What the Church Can Learn From Scientology

**Disclaimer: this entry isn’t really about Scientology, its theology, or its members. Please don’t sue me.**

           The latest book “exposing” Scientology is Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright.[1] The author mixes journalistic methods with something of a sociology of religion study to demonstrate just how powerful the hold Scientology has on its adherents can be.

            I have no interest in parsing the tenets of Scientology, nor have I any interest in exposing the secrets of that or any other organization. What interests me about the work Wright did was his conclusion that what keeps even nominal “believers” in Scientology is their investment in the Scientology community.[2] Wright claims that when a prominent member of the Scientology community was presented with the deeper, secret teachings of his religion, he considered it madness; yet he stayed in the religious context of Scientology. Wright says, "He was glued into the community. His family was all deeply involved in it; it had helped him in his career. He felt that some of what they call 'technology' in Scientology, which is its approach to human behavior, had been helpful to him. And there was not a triggering event [to make him leave]."[3]

            This strange attachment that the subject in Wright’s book seems to have with a religion that even that subject calls “madness” is what piqued my interest.[4] Does theology even matter in our religious expression? Is a congregation of like-believing individuals no more than that – a gathering of people to which we feel a sense of belonging?

            A recent article by Robert Dilday connected with this same idea of the powerful attractive force of belonging to a particular religion.[5] In this article, Dilday explores the three-word mission statement of Gayton Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia: Belong, Believe, Become. His point is that churches today need to foster a sense of belonging among those being brought into the congregation to hear the Gospel. Rather than an older, modern version of ministry (Believe, Belong, Become), which places the emphasis on orthodoxy, this re-arranging of the motivations of a church’s ministries reflects the postmodern impulse in evangelism.[6]

            Does the church necessarily need to make “belonging” a priority over demonstrating correct belief to those who seek to know God more fully in or congregations? Certainly we need to develop an atmosphere of discipleship that encourages faithful and correct belief in the person and work of Jesus Christ,[7] but the order of words in a slogan should not be interpreted as a priority of ministry. It is an unnecessary dichotomy to say that we must develop a sense of belonging before (both temporally and ontologically) we develop a sense of believing. The church makes disciples by living out its theological convictions in real time rather than by simply talking, preaching, or singing about them. The theology of a church is its welcoming, affirming, embracing atmosphere into which it brings those seeking God. We cannot separate the theology that we believe from the sense of belonging that should be present in the community of faith.

            Back to Scientology. The man interviewed by Mr. Wright stayed in a religion for years, even after he stopped “believing” the tenets of that faith. What kept him? He had a sense of familial belonging that overcame his intellectual and spiritual hesitation of belief. It was more valuable to him to stay in a religion and belief structure that he could not fully embrace because of the close community of the Scientology church. Although there have been reports of cult-like behaviors concerning people who attempt to leave the church of Scientology,[8] there is apparently a strong sense of belonging developed among the adherents of that religion. Entire families, social circles, and work relationships are bound up in the church, thereby reinforcing the sense of belonging the members feel.

            What can we learn about community and the generation of a sense of belonging from Scientology? We cannot, and should not, adopt the cultish practices of that religion, but certainly we can see that belonging is at least as important as believing.

            Our churches do indeed need to encourage visitors, hangers-on, ChrisEaster members, and the wider community of the church to develop a sense of belonging. In our Christian context, we must encourage one another to see ourselves as members of Christ’s body, as members of God’s people, as belonging to the great Story of Christianity that has been told for thousands of years. In our preaching, welcoming, and embracing of the world in the name of Christian belonging, though, we cannot bifurcate theology and the welcoming, disciple-making atmosphere of the congregation.

            The atmosphere of Christ’s love and welcome IS the foundation of our theology. In His embrace of humanity in the Incarnation, and especially in his Cross for the sake of humanity we see the combination of theological truth and spiritual embrace. We must not be like Scientology in our evangelism or our treatment of those who leave. But we would do well to see that there is eternal value in the theological/social presence of Christ that must be exemplified in every Church’s ministry.

