She stood before the rack, mesmerized by all the colors, textures, and accessories. She was about to make the most important decision of her entire, whole, complete life . . . all five years of it. It was time to choose her Halloween costume. She had loved unicorns since her first coloring book. But there in the top row was a princess dress like the one in the story books Mommy reads. Oh, but what about a scarecrow or a ghost? She herself had been scared by them. That would be fun, she thought deliciously!
Like this little girl, our opinions and cultural preferences are called upon early and often in life as we seek to find who we are or want to be. The right costume, the right car, and of course our favorite music that says we are a rocker, a cowboy, or an elite (classical music) are all daunting adolescent choices. As we age, life gets infinitely more consequential when choosing our lanes in life.
The foundation of a sustainable cultural choice to be Christian, is largely the Bible and the desire to live in a way consistent with the ethics and worship detailed in biblical law. Jesus tells us that the most important of the laws is to “love the Lord your God with all our heart . . .” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-40). But …. do we?
Can we be true to biblical law, especially the two listed, while our biased Christian values push and pull us to theological extremes? And if that ability is compromised, what is the impact on Christianity’s effectiveness in spreading the word of a loving, merciful God and his Son?
How Have our Christian Communities Become So Polarized?
To explore this question, let’s go back to the 1960’s and 70’s. This period included significant cultural developments marking a transition in the United States that swung us away from a fundamentally Christian culture toward a new set of cultural texts. The most well-known of those developments were the women’s liberation movement, birth control, Roe v. Wade, civil rights, President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” and the sometimes violent calls to end the Vietnam war.
True to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, there was a reaction to these events, generally thought of as liberal cultural developments, from within the Conservative Christian community. Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham were three high profile Christian Conservative leaders. Their response was to call America back to a Bible based consciousness that had defined our country for two hundred years. Their movement was frequently referred to as “the rise of the religious right.”
Adam Hamilton in his book Seeing Gray – in a World of Black and White, identifies a core belief of Conservatives, to be the adoption of a “doctrine of inerrancy,” the belief that “every word in the Bible is the perfect, inspired word of God without error, with no real inconsistencies, and totally true and trustworthy in everything it says” (62). These and other conservative Christian leaders called people to this biblical inspiration along with a conviction of the virgin birth, the atonement, the resurrection, and the faithful acceptance of the miracles of Jesus.
In response to the rise of the religious right, the pendulum swung again in the late 1990’s, as Liberals, sometimes referred to as Modernists, resurfaced as a cohesive cultural movement. The Modernists embrace fundamental Christianity, but unlike the Conservatives, stress social justice as integral to Christian discipleship. Also, while they take the Bible seriously, they may not necessarily take it literally, instead embracing a more interpretive, or metaphorical understanding of scripture. Its adherents focus on promoting social values such as compassion and tolerance.
I do not agree in total with the beliefs of either group, but I do agree that original scripture is the inspired word of God. Nonetheless, I can’t ignore the possibility that meaning, and nuance may have been inadvertently altered by fallible men as they translated the Bible through the ages.
Modernists and Conservatives continue to be widely supported by their own factions, creating chasms within the Christian church. Watching these two groups engage secular culture today, as well as each other, we see increasingly polarized positions on many issues, such as gun ownership, racism, woke’ism, LGBT rights, abortion, and immigration. The operating methods of these cultures influence each other and as we have seen, Christian culture is not immune to participating in the journey to the polar extremes.
Can Christian Culture Heal the Wounds of Polarization Within?
Where do we start to reconcile these extreme schools of Christian thought? Does the Bible as the essence of Christian culture hold the answer? But how can we find a via media of reconcilement on a figurative battlefield of the polar opposites of wounded and disillusioned adherents to God’s word?
I would submit that the problem is not with God’s word. The problem is us, tarnished as we are by our sin. We have applied our own voices to the verses and the louder we get at the extremes, the less God is heard. Many times, a verse is bent to the exclusive will of Conservatives or Modernists in its interpretation. This process is not all bad by itself, but an issue arises when another Christian sees it differently. Instead of responding with, “tell me more about why you feel that way,” we respond too often with, “you are wrong,” and in our self-righteousness we leave the table.
History is littered with failed radical manifestos in culture, religion, and politics so I would question the sustainability of such cultural absolutes. Their implacability squeezes God out of the conversation and leaves only remnants of Jesus’s message of love and forgiveness. This refusal to listen facilitates the polarization that we must work ourselves back from.
Let’s take for example the question of salvation for the hundreds of millions of Muslims, Jews, and Hindu’s who have not accepted Jesus as their Lord and savior. Will any of them be in heaven? A Conservative biblical scholar will tell you that the Bible says unequivocally, “No.” However, I must pose the question of how a God of love and mercy could condemn millions in ignorance to eternal darkness. Where is morality and love in that scenario?
How might God look at that question? An answer can be found with the prophet Jonah. In this story, God expresses his concern for the Ninevites despite their disobedience. He sends a reluctant Jonah to offer them an opportunity to repent. In God’s closing words to his prophet, found in Jonah 4:11, He asks Jonah rhetorically, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” Hamilton adds his own question, “Would God not say the same today to those of India, China, and Saudi Arabia, or his own land of Israel?” (102).
In his book Culture Making – Recovering Our Creative Calling, Andy Crouch quotes Acts 2:39, which extends God’s call beyond those who call upon His name to, “. . . everyone whom the Lord our God will call” (149).
Each of these sources suggest that eternal judgement may not be as straight forward as a Conservatives think. I will add that they have caused me to pause as well.
The Humility of Reconciliation is Our Goal
These are among many examples of God’s saving grace throughout the Bible. His grace then, would seem the answer to bringing Christians back from the polar extremes, to a rediscovered via media. Until the second coming, the Christian community must humbly accept the entirety of the sovereign will of God and seek reconciliation where we disagree. To quote the French Philosopher Albert Camus, “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” Further, in reconciliation, we establish credibility as a cultural unifier thus drawing more people to Jesus’s love and forgiveness.
Even in reconciliation, we will continue to wrestle with scripture as Jacob wrestled with God and five year olds wrestle with costume selection. The little girl had made the difficult choice and was seen trick-or-treating Halloween night in the satin and lace of a beautiful princess. However, the beauty was not limited to the satin and lace of the costume. It was in her enjoyment of a wide range of friends who had made different choices. She and the ghosts, pirates, cowgirls, and clowns were heard celebrating the sameness, as well as the differences in their costumes and the candy collected. Walking nearby with a watchful, loving stare, was a parent dressed as Jesus. For this adult who for years had held to one end of the Christian spectrum, the irony was palpable. She was thinking of Matthew 19:14 where Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
Works Citied:
Hamilton, Adam. Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White Thoughts on Religion, Morality, and Politics. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008. Print.
Crouch, Andy. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Books, 2008. Print.
Barker, Kenneth (General Editor), “NIV Study Bible”, Copyright 1985, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, Mi.
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