Why Be a Christian in 2022?
Work Eat Netflix Sleep: Finding Better Life Stories
Luke 6.39-49
Today is the first sermon in a series from a range of contributors, ‘Why Be a Christian in 2022’. I want to think this morning about some of the stories we live by. Many of you will have grown up on Margaret Mahy’s classic Lion in the Meadow story. It tells the story of a little boy whose playtime in the garden is interrupted by a lion. He runs inside fearfully to tell his mum, but his mum tells him he’s making up stories. Eventually, she gives him a matchbox, promising that it contains a baby dragon, who will grow up to be a big dragon, and chase the lion away.
Before long the boy and the lion rush back inside, frightened of the big dragon that’s just grown out of the matchbox:
'But there wasn't a real dragon,' said the mother.
'It was just a story I made up.'
'It turned out to be true after all,' said the little boy.
'You should have looked in the matchbox first.'
'That is how it is,' said the lion. 'Some stories are true and some aren't...'
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Easy to get defensive in a society like ours that’s “spiritual” but not “religious”.
- If we are religious, can end up feeling like the odd ones out, the weirdoes who’ve hitched our lives to some arcane story, when everyone else is quite happily living without any apparent commitment to any story at all
Two responses to that
- First, NZ is an outlier in how irreligious it is. You can see that in this chart from the World Values Survey, where we’re out on a limb with the Scandanavians and others
- Second, it’s easy to overlook that everyone’s got a story. Whether they know it or not, admit it or not, all of us are shaped by and influenced by multiple stories about the way the world is.
- Big obvious stories like the Christian story, or subtler, less obvious ones that we may be unaware of. Stories of nationhood, of family expectation, of economics etc.
- I’ll come back to these in a moment
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One of my favourite movies of all time, Wings of Desire, is kind of light on story. It’s a highly impressionistic, pretty artsy German movie. Some might even call it pretentious. I lent it to the German-speaking residents of Ramsey House flat last year, and I think they lasted 15 minutes, ahem. Let’s call it an acquired taste
- It’s mostly “about” two angels who are guardians of the City of Berlin in the 1980s.
- Angels move unseen among the Berliners, eavesdropping on their thoughts, passing on unseen “spiritual” encouragement, but unable to interact in any material way
One of the angels’ favourite places to lurk is the Library
- In the library, we meet this old guy, an exceedingly enigmatic character, who seems to be an undying embodiment of Homer
- Yep, the ancient Greek poet, Homer, creator of the Iliad and the Odyssey
- And the Homer character has amazing monologues about, well, storytelling.
- Here’s one that he speaks while flicking through a book of photographs about WWII.
My heroes are no longer warriors and kings
But the things of peace…
So far no one has succeeded in singing
an epic of peace
…
Should I give up now?
If I give up
then humanity will lose its storyteller
And if humanity loses its storyteller
it will lose its childhood…
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
It’s my conviction that God has given the Christian story to humanity to be the great epic of peace. But the very nature of epics is that they need to be told and lived from generation to generation. If humanity loses its epics, it loses its childhood. And in the 21C West, listeners who are willing to come to listen to this story like little children (even as they are called to grow into wise, ethical decision makers) – such listeners are in short supply.
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Many of you will know the famous description of post-modernity that comes from the French theorist, Jean Francois Lyotard.
- The post-modern condition, he wrote, is characterised by a certain “incredulity towards metanarratives”
- That is, from the mid-late 20C onwards, Western culture particularly has been marked by a decline in people taking seriously big stories about the world, or being willing to live by them, whether that’s Christianity, liberalism, Marxism…
But… just because most people don’t align with the big stories any more, doesn’t mean there are no stories
- Instead, there’s an explosion, fragmentation, pick-and-mix clash of stories and agenda, both explicit and hidden
- We all know this in our lives, and all around us
- And you’ll know many of the stories on offer
- I want to offer all-too-brief comment on four of the many, and suggest why our best hope is to remain rooted, grounded in the living epic of peace that is the gospel
- Or, in the metaphor Jesus used in our gospel reading, to be like people who dig down when building a foundation, and lay their foundations on rock
1. The story of godless scientism
2. The story of consumerism
3. The therapeutic moralistic deist story
4. The story of conspiracy or victimhood
1. Godless scientism
This story maybe has less currency than it did a few years back. There was a time when Richard Dawkins, for example, was in the news every other week, though that’s waned a little. Still, I think many people have been deeply influenced by the account of the world he’s given
- The story of godless scientism is that existence, and life within it, are pretty much a happy accident.
