(Part Two of at least three or four……)

If, as stated here yesterday, true vision fosters or leads to or results in right conduct, then we need to evaluate the vision. We need to be certain the vision is true. I believe the vision in our churches, the vision presented by our elders and preachers, needs to be tweaked. Or, in some cases, probably overhauled.

It seems that the vision a lot of churches create for Christians is one of looking inward to the here and now, all but ignoring the future there and then. A concentration on the Bible as a pattern or blueprint for how things are to be done instead of as a collection of inspired pictures to communicate to us what happens when one encounters the living God keeps us focused on the rules. And those rules are more and more about what we do in our Sunday assemblies and less about what we do with the other six days of the week. Ironically, the Bible has much to say about daily living in the world and very little to say about organized corporate worship. The whole of Scripture supports those priorities. But , instead, we seem to care more about what happens during our one hour of worship time on Sunday mornings than we care about how we act at work, at the park, or in line at the bank.

We’ve allowed the Sunday morning assembly to define our Christianity. We judge faithfulness based on how many assemblies one attends each year. The phrase “She’s a faithful member…” means she’s there every time the doors are open. Nothing more, nothing less. We rate churches on the “doctrinally sound” scale based on what and how they do that Sunday morning time.

When we see the Church as Sunday morning only and we see our lives as Christians centered on being there those Sunday mornings, Church and the Christian life becomes just another compartment in our world. Just as what I do in church has nothing to do with whether I make a sale at work or not, what I do at the office has nothing to do anymore with my walk with Christ. It’s all separate. Neither necessarily informs the other. And neither is necessarily more important than the other. People at work don’t care whether I go to church or not, just as long as I perform my job effectively. And, increasingly, people at church don’t really care anymore about what I do at work or play, as long as I’m there and worshiping correctly on Sunday mornings. It’s completely secularized.

Church and Christianity seem to be just another part of our world when it truly is a completely different world altogether that informs how we live in this world. And until we can learn to see our world in the reality of the cross, see how the love of God and the sacrifice of Christ and the promises we have in that salvation act impact all of reality, our character won’t change and neither will our actions.

There needs to be a mindset developed in the Church that everything we do and say and think is directly controlled by our God. Our actions are determined beforehand by what God has done for us, is doing for us currently, and has promised to do for us tomorrow. It all has to be connected. There cannot be a thought that what one does at work has very little to do with one’s claim to be a follower of Christ. It has everything to do with it!

But where do we start? What do we do? How do we tweak or overhaul the vision?

Peace,

Allan

(This is at least a three or four-parter. Hang with me on this for a few days.)

Stanley Hauerwas says the moral life is as much a matter of vision as a matter of doing. One acts in the world according to how one sees the world. Our actions are informed by our attitudes, our values, and our dispositions. Those things are shaped and formed first and those, in turn, determine what we do and say in given situations. But it’s our vision, our way of looking at the reality around us, which initially informs our character.

So if the Church is charged, in large part, with shaping Christians and preparing them to lead a moral life in the struggles against the things that separate us from God, how are we doing? Are we concentrating on building Godly values and attitudes, which lead to proper conduct, by presenting the proper vision?

I’m afraid my experience tells me that the Church wants to do what is right and good, but it’s not as informed or motivated by a radical big-picture view of reality as it is by making sure things are done “decently and in order” and in accordance with the recognized norms of society. In the 1960s, Will Herberg wrote and lectured about the disconnect between what we do and what we confess. He suggested that, unfortunately, one doesn’t necessarily influence the other.

According to Herberg, our religion is so thoroughly secularist that “the familiar distinction between religion and secularism appears to be losing much of its meaning.” We all uphold and cherish certain basic values and organize our moral activities based on those common assumptions. Pagan and Christian alike, believer and non-believer, adhere to similar moral standards, not based on the Father and Son, but on what our culture deems acceptable.

James Davidson Hunter says:

Vast numbers of Christians today live in real cognitive dissonance respecting their claims to being religious and the conduct of their lives.  They retain a vague notion of religious identity but their lives are distinctly secular, with the experience of God in worship and prayer not figuring very prominently in all that they do. Increasingly these nominal Christians embrace the heady hedonism and narcissism of popular culture and do not see that this contradicts biblical faith. Middle-class suburbia is teeming with such persons.

It’s true.

Where has the Church failed? What can we do better?

If true vision fosters and leads to and results in right conduct, maybe we need to evaluate the vision. Or the presentation of the vision.

What can we do better?

Peace,

Allan