Third Millennium Church

Some Further Reading

Since I'm on a bit of a hiatus working on my book, I thought I'd at least give a few links to some of the reading I've been doing.  These works will serve to flesh out some of the ideas I've been playing with.

A New Kind of Christian, Brian McLaren

The God We Never Knew, Marcus Borg

The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong

For linguistics, I refer you to Donald Davidson's work, especially his most recent book of essays.

Truth, Language, and History, Donald Davidson

My Master's work used a lot from one of his other book of essays, especially the essay called Radical Interpretation.

Inquires into Truth and Interpretation, Donald Davidson

For cosmology, assuming you have some undergrad physics, you should investigate Seth Lloyd's ideas of the universe as a quantum computer.

Programming the Universe, Seth Lloyd

I hope these pointers help you as we approach the problem of building a church for the Third Millennium.

Theology - The Fallacy of the Substitutionary Atonement

I realize that it is difficult to examine the question of the substitutionary atonement in a detached and logical manner. Many of us were told for years, perhaps even from birth, that this doctrine is the centerpiece of Christianity—indeed, a doctrine without which none of us can be saved. One the one side stands Paul and his doctrine of the substitutionary atonement and on the other the despicable doctrine of salvation by works, the lair of atheists and witches. It is an emotional issue. But Jesus did not come to bring us emotional dogma. He came to bring us the truth. I want to examine three problems with this doctrine that make it untenable for me.

I have argued elsewhere for a view of hermeneutics that I call Value Interpretation and a method of theology that I call Forest Theology. I will not reargue those points here. Suffice it to say that any biblical literalist will immediately find fault with my hermeneutical and theological method. For, as Luther threw James out of the Bible because he didn’t like what he had to say against Paul, so I am throwing out Paul. I can do this, I believe, because every interpreter of the Bible "cooks the books" as it were. I am just being honest about it, as Luther was. Briefly, consider the Bible not a literal record of some mystical Truth (because it isn’t; it is full of logical contradictions), but rather as a record of the way people have followed God throughout history, so that we can learn from their successes and failures and (this is the important part) construct our own view of God, our own Christianity. The Bible is a toolbox for building religions; it does not express one solitary religion.

The Logical Fallacy

Paul’s doctrine of the substitutionary atonement teaches that Jesus died "in our place" or "as a substitute for us". His vocabulary comes from two places: legal jargon and business jargon. Paul sometimes says that Jesus took upon himself the punishment that we deserved. Elsewhere he argues that Jesus paid our debt. The idea is that we as humans have some kind of judgment against us by God, but that Jesus steps in as a substitute and sets things right with God. Thus the name, substitutionary atonement.

Paul argues that this punishment that we have coming is death, or eternal separation from God, and that it is deserved because of our sin. Some sects argue that the sin came from Adam failing God’s test in the Garden of Eden while others argue that it comes from our own personal daily disobedience to God. It does not matter for our discussion which view you hold. Why is the punishment for sin death? If we hold a traditional view of God as the Creator of the universe, that means there can be nothing binding God. God exists outside and beyond the universe. He is not subject to its laws, just as a painter is not subject to the laws of the world drawn on her canvas. God is categorically different from this universe. In other words, if God is to be the Creator, he must be absolutely free. If anything binds God, then that thing must be more powerful than God and thus be itself God. This is where Paul makes his error.

God is the only one who could have made the punishment for sin death, since God is the ultimate ground of being. There is nothing beyond him or above him. Furthermore, Paul states that God desires every human to be with him eternally. Now we have a problem. For according to Paul God has made a punishment that defeats the purpose of his entire creation. God has made three contradictory decisions. He has decided he wants all people with him. He has decided to give people free will. He has decided that the penalty of sin is death, that is, separation from him. Given his omniscience, that is, his knowledge that free will would lead to sin, it is contradictory to his own purpose for God to make the punishment for that sin be eternal separation.

Some at this point will attempt to clear the logical contradiction by appealing to God’s justice. God can’t let sin go unpunished, preachers will say. Well, sure he can. He’s God. He is bound by nothing. He can do absolutely anything he wants. The only reason the punishment for sin is death is because God chose for it to be so. Another way to attempt to clear the fallacy is to argue that the perfect cannot abide sin. If God cannot abide sin, then God is not the absolute ground of being. The words must or cannot cannot appear in connection with God. He is absolutely free. In other words, if there is anything that God must do or cannot do then he is not God. God is perfectly capable of abiding with sin, since he does it every day.

This flaw can be resolved by removing from the argument the assertion that the penalty for sin is eternal separation from God.

The Procedural Fallacy

In addition to the logical flaw in Paul’s argument, there are several problems with the procedure for applying the substitutionary atonement. First, Jesus claims that he will die for the sins of the world, but Paul changes this so that Jesus only dies for the sins of those who accept the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. Jesus wants people to follow him; Paul wants people to believe this doctrine. One involves action; the other involves accepting a premise as true. Thus, the procedure for salvation is different for Paul than for Jesus. What is odd about this outcome is that it weakens the work of Christ. Did he really die for the sins of the world if his death must be applied by accepting a belief system? I don’t recall Jesus advocating the acceptance of any such belief system. Jesus does not require the acceptance of a doctrine from the thief on the cross. In fact, he calls those who promote doctrines "snakes and vipers".

Second, most formulations of the substitutionary atonement have an escape clause, often called the ignorance clause. This states that one cannot be judged on what one is not aware. This is a kludge of the worst kind. It violates the very principle that requires the substitutionary atonement in the first place. Everyone on earth must decide to accept this doctrine or be separated from God. Except children. Oh, and the mentally challenged. Oh, and all those who never heard the gospel. In fact, one can argue that the best kind of missions would be to never tell anyone the message of Paul’s gospel, so that they can be ignorant and be saved. Everyone in the world could be saved if we shut down every church and told every believer to be quiet. What kind of "perfect plan" is that? The ignorance clause only shows that Paul’s doctrine is fundamentally flawed, requiring patch after patch, like a pair of worn out jeans.

The Practical Fallacy

The final set of problems with Paul’s doctrine of the atonement are practical in nature. First, most Christians will admit that even after accepting the doctrine of the substituionary atonement as true (and thus having their sins forgiven) believers continue to sin. How are these sins accounted for? If they are forgiven by the acceptance of the doctrine (much like a life insurance policy) then there seems to be no penalty for continuing to sin after salvation. In fact, many sects argue for this very point, that after you say the magic words of the prayer of salvation, no subsequent sin can invalidate the contract you have signed with God. This is an odd outcome of Pauline doctrine, one that he wrestles with in Romans 7 without providing any satisfactory answer. The Roman Catholic tradition recrucifies Christ at every mass, providing remission of post-salvation sins through the sacrament of communion. Other sects just pretend that Christians don’t sin after salvation; that they have been perfectly sanctified. None of these solutions fully addresses the problem of a once-for-all salvation that is neither once nor for all.

