Third Millennium Church

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.

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.

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.

Spot On - The Red Pill

So far, we've concentrated on issues of biblical interpretation, driven in part by my evaluation of philosophers such as Kuhn, Quine, and, of course, Wittgenstein. Their theories about the nature and function of language have been key to my critique of the current Evangelical church in America. Before we move on to examine the 3M Church in theology, practice, and ethics I want to isolate what I think is the pivotal mistake that the current church has made. I think it will be important to focus on this error, so we avoid the temptation to start laundry lists of grievances, or perhaps our own 95 theses. There is one fundamental mistake which, if corrected, will lead to the correction of the other symptoms. Thus, we do not need to concentrate overly much on the symptoms themselves.

And here it is: Christianity has never been a "religion of the book" as many have said. "Sola Scriptura" is the great blasphemy that has caused the failure of the Evangelical church. Judaism and Christianity are religions of community. The various books served only to preserve the thoughts and inspirations of the community about God. They are thus the secondary instrument of God's communication, not the primary instrument.

If you're like me, you've been taught (whether in church or in seminary) that Christianity is a bible-based faith. That without the bible we would be lost. That the bible is the only way that God communicates to his people. You've probably had this inculcated in you since sunday school, if you were into that kind of thing. But if you study church history one thing becomes clear: this has not always been the case. It is the creation of a group of European christians who were rebelling against the Catholic church. It is a man-made, artificial, precept. It is not the natural state of the church. You may need to pause here, perhaps take a brisk walk or contemplate a sunset, because what I am claiming goes against the very core of the teaching in most churches in this country.

If you can swallow this red pill then I have good news for you, as you feel your feet dangling over the abyss, the ladder of Sola Scriptura kicked out from under you. God is real and alive and imminent. He breathes next to your ear. He's not in the bible; he's right there with you. He paints the forest canopy a thousand greens for you. He glows in the eyes of the one you love. And yet this imminent God is the transcendent Creator of this giant manifold of superstrings (or whatever theory of physics you currently hold). Quarks dance at his whim and galaxies spin for his delight.

In the beginning there was no bible. The early Christians occasionally got a letter from James or Paul, but for the most part they communed with God person to person. Mediators were never God's plan, whether priests or books. In the Old Testament, the priests come about against God's will. You really need to read all of Exodus 19 and 20 to get this, but I'll just quote a couple pieces. First, God always intended to speak to every person directly:

Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, "This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites." (Ex 19.3-6)

But they were afraid and demanded a mediator, Moses.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning." The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. (Ex 20.18-21)

From this point on God's people vacillated between desiring to see God face to face and wanting to hide behind a mediator. This is why Jesus was so important; he was God as mediator. For a while this solved our problem and the early church lived in full communion with God. But, as Galadriel says, the hearts of men are easily corrupted. Power, money, control--these things distracted the church from its true purpose. Shortly after Constantine took up the cross the New Testament canon was forever fixed and the power of the bishops in Rome entrenched. The Protestant Reformation swapped the mediator of tradition for the mediator of the bible, but with few exceptions we remained prisoners of men.

And so it is no wonder that the church fails in so many ways to be a place of love, help, and safety. Instead, we ignore our own sins while crushing down "sinners" with our big black bibles. We are mean, arrogant, judgmental, and self-centered. We have become the Pharisees, the enemies of God.

But there is another way. There is a better way. We must rebuild the church from scratch on a new foundation. Love. Freedom. Diversity. We must be a community who loves God more than the bible.

Can I do this? No. I'm just a guy who knows a little about God and a little about men, and has watched dozens of friends crash against the wall the church has built around itself, lost to drugs or despair or self-hatred. Who has seen honest ministers crushed by those in power with their slick smiles and pretty lies and their SUVs. They are whitewashed tombs, full of dead men's bones and all corruption. And they run the church. It is time for us to take it back.

I cannot do this, but we can. We can build a new church. We can smash the mediators who would separate us from God. We can tear down the buildings and the money and the good old boy networks. We can rip apart the legalism that binds many into prisons of false conscience. We can bring life back to the church.

This is the revolution.