Book Comment: If the Church Were Christian, Chapter 2, Part 1

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.

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

CHAPTER 2: Affirming Our Potential Would Be More Important Than Condemning Our Brokenness

Pastor Philip Gulley says,”I am weary of the church’s efforts to manipulate and shame me.” He believes that the church is a shame-based culture which uses embarrassment and disgrace for control of its followers. “For God to be good, we must be sinners in need of redemption.” This elevates “God at the expense of humanity.“

In his excellent (I highly recommend it) book, After You Believe, Bishop N.T. Wright talks about the type of religion against which Pastor Gulley is in revulsion: a Rules-Based religion in which you are saved by grace and then immediately go back under the Law, trying to live up to your new position as “saved.” People in this type of faith live in constant dread of inadvertently stepping out of line, of any small lapse of protocol and watch other people’s behavior for lapses which they can point out. They think God has a little scorecard He keeps on each of them.

Pastor Gulley calls this a mental illness. Bishop Wright wouldn’t say that, but he would agree, as I do, that it is a perversion, a total misreading of the purpose of the Christian life.

Pastor Gulley insists that salvation is not about “going to Heaven” but is about how we live here and now.  Well, salvation ultimately results in eternal physical life in a place prepared by the Lord (look it up), but Pastor Gulley does have a point.

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

Book Comment: After You Believe

"Keep getting old as long as you can."

Kris Kristofferson (b. 1936, Texas) 

Country music singer, songwriter, 

Golden Gloves boxer, Rhodes Scholar, 

U.S. Army captain

Kristoffer Kristian Kristofferson (yes, that's his real name) expresses the aim of most people for their lives.  Christians have a different perspective but we haven't always ourselves really understood it.  Many still don't.

In his book, After You Believe.  Why Christian Character Matters, N. T. Wright, the former Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, asks the question of what you do after you become a Christian.  Do you just wait to die and go to Heaven?  Does it matter once you are "saved?"  Isn't what we're really concerned with the "sweet by-and-by?"  Wright thinks it matters very much what we do in the "interim," and he clearly shows that Jesus and Paul thought so to.

Wright speaks of two approaches many Christians have adopted: 1. A Rules Mentality,  which in essence places the believer into legalism and ritualism, and 2. Spontaneity, going with what "feels right," since we are no longer under the Law.  This in essence places the believer into antinomianism.

Bishop Wright says neither of these approaches is correct.  Our duty is to develop Christian character and become who are intended to be in Christ.  The Kingdom of God is in the world now, and we are citizens of that Kingdom.  In the next life, in the Kingdom, we are to be kings and priests; since the Kingdom is here now, we are to begin being kings and priests now, fully revealing the image of God.  He call this the development of Christian virtue.

Wright is an Anglican and Anglicans say that they are "protestant, yet catholic."  I am very Protestant and I get a little squirmy when Wright explains things in more "catholic" ways, but what he's really talking about are sanctification and holiness and he is exactly correct.

Under the leading of the Holy Spirit, we are to experience what Paul calls "the renewing of your minds."
Classical pagan virtue found many of the Christian attitudes to be puzzling, especially those involving self-denial and self-sacrifice.  By practicing the Christian virtues (love, faith, hope, charity, self-giving, looking away from oneself, etc) under the leadership of the Holy Spirit (assuming the Mind of Christ) we gradually grow into them so that they become second nature.  Once they become second nature to us, we will not have to stop and decide how to act when the fecal material really hits the spinning blades.  We will know how to act.