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[1] Wright, Lawrence. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. New York, N.Y.: Random House, 2013.

[2] http://www.npr.org/2013/02/06/171096563/hollywood-hot-shots-scientology-and-a-story-worth-the-risk-in-going-clear

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] http://www.abpnews.com/ministry/congregations/item/8171-belong-believe-become

[6] Olson, Roger E. Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007.

[7] Tyra, Gary. Defeating Pharisaism: Recovering Jesus' Disciple-Making Method. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2012.

[8] http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/17/16563308-paul-haggis-says-leaving-church-of-scientology-was-a-treasonous-act

On Christian Activism

On Christian Activism

Delivered at Madison Chapel

February 3, 2013

The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany

            My wife and I sometimes joke about being Baptist, and that if we had to choose some other Christian family to be a part of that we’d like to be Eastern Orthodox. I fell in love with the Orthodox worship and iconography on a trip to Greece in 2007, and besides that, their priests get to be married AND have beards. That’s a win-win.

            I am sometimes wistful to be a member of a Christian group that has separated itself from the broader culture like the Amish or certain Mennonite groups. They live what seem to be pristine, uncomplicated lives apart from the world of faster and bigger. They live simply and carefully; they seem to be just as holy as a Christian group can be.

            The temptation to withdraw from society is very strong among Baptists and Evangelicals in America. Voddie Baucham has made a fortune preaching about pulling Christian children out of public schools and either homeschooling them or setting up some sort of enclave co-op among would-be homeschooler families to form private schools.[1] Christian Exodus wants the “true” church to secede from the Union and begin all-Christian societies in South Carolina, Idaho, or Latin America.[2] These are strange and extreme cases, but they strike a chord with me in a way. I want to see heaven on Earth, to see Christian values and virtues lived out in the community of faith around me. I want to see crime and poverty eliminated as much as I want to see the need for abortions to be eradicated.

            Yet in these situations where Christian segregation is the golden goal of the church, that is, the creation and maintenance of a society that is separated from the “world” and all of its sinful, liberal, religion-neutral policies, there is a massive failure of nerve and, I believe, a mal-formation of the purpose of the Gospel. Let me be clear – What overcomes my temptation to “come out of her, my people”[3] is that when Christians separate themselves from society and forsake the world for their own enclave of self-righteousness, they lose whatever ability they had to come alongside the world in mourning or in holiness. The community that separates itself from the “morally bankrupt” world trades in its calling to be a faithful witness to that world in favor of its own hegemony of thought and deed.

            What keeps me from the monastery or the Amish community or the Mennonite fellowship is that the Gospel demands our participation in the world to stand as a faithful witness to Christ and His Kingdom whether the surrounding culture is morally bankrupt or not. Once we give up on our participation in culture, we give up on our ability to “bind up the broken-hearted” and all the rest that Jesus’ ministry was about.[4]

            So I am convicted that separation is not the way to go. Does that mean that I entirely agree with Rev. Baucham’s analysis of the public education system? Certainly not. I actually have been convinced for years that if education is to be properly done, it must be done by the church. However, I understand that there is more to education than the scant hours a student spends at “Caesar’s” schools. Further, do I think that America is not failing morally? Absolutely not. However, given all of the other choices of governments in the history of the world, this is the one I’ll take.

            The segregationist impulse is understandable and reasonable, I suppose, as is the other extreme of Christian activism – the intended takeover of the political and social frameworks that guide our country. This impulse is by far the more publicized position, given that political activism and activity is what is most covered and talked about in our media climate.

            We are the inheritors of the Religious Right, the hybrid religio-political adventure founded by preachers like the late Jerry Falwell.[5] I say that we are the inheritors of that tradition because, like it or not, we live in a state where such a movement still holds sway over our political and social agendas. The recent March for Life is just another testament to the continuing belief in our society that Christian social activism necessarily means not only the active participation in the political process of our country, but the adoption of the language, tactics, and methods of that system in order to advance the “Christian agenda.”

