I like Don Miller's books. In his books, he uses this "voice" which makes it sound like really obvious, yet somehow generally overlooked, points are being made by someone with Forrest Gump's verbal skills. Then, if you see video of Don Miller speaking to groups of people, he's making similar points, but is extremely articulate. Oddly, the simpleton book voice is often more gripping, and more memorable and eloquent in its way.
I ordered his Free Market Jesus DVD and it got delivered today, just when I was out of N.T. Wright stuff to listen to, and it made the following points (some of this is Don, and some is me expanding on that stuff):
After it was a group of rebels, what was the Christian church? When we go to churches today, what is defining the structure and thinking that goes on there? What is it currently based around that's baggage?
When in England, Don saw the "castle style" cathedrals, with their defensible towers and so on, and he thought that, when there were kings in castles and lords and barons and so on, that the church imitated that, because it was "what was going on." The church had similar buildings and robes and scepters and so on to the royalty and nobility. And the church and the king also either worked together, using the same methods, or they competed, because they were so alike.
Don said that the idea that "God is like a king, and a church is like a castle, protecting us from evil" is kinda scriptural, but also very narrow and limiting. It helps people feel they've quickly grasped everything, when actually they've laid hold on a simplistic view, and lots of odd stuff that doesn't fit has been tossed in there too. But that's what they were up to back then. Jesus was the King, the lord, and we served him as loyal subjects who knew a thing or two about proper decorum and the pomp and ceremony of reverence. He liked us to bow and all that stuff. He liked slow, triumphant, reverent songs to be sung in his presence. It was all about power. We told people to subject themselves to Jesus like we did, because this was his due.
Then, Miller thought, the Enlightenment happened, and it became about theories and methods, science and logic, "proof" and education. The emotional, the artistic, all that got tossed out. If you couldn't prove it (and who can prove vital life things like someone loves them, something is fair, or something feels good or bad?) So, where churches had tried to communicate spiritual things by art, now they tried to do it by thinkers, theories, lectures and countless books. Suddenly the (originally throne-like) pulpit moved from the one side into the middle, the five minute sermons became forty minute sermons, pews were built, and now the church had transformed into the image and structure of... a university lecture hall. Now spirituality wasn't something you experienced and listened to and looked at, it was something you were taught. We told people to attend the lectures and get educated about Jesus. It became largely about theories, methods and above all, words.
Then, Miller said, the Industrial Revolution happened, and industrialization and factories took over the world. Men left their family businesses and farms and went into factories to work with machines and be productive. They got lonely and disconnected and felt like they were being dehumanized, like they were cogs in a machine.
Emerson was hired by Ford Co. to tell these men in large "motivational speaker" sessions, "You aren't cogs in a machine, you are a part of the Ford Family. You are brothers, working to be productive for your family, and your family looks after you." Churches started to be run like corporations. Everyone was to be productive and to have a clearly defined job title and role. We sold Jesus.
Suddenly we had motivational speeches about being productive for him. Now motivational speakers, brochures and pamphlets tell us "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Christians" and "Four Pillars To A Happy Marriage" and "Five Steps To A Closer, Effective, Productive Relationship With God." Increasingly, spirituality became something we felt we could convey, not with art, not with music, not with teaching, not with telling people to serve Jesus the King, but with Infomercials for God. We were to be productive, and we were to sell Jesus like he was Amway. What's wrong with infomercials? Oversimplification, insincerity, melo-dramatization. Performance. They aren't a real, sincere, honest way to convey anything. They are about sizzle and flash, and don't deal in the substantive.
Miller argued that, due to this, many Christians are walking around wondering "Is Jesus like a Shamwow or the Magic Bullet? Is he something churches need you to pay money for and buy into, and then he doesn't deliver, because it was all about the pitch, and all about market penetration, drumming up interest and getting buy-in, and not about customer satisfaction? It is Christians who wonder this. Everyone else just assumes that's the case.
Miller then pointed out that the bible uses very different (and many kinds of different) imagery to tell what spirituality and Christianity is like. Things we need to do that take a long time and a lot of work and difficult choices before we see results. Things that are human, messy, relational and complicated. (So, being spiritually enriched, enlightened and matured isn't like making a wise choice and buying a Shamwow! after all?)
Jesus when teaching used comparisons to things quite different, and not all about a wise choice to invest in a worthwhile product. Things like fathers raising children to adulthood, things like courting a woman and building a lasting marriage, things like a farmer planting, cultivating and harvesting his crops, things like trees growing from seedlings to maturity, things like shepherds herding sheep through wildernesses and choosing the route and keeping them safe.
Jesus didn't only pick these kinds of images to talk about himself. These are the same images he used to tell us how to live also. Because life's a whole lot more like farming, shepherding, fathering or tree-planting than it is like buying a Thighmaster. There are no quick fixes, magic bullets and cheap, easy cure-alls in real life. And Christianity isn't any different.
2 comments:
And of course, the irony in all of this is that all of those misbegotten ideals (enlightenment, royalty, infomercial, corporation, etc) do hit on some small part of what we are to be (Miller hit on this early on when he was talking about Royalty). As you/he point out so well, there's a lot more to it than any of them that none of them touch on.
Ultimately, I think the big idea is that way too many people try way too hard to make Christ and following him way easier, way stupider, way less real, and way more phoney than it's ever portrayed in Scripture. That's part of the problem though, we (humans), really like to try to escape the Word of God. If not in word, then at least in deed.
Thanks for reading my stuff. Had you seen the Don Miller DVD already? ('Cause it sounds like you did)
Yup. Easier, stupider, less real etc.
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