Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s essay, "Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr", in the September 18 New York Times Book Review and Malcolm Gladwell's article "The Cellular Church" in the September 12, 2005 issue of The New Yorker (not available online) about Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback church and author of the bestselling The Purpose-Driven Life.
The articles are by men who, to paraphrase Niebuhr, take religion seriously if not literally. They are respectful and thought-provoking, and I urge you to read them.
One quote from Gladwell's article sticks in my mind. In The Purpose-Driven Life Warren claims that when Jesus was on the cross, his arms stretched to the breaking point by iron spikes driven through his hands, what he was really saying to us was, "I love you this much."
Excuse me while I puke. Noted theologian Sam Kinnison came much closer to the truth when he suggested that what Jesus was really saying was, "AHHHH! AHHHH! AHHHH!"
Warren's sentimentalized view of Christ's suffering borders on the blasphemous. He takes the most powerful symbol of the Christian faith and reduces its meaning to a hug. I don't expect somebody who got his preacher degree via a correspondence course to have the same theological heft as St. Augustine, but Warren's Lord of the Hug metaphor is so offensive and so fucking dumb it beggars the imagination.
But enough about Rick Warren. Let's talk about Jesus. I've been thinking a lot about something he said in Matthew 10:34.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father;
and a daughter against her mother;
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one's foes will be members of one's own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Jesus obviously never got Warren's memo about "low barriers to entry." I guess they started churches a little differently back in the day. One of the things that confounds and fascinates me about Jesus is that he did everything bassackwards from the point of view of building a popular movement. Take one example: divorce. Jesus tosses the law aside (though he earlier promised not to discard one iota) and says, Screw precedent. Divorce is history. Except for adultery, of course. No man wants a ho for a wife. (I'm paraphrasing.) Jesus makes this pronouncement to the citizens and later directly to the leaders of the ultimate patriarchy. Bobby Brown had his prerogative. One belonging to the men of Jesus' time was to discard a wife pretty much at will. Jesus says NO. Not exactly the best way to make friends and influence Newt Gingrich, as it were.
It also happens to be a strong argument for the importance of women in Jesus' ministry. Combined with Matthew 10:35 (he counts daughters as well as sons among his followers) you can make a solid argument for Jesus as the first feminst. His teaching certainly seems at odds with that of later Church fathers and may even explain the delight so many have taken in the "theology" of Dan Brown's bestselling religious potboiler.
When I read Matthew 10:34 I hear Jesus saying, "My teaching is hard. It's not for everyone. Well, it is for everyone, but everyone won't necessarily like it. Before me there was one way of living. After me, another. Follow me and your own relatives may turn against you, because people will fight tooth and nail not to change their lives." Hence the narrow gate. Today people prefer the supersized gate. Fortunately Jesus didn't conduct a door-to-door focus group before getting started. And while he managed to accumulate just 12 followers at the time of his death (one of whom betrayed him and another who basically said, "Jesus who?") look at the growth in the Jesus industry since! It shows that a durable movement does not, in fact, require low barriers to entry. Movements with the most committed followers tend to the opposite of the Warren model. The popularity of Saddleback does not point to a new Great Awakening. On the contrary, the contemporary churchgoer's preference for Warren's wide gate does not indicate a rebirth of faith but its slow decline.
I want to end on the sword. (No, I'm not suicidal. I mean the one Jesus spoke about.) Schlesinger quotes Niebuhr: "Americans are never safe 'against the temptation of claiming God too simply as the sanctifier of whatever we most fervently desire.'" For me, this is tied to the sword of Christ. I believe the sword is an image Christ used to warn his followers: Accepting me means cleaving yourself in two: there was you before the Word, and there is you after. I am a sword striking at the heart, striking deep inside.
But too many Christians give the verse a different interpretation. In a typically literal - militaristic - reading of scripture, they think the sword can be taken up to smite our enemies. It's the "Team Jesus Sword" sanctifying what we most fervently desire. We are people of the sword; you aren't. We are on Jesus' side; you aren't. What we do is right; what you do is wrong. We will be saved; you will be destroyed.
But can that possibly be the meaning of the man who said, "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other also." In other words: Whoever lifts a hand to defend himself has already committed murder in his heart. This is a difficult teaching to accept in a time of great insecurity. But hasn't the world always been as insecure as it is today? Hasn't the gate always been as narrow?
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