I came across this video at the The Ten Minute Bible Hour of the proprietor, Matt Whitman, giving his de-conversion, and back, story, and at the end of the short video he critiques the now common deconstruction stories, as I discussed in my last post. Growing up a Christian he thought he had this whole Christian thing nailed down, until he didn’t. Around the age of 29 having moved away from his faith, he made an incredible discovery: Christianity wasn’t about him! He did something radical in response to his doubt: he actually read the Bible! From the beginning. At about the six minute mark he describes the discovery that brought him back:
The plot of the bible can’t be the improvement of people’s behavior, and the increased accuracy of people’s thinking about God. It’s gotta be the story of God redeeming things that are broken and messed up, creation, people, everything. That’s a completely different religion.
Completely different than the Christianity he grew up with, and rejected. In fact, he says he’s still an atheist regarding that God, but now his faith is in a God who is actually God! It’s all about God, not man! We fit in his story, he doesn’t fit in ours. Big difference.
His thoughts capture why people so easily pervert Christianity, and turn it into just another law religion, instead the gospel religion it is. When I say this I mean a religion where our acceptance before God is determined by our performance, and not by another’s performance. If, as Paul says, Christ is “our righteousness, holiness and redemption,” that pretty much says it all. There is nothing we can do to improve our standing before God. Even more, the word translated holiness in the NIV is better translated by the ESV as sanctification, or the process of becoming more holy. Think about that. We’re not only justified before God because of Jesus, he is also somehow for us the process of us becoming more holy. Paul puts redemption third because Christ paid the ransom our sin deserved, so he could be both our justification and sanctification.
Christians have a much easier time accepting the former than the latter. In fact, most Christians have never even conceived of Jesus being our sanctification. Isn’t that up to us? Isn’t that our decision? A matter of our will? Nope, not according to Paul. It took me a long time to understand this. As a young Christian I knew I was saved from hell, justified, but I thought my walk with God was determined by my obedience, or my practice of spiritual disciplines, or how sold out I was to Jesus, or put another way, I thought it was all about me, me, me! Does that mean our decisions and wills are not a part of our sanctification? Of course they are! Dumb question. It’s simply that our decisions and will are bound up in the salvation Christ purchased for us on the cross. Properly understood they are now driven by love and affection for God, and not fear that he won’t accept me unless I try really, really hard.
Coming from a Reformed, Calvinist perspective, this is old news to me, but Reformed Christians have their own problems. Our tendency is to think that Christianity is all about “the increased accuracy of people’s thinking about God.” When Matt said that I realized that’s what has frustrated me about many in the Reformed camp for so long. That doesn’t mean this same malady isn’t found among Catholics, or Wesleyans, or Arminians, etc. Often it’s more of a personality thing. Some people just have to be right! Some people just don’t do nuance or ambiguity well. It’s human nature, sinful human nature. Maybe more of these kind of people naturally gravitate toward a tradition of Christianity that focuses on right thinking.
I think my discomfort with this is why I’ve come to appreciate I Corinthians 8:2 so much, where Paul says, “Anyone who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” I call this epistemological humility, which is appropriate because we are finite creatures and know very little about everything, including God. Most people, Christian or not, rarely contemplate how little they actually know; microscopic would be far too generous. That’s why Christianity above all is about trust in our Savior God. Full stop. Everything else, including our doctrine and living, flows out of that. Nobody gets to heaven because they have the right or most accurate theology, just as nobody gets there because they’ve obeyed the law. The context of Paul’s call to epistemological humility is love, for God first, ourselves, and others. If we understand that, we’ll understand “the story of God redeeming things that are broken and messed up.”
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