Second, many sects offer the substitutionary atonement as a free gift from God, when in reality it is never free. The conversation often begins after an excited new Christian has said the magic words of some board-approved prayer. Then he is informed that he has to come to church every Sunday, and probably Wednesday. And he cannot drink or smoke or swear. And he can no longer associate with unsaved friends except to convert them. Or watch R-rated movies. Or listen to “secular” music. And he has to agree with the church’s statement of faith, which probably contains another twenty or so doctrines he must assent to. And he must be pro-life. And he must tithe 10% of his gross income. And mixed marriages are wrong. And he should vote Republican. On and on, etc. after etc. this "free gift" has literally dozens of strings attached to it. Violate any of them, and one will be accused of "pursuing the flesh" and kicked out, handed over to Satan for the "salvation of his soul." This is the ultimate bait and switch.

Bonus Fallacy: Eternal Space-Time

Paul of course could not have known what we know today about the structure of the universe, and in particular what Einstein discovered about space-time. I am thinking in particular of his assertions in general relativity that gravity acts by the curving of space-time. To make this formulation Einstein declared time to be a dimension just like space. This means, of course, that time does not move at all. We sense the movement of time because of the construction of our minds, but all time exists right now just as all space exists right now. Thus, when God created the universe he created all four dimensions in their full extent. This is hard to visualize, since we have trouble seeing four dimensions, but the equations of general relativity bear this truth out. Thus, not only did God have foreknowledge that all people would sin, but since he is outside the universe he could actually witness this fact for all time at the moment of creation. To think that God was somehow caught unaware of this problem and decided to send Jesus to fix it, something like patching up a wound, is to think of God as a man and not the true creator of the universe.

Final Words

I know this has been long but I also know that my arguments will be considered by many to be shocking. After all, every Christian believes in the substitutionary atonement. Well, not really. In fact, Christians have interpreted Christ’s death in many different ways throughout the centuries. Many of us have merely been immersed in a teaching, told over and over again that it is the gospel truth. That to deny it, is to deny heaven. Every scripture has been twisted to fit with this particular interpretation of Christ’s death. For example, at the last supper Jesus says, “This is my body, broken for you.” We interpret this in the light of our preexisting theology of the substitutionary atonement. We read “for you” as “as a substitute for your sins”. But if you look closely, it does not need to be interpreted that way. The word “for” just means “for”. We supply the interpretation. We have also been taught to associate certain Old Testament texts with the substitutionary atonement as if there is no other way to see them, but they can all be interpreted in different ways. And they were for many thousands of years. There are literally thousands of ways to be a Christian, and not all of them require you to assent to Paul’s doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. We need to set our minds free to see what millions of Christians before us have seen: that Paul added to the message of Jesus to promote his own agenda.

One final note. I have noticed in many churches that Paul and his letters have become almost idols to many people. All our theology comes from Paul. Some hermeneutics texts state that doctrine must come from epistles, not narratives, and guess who wrote most of the epistles? Paul never knew Jesus. He never walked with him. His theology differs greatly from what Jesus teaches us. Jesus speaks continually of action and Paul is always speaking about doctrine. His churches end up abandoning him, especially in Asia, and the only reason we get much of our theology from him is that some bishop at the early councils got his books approved and other books rejected. Thankfully, I believe in a bible that serves me in my search to be close to God, not a book that I have to serve. I can keep the things Paul says that fit with my view of God and toss out things that don’t. If your religion doesn’t give you this freedom, you should try it. God is far better than James or John or Paul.

Salvation

The first result to come from our application of forest theology is a new understanding of salvation. Salvation is what we find Jesus talking about most, with ethics coming in a close second. So it's good that our analysis has led us first to what Jesus considered most important. Our view of salvation is based upon the gospels, rather than the epistles. This is an important shift, and is based on our hermeneutical premise that the bible is a human book, complete with mistakes and biases and false teachings, that we must sift for information relevant to our culture and world. We find Paul's doctrine of salvation to be philosophically inconsistent, and spiritually rather cold. A legal contract between you and God with all sorts of riders attached does not seem to be what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of eternal life.

Instead we look to Jesus himself for our theory of salvation, and what we find is that salvation is living a life imbued with the presence of God. The early church did not have the New Testament, because they did not need it. They had Jesus. Those of us who follow him all have him as well. We do not need a priest or pastor or teacher to stand between us and interpret his words for us. We can hear directly from him daily.

Jesus told everyone who asked about salvation to follow him, to trust in him, to do the things that he does. Jesus demanded action, not a signature on an insurance policy. The action we must take is to follow his example. We are to treat people the way we want to be treated, love God, and forgive those who harm us. Notice that "following" is not perfection. We can never be perfect, but all God asks of us is to be on the right path. The language Jesus uses is that of a master and an apprentice, or a teacher and a disciple. The apprentice will not produce masterwork, but she can be learning, improving, and growing. This is what Jesus requires of us, that we be his apprentices, his disciples. We try, in our own frail, human way, to do what he does. It's really that simple.

Let me try to explain how we can spot salvation in a person. There are two kinds of people in the world, givers and takers. Takers are the ones like the Pharisees who Jesus condemns. These people live their lives only for themselves, and they take from those around them (emotionally, financially, and physically) in order to build themselves up. These are the assholes of the world. You all know some of them. Some of these people are sick, and with help can leave their life of destruction. Many of these people claim to be Christians but their lust for power and control over others shows that they are not. The second kind of person is the giver. The giver builds up the people around him. The giver is generous financially and brings joy and life to other people. Givers create, build, and raise.

Since God's greatest creation is human beings, how we treat other human beings determines whether we are saved or not. Those who are followers of God become better and better givers. Whenever we harm another person, we are acting directly against God.

What this means in practical terms for each person is different. Some people will be drawn to helping others financially, some to help others emotionally, and some physically. Some people will simply be there with an ear to listen to the problems people have, while others might actually work in a job that lets them help people. There are millions of ways to follow the master. God will call each of us to a different life, because God loves diversity. But the life of salvation is marked by its outward flow, into the lives of other people, rather than an inward flow.

People who follow Jesus are marked by kindness, generosity, care, honesty, joy, and love. Notice I said marked. We are not perfectly kind, nor always generous, nor honest at every moment. We are still human, but our striving and our direction is toward improvement. Thus, there is no guilt necessary. Legalistic religion rolls right off us. Our salvation is secure as long as we follow him.

