an important book entitled, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Listen to
this excerpt from the opening chapter: “At different times in our history, different cities have
been the focal point of a radiating American spirit. In the late eighteenth century, for
example, Boston was the center of a political radicalism that ignited a shot heard round the
world. In the mid-nineteenth century, New York became the symbol of the idea of a melting-pot
America...In the early twentieth century, Chicago came to symbolize the industrial energy and
dynamism of America...Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas as a metaphor of our national
character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and
a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as
such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form
of entertainment. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to
death.”
Now a critic might hear this and say this is
yet another example of how Christian leaders are out of touch with contemporary society, and
overly invested in maintaining the status quo. They are unwilling to change with the times and
as a result are missing out on the opportunity to reach a whole new generation of young adults
who need the Church. Christianity doesn’t have to be stuffy and remote, after all, what’s wrong
with making it less boring and more fun?
In a recent interview, Robert E. Webber, the
William Meyers Professor of Ministry at Northern Seminary outside Chicago, describes his work
with young adults, having studied extensively what young adults are looking for in life. He
says, “For younger adults attracted to Christianity, there is a shift away from Christianity as
an idea to Christianity as a life. If Christianity is an idea then you have to defend it.
Today’s Younger Adults are attracted to someone like St. Francis who is reported to have said,
“Preach the gospel at all times, and only if necessary, use words.”
Weber goes on to say, “If you look at worship
over the last thirty years the focus has been primarily the nearness of God, the immanence of
God, friendship with Jesus, etc. Accessibility has been the name of the game, and what better
way to be accessible than by being entertaining. [Worship has become one more medium of
entertainment for people who expect to be entertained everywhere they go. Nothing could be
worse than being bored.] Well, younger adults are sick of that. They just think it’s shallow,
not really real. And they’re beginning to see God more on the side of God’s holiness, God’s
otherness, God’s transcendence. They’re trying to create an atmosphere that allows for that.
What are big with younger adults are lots of candles, icons– they will use either real ones or
flash one up on the walls of the church. There’s a recovery of hymnody, and there’s a recovery
of liturgy and ritual. [You have to remember that this is a generation that grew up being
entertained. They grew up in front of the television with Sesame Street and Disney, and they’re
looking for more, something real.]
Now what does this all have to do with
whether or not Christianity is boring? Once a professor of mine, upon hearing me protest that
my reading assignment was boring, said to me , “Javier, boredom is an insult to your
intelligence. If you’re bored it simply means that you lack the creativity or imagination to
make your particular circumstance interesting.” At the time I thought he was being pejorative,
but over time I’ve come to realize that he’s right.
The reason that Christianity is perceived as
boring is because we’ve taken it and turned into an idea, an set of principles, a set of rules
where all we have to do is figure out if something is right or wrong. We’ve turned God into our
friend, rather than letting God be God. And in worship, where we most concretely experience
what we call “Christianity,” we’ve reinforced that. For Tommy, and for each of us, what we must
do is recover in worship a sense of adventure, not entertainment or even lifeless ritual. Jesus
called each of his disciples to an unknown, unpredictable life. The only thing they were
certain of was that their lives would never be the same. Imagine for a moment if we came to
church, if we practiced our faith, not in order to affirm our life or to make us feel better
about our present circumstances, but instead expecting that doing so would change us in such a
way that we would never be the same again.
Isn’t your life missing a sense of
adventure? Does your life resonate with what Prince Charles once observed when he said: “...for
all the advances of science, there remains deep in the soul, a persistent and unconscious
anxiety that something is missing, some ingredient that makes life worth living.” It’s this
ingredient that the Church has to offer, namely God, and the pursuit of a God-filled life is
anything but boring. I promise you that there was nothing boring about the way Jesus lived his
life, for his life was a huge adventure toward God. If we recover this sense of adventure, if
we really take it seriously, no one would ever claim that Christianity is boring.
The second objection that many people have to
the Christian faith is that it is untrue. A few years ago Bill Clinton got into trouble by
saying, “Well, it depends on what ‘is’ is.” I might get into trouble for saying something
similar, for the claim that Christianity is untrue depends on what we mean by truth. What I
think most of us mean by truth is “facts.” “Just give me the facts.” “Can you prove that Jesus
rose from the dead? Can you prove that Mary was a virgin? Can you prove the miracles?” These
are some of the most regularly asked questions that I as a minister am asked. We assume that
for something to be true is must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and if we are going to be
asked to believe in something then it must be a fact. Perhaps that’s why so many marriages are
in trouble these days, because how do you prove love.
