Book Comment: If the Church Were Christian, Chapter 3

Our old friend, Quaker pastor Philip Gulley returns.

If you are joining this book review series mid-stream , you can read the comment from the beginning by going to the LABELS section following the last post on this page and clicking on PHILIP GULLEY

Gully, Philip, If the Church were Christian.  Rediscovering the Values of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010)

CHAPTER  3: Reconciliation Would be Valued Over Judgment

Pastor Gulley in this chapter is reacting to stereotypical thinking, which sadly,  too many Christians and Christian churches have traditionally fallen into.    He describes this stereotype as the view of God in which He is thin-skinned, always just before erupting into violent anger, and deeply concerned with trivia like whether or not you argued with your sister.

God is easily offended and you had better do something about it.  He has to be appeased or He will lash out at you.  So you stand in line and confess your sins.  You say some prayers you have memorized and hope God will forgive you … this time.

This is just for your little daily sins!  What about your big ones, and what about THE BIG ONE, the one you were born with?  For that one, God can only forgive us if He is satisfied by the gruesome death of Jesus.  Pastor Gulley call this a “dreadful view of God,” and he is right.

Gulley charges that “appeasement theology” was used to give the Church (I think he largely means the Catholic Church) power over its followers and to make itself rich. He points out that the Roman Catholic Church once had a list of financial penalties to be paid for absolution of specific sins, and he quotes Johann Tetzel, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”   Pastor Gulley is correct that this was an abomination.  Thankfully, that is in the past. (The Church, of course, is the entire body of Christian believers of every denomination.)

Gulley insists that what Jesus wants from us is that we sacrifice our ego and pride.  He is correct.  The very essence of sin  (a word the modern world hates to hear or discuss) is choosing one’s own will rather than the will of God.

Where I, and orthodox Christian theology, differ from Pastor Gulley, who is a Universalist (everyone will be saved), is indeed over the Atonement. He denies the need for the Atonement.

Pastor Gulley’s understanding of the doctrine of the Atonement is a caricature.  The wrath of God is real, but it is the result of His utter holiness. The Bible speaks of Him; Holy Holy Holy.   He will not tolerate imperfection because He is perfect.  That sort of leaves us out. But, because he is Love, He Himself solved the problem we could never solve.  He accepted into Himself all the imperfections, all the sin, all the evil.  It killed Him.  Then, He stood up.

The picture which Pastor Gulley paints as that of the traditional Church, he rightly rejects.  It has, sadly, been the one which many in organized Christian religion have presented to the world over the centuries.  Think of Jonathan Edward’s sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.”

To many today, it is the only “gospel” they know.  It is an insult to the true gospel (εὐαγγέλιον , the good or true news/message).  No wonder so many have rejected it.  Listen to one of them , Spanish film director, Elio Quiroga, quoted in Fangoria Magazine (#296, Sept 2010, p. 34);  “All of us Spaniards have been inculcated with this dark, guilty, ominous way of seeing life propagated by the Roman Catholic Church.  All this Catholic shit colors the whole of Spanish society, like a storm cloud, permanently over their heads.”  They think the same thing about Baptists, and Lutherans, and Methodists, and Russian Orthodox, and all the rest of us.  In Scandinavia, they even call us morkemen (“men of darkness.”)

God is turned into an unreasonable  bloodthirsty monster who demands sacrifices so maybe He won’t wipe us all out.    If we’re good.

Where in this caricature is the cause of the joy which enabled Paul and Silas to sing hymns while manacled to the wall in a jail? (Acts 16:25)  What in this enabled Paul to say that we don’t have a spirit of fear? (2 Timothy 1:7)

Pastor Gulley says that the Christian scriptures, which he denies are God’s inerrant word, justify both compassion (1 Corinthians 13) and cruelty (Galatians 5:12).  The Galatians quotation was just Paul using sarcasm to express his point.

My assessment: Pastor Gulley is correct that a culture of “recrimination and judgment “ has too often been the emphasis of conservative Christians.  Fire and brimstone to scare shaking sinners into faith.  The problem is that fire and brimstone, which is a biblical concept, can only produce fear.  Fear cannot produce the proper relationship with God: joy, praise, love, sanctification, holiness.

A climate of fear misses the point.    It really is fearsome to be alienated from God because Hell is real.  But, the true biblical meaning of the word “fear” in relation to God is positive: respect, admiration, astonishment, “awestruckness.”

The statement that “God is Love” is correct, but totally insufficient.  God is action, He is movement, He acts, He purposes.  The three Persons of the Trinity are united as One in their love for one another and we are given power to become sons of God, to share in that unity of love.

The false dichotomy between the fearsome “God of the Old Testament” and the loving “God of the New Testament” comes from our failure to understand the true nature of God.

The sacrifice which God demands is our ego, our pride, our self-sufficiency. We need to learn our place.

The paradox is this … once we learn our place as creatures created to praise, worship, and glorify the Creator, we are given the power to become priests and kings, and as C.S. Lewis points out, we are made sons (and daughters) of God, on the road to our ultimate destiny of absolute perfection, of partaking of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

This is part of a continuing chapter-by- chapter response to this book.  More to come.