Spot On - The Atonement Problem

I have been struggling with a question that has bothered me since I became a Christian. Lately I've been seeing it as part of a key to answering some of the larger questions I have. The problem I have is with the Atonement. In much (though not all) of orthodox main-line Christianity, the Sacrificial Atonement of Christ is the essential truth that Christ brought to us. There are various versions, but basically the idea is that we all sin (or Adam did) and the penalty of sin is death. Christ, by paying this penalty for us (sacrifical) allows us to be reconciled with God (atonement). So Christ's death was necessary because it allows those of us who've "accepted it" (and what this means varies with denomination) to be reunited with God.

Except, as in much of what the church teaches, there is a deep underlying flaw in this logic. Follow with me please. God is supposed to be the creator of the universe. He is not bound by the universe, neither by time nor space, but exists independently outside of it, eternal and perfect. This is a God I can get into. Much better than the petty human gods people normally create.

1. God is perfect and good, loving and all-powerful.
2. We sinned (either through Adam or each of us in our daily lives).
3. The penalty of sin is death (eternal death, that is, hell).
4. Without Christ's sacrifice we all rightfully burn in hell for eternity.

What is the problem with this logic? The problem is number 3. Why is the penalty for sin death? If we assume the kind of God who means something, then it must come from him. Why did God create a universe in which he knew sin would be commonplace and then make the penalty for sin, death? Let's attempt an answer and I'll show why it has problems.

The thing that makes God interesting to me is that he is a consciousness. In a universe of matter and energy, consciousness is a curiosity, no more. In a universe driven by a conscious being like God, consciousness becomes the most precious thing in the universe. This accords well with the way we think of ourselves. We are, of course, finite and God is infinite, but we are still more similar to God than we are to the dust. This gives us hope.

We might argue that since God designed the entire universe to create consciousnesses, that the harming of another consciousness would be the greatest crime, opposing directly God's intent for the universe. If we consider what Jesus said about treating other people the way we'd like to be treated as the essential definition of right action, then sin is mistreating people. Thus, sin, according to Jesus, is mistreating the very thing that God made the whole universe for, other people.  The penalty for this great crime is death. This seems to make sense.

But it only seems to make sense. If the penalty for harming another consciousness is the death of that consciousness, then God is violating his own law. Take murder. I murder someone. Say they did not accept the atonement, so when I kill them they go to hell. Now I die and for my sin God sends me to hell. Now instead of one lost consciousness, there are two. God's law has exacerbated his own problem. It has in no way protected consciousnesses, but actually increased the number of lost consciousnesses. In fact, since sin seems to be the normal way of life here (which God knew), he seems to have doomed his project from the beginning.

Some will say I'm crazy for trying to figure out God, that it is a mystery. That God's ways are not man's ways. It would seem, however, that at least at the central point of all theology God's methods would make more sense. To me most views of the atonement have Jesus appearing as a band-aid on the big screw up of God's creation, as if God didn't realize his creation would sin morning, noon, and night. So Jesus is sent to pay the penalty for everyone. Except he doesn't pay your penalty if you don't say the right prayer or belong to the right church or have a proper theology or allow mixed marriages or don't vote republican. Or whatever the hot topic that sends people to hell is today. The menu changes constantly, and you never know what the sin d'jour will be. It certainly won't be what the pastor is doing in the back room, however.

So what if the penalty for sin wasn't death? What if Paul was just an interpreter of Jesus, just like any other interpreter. We know that most of the apostles that walked with Jesus disagreed with his theology. We also know that Luther, when he moved Romans to preeminence among the books of the bible, threw out James because it disagreed with his argument. That is where this theology comes from. It comes from a priest who several hundred years ago created a theology in opposition to the Roman Catholic church, which required payment for sins with gold. What if Luther's theology went too far in the other direction? What if Paul were just a man who saw God one way, and James was a man who saw God another way? In other words, what if their interpretations of Jesus' work are no more valid than yours or mine?

Jesus did not ask the thief on the cross if he accepted the sacrificial atonement. Nor did he ask the woman caught in adultery. Nor did he mention it to the Samartian woman at the well. In fact, Jesus doesn't use the vocabulary of atonement. He often says things like his followers "believe in him", "will have eternal life in him", "follow him", "do what he says", etc. For a good section of uninterrupted speaking by Jesus, check out John 17. There is definitely a promise of eternal life for those who believe in him, but there is nothing about a sacrificial atonement. Even John 3.16 mentions no such thing. If the sacrificial atonement is so important, why doesn't Jesus mention it? Only those who come after Jesus talk about a sacrifice. Peter and Paul mostly. James doesn't make much of it either, and he was the head of the church.

What does Jesus talk about? He talks about treating people the way we want to be treated. He talks about loving God and communicating with God. He talks about forsaking the world and its treasures to find the true treasure in God.

So what if Luther was wrong, or, at least went too far? What if we remove the sacrificial atonement from Christianity? The sacrificial atonement is just one theory of Christ's death that Christians have held. We think it is the only view because the church has immersed us in the view. But other Christians through the ages have held different views. What if we take an examplar view of the death of Christ? Put simply the examplar view is that Christ's death is an example to us, not a sacrifice for us. Christ died to the world physically to show that we must die to the world spiritually. To follow Christ is to follow him in his death. That is, we no longer value what the world values, we value what God values. This view accords well with the way Jesus himself talked of his death, and especially the idea of following Christ.

But without the atonement, doesn't the universal law of sin condemn us all to hell? In short, no. Such fears are engendered by a church that wants you to depend upon them as a mediator with God, to let them control your lives and take your money. But do not be mistaken. Hell is a real thing. It is reserved for those who mistreat people without repentence, who claim to follow Christ and then ignore most of what Christ teaches, and who stand in the way of those who want God. To those of us who strive after God, to hear his voice and to treat people rightly, only heaven awaits. And no silly prayer or communion or statement of faith can change that.

Forest Theology

If, as we argued in the last article, we should model theology on a forest instead of an orchard, how would we go about doing it? A forest is not pure chaos. The law of gravity determines how strong vines must be to climb up a tree. The law of energy conservation determines how much leaf area a tree needs to get its sustenance from photosynthesis. The laws of thermodynamics determine how fast a rotten log rots. Thus the chaos is built upon a framework of simple elementary laws. In the same way, I want to posit a minimal set of natural laws of theology that will frame how our theologies develop. And I say theologies because every person creates their own.