            This model of activism seeks to infiltrate the systems of government and industry to “take them back” for Christ. The thought goes that if enough people elect enough Christians to office or to the Board, then those elected will then pass enough legislation or policy that America or the company in question will become (re-become?) Christian.  Phrases like “activist judges” and “morality legislation” are taglines of this type of thinking among believers. The motivation is to take back America for Christ, against America’s will if need be.

            Is this method really any better than withdrawing completely from society? The “takeover” model does essentially the same thing: Christian radio stations as alternatives to secular stations; Christian bookstores as alternatives to secular smut-peddlers; private Christian schools that look just like public schools except for the uniforms and the better sports teams. Rather that withdrawing from the world with the Mennonites, these believers create alternative Americas within the very communities they inhabit.

            By marching for the Right to Life, campaigning for Christian values, championing prayer in schools, or other such political and social activism, we are falling into the same mire of political and social vocabulary and methodology as those we would defeat – we try to “beat them at their own game.” We’ll lose every time.[6]    Consider the latest inflammatory tweet from Mark Driscoll, pastor of the wildly popular Mars Hill church in Seattle: “Praying for our president, who today will place his hands on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know.”[7] What good does that do the church? What is that bearing witness too other than the same type of political language of Obama’s opponents baptized in Christian terms?

            What is Christian activism, then? Are we doomed to failure if we engage the culture on its own terms, or doomed to an un-authentic impotency if we withdraw? I rather think we, as followers of The Way, must see our role in the world as that of Faithful Witnesses, testifying to the reality of Jesus’ already-and-not-yet rule in this world.

            Rather than quoting the same Jeremiah passage that we read this morning and fighting for some personhood amendment,[8] we could read further and find that Jeremiah is actually being commissioned for an active role in his community – he is “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant,” all within the context of a culture that thinks it has God figured out or tricked out of relevance.[9] His is a calling to be within his context, to speak whatever God so instructs him, so that the culture around him may have at least one faithful witness to the will and Word of God in their midst. His is not a promise of triumph, it is not a battle cry to take back the throne or the high priesthood – it is a commissioning to go, speak, and live a life of witness and testimony that there is indeed another Word at work in the world.

            Oh, but no matter how we interpret that passage or any other, no matter which view of social participation or alienation we live into, we all want to be the winner. We want to have God on our team. We want our little band of believers to be the right ones, to have the advantage, the righteous opinion, and the sacred perspective. We want to live with some measure of confidence that our interpretation is right, that our agenda is righteous, and that our new method or approach is the one to bring the light to the darkness.

            But for all of our posturing and activism, for all our causes and “scauses,” we wind up failed caricatures of the things we want the most.[10] We are no different than Lance Armstrong when we act as Mark Driscoll did, and we are no better off than the Amish were some years ago when we try to avoid society all together.[11] If we are going to be activists, it must be in the manner to which we are called – to be the presence of Christ in our communities, proclaiming the reign of God to all we meet through our lives and deeds. When we chose sides in a political or social fight, or when we remove ourselves from the society that we live in, we forsake the very core conviction of our activism – love.

            Paul is often pulled out of context here: this passage is often used in weddings. However, notice how the contrast in chapter 13 is between the Christian acting in love and the one who is an activist without it. I can think if no more appropriate language than what Paul provides – we are a clanging gong or a crashing symbol when we screech and scream our causes in the name of Christ without his love. Love of our neighbor based on our love for God is the motivation for our true activism, whether it is for programs of mercy, seeking justice for the oppressed, or caring for the downtrodden. We cannot afford to forget that it is love, that same love of God made true in God’s Spirit living within his people, which makes us act.

            We must also remove from ourselves the arrogant, poisonous expectation that we will triumph in our efforts. If we secede from society and form an autonomous Christian collective, we set ourselves up for the failure that comes from underappreciating humanity’s sinfulness. If we manipulate the political process for victory on Election Day, we succumb to the necessary and gospel-curtailing definition of politics, that is, compromise.

