Chris helps peel off a major cultural blinder for American Evangelicals in this piece. Here's to joy, to holy discomfort, to the upside-down gospel. -Paul
In his remarkable new book, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense, Francis Spufford takes a fresh swing at atheist rhetoric. Spufford illustrates his frustrations by summarizing comments about a famous bus advertisement seen around London a couple of years ago. The billboard read: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
I work with high school students and hear some variation of this all the time. After all, life must be enjoyed—and God puts a real damper on that endeavor, don't you think? I just want to live life! Spufford's objection to the sentiment is aimed at its presuppositions. "Enjoyment is lovely," he writes, "but enjoyment is just one emotion."
What about the other emotions we feel like pain, joy, exhaustion, humiliation, tenderness, and grief? he asks. What to do then? And even more to the point, what about the people who have very little control over "enjoying" their life? Imagine the poor, disabled, and enslaved watching that bus billboard go by: Enjoy my life? How?
Spufford's point is simple: enjoyment is not the purpose of life. It can't be—because not all people have control over the quality of their life. Some lack resources while others lack physical or mental abilities to do so. Spufford sees this instance of atheistic rhetoric as privileged, upper-middle class, and largely white. Privileged, in a word—like what Ernest Becker calls the "bourgeois" nature of the scientific community.
Bourgeois buzzwords
For a long time I saw this disconnection from life as it is as just another reason to see the gospel of Jesus Christ as supreme over contradictory thinkers—not because it is more sophisticated or reasonable, but because it is more powerful, more accessible to the whole of the complex world we live in.
But I'm growing to realize that the same issue I take with the atheists—privileged disconnection—is becoming the new direction of popular American Evangelicalism. We are becoming inundated with the same bourgeois blasé.
You hear it in the marketing, in the buzzwords of blog posts and conference lingo.
You hear it in the marketing, in the buzzwords of blog posts and conference lingo. In hip circles it's couched in tidbits irresistible to Millennials—like promises for how Jesus will help "your story" (usually, "living your story" well includes the really costly aspects of discipleship—setting goals, developing better habits, etc.) You've probably also heard a bit about "living the life God always meant for you to live."
Perhaps, as Rebekah Lyons put it at the recent IF: Gathering: "Is the life I lead the life that longs to live in me?" Jon Acuff, the hilarious mind behind "Stuff Christians Like," wrote the national bestseller Quitter (about his "true story of cultivating my dream job") in order to tell us that "It's time to close the gap between your day job and your dream job. It's time to be a Quitter." In megachurch pastor Steven Furtick's bestseller Sun Stand Still, he says: "If you're tired of being ordinary, it's time to dream bigger."
This is what we're selling to ourselves.
What the what?
There's this great moment in Dave Eggers' book What is the What? where an American Peace Corps worker is telling Sudanese refugees about life in America. He has to explain escalators to them. The refugees are puzzled. Are they for the handicapped? Why do the stairs have to move? Well, the Peace Corps worker thinks, I suppose because we got tired of climbing them. How would this explanation sound to a group of young men who walked for 6 months across the desert just to find freedom?
Sometimes our "solutions" and mechanisms for living our "best story" or a "good life" simply can't translate to people with vastly different experiences than us.
Sometimes our "solutions" and mechanisms for living our "best story" or a "good life" simply can't translate to people with vastly different experiences than us. At best they sound silly. At worst they are alienating, exclusive. When reading some of what our Christian publishers put out or hearing some of our conference speakers talk, I wonder sometimes what would happen if a homeless widow read it, or an impoverished immigrant heard it—how would they react?
Tired of "being ordinary?" "Cultivating my dream?" "Living a life worthy of a good story?" It could be dizzying. What's wrong with ordinary? And what dream is there other than being alive? There are people—many people—who not only do not even have the fundamental resources to accomplish these things, but they also don't see the benefit in doing any of it.
We do not live in a world where all people can "make" their life. We live in a world with true victims, people who are a part of generational sin and systemic injustice. What is their solution? To dream bigger dreams? To "live a better story?" To buy some curriculum or book for $13.95?
Life, for so many people on the earth, is ordinary, routine, simple, and difficult. And as I have learned, the people living such lives possess wisdom and power that the privileged do not. "Blessed are the poor," Jesus said, "for theirs is the kingdom of God!" The religious screw-ups and the spiritual misfits possess something that rich, ruling men have trouble grabbing a hold of: a world where God is in control and we trust him—that is, a life in his kingdom. We must remember that all of these messages, while not necessarily sinful, are still not the answer to human flourishing. Nice these words may be—they are not the Word, the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Us poor bourgeoisie
If our message only makes sense to the upper-middle class, we need to go back to the teachings of Jesus and rethink some things.
If our message only makes sense to the upper-middle class, we need to go back to the teachings of Jesus and rethink some things. Publishers understand that these words will sell because they are directed towards the upper-middle class, those who care about these questions and have the money to spend on the "answers" they claim to provide. But this is not the gospel, is it? Do you see much of Jesus' words in these words?
The gospel is not an announcement to live a better story (whatever that means anyways) or about becoming an extraordinary person. The world desires us to do things that are quick and astonishing, but I think the Sermon on the Mount wants us to do ordinary interactions differently over a long period of time: turn the other cheek, share our coat, and help someone carry something.
This is life inside God's kingdom. We are not saved into a more awesome life, in fact, we are more likely to be saved into increased suffering and humiliation, which may never see resolve. We are not promised a "better story" with a great ending when the credits role. Some of us will die without being known by many, some will suffer at the hands of injustice, others will never be healed of a disease. Did these lives fail? Are these not acceptable to the modern American church? "But many of the last will be first, and the first will be last," Jesus said. In the eyes of Jesus, who lives at the end of the world as well as the beginning, these may be more eternally successful, living a grander story than any of us simply because they understood how little they were in comparison to the Father.
As Jesus inaugurated his kingdom, it was clear that the "bourgeois" of society would have difficulty hearing it. The poor, the lame, and the marginalized had an easier time with the message and embraced the reality of the kingdom of the heavens with great excitement and desperation. Does our rhetoric elicit the same response?
If our sermons, books, church experiences, and conferences simply stroke the ego and puff up the privileged, are we really announcing the gospel of the kingdom of God?
If our sermons, books, church experiences, and conferences simply stroke the ego and puff up the privileged, are we really announcing the gospel of the kingdom of God? We must return to a gospel for all people, everywhere: a whole gospel for the whole world, one that blesses the poor and gives woes to the rich and, in so doing, saves both.
Chris Nye is a pastor and writer living in Portland, OR, with his wife, Ali. Connect on Twitter: @chrisnye