If you analyze in the New Testament what Jesus says and does, as opposed to what one disciple named Paul claims he says and does, you will begin to see a clear theme in his teaching: how do you treat others? Or, to put it more positively, you should treat other people the way you want to be treated. This is important because it gives us a measure to determine if we our really hearing from God or not. Since God created and loves all people, any theology that mistreats people does not come from God. You are instead hearing the selfish human voice of the mediators, of those who want to stand between you and God and tell you how to live your life. Look at the story of Zaccheus in scripture, a man who mistreated others but who turns from his ways and begins treating people rightly. Or the thief on the cross who knew he had mistreated people, repents, and is promised a seat in heaven. Or the Pharisees who abuse and mistreat people and thus receive the only cruel words Christ ever uttered. Clearly, those who harm or otherwise use and abuse other human beings are working against God. Let's put it in a form more like a natural law.

The Golden Law: Any theology that results in the mistreatment of other people does not come from God.

Notice that it is teleological in nature, that is, it is defined in terms of the ends or results of theology. This is good, because it keeps us from having a theology of good intentions that ends up hurting people anyway. Intention does not matter. What matters is our actions.

The first law put a limit on what we can take for theology, but it gets us no closer to how we develop that theology in the first place. That's what the second law does. I've argued that God never wanted us to have a mediator, that his goal from the beginning was to be in intimate communication with each of us. But we block that communication in many ways. Often, we are too busy listening to our own inner voice to hear God speaking. Or, we find a million ways to distract ourselves. Perhaps we are afraid to hear his voice, because we have been trained by the church to think that God only accepts those who are perfect. The key, however, to building a forest theology is hearing from God. It is the only way. We are protected from the "Son of Sam" effect by the Golden Law. We have nothing to fear.

The Law of the Word: All theology is built from the words of God, spoken to us in various ways.

God speaks not only through the scripture, but in a thousand different ways as well. Sometimes it is the voice of a friend or parent. Perhaps he speaks through nature to us, or art, or meditation. It really doesn't matter. God has used all manner of communication in the past, and he continues to do so. We integrate all these sources into our own personal theology.

But a theology does nothing if it remains random thoughts about God. Our theology must be put into practice on a daily basis. If you think God wants you to help the poor, but you never give to the poor or visit the local food bank or help out at the local soup kitchen, then you don't really believe that God wants you to help the poor.

The Law of Action: All Theology results in action.

Finally, as God said in Genesis, it is not good for a person to be alone. And though you could argue that the fourth law is really one aspect of the Law of Action, I want to emphasize its importance. People who keep themselves apart from other people get freaky. This is not healthy. The problem is the church lies to us, and makes us think that we can only interact with those who have a similar faith to ours. To everyone else, we must proselytize. This is crazy, becuase there is no "one correct faith" anywhere in the world. Thus, anytime we interact with a person who follows God we can learn something.
The Law of Interaction: Any theology that results in people separating themselves from others who have differing theologies does not come from God.

This law protects us from becoming insular, creating our own little sect that condemns everyone else to hell. It also allows us to hear how God is speaking to other people. Remember, theology is a forest, not an orchard. God may stress to you that you help the poor, while to someone else he stresses being gentle and kind in personal relationships.

These are the four laws that I believe allow us to craft a theology for ourselves. The words we hear from God will allow us to live a life of constant growth and communication with God. Our theology will transform as we are transformed by it, because it results in action, not a dead page.

Why We Need a New Theology

It should be obvious from reading any of this site that I believe a great hoax has been perpetrated on all us Christians by the church. In my own awkward way I've tried, using multiple examples and scenarios, to show that there never was nor is there one true creed of the church. Throughout the centuries the church has changed its beliefs to either gain acceptance or power or control. This is why the Fundamentalists err. Their goal is to recover the "original" and "pure" religion of God that was corrupted through the ages. But this is a false goal. There never was a "pure" religion; there never was a foundation to recover. All they are doing is grabbing an arbitrary (and inconsistent) snapshot of the way God's people worshiped him. What is the truth then? Perhaps a story will help.

When I was a child I always asked the wrong questions, and my parents were often amused by this. Once we were out driving though the fields of Pennsylvania and we encountered a new freeway being constructed. The road started in a field and connected up with the road we were on. "Is this the start of the roads?" I asked my Dad. He didn't understand my question. I had reasoned that everything has a start, and since this road "began" in a field it must be the start of the roads. There has to be a first road, a beginning road, the road from which all others lead off from, right? Another way to examine this idea is to look at a globe and ask, where does it begin? Well, it's a sphere, there is no beginning. A piece of paper has an "edge" and you can argue whether one edge or the other is the "beginning" but at least the question makes some kind of sense. If you've ever printed an envelope in a laser printer, you understand how important it is to figure out "which edge goes up". But a globe has no edge and thus no start. The roads are a vast interconnected network. They, likewise, have no "beginning", no "edge" as it were.

And this is how it is with God. People who try to define one true Creed ignore the blatant fact that the bible itself portrays no one true creed. Just look at how the "truth" in the bible changes through the years. Polygamy? Ok in one era, not ok in another. Slavery? Ok in the bible, not ok today. Marriage? Arranged in the bible, free choice today. Kings? Obeyed in the bible, rebelled against in America. Kosher meat? Illegal in Acts, ok today. Women as possessions? Ok in the bible, not ok today. The Ten Commandments? Seriously, do you really want to be put in jail for coveting? Coveting is not stealing, it's just wanting. Dear God, if coveting were illegal in America how could we have all those ads for new cars on TV? The whole economy would collapse if America obeyed the Ten Commandments. Trust me, even if you think you do, you do not want the Ten Commandments made into law. But isn't it the "truth"? That's like asking if there's a first road or where the edge of a sphere is. You're framing the question incorrectly, and that is why you get the wrong answer.

Let me ask you this: what is the truth about you? Is it the list of knowledge that you have and perhaps your likes and dislikes? Is it a bunch of measurements of height and hair color and manner of dress? Is that you? No, of course it isn't. You are a person. You don't know anything about a person without interacting with her. You can know some facts about her, but you cannot know her.

Likewise, the truth about God is the interaction between us and God. And I say "interaction" to emphasize that it is a living process, not a dead record written on sheep's skin. When God wanted to represent himself in the clearest way he sent Jesus, a person. He did not send a prophecy or a text or a pronouncement or fire or wind. He sent a person. God is a person and so the truth about God is not an object or a text, but an interaction with that person. Just as I cannot know you without interacting with you, I cannot know God without interacting with God.

The problem is, interacting with God is suicide. No, really. Knowing God wipes away any sort of selfishness or arrogance we might have. Think you're hot stuff? Really? God stands outside of time and created all of space-time for his pleasure. Do that much? Truly interacting with God is a frightening thing, and most people shy away from it. So the church steps in and says, "Well, God is a scary thing. Why don't you come to God through us? We'll make him quite safe for you." And so the church becomes the priest, the mediator, between you and God. It's all there in Exodus 19. We ask for it so that we don't have to face God ourselves. In exchange for our obedience and loyalty the church will intervene between us and God. They will determine what is the truth and we just have to parrot it. No thinking required, and more importantly, no relationship with God required. The church does everything for us.