            No, there is to be no triumph or victory here and now. There is to be no rule on earth of Christendom or something like it. Remember how Jesus was received by his own people when he proclaimed God’s mission of love and justice – an angry mob drove him to a hillside with murder in their hearts.

            No, if we are to do and Christian activism at all, it must be with the knowledge that only the love of God for a dying humanity can drive us, and that only the coming Kingdom of God can draw us forward. Forward to community rather than toward isolation. Forward to relationship rather than toward political victory. Forward unto death, forward unto life. Forward through love.

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[1] http://www.gracefamilybaptist.net/voddie-baucham-ministries/

[2] http://christianexodus.org

[3] Revelation 18:4, a commonly quoted verse by those practicing Christian segregationism.

[4] Psalm 147:3; Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18.

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority

[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/us/politics/christian-conservatives-failed-to-sway-voters.html

[7] www.twitter.com/PastorMark; 21 Jan 2013.

[8] http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/clarionledger/2507235811.html

[9] Jeremiah 1:10.

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scause_for_Applause

[11] http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html

This Sacred Romance

This Sacred Romance

Delivered at Madison Chapel

Madison, Mississippi, January 20^th, 2013

The Second Sunday of Epiphany

One of the things often brought up in conversations I have with lapsed or lapsing believers is about God’s love in the midst of circumstance. Pick a tragedy: the Newtown shooting; the Aurora shooting; Hurricane Sandy; Hurricane Katrina; mom dying of cancer; brother dying of AIDS. All of them usually bring out an editorial or three about the goodness of God and as how a loving God could possibly cause, allow, or permit such an atrocity to happen.

Just this past week a prominent atheist writer offered an editorial on how her particular non-belief system could offer comfort to the families of the dead children and Sandy Hook Elementary School.[1] She says, in part, that “When I try to help a loved one losing his mind to Alzheimer’s, when I see homeless people shivering in the wake of a deadly storm, when the news media bring me almost obscenely close to the raw grief of bereft parents, I do not have to ask, as all people of faith must, why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen.” She goes on to argue that hers is a non-faith that allows her to “concentrate on the fate of this world — whether that means visiting a friend in a hospital or advocating for tougher gun control laws — without trying to square things with an unseen overlord in the next. Atheists do not want to deny religious believers the comfort of their faith. We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.”

Ultimately, though, I fear that the editorialist’s argument offers little consolation to the grieving families and traumatized school and community. Her conclusion, a quote from Robert Ingersoll, is that “the dead do not suffer.”

Where is God? Where is the Love of the one we worship? Even in the absence of tragedy and horror we are often want to wonder at the feeling of plainness and normality of our lives; we live, it seems from one moment of dejected horror, crying out to God for mercy or a sign of purpose, to the next moment of joy and celebration at our achievements.

This call-and-response rhythm is exhausting. Just when we allow the wounds of one moment in our lives to stop bleeding, an arrow of outrageous fortune strikes us afresh. It is no wonder that we are left calling out to God for proof of his love – this life we live is hard and cruel and dangerous.

            Where is God? Where is his great Love? Is it helpless against the darkness of our lives? Is the love of God in this world a poor image of the lives we hope to live when we cross through to whatever is next? Are we practicing, faking, hoping, dreaming about a God whose love actually has flesh and heart, hands and hope?

            We get so close sometimes. With every wedding I perform I see just a glimpse of the love of God – when people touch something beyond their natures to give of their identities, their future, their very names to another person in that most intimate moment of hope and love and expectation. I feel it when I miss my daughter – unfamiliar sensations of want and longing and care – there is something like the love and longing of God in these new experiences.

            How interesting that we frame our visions of God’s love in terms of weddings and in the powerful parent-child relationships of Scripture. God calls Ephraim his child, whom he takes by the hand and teaches to walk; Israel is the bride that is showered with affection, presented to the world as a beautiful bride and as a crown for other nations; Jesus himself, the manifestation of God’s love, makes his miraculous ministry public with the water-to-wine moment at a wedding in Cana.

