People usually screw things up by going to one extreme or another. When it comes to Christianity, this has historically always been part of it. Some people emphasized that Jesus was the son of God to the point of believing that he "wasn't really" human. Like maybe he was a ghost or apparition or angelic being of some kind, masquerading as a man. All of his miracles were about "Look, I'm glowy magic!" Others, of course, emphasized his humanity to the point of believing that he was merely the best of humans, with no particular connection to God. Just a good man, a prophet, a teacher, who was misquoted or mistranslated every time he suggested otherwise. All of the accounts of miracles were embarrassing lies, and every bit of his teaching or prophecy or humanity which revolved around them was mistranslated, quoted out of context, or was more embarrassing lies.
When it comes to the modern Christian, the two basic extremes I'm dealing with are:
-people who think Christianity is all about the Kingdom of Heaven/God/Jesus having come to earth and us continuing to spread goodness, healing and magic to it as Agents of the Kingdom, on the one hand,
-and people who think Christianity is all about the Cross, and about the irredeemable horror that is the world in which we live, and how Jesus had to die to spirit us away to Heaven so we wouldn't have to deal with it anymore.
One question as to these two views is "Which one is right?" That's kind of a dumb question, actually, which reveals an insistence upon polarized thinking, about it needing to be one or the other, and not both and/or neither, kinda. The belief that one of these two opposites is actually in the middle, and that only the other is "off to one side." This is the kind of thinking which causes the characteristic church divisions and compartments in the first place. The Mona Lisa: Right or Wrong? Obama: The New Messiah, or The Beast, AntiChrist and False Prophet of the End Times Rolled into one? Stupid.
Another question is "Which parts of the bible are they glossing over to overemphasize their preferred half of the story, and what do those parts say?" Yet another question is "What kind of person does it make you/which kind of person chooses to overemphasize the one or the other side of the message?
I listened to
this today. Tom Wright. Up to his usual shenanigans. More perspective than one can comfortably hold in one's head at one time (if, like me, you are lacking sufficient intelligence to take it all in like this) and no practical application. Ridiculous words like "salvific" and "narratival." Terribly valuable, though. A thing to remember as one goes on living one's life, rather than a thing to "get" immediately.
I was raised with "All Cross, no Kingdom" Christianity, and am now finding the company of "All Kingdom, no Cross" people equally ungratifying.
In my upbringing, the gospels "led up to" the cross. In other words, the whole point of history, and therefore of course the whole bible (including millennia of Jewish history) and the gospels and epistles "pointed to" (were really actually about) the cross. The whole story of humanity was about how God created the molecular universe on purpose with a plan, and intended human beings to have a stewardly, participatory role in it, and we betrayed him, fell in with a bad crowd, and let them take over what God had put us in charge of, so it could be ruined and subverted, kinda ruining but maybe not ruining, God's plan. The world was therefore, irrevocably ruined, so Jesus came to rescue us from it by dying on the cross. The Christian job was to not get too enamoured of anything or anyone which might SEEM nice, as we were in enemy territory, awaiting airlift out. When bad things happened in the world, it made us feel better, righter, smugger and more comfortable that our world view was the one everyone should have. Right now some very shrill and certain people are preaching that Jesus will come May 21st, 2011, and that this world will at long last, by October at the latest, finally, and blessedly burn. Hallelujah!
The other view is quite different. the gospels "led up to" the kingdom of God being reasserted on earth. God is setting the world to rights and wants us to take part in this. In other words, the whole point of history, and therefore of course the whole bible (including millennia of Jewish history) and the gospels and epistles "pointed to" (were really actually about) Jesus coming and "thy Kingdom com[ing] on earth as it is in heaven." The whole story of humanity was about how God created the molecular universe on purpose, and intended human beings to have a stewardly, participatory role in it, and we betrayed him, fell in with a bad crowd, and let them take over what God had put us in charge of, so it could be ruined and subverted. The world was therefore, needing to be put, once again, under the rule of heaven, so Jesus came to set that right. He is the King, and he has come. The Christian job is to work as the agents of the King, spreading news or and demonstrating for others how the Kingdom of God works and is run. When bad things happen in the world, it just means we have a LOT more work to do.
