mike@turing.cs.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell) (08/17/90)
As I had planned, I devoted my hiatus from posting to s.r.c to thinking and observing and praying about the various types of Christians we meet and interact with in our lives, including those in person, those in books and the news, and those on the net. The title of this article may have thrown you a bit off. If so, I am glad, for it has then achieved its purpose. I discovered, much to my surprise, that a stunningly large number of Christians are what I have started to call "Jesus-less" or "Christ-less" Christians. They tend to fall into two categories. I'll start with the more obvious. Somewhat in line with the differences in shade of meaning between "Jesus" and "Christ" we find in the New Testament, I use the two terms two describe somewhat different sorts of people. My brother is someone I would categorize as a "Jesus-less" Christian. Let me give an example: A cousin of mine wrote our family indicating that he had received a fellowship to do his doctoral research at Los Alamos. We arranged for the whole family (convenient since my sister was just flying in from California for the weekend) to meet halfway for dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in Espanola. As we drove back to Albuquerque, my father, brother, mother, an I were in one car. My brother announced a "faith-strengthening" experience he recently had. He said that he had recently prayed that a coworker of his have car trouble of some sort, and he had just learned that this person was involved in an accident with no injury to anyone, but the cars were both severly damaged. My mother, father, and I attempted to talk to him about *our* understanding of prayer and vengeance, etc. But what was most striking was his explanation: he read in the Psalms about this sort of prayer being quite common and dismissed my comment about "pray for your enemies and bless them that persecute you" with a flick of the wrist. I certainly understand how a person reading just the Psalms might think that vengeance prayer is what God expects of us, but my reading of the Bible is colored, above all else, by the figure of the actual Jesus. Without him, the Psalms lose their meaning, as does the remainder of Scripture. As I've said here many times before, no part of Scripture is independent, and it all draws its lifeblood from the actual life of Christ. Other Jesus-less Christians seem to look at the Epistles of the New Testament as blueprints for the church, ignoring (I no longer am quite so willing to believe claims of ignorance) that one of the major acts of Jesus on earth was to make specific claims about what using Scripture as that sort of blueprint for life meant. He didn't seem to take too kindly to the Pharisees, as I recall. Don't forget that the major occupation of the Pharisees was scriptural interpretation and application to everyday life. The example of Jesus leads me to question groups which act as sole dispensers of religious truth and seek to indicate what is correct for my life. I have no doubt that many of you are figuratively nodding your heads in agreement. But it is a part of that crowd that makes up the Christ-less Christians. In their eagerness to avoid the perils I sketched above, they swing too far in the other direction. This is the group which holds to an individualistic morality, one which preaches that good intentions are all that is required of us. I confess that not only am I not too good at living up to my good intentions, but I frequently fail to have good intentions at all. Many in our society and our churches regard that sort of failure as a cardinal and irredeemable sin. By replacing the covenant of works with a covenant of good intentions, they have not only missed the point of the gospel, but subverted it to say virtually the opposite of how it started out. The saving grace of Christ, which is apparently not necessary in the minds of the Christ-less Christians, is the essential component for the alleviation of human ills. Bertrand Russell said that the highest good is love aided by knowledge, knowledge tempered by love. Holding up Hitler as someone acting with good intentions but too unintelligent to realize that killing the Jews and starting wars was no way to help humanity became Russell's primary example. Having read much of what Hitler wrote and a lot about him, unintelligence is hardly part of his repertoire. What was Hitler apparently missing? Neither love nor intelligence, but Christ. I dare say that the Medieval church was missing Christ as they persecuted and killed all the various groups they did. I'm willing to believe their claims to be acting with good intentions, but they missed something, clearly. Many seem to feel that failure is glossed over with the magic words, "But he tried hard, didn't he?" How many times has the Boy Scouts' "Do your best" been subverted to "I did my best; you can't blame me"? The only true way to carry on after failure is to admit it as failure, accept the grace of Christ, and carry on with the business of living. Thank God that even after a failure to do that we are still redeemed and redeemable! With this said, I will crawl back into my silence, awaiting more thoughts. As always, I am willing to correspond on this or any topic via email. -- Michael I. Bushnell \ This above all; to thine own self be true LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE \ And it must follow, as the night the day, mike@unmvax.cs.unm.edu /\ Thou canst not be false to any man. CARPE DIEM / \ Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!