Church history is a cycle of people coming face to face with God (revival), realizing what it means and asking for a mediator (ritual), and losing sight of God (retreat). Then the cycle repeats. My goal is to break this cycle, because it's been going on for far too long. There's no need for it. God never wanted us to have a mediator. Like it or not, one day we will stand naked before God and no church will be there to coddle us. I used to laugh when ministers would describe heaven. It always sounded like one of their church services extended forever. Such people are clueless; ignore them.

Interacting with God is nothing like church. The church makes everything easy; God makes things difficult. The church draws clear lines; God made the universe fuzzy at small scales. The church likes conformity; God loves diversity. The church wants order and regularity; God loves chaos. When John said "God is love" one of the things he was pointing to was how irrational God can be. We all know love is irrational. I drive my single friends crazy when they ask me how you know when he or she is "the one". I always reply, "You just do." Love is crazy. God is crazy. If you've ever had that insane, illogical love that makes no sense, you understand what a relationship with God is like. This kind of relationship is anathema to the church, because it cannot be mediated, printed in a bulletin and done over again for the evening service.

Life is messy; God is messy. But messy is where the fun is. We need a theology of messy. Have you ever been in a forest? The tangle of vines and underbrush and fallen trees. True chaos, but so alive! Dead branches lie on top of young saplings. Animals make nests in the dead leaves. Trees fall across the trail. The church wants theology to be an orchard: orderly, productive, mechanistic. God wants theology to be a forest. After all, men make orchards but God makes forests.

In the next article I'll discuss what a messy theology might look like, and how we can live in a relationship with God without mediation.

 

Spot On - sdrawkcaB

As our nation becomes more and more Pharisaical (and thus, according to Jesus, less and less holy) it occurs to me that the Evangelical Church has got pretty much the whole Christianity thing backwards. It was the Pharisees who had hundreds of rules about how to conduct your life, controlling everything from diet to defecation. I'm sure you've heard of them, pretty much everything is an abomination to the Lord, from eating shellfish to wearing clothes made out of different types of cloth. Of course the Pharisees had improved the system by interpreting the Mosaic laws to solidify their power. Have someone who disagrees with you? No problem, there's sure to be one of the thousands of rules he has broken. You only need two witnesses against a person and you can pretty much get him stoned (or, under Roman law when stoning was illegal, jailed). In any case, the rules gave the Pharisees pretty much total control of the people.

Enter Jesus. Jesus gives the Pharisees the finger in some pretty substantial ways. He breaks many of the Mosaic laws (works on the Sabbath, hangs out with prostitutes, touches lepers, doesn't wash his hands ceremonially, etc.). In fact, it's pretty easy to see from the New Testament that Jesus seemed to enjoy breaking the Mosaic Law and the additions to it made by the Pharisees.

Of course the worst crime Jesus committed was challenging the Pharisees' power, which is why they ultimately killed him. And his challenge was rather direct. Here is Jesus, forgiving a woman caught in adultery! Here he is telling the people the Kingdom of God is in them! Here he is preaching to the Samaritans (Samaritans! The dirty dogs!) that God doesn't care if you worship in Jerusalem! The entire Sermon on the Mount is one long rant against the Pharisees and their religion.

Now the Pharisees were religious men, and by religious I don't mean that they loved God. Religious people always love themselves first and God second. In fact, I've argued before that religious people are the true enemies of God. Give me one repentant sinner over a thousand self-righteous religious people any day. At least, I think that's how Jesus would phrase it if he were into our lingo. Religious people are all about behavior, because they think that your behavior determines if you love God or not. In fact, even though the Evangelical Church goes on and on about being saved by grace through faith, this is just a lie. People in the Evangelical Church are considered saved if their behavior matches up with what the church thinks is godly behavior. If it were truly grace through faith, then people who sin and yet profess to trust Christ would be saved. But they're not. In fact, the behaviors that are acceptable for Christians have continued to shrink. I've heard several Evangelical Christians say that you cannot be a Christian and a liberal! You cannot be a Christian and listen to rock music! You cannot be a Christian and drink alcohol! How is this grace? It's not. People in the Evangelical church are not saved by grace, they are saved by their behavior.

But everyone screws up. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has been selfish and proud and petty and cruel. Everyone lies. Everyone hurts someone. The most self-righteous preacher standing in his crystal cathedral has a heart as dark as a tomb. And that's all of us. I could tell you story after story of the sins of ministers and people who, on the outside, pretended to be holy and righteous. Every one of us is a twisted fuck.

Now this poses a problem, since as I said above, no one is perfect. So if you are saved by your behavior yet your behavior is imperfect, how do you cope? Easy, you lie. The Evangelical Church is not made up of pure and holy people, it's made up of people who've learned to lie about who they are and what they do. They live double lives. They are whitewashed tombs, just like Jesus said. Outside they are clean and white and pure but inside they are full of rotting corpses.

My favorite example is sexual purity, because it's the one sin the Evangelical Church harps on and yet the one they fail at most spectacularly. Somehow they have gotten it into their heads that premarital sex is a sin (even though it is mentioned nowhere in the bible as being a sin--don't believe me? look for yourself). Fortunately, the Evangelical Church operates through lies. So you have all these Evangelical women "saving" themselves for marriage and claiming to be virgins, even though they will have oral and anal sex and pretty much anything but vaginal penetration all the time. But it's ok, they are virgins! What the hell? How is that sexual purity in any way? It's not. It's a joke.

Or take racism, which is clearly a sin in the Bible (don't believe me? check out what happens to Miriam when Moses marries a black woman). Of course no Evangelical would actually ever claim to be racist, but they'll use terms like "tunnel digger" and "towel head" and even the N-word. But they're not racist, that's just a phrase. They love those people. And then you look at their congregations and they are whiter than snow! Huh! How could that happen? Must just be random chance!

The gospel has two parts which correspond to what Jesus told the people who came to him: "You are forgiven" and "Sin no more". When someone came to Jesus he forgave them and then he told them to sin no more. He did not tell them they would be forgiven if they stopped sinning. They were forgiven based on their trust in him. This is the gospel, not the self-serving bullshit excreted out by the Evangelical Church.