            There is no theophany here – there is no Job-like wrangling over whether God is really loving and present or whether he’s the “unseen overlord in the next [world].” This is not the image of God we have when children lay murdered or communities are washed away or when there’s an empty chair at Christmas. This is Love in the Raw – when we see that our own constructions of Love at its best are not enough – the wedding in Cana could have overcome the scandal of running out of wine – but it was at that moment when Jesus launched his journey of Love and reconciliation between the God who spoke the universe into being and the people who speak of love as though they have a clue. The contrast is so sharp – our moments and events of love and sorrow are the frames through which we understand God’s love. But yet the very activity of Jesus at that wedding, the very nature of Isaiah’s description of God’s love for the apostate Israel as a bride to His divine Groom makes our notions of real love seem too limited and colorless to allow us to speak of God’s.

           

            So where is God and his great Love? Is it too far beyond us to see? Is it only made manifest in the man Jesus? Are we just wasting our time fighting over the scraps of divine intent and interest when we argue over who can marry whom? Where can I find some of that pure, uncut, divine Love in the midst of Newtown and Aurora and Columbine and Pearl?

            I think of Jesus’ miracle at the wedding in Cana to be something of an inside joke. Good scholarship calls this the first of Jesus’ Signs in John, the inauguration of a program of ministry meant to confirm that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the savior, and that the reader, too, may become convinced and believe. When Jesus underhandedly turns the water held in the stone jars of Jewish traditionalism into the new wine of God’s love, he lets us in on a secret – God’s love is not found in the event of the wedding, not at the reception any more than the opposite of God’s love (whatever that would be) is found in the events of tragedy we live through. Jesus whispers to us through this story – “psst…over here; this is just a party – God’s love is not found here.”

            Then where? Where is God’s love?

            Tomorrow we’ll celebrate the life and words of Martin Luther King, Jr., a preacher who saw a vision of God’s love. His life and name have been used, referenced, and abused even this last week in a ridiculous argument about gun regulation.[2] When people celebrate his life and words, they often end with the tragedy that was his murder. Enter the gun control nuts and the gun rights nuts and the racist nuts and all the other nuts, using the life of a man fighting for his right to be considered a human being as a cudgel for their own vision.

            They miss the point. In the life of MLK we see God’s love at work. We see in his words, his dreams, his celebrations that there is a better, a holier, a more Godly way to love one another not based on the color of skin – nor the content of character – but based on the fact that humanity, God’s own created humanity, is worth living and dying for. We can so easily see his murder as another moment when evil, in one moment, one event, cut short the life of someone who was making a difference. But here, in the life of this man we can see God’s love!

            Here! Over here! I found it! It is not in the event of his preaching or in his speeches or even in his marching – it’s in HIM! God’s love is not found in events any more than events are proof of his non-love! God’s love is in the people who believe and are filled with the Holy Spirit and act out of that relationship! Neither MLK’s immortal words nor his documented deeds are proof of God’s love – the love is in the man!

           

            Where is God’s love? It is in the gifts we receive from the Spirit. It is in the services we are led to do in His name. It is in the one who utters wisdom and the one who utters knowledge; it is in the one who has astounding faith; it is in the one who can heal; it is in the one who works miracles; it is in the one who can prophesy; it is in the one who can discern the spirits; it is in the one who can speak in tongues; it is in the one who can interpret these tongues.

            Where is God’s love? It is in us. We must stop looking to externals to see the love of God made manifest in our world. God’s love is not a wedding, or a birth; the absence of God’s love is not in Sandy Hook Elementary or Aurora or on the devastated East Coast – God’s love is in the people who live and act and speak and pray in the name of the One who IS LOVE.

God’s love is not made true in events. It is not made un-true by events. It is made true in the people who love him and live in his Spirit. It is made true in people. It is made true in me. It is made true in you. Amen.

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[1] Susan Jacoby, “The Blessings of Atheism.” The New York Times, January 5^th, 2013.

[2] Larry Ward on CNN NewsRoom, January 11^th, 2013. “I think Martin Luther King, Jr. agree with would me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.”