Dan's Thoughts

Vision #25 - September 25, 2006

A company whose employees do not purchase or use its products will not endure. Such employees reveal through their choices that they do not believe in the product of the company they represent. Neither will a church, a denomination or a Christian believer endure if their beliefs and actions are at odds with the Christianity they profess. Whatever our words and sentiments, we affirm or deny our faith by our choices, how we treat others and by where we place our passion and attention.

One of the greatest books I ever read was called, The Beginning of Wisdom by Leon Kass. It is essentially a commentary on the book of Genesis but what a commentary! In it, Kass, explains how the Hebrew concept of covenant implies a very different view of life than that of either the ancient Greeks or of modern Americans. As I read this book, I became ever more convinced of how secular American Christians have become and how this secularization has impoverished our faith.

As a rule, our worship services allow us to more easily shed tears about Jesus than our grandparents felt the freedom to do. I think however, we understand him less. When church work consists of a Sunday morning affirmation of the Sermon on the Mount but of a work week affirmation of Wall Street and Madison Avenue, we rarely notice the disconnect. Even Christians call the secular life of our culture, “the real world.” We don’t stop to think that if the secular life of modern America is “the real world” then spiritual life is necessarily the “mythological world.” Spirituality thus becomes “what I wish were true,” while “the real world” becomes “what really is true.” In such a climate, spirituality becomes sentimentalism. We may enjoy weeping about the sweetness of the gospel story but when we leave the worship service we tend to interpret life by the same thought patterns and philosophies as nonbelievers.

Kass demonstrates the impossibility of claiming covenant while living like everyone else. He claims that covenant is about learning to grow up, learning to manage one’s emotions, finances, and sexuality according to divine teaching and, most importantly about transmitting the awe of God and the teachings of scripture to our children and grandchildren. If he is right, then a sentimental Sunday worship which excludes subjects like study, responsibility and maturity are parodies of covenant. Such a definition of worship is actually a way of avoiding the truth: that the way of the world and the way of covenant are very different one from another.

Kass, who is a Jew, presses us to acknowledge that becoming a believer involves choosing a very different way of viewing the world and of experiencing life. In affirming this truth, Genesis lays a foundation upon which all the rest of scripture rests and upon which all other scriptural truths emerge. We can move on to other revelations until we get this one right: we are called to be a people who live by different principles than the world around us.

If we are believers (and especially if we manage and lead churches,) we are obligated to mold our lives and our actions according to what we claim to be the Word of God. Of course, to do that requires that we know the Word of God. That means we have to study and reflect upon Holy Scripture. Otherwise, we are trying to market a product that we don’t believe actually works.

Perhaps this is one reason so many church workers experience burnout. It is hard to confess one thing while living another. Sooner or later, you feel like a fake.

Dan