We're all sick and broken but when we come to Jesus he says, "You are forgiven. Sin no more." And if we fail to heed his suggestion and we come to him again he says the same thing. Jesus knows that we cannot be perfect, so to withhold salvation from all those who are not perfect is to withhold it from the entire human race. The beautiful freedom of the true gospel is that we don't have to pretend to be something we're not. The gospel does not create liars and hypocrites, the church does. The gospel creates people who over time become more and more sensitive to the way their actions harm others, and seek forgiveness. They become quicker to forgive others as well.

But I actually don't mind that the Pharisees of our time are preaching a false gospel, because as they continue to warp and twist the bible for their own power, it becomes obvious to more and more people that they do not represent God. Ask anyone the defining characteristic of a Christian and you'll hear "hypocrite" quite often. Why? Because it's true. As the Evangelical Church becomes more irrelevant in people's lives, they will continue to seek ways (though political power) to enforce their beliefs on people. This will cause more and more people to reject them, which is very good news. The saddest religions are those that need government support to continue. True religion doesn't even notice the government. God is so much more.

The Viral Church

In the last Church Practice article we showed the problems that exist in the current Evangelical ecclesiology. Essentially the church has the structure of a business, with the final product not being monetary profit but converts. As Marx's critique of capitalism shows, a business will do anything to gain efficiency and maximize profit. Thus, the church ceases to be a place of love, caring and acceptance and becomes a place of conformity, obedience, and aggregation of power. Why? Because what matters to a business is the business, not the workers. Likewise, what matters to the church is the continued existence of the church, not the well-being of the people in the church.

But the church was never meant to be modeled after corrupt human institutions like businesses. Jesus said, "The lords of the gentiles exert power over each other, but it is not to be this way with you." We are not to pattern our gatherings after human institutions, and certainly not hierarchical institutions. Everyone in the Body of Christ is equal, and Paul in Corinthians spends some time developing this metaphor. "Does the eye say to the hand, I don't need you?" Furthermore, Jesus consistently denounced the aggregated power structures that the Pharisees had constructed in favor of individual response and connection to God.

Take John 8. The woman caught in adultery had no case; she was guilty. The bible is quite clear on what should be done to her and the Pharisees were biblically correct in wanting to stone her. Jesus by his act dissolved the power and authority of men and their systems of power, who use the bible to further their own stations. Jesus' remark about "you without sin cast the first stone" is telling. Human aggregations of power only serve to hide the sins of those in the power structure. We are all still human and frail and sinful. But those in the power structure can pretend that they are holy because they can always draw attention to a worse sinner who has no power in their system. Further, by vouching for one another they can maintain the illusion of holiness. If anyone should challenge the system there are dozens of sins in her life the church can expose, ensuring that they remain silent. The church has become the machine.

The Viral Church, however, has none of these characteristics. It is interesting to compare the church as it appears in the New Testament with the abomination called the church today. Small groups of believers met in houses and supported each other, praised God, and invited friends to join in. No power, no station, no lord of the manor standing above everyone else. Instead of the church taking money from the people, the church distributed money to people. Instead of political power, the church was persecuted.

The Viral Church is small. No more than a handful of friends and family, perhaps 15 people at most. The benefit of a small church is that there is nothing for the power mongers to desire. Who wants to be lord of 15 people? Wooo! What power! What prestige! The Viral Church has nothing to covet; it cannot serve as a power base.

The Viral Church is nonprofessional. With such a small group of people, there is no need for a priest. No one needs to be formally trained in hermeneutics or pastoral ministry. No one needs to quit their day job. In the New Testament, most of the church consisted of slaves who didn't have the option to quit their jobs. There was no such thing as the clergy. There is no need for clergy today. The Viral Church makes do without leadership. Chaos? Not with 15 people there isn't. There is no staff. There is no secretary to run off with the pastor.

One argument against a nonprofessional church is that heresy could come into the church because people are not trained. Well, heresy is in the church at the moment, spewing out of the mouths of people who have all sorts of degrees and training. How does training stop heresy? Think of the highly-trained pastors who are racists, or sexually immoral, or think that everyone but their sect goes to hell. How has training in any way helped the church? People will always believe what they want to believe. I know many ministers who sign statements of faith they don't really believe. What does a master's degree teach you about loving people? I have heard scripture twisted in English and in Greek. I have seen people with terrible character in positions of power. Training does nothing; it is worthless. In fact, since most theological training is indoctrination in a sect's particular set of heretical beliefs, I would argue it does nothing but perpetuate the wicked system we currently have. Fuck it. Give me someone with true character over those with Master's degrees any day. (Full disclosure: I have one of those degrees.)

The Viral Church is money free. Since the group is small there is no need for buildings or church vans or pastoral support. There is no need for a collection. People can give their tithe to the poor and needy. Keeping money out of the church also helps to make it unappealing to the power mongers. When church budgets reach the millions, graft and theft are rampant. Every church I've been involved with has mishandled money in one way or the other. Best to just dump it; we have no need of it. Want to take the church out for coffee? Try paying out of your own pocket. There's no priest, so anyone can lead the church. If you want to set up a soup kitchen, you'll still need to set up a charity to manage the funds and such, but that is not the church. The church could participate in a soup kitchen, but the church is not a soup kitchen. The church itself needs no money.

The Viral Church is a group of friends. Many churches consist of groups of strangers fighting for social dominance and prestige. This is why the Evangelical church is full of back-biting, hatred, gossip and liars. Such tools are useful in climbing social ladders, but they have no place in the church. If the church becomes a small group of friends, there will be no prestige to fight over. No one will brag at work about how they are the head of Sunday School at First Baptist. No one will care. The Viral Church can dispense with all of the social trappings that the existing church wallows in. It can be a group of friends. People who love God gathering together. Will there still be dicks? Yes, there are always dicks, but there will be nothing for the dicks to reign over. There is no kingdom for them to usurp. At worst, they will be annoying.

The Viral Church knows it does not have all the answers. The days of promoting one sect over another are over. Even Jesus didn't have all the answers ("When am I coming back? Only my Father knows.") and we as humans know even less. Since the church will no longer hold the keys to the kingdom, every Viral Church stands among equals. Don't like this group? Try that one. Don't like that group? Try another. Who cares? This allows diversity in the Body of Christ, since no one church is claiming to be the "right" church. Different Viral Churches could have radically different theologies and emphases. Pick one that you enjoy; it's as simple as that. No politics necessary.

The Viral Church is viral. Since it is just a group of friends, the church grows by people making and inviting friends. Humans are social creatures; we all live and die by our relationships. Thus, the Viral Church is based upon those relationships. When a given Viral Church starts to get crowded it splits apart, sort of like families do. There is no creed; there are no requirements. You don't make your friends fill out a statement of faith before they can be your friend, do you? Why should the church be any different? People with common interests will naturally group together. Likewise, if you go to a viral church that believes something you don't, stop going. Or stay. It's really no big deal, since we are not saved by how we think anyway. But that is the topic of another essay.

