Make Friends or Suck It Up

1. Church is about sublime truths and ineffable encounters with God.
2. Church is about making friends and cultivating social circles.

This bi-modal reality of church life is highlighted in the book of Romans. The book is regarded by many to be the most sophisticated systematic exposition of theology in the Bible. It begins with Paul’s affirmation of his call as an apostle and ends with the peroration, “Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him–to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ.”

But not all of the book is so “high-flown.” Chapter 16 is comprised largely of Paul’s personal greetings to relatives and acquaintances. It even includes a personal note from Paul’s scribe to the good people in Rome.

Several things jump out from Paul’s list.

First, he sees many of the people in groups. “Greet Priscilla and Aquila . . . and the church that meets in their home.” “Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the saints with them.” The church in Rome was not “one big happy family.” It was a collection of families and affinity groups.

Second, Paul’s “church circle” included a substantial number of relatives. “Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me.” “Greet Herodian my relative.” “Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my relatives, send their greetings.”

Third, Paul had special friends. “Greet Rufus and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.”

Fourth, women played a major role in Paul’s church, “I commend to you Phoebe our sister, a servant of the church in Cenchrea . . . she has been a great help to many people, including me.” “Greet Truphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.

Fifth, people who were leaders outside the church were leaders inside the church. “Erastus, who is the city’s director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings.”

What lessons do I take from this for our life together as a church?

Once a church has more than a dozen or so attending it will be characterized by “insiders” and “outsiders” unless the members form smaller circles of friends within the larger congregation. These friendships are “real” only if they bring people together outside of church on Sabbath morning.

It is normal for church circles, friendship circles and family circles to overlap. It is not “unspiritual” to find your closest friends among people with whom you share social affinities like education, recreational interest, blood relationship, mission interest, political leanings.

Unless you actively cultivate special friendships with a few people in your congregation you can expect to be disappointed by the “care” you receive from the congregation. One hundred people are not going to notice if you quit attending, get sick, die or have a baby. Four or five friends will notice and care.

The leadership core of your church is not going to notice if you get sick, go on vacation, get discouraged, are dumped by your spouse, are fired or drop out of school. They are not bad people. They are not selfish or snobs. It is simply not likely the seven to ten “key leaders” in your congregation will notice all of the significant happenings in the lives of the 180 members of the church (a third of whom are absent any given Sabbath).

If you are not part of a small, close circle of friends, you are going to be overlooked some time. Count on it.

So what to do? Come to church for the worship and don’t expect quality social interaction. Or make friends, real friends, with other people at church–people who are not already in the “leadership core.” (These leaders already have more friends than they know what to do with. They don’t need you.) Your relationships with real friends will enrich your worship experience and will change the “fellowship of the saints” from a merely theoretical religious notion into an experiential reality.

Making friends often requires you to be intentional. Ask some one to join you for dinner, a hike, a service project. If you have a good time, ask them again. And again. And again. If you wait for someone else to ask you, don’t complain if you have to wait a long time.

Do something to improve the quality of your church. Make friends.

If Theology Can’t Fix my Car, Why Bother?

Friends of mine are deeply involved in advocating particular theories about the end of time. They preach, write books, publish newsletters. A couple of different times I’ve ask them, If I believed everything you are teaching, what would I do differently? What do you want me to change in the way I live? Their answer: Nothing.

So why should I listen to their sermons or read their books and blogs?

One of the most important questions to be asked in theological conversation is So what? What difference does it make? If the answer is “Nothing!” then at minimum we don’t need to excommunicate each for our differences.

Valuable theology does make a difference in our lives. No, it won’t fix my car. It won’t cure Alzheimer’s or wash the dishes. But then that’s not what it is for. Watercolor painting won’t fix my car either, or cure Alzheimer’s or clean the dishes. Still we treasure good painting. And good theology is at least as valuable as good painting. In fact, theology is a lot like art. Theology is someone’s attempt to paint a picture of reality using words.

Theologians tell us what they see, and they hope that in their telling they will enable us to also see. The eyes of our mind see differently after reading a theological work.

It is important to recognize that theology is not reality, just as a painting of a tree is not a tree. No matter how elegant, attractive or “true” the painting is, the painting is not the tree. The Bible is not God. Calvin’s “Institutes” does not contain God. Ellen White’s Conflict of the Ages series does not contain God. These great works point toward God. They evoke in our minds an understanding and appreciation of God. They help us understand the implications of our God theories for the practice of life. But they are not themselves God.

So why do theology?

1. We humans can’t help ourselves. We are incurable theologians. Even Dawkins has to theorize about God–God doesn’t exist;–he can’t help positing a theory of ultimate reality. When we do theology we are doing what all human cultures everywhere at all times have done. We are expressing and revealing our humanity.

