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There is a Grace that
knows no bounds,
Few are the Christians who
dare to go there.
So much
they know their bounds,
thus, so little knowledge of
the no-bounds God.
They follow, they say, a man named Christ,
But have denied the wideness that
spawned his dissident Way.
—Brian K. Wilcox
“All seek him, not explicitly, yet really, whenever they desire that the ultimate human experience of radical meaning of their being, of their being subject to death and of God’s ultimate acceptance become manifest in their history, and thus wholly present and finally confirmed. To this degree, insofar as we are concerned, every man who is faithful to his conscience is an ‘advent’ Christian, a Christian who looks forward to the one man in whom the real issue … and God’s pledge have become one in one person and so have become manifest as ultimately valid. As Christians we have the courage to believe that what is here sought, has been found. It is Jesus of Nazareth….”
—Christian Theologian Carl Rahner,
“In Search of a Short Formula of the Christian Faith”
“In my view Christian faith should at least include a readiness to acknowledge that God somehow uses the redemptive elements outside Christianity to prevent human history from going completely bankrupt, …
“A conclusion we may draw is that throughout human history there are men and women who have gone about doing the king’s business without being aware that they are in the king’s service.”
—C. S. Song, The Cross and the Lotus
“What if I were to see a Papist, Arian [group that denied that Christ is of the same essence as God the Father, but was created by God], a Socinian [group that denied the deity of Christ] casting out devils? If I did, I could not forbid even him without convicting myself of bigotry. Yea, if it could be supposed that I should see a Jew, a deist, or a Turk [a Muslim] doing the same, were I to forbid him either directly or indirectly I should be no better than a bigot still. … … whatever the instrument be [whomever of any faith or no faith], acknowledge the finger of God, … defend his character and his mission … enlarge his sphere of action.”
—John Wesley, “A Caution Against Bigotry”
This “devotional” might would appear devotional to some persons, but to those John Wesley identifies as Christian bigots, this devotional would not be devotional or pleasant. If someone is among those John Wesley would call a bigot—We could ask whether we should speak of a Christian bigot, rather than only bigot. Also, bigot is a strong word, but it says exactly what John Wesley meant it to say, and I mean it as he did-.
This statement that I write is not to those Wesley would call bigots, even bigots who propagate their prejudice and hate inside churches and train up children and grandchildren to be bigots, again to use the identification of John Wesley. I write, rather, to persons who, like this writer, grieve at the defamation of the name of Christ and Christianity by so-called Christians-God will be the judge, not our opinion of such-who would definitely call me liberal and heretic for this statement, and I would receive the label with gratitude, for speaking the truth. This statement is not to those who have taught an identification of Christianity with a Christian America and condemned to an eternal hell all persons who do not explicitly confess Christ with the mouth. Indeed, such a gross and sad reduction of Christ and confession is herein stated for what it is.
But, let us not lay the prime blame at the feet of laity, let us lay the prime blame at the feet of the clergy who have themselves, due to being stuck in acculturated religion and mentalist thinking, have lived inside little religious boxes and colored the Immensity of God inside a literalistic and reductionistic interpretation of Scripture and tradition and, thus, denied both experience and common sense. However, they call this reductionism by the word faith and use faith as an excuse to believe in the most nonsense teachings, and teachings that betray basic common sense, too. No wonder many outside the churches see us Christians as basically way behind the times and dumb, laying our brains aside when we enter our churches and calling some blind faith, which is not true faith, by the word faith.
When Jesus called his disciples, did he say, “Confess me”? Or did he say, “Follow me”? Then, is not the following itself confession in action without one word of confession by mouth. Some confess Christ with the mouth, but they do not follow Christ with the heart and have no intent to. They seek to confine Christ and own Him, as well as those who serve Him, though they parade words and rites of piety. They are the ones that the prophet Isaiah speaks about, in Isaiah 29.13 (ESV):
And so the Lord says, "These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. And their worship of me amounts to nothing more than human laws learned by rote…
They have made the Christ in the image of a socialized, acculturated institutional church, rather than shaping the institutional church in the image of Christ.