- Further, scientism holds that existence can be explained purely in terms of how things came about, the process by which they came into existence
- But to ask any why questions, questions about why they came about, or about their purpose or goal – scientism views such questions as nonsensical
- For scientism, purpose and meaning are purely what we ascribe to them
Thus, two representative quotes from Dawkins
“Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense” (The Selfish Gene, Ch 10)
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” (River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life)
Now, when it comes to the “how” questions, we’d all recognise that science has an amazing amount to teach us. (Although, non-expert that I am, I understand that Dawkins’ own view of biology is beginning to look dated. E.g. there appears to be a lot more cooperation in biology than he was prepared to admit). But, in terms of the “why” questions, Christian faith tells a fundamentally different story to scientism.
- Scientism can have no real explanation for why we are so driven as humans to ask purpose questions, why we feel (sometimes against all apparent evidence) that there is a story to our existence
- Take the despicable events going on in Ukraine this week
- Scientism can’t on its own terms stand back and say: No, this rapacious greed and callous disregard for life are wrong
- And wrong, not just as a breach of the social contract between nations, but existentially, categorically wrong
Just in case any of us are tempted to get too smug about the Christian story, it’s good to pause at this point and remember what scientism is most afraid of.
- Dawkins’ fear is people refusing to think
- “I am against religion, because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world”.
- Now, historically, that’s just not true
- Many of the great pioneers in science have been motivated by religious faith of one sort or another: Boyle, Newton, Kepler, Lemaitre etc...
- But it has become true of certain Christian approaches
- Let’s not fall into the pit of losing our wonder, our spirit of inquiry
- Let’s keep striving to discover God’s truths, in the endless quest that makes us human.
- (That’s all I‘ll say, but if you are unsure about the science/religion interface, check out the videos and articles at www.faraday.cam.ac.uk or the American www.biologos.org. You could start with the paper by Peter Harrison on Religion and the Rise of Science.)
2. The Consumerist Story
The consumerist story goes pretty easily with the godless scientism story.
- It’s pretty ubiquitous and familiar
- And it’s pretty boring, so I won’t say much about it
- Suffice to say that, if humanity is just a meaningless blip in the history of matter, then let’s make it a fun blip
- Let’s find our meaning in the stuff we acquire and consume
- Let’s amuse ourselves to death with entertainment, fashion labels and brands
- I think most of us know this isn’t enough
- When I was a student at Victoria, I used to walk each day past some big graffiti beneath the Rec Centre: Work, Eat, TV, Sleep
- Put so starkly, we want to revolt against the life that describes
- And we know in our bones, too, that it’s morally wrong.
- We know unchecked consumption is trashing the planet.
- We’ve seen The Story of Stuff.
- We know that the corporations are getting rich while the poor are not
- And we know that our addiction to entertainment, screens is not making anyone happy
- Matthew will provide you with any number of graphs about how the rise of Facebook and Instagram is correlated with the rise in teenage depression, especially among girls
- That graph is for the USA, but I’m pretty sure he can put his hands on an NZ one
- But it’s not just enough to notice this
- The truth is that the corporations are smart and strong, and the algorithms telling us to buy are powerful
- We need other, better stories than the consumer story if we are to resist them
- To resist the algorithms, we need to take our compass from Jesus, not Jeff Bezos
- We need someone to speak forceful, anti-consumerist stories into our lives: “Give to everyone who asks you”
- We need role models like St Francis and Dorothy Day, people who thrived on having little, not Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner
- But we’ll only get these bearings if we choose our story wisely.
- As an interview with Stanley Hauerwas puts it
- “Being a Christian gives you something to do,” he says. “It means your life is not just one goddamned thing after another.” Unlike, that is, the empty and formless individualism of secular modernity — whose adherents are damned to a Hell resembling a vast mall where big-screen monitors show bored shoppers military conflicts in far-off places.
3. Therapeutic Moralistic Deism
“Therapeutic Moralistic Deism” is a term that comes from the 2005 work of two American sociologists, to describe the beliefs of 21C American teens. I think the beliefs they describe aren’t that remote from what many NZers hold to. In outline:
1. There is a benevolent God who watches over us
2. God wants people to be nice to each other
3. The central goal of life is to be happy, and to feel good about myself
4. I don’t really need God in my life, unless it’s to help me solve my problems
Now, on the plus side, maybe this cluster of beliefs partly arises because of a reaction against the limits of scientism and consumerist materialism.