One argument against the Viral Church is that it precludes mass worship. I don't think it does. If you want a mass worship festival, set one up. Get a bunch of bands together and have a concert. And really, I've heard more bitching about mass worship than almost anything else in the church. The songs are too fast! The songs are too slow! The music director won't let us play guitar! The worship leader always plays guitar! I don't like those Jewish songs! Blah fucking blah! Christ, you'd think the church was in some deep persecution the way people bitch about worship. So I say, forget mass worship. It doesn't work. Get together with your friends and worship God however you want. Sing hymns if that's your deal. Listen to death metal if that's your deal. God really doesn't care. We just need to get over ourselves.

And that's ultimately what the Viral Church is about. Humans getting over ourselves. Your beautifully constructed building with the thousand seat arena and the grand organ and the dozen Sunday school rooms means exactly Jack to God. All that matters to God is your heart and your character. Burn the rest of this shit; it does not matter. The reason the church has failed is that it spends its time concentrating on the worthless human prideful pursuits instead of trying to help people live honest lives of character and grace.

Love. Freedom. Diversity. This is the Revolution.

Spot On - The Essential Conflict

The difficulty of this blog is that by squeezing out one article at a time between thesis revisions :) you might miss the big picture of what I'm trying to do. I want to use this column to talk about the big picture, and to generate some analogies that might be useful in seeing what we are doing. It all has to do with what I call the essential conflict, the conflict that has shaped human history since its inception.

Throughout history the essential conflict has raged between the people and the priests. The pattern is the same across many different cultures and thousands of years. God reveals himself to the people, so that they can get to know him. Whether voluntarily or by force, the people form a priesthood. At first the priest tries to help the people get to know God, but soon his humanity takes over. He craves the power of being the intermediary between God and man. He knows the sins of everyone in the village. He makes it more difficult to get to God by adding his own requirements. The priests band together to form a power structure. This power structure starts accumulating power, prestige, money, and sex. The priests hold the keys to the kingdom. Rebelling against them is the same as rebelling against God. In three generations or so the priest no longer makes it easier for people to find God, but harder. He has become the gatekeeper, and only those he smiles upon achieve eternal life. We can't criticize him; he's doing an important job after all. His needs are different. He speaks the word of God.

Then, someone stands up to the priests and says "No!" to their power structure. Depending on how integrated the priests have become with the political system (or, in the middle ages, when they were the political system) this person can be imprisoned, killed, silenced. Another rises. Soon, after much sacrifice and suffering at the hands of the priests, a group of people breaks out of the system. They want access to God without priests, so they create a community that has direct access to God. They are often persecuted, called witches and hunted down. This type of revolution has happened over and over in history. The bible contains the record of several such revolutions: Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, to name a few. And if you study church history in the slightest way, you'll see this pattern repeated over and over.

Jesus came to end once and for all the rule of the priests. He gave us all direct access to God, without any intermediary but himself. Being fully God, Jesus proved that he could be a priest without the human temptations to power. Think of his trials in the desert. God himself became our intermediary. So true religion, the true worship of God, needs no priest. This is the radical message of Jesus, and why the Pharisees ultimately killed him. They, after all, were the priests of their day.

It is true about human nature that we will rule over one another if given the chance. We will always take the actions that benefit us, and if they screw over someone else, well too bad. We would expect this attitude in business or politics, and we would hope that such would not be the case in our religious lives. But it is. We are no different in church than we are in the boardroom. We are evil, face it. We shouldn't be trusted with each others salvation, and God doesn't want us to be.

Now, I've said that this cycle has played itself out over and over again. Just look at church history. A church rises in a flush of joy over finding God, power structures form, and soon the church is trapped in a human set of rules and games meant to enrich those at the top of the structure. Should we just consign ourselves to this truth? Maybe this is just what God wants?

No. I cannot believe that the creator of the space-time continuum enjoys seeing his people flayed alive by the priests in his name. If you've spent any time in ministry, you know the evil that relatively stable and sane people can subject each other to. I did it; everyone does it. It's part of the package. To be a priest is to inflict pain on others. Sometimes you'll find someone who avoids the worst aspects of a priest, but we all at one time or another end up ganging up on someone, or using our power for our own gain, or lying to our congregation to protect ourselves. I've had sweet old lady ministers lie to my face while scheming against me the whole time. The ministry is a web of schemes and infighting and one-upmanship. It's a horrible, filthy, ugly, wicked, petty, conniving world.

So, I'm not interested in just reforming the problems of the Evangelical church. Someone could do that pretty easily. At the moment the Evangelical church is integrating itself into our government, so pretty soon disobeying a pastor will not just get you thrown out of church, it will brand you as a terrorist. As America decays into a theocracy, it will become dangerous to criticize the church. You'll notice that among the sins decried by the Evangelical church, violence is absent, because you need violence to run a police state. Blackballing people who are not Evangelical Christians already occurs at the Army base where I work; I'm sure it's even worse in private industry. Of course, as the Evangelical church gains more power, they become more corrupt. Soon, any sort of revolution in the church would be a revolution against the government; the two are rapidly becoming the same thing. The priests are winning in America, and now they have nukes.

Thankfully, governments come and go and one day they will sift through the sands of America looking for artifacts, trying to learn our language, arguing over our texts. But God's people will still be around, joking about what significance the female shape of the Coke bottle had in the sexually repressed 1950s.

No, what is needed is a fundamental shift in what the church is, to finally break us out of the cycle of priests vs. people.

This is what we must do: we must reshape the church at its very core, so that it has nothing that causes men to want to use it to dominate others. This is difficult, but I think it can be done. At the moment there are several aspects of the church that make it useful to someone who wants to control other people:

1. Conformity. Everyone in a church thinks the same way. People who think differently are ostracized.
2. Ignorance. Authority in the church comes from the leadership's interpretation of the Bible. They claim they are "just reading" it, but anyone with a bit of skill in reading can see where they are wrong. Thus, it becomes important to lift up the priest as the only one who can "properly" interpret the bible. Most people don't have the time, so in their ignorance they trust the priest.
3. Large-group Shared Experience. Church services are designed to promote the loyalty of people to something larger than themselves. This is a fine thing, but normally the "something larger" is God. In this case it is the church hierarchy and the sect.
4. Sloganeering. Sermons are designed around slogans that require little thought and cannot be critiqued: "Give it all to God!", "Sola Scriptura!", etc. Thus people do not learn to critique an argument, only to repeat the slogan. Critical thinking is discouraged in the church.
5. Hell. The threat of disobedience to the church hierarchy is eternal damnation. Sure, they'll say that people outside their sect go to heaven, but they don't really mean it. Only by following their doctrine and obeying their rules are you assured of heaven.
6. Manipulation. People in church are used to responding to manipulation, whether it is for the collection, the sermon, or appeals to work in the nursery. Thus, they tend to be more malleable than unchurched people. That plus ignorance is a big benefit to someone who wants to control people.