Are these confessors of Christ truly Christian? Some do not confess Christ with the mouth, and many of these may belong to other religious faiths or no acknowledged religious faith, but they prove they follow Christ by the spirit of their heart and, thus, they are implicitly trusting Christ as the Word, as the Way to the Father. They manifest the only spirit of holiness, and that spirit of holiness is always and everywhere the Spirit of Christ, for there can be no other source of godliness.— That which is Christlike must come from Christ, otherwise there is another source of Christlikeness other than Christ, and not even the most liberal Christian would admit to such a thing.— While not saying “Christ,” they live as Christ taught, much more than many who say the name, and, thus, they prove they love the Way and Christ more than these who know Christ by a name “Christ.” Are these not true Christians who truly know Christ without the name Christ?
All this is to ask, “Is being a Christian defined by the mouth or the heart?” We who claim scriptural Christianity can read our Bibles, and the overwhelming evidence is that being a Christian pertains to the heart, as the seat of will and wisdom and affection, and the mouth proves nothing, indeed, often it only proves that the head has been filled with ideas and custom, while the heart has never been born from above through the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, how can such persons know who is truly a Christian? They cannot, for they are once born, and not born twice. But, they may act as John Wesley would call a bigot, by their relegating Christ to their mouthy confession and deny Christ and assign some hell to the truly Christlike man or woman of another wisdom tradition or simply a follower of Christ who follows Christ outside the rites of the Church. Indeed, if someone can reduce Christ to the earthly church, then, that would not be the same Christ I serve and love, and the one who has taught me the mystery of Love and Grace, beyond the bigotry I once believed in, preached, and spread through my so-called “Christian witness.” But, it was not a Christian witness, it was the witness of Christendom, the witness of those who had reduced Christ to a Western fashion of civil faith that left me empty and knowing there must be more than such prejudical and unenlightened faith, and often a so-called Christianity heartless, while claiming the love of Christ.
Did not Jesus say, “You must be born again?,” but where do we find in the Gospels that, “You must become a person who confesses Christ with words?” Do not quote Paul here, rather, go to the Gospels and listen to them. What does the Jesus of the Gospels say? Find the Beatitudes, and read them, also.
So, I am certain some readers of my writings are as saddened as I get at the pathetic “Christian religiosity” that evidences no to little true knowledge of Christ through the heart. But, this religiousness wants to fill its head with more facts about what it already thinks it knows. And, this religiousness feels itself so privileged and special to God, and the damned with the rest of the world, for in refusing an explicit faith in Christ they are deserving of hell. But, “we,” lucky folk, got born in Christian culture and inherited it, so we are just blessed to go to heaven. Again, such an arbitrary God would not be the God I serve or would serve. For how can we attribute to God bigotry that would be bigotry among us humans, or attribute good to something this God would do that would be evil by any human to do? Does attributing injustice to God make injustice justice because God did it? No.
So, to be true Christian, let us both be touched in the heart and confess Christ with the mouth, otherwise, we speak only words and deny Christ by them. Did not Christ in the Gospels say, "No one who simply confesses me with the mouth, saying 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter my Loving Sway, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven"?-Again, Christ lifts knowing Christ beyond confession of the mouth or even institutional Church, but identifies true Christianity, or true faith, with gladly doing the will of God.-Let us dare to see Christ already working, and Christianity alive, outside explicit faith in Christ. Let us dare to see, also, the spiritless, loveless, and dying so-called faith that haunts many churches and makes them places that persons are no longer attracted to in order to seek Christ.
Without a heart in love with Christ and showing it in a Christ-like life, not just a Christian religion life or a faithful to the church life, then, we are not Christian, which means we are not following Christ at all, though we mouth a creed, sing hymns, say prayers, talk of going to heaven, and speak the name of Christ. Rather, we have put up an idol in the place of the Living Christ, and we have bowed down to it. We have created from the living faith of the Living Christ a sad mimic tottering from its outmoded ideology in a rapidly changing world. And, that idol that many call Christianity, but is not Christian at all, is created in our image, the image of distorted, broken, and prejudiced humankind. And, to call a base rock a diamond makes it nothing of a diamond, even as to call something prejudicial Christianity makes it Christian.