We are part of a culture that has restricted
its ability to speak publicly about faith with any kind of conviction. ‘Facts’ are acceptable
in the realm of public discourse, but ‘faith’ and ‘beliefs’ are a private matter for private
consumption. This dichotomy rests on a false assumption that most of us readily accept. The
assumption is that if something is true then it must be proven independently of a belief or a
tradition of values. If that can’t be done, then it is either a ‘myth’ or simply an opinion
that should be a privately held belief. As Lesslie Newbigin has commented, “The most obvious
fact that distinguishes our culture from all that have preceded is that it is– in it’s public
philosophy– atheist.”
Nowhere we do assume this to be truer than
when it comes to science. We have been taught that science is a discipline in search of the
facts, in search of what really is. Scientific discovery and research, we assume, is value-free
and uninhibited by the trappings of tradition and dogma. With science, it’s just the facts.
Now I want to be clear, I’m not one of those ministers who think that science and faith are
fundamentally opposed to one another. On the contrary, I think they are quite complimentary of
one another and hold each other in very healthy balance.
What I take issue with is the assumption that
science is neutral and value-free. It isn’t. Faith is at the very heart of a scientist’s
labor. For example, a scientist faced with an apparent conflict does not accept it as final,
nor does she take refuge in the idea of divine intervention. She goes on struggling to find
some rational way in which the facts can be related to each other, some formula or mathematical
equation that will tie them logically together. This struggle is a deeply passionate one,
sustained by the faith that there must be a solution even though no one can yet say what it is.
Without that passionate faith in the ultimate rationality of the world, science would falter,
stagnate and die. Thus science is sustained in its search for truth by faith in what is
unseen. Thus the formula, credo ut intelligam, I believe in order that I may understand, is as
true for science as it is for religion.
Therefore, a scientist’s enterprise is not
value-free: it is impregnated through and through by commitment to a purpose. Scientists must
make decisions about what is worth researching and what is not. That is not a value-free, fact
based activity. Even the most humble student beginning the study of physics engages in a
purpose-filled activity. The facts described in the textbook do not simply imprint themselves
on his mind. They have to be understood through an arduous process of learning the appropriate
skills, words, ideas, and instruments that are peculiar to the field of science. Doesn’t that
sound like a tradition? And this only happens if there is a preliminary act of faith– faith
that the enterprise is worthwhile, that the methods developed by previous scientists are
trustworthy, and that the teacher is a competent master of them. ‘Knowing,’is thus a skill that
has to be learned, it not as easy as having the facts, its not as easy as simply observing what
is. In order to learn the scientific craft one has to learn by submitting to the authority of
teachers, and learned men and women, and giving attention, often with some strain, to what they
say. And this is as true in Sunday school as it is in the laboratory.
Having said this, what does this have to do
with whether Christianity is true or not? What it means is that the very question, “Is
Christianity true?” assumes that the only way to answer that question is by pointing to certain
undeniable facts. What I hope I have just shown is that even scientific inquiry must start by
an act of faith, and must trust the tradition of scientific inquiry that has preceded it. Jesus
lived. That is a fact. Jesus was a Rabbi and taught in synagogues. That is a fact. Jesus
died. That is a fact. Jesus’ followers continued a movement that we have inherited today.
That is a fact. Jesus was born of a virgin, was a miracle worker, and rose from the dead. This
we can’t prove, but that doesn’t mean the whole enterprise is a hoax or bankrupt. If we only
depended on the facts, then even science would have to admit defeat and die. But it doesn’t and
it shouldn’t. Neither should the Christian faith. At some point trust is a crucial part of
every endeavor, whether it’s finding a cure for cancer, or whether it is faith in the God of
Israel and the God of Jesus. In the end, what speaks more truthfully to the core of your being:
that you are nothing more than a collection of atoms and microscopic particles with no purpose
whatsoever, or that you as a human being exist for the purpose of knowing God and enjoying God
for ever? Which is true?
Thirdly, and finally, is the objection that
Christianity is irrelevant. I only want to say something very brief about this objection. Is
your life irrelevant? Does your life matter? If your answer is “no it is not irrelevant,” then
Christianity is not irrelevant because Christianity is a way of life, not a set of ideas or
regulations. If you matter, if you are driven by a higher purpose or calling, then Christianity
matters for it is about you, and me, and us and our sacred purpose in the world.
And so I want to conclude by summarizing what
I have said. Is Christianity boring? Not when lived as way of life. When it is a way of life,
it is an adventure. Is Christianity untrue? That is the wrong question, for Christianity is
not a set of theories to be accepted or rejected, proven or disproved. Remember, it is a way of
life. Is Christianity irrelevant? If your life matters, and it does, then the Christian faith
matters. Why? Because it is our way of life.
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