2. Theology has implications for how we order our lives. The respect I give those who disagree with me. The limits I impose on people who use their freedom in ways that damage others. My willingness to cooperate with others in community (preserving and limiting personal autonomy). My behavior in support of personal and community health. All of these things interact with my theology.

3. Theology is the art form most suitable for talking about purpose and meaning. Our lives are immeasurably enriched when they are supported by a lively sense of purpose and meaning. If we did away with formal theology, we would immediately replace it with something that functioned in similar manner in our lives–superstition, philosophy, a different theology.

4. Good theology is beautiful and helps us see beauty. Our hunger for this “divine” beauty has inspired the writing and collecting of books for three thousand years at least. The connection between theology and beauty is so strong it justifies our theologizing even though we know theology can be used in wicked ways. (Of course, we are far better served when we use theology to create beauty than when we use it to crack skulls.)

Theology, even the very finest theology, won’t fix my car. It might help me respond righteously if my mechanic fails or my car is irreparable. It points to meaning and purpose that transcend the entire world of cars and mechanics. No matter how precious my car, theology opens a universe beyond it that invites exploration and worship.

Believing Less

(I am posting this article from my liberal adventist blog here, because I think it applies directly to the work of the pastor. In fact, it is probably more relevant to pastoral work than it is to the religious life of laity.)

Growing up as a precociously religious kid who was reasonably bright, I mastered a lot of information.

By the time I finished elementary school, I knew the names of the general-slaying woman with a hammer (Jael) and the first organist (Jubal). I knew the date of Creation and the right day to keep holy. I could tell you the meaning of the “Spirit of Prophecy” and “then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” I knew the identities of the “little horn,” the “great red dragon” and the “lamb-like beast.” I believed every detail. Fervently.

By the end of high school, I could chart the precise order of last day events–the loud cry, the little time of trouble, the national Sunday law, the close of probation, the great time of trouble, the death decree, etc.

In college and seminary, I added to my repertoire. I became an expert on justification, sanctification and glorification. I could explain legal, relational and psychological theories of the atonement. I could teach people how to “pray through the sanctuary.” I could explain “the covenants.” I could comfortably toss around words like soteriology, pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian, eschatology, hermeneutics, hamartology, ecclesiology, epistemology. When I began pastoring my first church–the Babylon Adventist Church on Long Island–I believed an enormous number of things and could explain why they were true.

Now, I believe less.

I have not been persuaded by the various efforts to “disprove” Adventism. The evangelical critique of Adventism has a patina of scholarship. However, it appears to me to merely replace slavish Adventist dependence on Ellen White as the primary interpreter of the Bible with a slavish dependence on Paul as the ultimate voice of truth. Not a great leap forward in epistemology, exegesis or human well-being. The unrestrained confidence in the “assured results of scholarship” characteristic of classic liberal theology seems naive to me. History has not been kind to “assured results.”

My believing less arises not from the attraction of another truer (or more sophisticated or more exegetically-precise or more venerable) system. Rather it arises out of thirty years of listening to God’s people–professional theologians and mothers and students and scientists and the home-bound disabled and addicts and care-givers and doctors and truck drivers.

All those prophetic details? The theologians argue endlessly. Some of their arguments are interesting. However, a correct interpretation of Daniel 8 and Revelation 13 offers no help for people who have spent thirty years trying to quit smoking or people who are interacting with adult children who are schizophrenics. Should I really claim to believe something that makes no difference for mothering, bill-paying, physical health or the navigation of old age?

To push it even further, people who REALLY do believe we are at the end of time drop out of school, move to the country and “evangelize” in confrontational, obnoxious ways. In other words their lives are deranged.

The same holds for “justification, sanctification, glorification.” The debates about soteriology (how a person is saved) fill endless volumes. The debate is interesting and irrelevant. In my limited experience there is a strong correlation between having highly developed soteriological schemas and being tragically ineffective in significant relationships. Knowing the precise relation between justification and sanctification appears to offer little help for troubled marriages or dealing with addictions or managing money wisely.

So I believe less.

I believe in God.

I believe in people. God made them. God died for them. I figure salvation (whatever that means) is the default state of things. If God, with classical omniscience and omnipotence, created humanity with the full knowledge that 95 percent of them (cf. Ellen White’s statements about “not one in twenty”) would be incinerated, that would raise ethical questions at least as large as those created by theistic evolution.

I believe “God desires mercy and not sacrifice.” That is, relationships are more important than religious rectitude.

I believe doing good is more important that believing right. (Though, of course, ideas matter. Some ideas have consequences.)

I believe making beauty is better than making ugly.

(Some readers, at this point, might ask, then what do I make of the highly elaborated theology of Adventism? Do I think we should get rid of it? Do I think it is wrong? I’ll address this in a future post under the title, “If theology can’t fix my car, what good is it?” Hint: water color painting won’t fix my car either, and I'm still a watercolor painter.)