But the problem – it’s a pretty thin story. It can’t really shake the consumer paradigm, if Witchery clothes, Nike sneakers, and iPhones are what I think makes me happy.
Nor does it have the power to change me. What I really need is to be confronted with a story that shows me a true reflection of myself, not a Photoshopped one. I need to be shown who I am in both my belovedness and my brokenness, my rich status as someone made in the image of God, and (ouch!) my state as a self-centred sinner in rebellion against God.
Otherwise, I will just find moral superiority in looking at the speck of sawdust in my sister’s eye (v. 41), or my flatmate’s eye, or my wife’s eye. I will have no reason to learn about the plank in my own eye, because that might hurt my feelings.
What I need is the God revealed to me in Jesus, who puts his finger on my hypocrisy, and through his death and resurrection sends the power of his Spirit to do something about it.
4. Stories of Victimhood and Conspiracy
Only this week have I thought it worth saying something about this. And it’s because I spent some time at the cathedral this week, at the bishop’s request, talking to protestors. In the ones I talked to, I was most reminded of Matthew 9/36, “sheep without a shepherd”.
It struck me that Christians have to face the fact that some of our number have taken on all manner of outrageous stories. I can say, “the Christian story has the answers”, but what if some of those owning the story are claiming it comes with all sorts of corollaries.
(I should clarify here that I’m not talking about the narrow issue of mandates, where there are legitimate questions to answer but more the cluster of other views that’s cropped up around the protests)
There’s a famous quote, allegedly from GK Chesterton, “When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything”.
- I think that describes some of what’s on display at Parliament at present. Without a good story to believe in, people will believe in all sorts of nonsense.
- But, it is tricky, because plenty of those at Parliament are our fellow Christians. We are ontologically bound together by baptism.
- And it would appear, baptism doesn’t save us from outlandish conspiracy theories
- So how do we draw a clear marker?
- The gospel had some pointers in what Jesus says about a tree and its fruit (vv. 43-45). A true story will lead to good fruit.
- Is the version of the gospel we’re following rooted in Jesus’ peace, and leading to truth, to love, to kindness, and dare I say it, respect for the law?
- Or is it rooted in fear, and issuing in fear?
- Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, I have overcome the world” (John 16.33)
- Whereas many of his followers say, “Be very afraid, the world is out to get us”.
- Is our stance towards the world driven by a fearful Christian narrative, an antagonistic one, or a hopeful one, an epic of peace?
Further, I think it’s OK to stand firmly in the mainline tradition at this point, over against fringier readings of Scripture, and to declare them as fringe. There’s a whole sermon here!
- but briefly, let’s not be ashamed of the long tradition in theology of wrestling with Church-State relations.
- Let’s not assume everything the state does is malicious (Romans 13.1 – obviously qualifications needed)
And let’s hold onto the Anglican conviction, stated by Richard Hooker, that we are required to read Scripture, informed by the church’s tradition of reading scripture, and in ways that are reasonable.
- If someone’s reading of Scripture tells you that Jacinda is a front for the Masonic Lodge, and that the vaccine makes you magnetic, that’s not a conclusion reasonably to be drawn from reading Scripture in light of the Church’s tradition
5. The Christian Story
Finally, and too briefly, the Christian story.
“Firmly I believe and truly”, that in this story God gives us a true story to inhabit, a story that is a way out of the arbitrary purposelessness of scientism, the planet trashing selfishness of consumerism, or the narcissistic solipsism of therapeutic moralistic deism.
As Walter Brueggemann summarises it, it is instead the story of a God who
creates the world in love
redeems the world in suffering
and will consummate the world in joyous well-being
It’s the same story we heard in our reading from Romans, where Paul sketches a history that is not pointless, or godforsaken, but a history that has gone astray, until God enters it in the person and story of Jesus to put it back on track.
And a key way God does that is by summoning people to enter this story of restoration, to take on what Paul called “the obedience of faith” (v. 5). That’s the story you’re invited into.
If we’re finding our life stories less than satisfactory, too much Work Eat Netflix Sleep, it just might be that we because we are letting the other stories shape us, and we need to learn again the story of sacrifice.
Lent is coming. It’s a good time to resolve to put down our smartphones and to pick up our bibles; to drink deeply and wrestle boldly with the difficult, confronting story of a holy God who wants us to live not for material comfort, but for him.
Lent is a good time to put down our self-reliance, and our sense of victimhood, to still our distracted hearts, and to ask this God’s Spirit of Transformation to give us courage: courage to lay down our lives for the world God loves, and for the story of joyous wellbeing which he is weaving through it. Will you do it?