People raised as I was have a lot of death and gloom to them. A lot of resigned acceptance that things are "just terrible" but that, so long as we focus on the there and later rather than the here and now, we can, sort of, be happy, in our imaginations at least. Too much reading verses about the Kingdom (or the Holy Spirit) made us wiggy and made us worry that the bible might prove the Kingdom folk to be right, after all. We glossed over them quickly, didn't quote them much, and spent more time explaining them away than explaining them. But then we citizens of Heaven behind enemy lines would quite often find that we really liked some good stuff that really seemed to exist in the world. The Olympics, House, Macbeth, Pink Floyd. And people we liked too. People who, as near as we could tell, were wrong about stuff. And either we felt guilty, or we tried to Christianize it, or somehow argue that this thing from the world is actually from God, so it was ok to enjoy it, and not a form of consorting with the enemy.
People focussed instead upon the Kingdom smile and hug people a lot. They are always eager to set the world right. They want to reach out and connect with human beings we treated like enemies. They believe, as Wilton Knight on Knight Rider did, that One Man can Make a Difference. They tend to have to go to Africa to do it, too, or the poorest neighbourhood they can find. Mostly they don't, feel guilty about that, and salve their smarting consciences by being something-pastors, on something-teams, or giving money or time to people "serving abroad." Because it's usually abroad. They can't make their fellow countrymen and women see that things need to change. They can't deal with the complacency in their own culture, so they go to people whose lives are undeniably fucked so they can help. I've seen and talked to many of these people. I've seen that they sometimes burn out on well-doing. They get weary of it. They get disillusioned about how much good they can maintain any belief that they can actually do, and about various eventually disappointing people they'd trusted to get good done with, about how much of a difference a group of people, let alone one man, can really make in any measurable way.
Once again: the dumb question: Which is the right way to think and live?
N.T. Wright is pretty smart. He says you should read the gospels and Paul (most people don't actually do this, but settle for Sparksnotes.com "Significant Quotations" bits, like that's the same experience), and that you should simply let them actually say what they want to say, and actually be about what they are actually about, rather than slanting them to the one side or the other, to "History until now has been a prolonged introduction leading up to the cross" on the one hand or "the kingdom has begun and we need to not focus unduly upon the fact that Jesus died, because that's actually perhaps somewhat confusing/depressing and those gloom and doom folk have been sucked into that vortex of old-fashioned crappy Christianity" on the other.
Easier said than done. Most people just don't read the bible at all. I mean today, I read Ezekiel 14, and it said in verse 16 (speaking to Jerusalem, Ezekiel says there) "she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your bosom and pressed your young breasts." Now, should I view that in terms of pointing forward to the cross? Or in terms of being the sad state of affairs that existed while Jerusalem was awaiting the coming of Jesus to proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven? Maybe it's about both of those and neither, and about other things besides. Maybe "Which side is right?" is a dumb question.
I like this book because it isn't a self-help book, and it isn't either an anguished tale of growing up without a Christian upbringing, nor is it an earnest story about growing up with a (Baptist) Christian upbringing, and finding something more, something deeper. It is a funny, unpretentious, both-feet-on-the-ground, artistic musing work about growing up with a Christian upbringing and looking for more, and learning to deal with the whole world and all of life, rather than just living a ghettoized Christian existence. Funny, and with an aptitude for Kurt Vonnegut-grade "wording things in such simple terms they seem ludicrous" technique. 
I like this book because it again isn't a self-help book, and it's not by a pastor explaining about how he learned what he learned, and what he thinks is important, and how he helps people until tears run down their cheeks. It's a woman's story, and it's about the (Lutheran) Christian upbringing not really working out, and, at therapy having a shrink who was bright enough to know he needed a really clear picture of what kind of God she actually believed in (a snappy, sarcastic, cold one, it turned out) so they could talk about that. She alternates personifying God for her therapist with real-life anecdotes about growing up in California as an aspiring actress, playing the photograph of John Candy's wife in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and a friend of Mallory's on Family Ties, and reaching forty, knowing it wasn't getting any better than that, and childless and husbandless to boot, and losing faith that God wasn't altogether too much like her father.