Once upon a time some persons approached an angel in heaven. They said, “We’re confused and very concerned, and we thought you might help us.” “What is wrong?,” spoke the angel. “Well,” they said, “many of our friends who passed on are not here with us in heaven, but they were fine members of our church; they attended regularly, tithed, and were good citizens.” The angel asked, “Were they Christians?” The people replied, after looking befuddled for a moment, “Oh, yes, very fine Christians!” The angel said, “Okay, you give me the names, then I’ll go talk to the archangel who is my supervisor about this matter and report back to you.” After asking one of the archangels, the angel reported back, “Friends, the archangel said to me that they were not Christians.” The people were shocked and began telling the angel all the good the people had done and how faithful they were to their church. The angel said, “Yes, they were on the membership of a church, but not members of the Body of Christ.” “Why?,” asked the concerned friends. “Well, the archangel says a lot of Christians have been concerned about this matter of their friends whom they thought Christian being absent from here. So much so, that he had to coin a term to cover these special cases. So, he just said to me, ‘These people were not Christians, they were Christendoms.'” “What,” they inquired, “does he mean by that?” “Well, as best I can tell they were devoted to the church, but not in the Church; they were staunchly moral, but not following the teachings of Christ on loving all persons and God; they contended for ultraconservative policies in politics, including having a Christian world and state, but they reduced the name and work of Christ to their own worldview; they were a part of what came to be called the Christian religion, but they did not follow Christ who is the fountainhead of that religion; they claimed that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, but they refused to be taught anything different from what their cultural expression of 'faith' taught as truth; succinctly, they spoke the name of Christ, but did not follow Christ. So, they were not Christian, says my archangel supervisor, though they were much devoted to Christian religion.” “Then,” asked the people, “is that one reason that many of the churches are dying on earth?” “Well,” spoke the angel, “possibly. Possibly. You decide that.”
What is Christendom? Christendom is a culture wherein Christianity is the major population. This is pertaining to the word “dom,” meaning “Lord, Master.” Loosely speaking, Christendom is a culture in which Christianity, as religion, rules. Other religions are considered from wrong to inferior. This is manifested in claims for prayer in schools, which is an act of Christendom. Why? Because Christendom does not what prayer in schools, though it says it does. It is being untruthful. It does not want prayer in schools. It wants Christian prayer in schools. Many in Protestant Christendom want Protestant prayer in schools. They need, then, be honest and just say, “We want only Protestant prayer in schools, while people of Catholicism, Judaism, and all other faiths have to accept our Protestant praying.” Christendom, generally, does not support freedom of religion, it supports freedom of “our” religion.
So, how is Christendom defined in this paper? Christendom is a culture in which civil religion has become identified as Christian religion. Another way of putting it is that being a good citizen is identified with being Christian. Another way of putting it is that Christ is reduced to civil Christian faith and the faith of a particular culture, and being a good Christian is not really following Christ as much as bowing to a grotesque and blasphemous idol of political and civil ideology, but not grotesque to those who have identified Christianity with Western culture and government.
The above story affirms that much of what I have witnessed in my life in Christianity could not be convicted, if taken to court, as a movement following Christ. Rather, much so-called Christianity is civil religion, and has become the comforting drug of masses, rather than the challenging call to follow Christ through dying to our egocentricity, selfishness, and narcisstic piousness.
If you want to be a true Christian, now, you may have to be esteemed a rebel, a radical, a dissident, a nonconformist, and a liberal, even a heretic. You may have to accept that you must refuse to accept the comforts of Christendom, in order to follow Christ. Christendom is good at using labels to mark persons off as religious or spiritual lepers. To follow Christ, however, you may have to prove unfaithful to much that the “church” became in an unholy alliance with culture, you may have to be labeled one of the lepers. However, rejoice, for you are blessed to be esteemed such by a dying civil religiosity. Thank God for being so labeled and esteemed unfit. Do you want the comforts of a civil and dying faith, or the comforts of a living Christ? Let us choose Christ, even if that means losing the applause or fellowship of civil religionists.
