Christianity’s Challenge

by Rebecca Bynum (October 2013)

 
It is an unfortunate fact that to the non-Christian world, Christianity seems to be supporting all manner of evil because it fosters Western culture which bears a great deal of guilt for harboring politics without principle, industry without morality, science without conscience, liberty which has turned to license and the accumulation of staggering wealth among the very few. As Western Civilization sinks, Christianity is sinking with it. The most recent Pope’s answer seems to be to embrace the secular ideal that the highest value is non-judgmentalism and thus to participate with the world and its sin; but at least that way the church will not simply become a relic of the past, it will be somewhat relevant.

Certainly the Medieval Church bears primary responsibility for the great reaction against it which resulted in the splintering of the faith into a multitude of sects and the rise of atheism. Indeed, the church begat the modern secular world. Now, it seems the Catholic Church and the myriad Protestant churches will no longer stand in opposition, nor even in contrast, with modernity; they will simply lose themselves in it.

One cannot, of course, easily discount such a mighty and moral religion, set in motion by the handful of followers of a crucified carpenter. This powerful faith conquered the entire Roman world and then went further and conquered its barbarian conquerors. A religion this potent, which absorbed the best of Hellenic philosophy and the Judaic religious tradition, will no doubt resurrect itself and conquer the whole world in time. The Reformation was such a resurrection, but it was also a correction — a rediscovery of the word.

For Christianity to once again recover its submerged strength, Christians of all persuasions must look to the life and teaching of Jesus himself and examine the foundations of the Christian tradition with new eyes. For too long Jesus has been portrayed as meek to the exclusion of his courage. He has been portrayed as a victim to the exclusion of the greater meaning of his life and he has been portrayed as giving the world an unrealistic proposal on which to base man’s life — a pleasant fairy tale, no more.

I believe that if young people were introduced to the Master’s message in its undiluted form, they would unhesitatingly embrace it and would not falter in carrying it through to the very end. They have been shown a faded cardboard copy of the man; a deeper and more meaningful presentation of Jesus’ life and work is needed, one focusing less on the fact of his life (the babe in the manger and the martyr on the cross) and more on the full grown man. Jesus was a man who stood forcefully and steadfastly for magnificent truth. He was a man who feared no man.

First and foremost, modern religion must not be an affront to reason and secondly, its morality must be of the highest order, unconfused by the superstition and paganism of the past. The ancient anthropomorphic God who was jealous, vengeful and unjust, who demanded sacrifice and suffering and found pleasure in the same, must finally be left behind, acknowledged as a stage of religious development, but no more.

The message of Jesus has been coccooned for two millennia. It has been encapsulated in an ancient religious idea — that God requires blood sacrifice in order to appease his wrath and bring forth his forgiveness. This idea is entirely unworthy of enlightened men.

Jesus remains our savior, but not so because of his death, rather as a result of his exemplary life. Jesus demonstrated, as has no other person before or since, the thrilling adventure of living a life in complete faith and trust in God. He elevated man’s relationship with God to the highest point in religious expression and he did so by example. The meaning of life is found in the effort to live by ones’ highest ideals – to live the will of the Father in Heaven by finding justice and truth, goodness and beauty, not as philosophic abstractions, but as living realities in daily life. Theology may define faith, but Jesus lived faith. “Follow me” said he, “I am the way.”

We cannot follow Jesus through merely understanding or expanding upon a philosophic formula, especially one concerned mainly with the fact of his death. We follow Jesus by living lives dedicated to doing the will of our Father in Heaven — just as he did. We find our path first by loving God and then by living lives of loving faith-trust, by allowing God to hold us securely in his love. Then we can hold fast to truth and elevate our devotion to morality for we know for certain that the Father will not let us fall. The hunger to live by righteousness and to know and experience living truth only grows brighter and more real with time. To know God as an ever present living reality, the way Jesus did, becomes our goal. “Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven.”

The idea that the blood of the Lamb washes away our sins portrays too much paganism, reflects too much magic and barters too much superstition to uphold the mighty religion of Jesus anymore. The great lesson of the cross must be that God will not interfere in the free decisions of human beings, not that God required the suffering of his innocent son to appease his anger over the state of sinful humanity. God allowed the decisions of all those who sought the death of the Son of Man to be made freely. God does not force man to turn to him, to love him or even to recognize him. God allows man his sin because he allows man his freedom.

This is a more difficult message to be sure. Men want certainty; they want to be given the magic words or the magic formula by which their entry into the kingdom is assured. If they could purchase that entry with gold, they would – indeed, many try. How much easier is that than the difficult chore of finding God’s will — unique for each man alone — and then of carrying it out, actually doing the will of God. It is a difficult, but not impossible task. God may be found and his will may be discerned. That is what it means to follow Christ.

God’s will is the absolute focal point of justice, mercy, goodness, truth and beauty within the soul. How are we to find his will except by searching within? How do we find him but to seek our deepest understanding of morality, our highest discernment of truth? None of this is easy. Often it entails making enemies. Not everyone will understand the effort to live up to one’s highest ideals, nor will they understand one’s turning away from or even denouncing those who seek a lower road. The lower road is easy to justify and those who stand apart often seem intolerant, inflexible and self-righteous. The cost of following God’s will is usually not one big thing, but many, many small things.

Was Jesus concerned about pleasing men? Did he not warn his followers about counting the cost? It is time for institutional Christianity to also count the cost. It can take the easy road and adopt the less demanding morality of modernity — non-judgmentalism — or it can humble itself and kneel before the cross it has so valiantly extolled in times past. Pope Francis was correct when he said, “Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists — they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.”

Finding living faith means embracing radical freedom. Is Christianity ready for that?

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Rebecca Bynum's latest book is Allah is Dead, Why Islam is Not a Religion.

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