The church makes an excellent base from which to rule the world. And that's what many men have done over the centuries. We must change this, by negating the effects given above that make a church so tempting to those who want to control others. Perhaps by doing this, we can break the cycle of priest and people by once and for all destroying the need for priests.

"You will be a kingdom of priests, and a royal priesthood."

The way that we change the church to be less appealing to the controllers of the world is the task of this site. It's a tough one, but I think we can do it. If we don't the church will be condemned to another millennia of men using it for their own means. We can't let that happen.

Why We Need a New Ecclesiology

How do normal, happy, well-adjusted people turn into the wicked liars that inhabit most Evangelical churches? The people are not the problem. People are just people. We all have our faults and sins, and we all have our moments of kindness and good will. No, the reason that wickedness pervades in the church is because of the church structure, because of the way that men have set up the church.

Jesus saved his worst insults and accusations for the men who ran the church of his day, the Pharisees. You have to understand that this was not religious rivalry; at the time Jesus identified fullly with the Jewish religion. Jesus' problem with the Pharisees was an internal Jewish dispute. He was not upset with the Pharisees because they did not accept him as Messiah, he had not made that pronouncement yet, but rather because they had corrupted the leadership of God's people.

I make the same claim against the current Evangelical church. The leaders in the current church have corrupted God's church and have caused God's people to become narrow, selfish, wicked people. The leaders are snakes, whitewashed tombs, who work tirelessly to make a convert and then cause her to be further from God than she was before she walked into their church. The Pharisees are the true enemies of God.

Strong statements, but I only repeat what the Master has already said in the same context. And, considering the Evangelical church is in such a state of failure, the need for strong statements has come. What's that, you say? The Evangelical church is strong and growing? Ah, you've made the mistake of confusing outer appearances with the inner soul. Allow me to become more explicit in my critique, although I do so love the language that Jesus used to tear down the evil that men do.

1. Theological Failure. The church bases its theology on poor hermeneutics, causing them to inject their own theological preconceptions into their teaching. The primary focus of this failure is an abandonment of salvation as a free gift for the modern doctrine of salvation by belief. In other words, you are saved if you agree with certain key doctrines, not whether you trust in Christ or not.
2. Moral Failure. The chuch glorifies the sins that it commits: pride, envy, greed, lying, gluttony, etc. and treats them as if they were righteous acts. Then it takes sins that no one in the church wants to commit: homosexuality, drinking, smoking, etc. and makes those into the worst of mortal sins. By whitewashing their own sins and overstating the sins they don't commit, the Evangelical church sets up a system of lies and hypocrisy that it uses to punish those who disagree with them.
3. Political Failure. More and more Evangelicals have become convinced that a Christian may only be a Republican. This causes them to render unto Caesar what is God's, and to become serfs of the Republican power structure. Since they have sold out to a human institution, their theological positions have been compromised. For example, churches that think smoking is morally wrong continue to support the tobacco industry because the Republicans say they must.
4. Ecclesiastical Failure. The church is supposed to be the gathering of believers, nothing more, nothing less. As currently instituted, the Evangelical church is either an extended social club with all the baggage common to that institution (black-balling, politics, ostracization, peer pressure) or a small band of the "Elect" who know the secrets of eternal life and who pity the rest of us who will burn forever in the fires of God's anger. Churches which are loving, accepting, humble, gracious, and forgiving are rare and ephemeral. Perhaps, for a season, a pastor who knows the real deal will be able to make the church what it should be, but he is soon overwhelmed by the money, the power structure, or the men who hold the lease.

These failures are due in part to a bad ecclesiology. The church structure has been modeled after a business, with a CEO and board of directors who manage the money and allocation of resources (people). As with any business, profit is the ultimate goal. In the context of a church the profit is not in money, but in popularity. The goal of a church is to have as many people as possible in that church. One would think that if all the Christian churches truly were interested only in spreading the gospel that they would not care which church a person attends. This is not the case. There is always the undercurrent that only one's particular sect really has it "just right". So the goal is to get everyone into our church. Every Pentecostal church rejoices when a Baptist "converts" and comes over to the right way of thinking. And vice versa.

Since the goal of the church is to attract and retain a population, the church uses all the normal systems that humans use to control one another. Peer pressure ensures that everyone in the church thinks and behaves the same. Ostracization is the threat used to keep people in line. If you start to think differently than the church, there will be hints that you aren't welcome, with the final stage being a full disfellowshipping. For most people, it's easier not to rock the boat and so they stay and swallow whatever they must.

Businesses have expenses and so the church must institute a tithe to pay for the staff and buildings it needs to keep everyone in one place. This is important, and why the weekly church service is mandatory. The church would have a harder time controlling people if it did not build a sense of shared experience, which is what the weekly service does. If you look at the way an Evangelical church service is structured, the high point of the sermon is either preceeded or followed by the collection. Obedience to the teaching of the church is reinforced by obedience to the tithe. When people invest their money in something they have a natural desire to see it succeed. This is the true importance of the tithe. Proof that the tithe is essential to the working of the Evangelical church is simple: if it's not essential, stop taking a collection. You won't find a single church that will do this. Their structure demands strict monetary obedience by the church population. Pastors know who tithes and who doesn't. Believe me, I've been there at the meetings where it was discussed. They try to play off the collection, as if it were a necessary evil, but in actuality it is a core part of their mechanisms of control.

So the church as currently structured has very little to do with the message of Jesus and the way the church was meant to be. It was never meant to be a monolithic power structure capable of building huge buildings and aggregating hundreds or thousands of people in one place. It was never meant to enforce conformity of doctrine or thinking. It was never meant to lift up leadership into a position of power over people. Finally, the church does not have authority over every part of our lives. I know pastors who think the church has the final say on who you marry, who your friends are, how you vote, how you spend your money, and what sexual positions are allowed. This must stop.

It is no wonder that with such manipulation in the church, that the people begin to be narrow and vindictive. They are under pressure to conform, and are probably hiding many sins behind their church smile. You'd lash out at someone who was different too in their position.

How must the church be structured for the next millenium? That is a question for the next article in this series. As a preview, the church will not be about buildings and staff and sectarianism. It will not be about conformity and money and power. In fact, for the church to survive the next millenium, it must be something quite different.