The Christendom church is dying. Thank God! Out of the ashes of the death of civil religion, a transformed Jesus movement will arise: is already arising. This movement will not so much be “church oriented” as “mission impassioned.” Some of us are honored to accept the call, at some personal cost, to help administer the last rites of civil Christianity, which is no true or scriptural Christianity at all.
Those clinging to the ideal of Christendom, secure in their little boxes, will be very uncomfortable with the death of the Christendom church. Those who long to know Christ anew, who know, deep down, that what is now called Christianity in this nation is often little more than the vestiges of a dying myth that could not be sustained and gladly is dying, will rejoice at the fall of Christendom, even if it means the demise of many civil religionist churches, or maybe it would be better to say religionist chapels. The bridge is burning and some are still trying to save it and with it themselves. Saving it is over. It needs to die, for it has turned in on itself and followed itself and its culture, not the summons of Christ with its whole heart and for the good of all peoples.
Does not the Scripture point to this religiousness that is, thankfully, dying? Does not it speak of those "who have a form of godliness but deny the power of it"?
In Easter Season, we can pray, “Lord, do not revive the church we have come to know. Help it to die, that we might live, again as your true Christians. Give us not a revived church, give us a transformed, a new, church.”
What many of us witness as civil Christianity does not need to have a revival, it needs a burial. But, out of the loss, which can be painful, there will be the Spirit of Christ eastering a new Jesus movement, which will return us to the joy and energy of the beginnings of the early Church, before Christianity became identified with the politics of secularity and Jesus was reduced to a civil Lord being king of a monarchical kingdom. In time North Americans came to claim its land as the Holy Land, the Kingdom Land, and itself as the New Israel, and arrogated to itself a position that neither Scripture nor common sense implied was true to Christ or the Gospel. That American Christendom is dying, and the new church is breaking in with a missional drive, and that church will take in churches all the way from conservative to liberal, for mission will drive it, not dogma and not culture.
Once a Zen Buddhist said to the famed missionary to Africa, Albert Schwitzer, “We Buddhists are convinced that there is something to Christianity, but we are not sure Christians know what it is.” Christendom does not know what the essence of Christianity is. "May a renewed following of Christ arise, Oh Christ, of people who will know, and, therefore, will hasten more the burial of that which has denied the Way to the extent it followed the gods of the culture of civil religiousness. Amen."
This has been a difficult writing, and one I am aware could spawn criticism. It has been one that a part of me does not want to send out, for it is prophetic in bluntly addressing a matter of great burden to me, as well as many in the churches. Again, it is not for those Wesley would call bigots, for these are the ones who would not dare confess such bigotry. And, trying to convince a bigot of bigotness is useless, for bigotry is emotional, not intellectual. Bigotry is driven by prejudice, not reason. So, I find it useless to try to convince such persons. And, we must confess that likely each one of us has some bigotry in us, so, I do not mean to say I am free of prejudice.
In love of Christ and true Christianity, and in dedication and love to all those with implicit faith in Christ outside the institutional, earthy Church, many of whom serve my God in other faiths and have inspired me to understand and love Christ Jesus, my Lord and Savior, more, I send this writing out in love and for Love, and appreciation for them, my spiritual brothers and sisters in the One Creator. Amen."
Spiritual Exercise
What does it mean to you to follow Christ? Has that ever brought you into conflict with values or practices in a church? Has that ever led you to be ostracized or criticized by devotees of Christendom religiosity? Do you agree or not that Christendom is dying, or is dead? Explain. What is the difference between a church revival and a church dying and being reborn? Why do you think many in churches will cling to Christendom, even if it means resistance to rebirth leads to the full death and closing down of “their” church? Explain your answer. What does it mean to claim that some may follow Christ and confess him with the heart and, yet, be outside official membership in a church? Where is Christ working most, inside “churches” or outside them? Explain. Where do you want to follow Christ, in maintaining church, primarily, or sharing Christ outside the walls and buildings of the churches? Explain your answer. If you want to share Christ in the world, then, pray for Christ to lead you into how to do that, in His Name.
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