a merry schismatic christmas (part 6)- slightly re-worked

to anyone who may have read this earlier: i've tried to re-work some of this because i know i didn't communicate my thoughts very well. sometimes this stuff is hard to blog about without being lengthy, so i'm sorry if any of it is confusing.

this past new years, we hung out with some old friends. at one point i was talking to one of them about how i would be interested in adopting some day. he looked at me and told me flat out that i didn't want to do that. he said that he knew people who adopted, and that it was a big risk. i was kind of taken a back. he went on to say that when you adopt you bring all of that child's problems into your home, and that child can infect your family. now, to be fair, he has had experience knowing people who take in troubled children, and he didn't realize i was talking about adopting an infant, not an abused child. but this still struck me. "infect." as if a child is a virus or bacteria.

jesus came to call israel to repentance, and begin a community who is the true, renewed israel ushering in God's kingdom. jesus came to establish God's kingdom here and we are to continue his work. the christianity most american evangelicals follow doesn't teach this. as i've already pointed out in previous posts, it teaches that the church is about gathering people onto a big cosmic life raft before God destroys the ship (earth) or sends people to hell.

the idea of acquiring a get-out-of-hell free pass, and just living one's own life fit's american culture nicely. think about it, what does the stereotypical american evangelical family look like? usually they look just like a stereotypical american family, only they go to church, don't swear, shop at family christian stores and might be involved in a ministry. to many christians, after they've gotten their free pass, it becomes all about an image, and i would argue that it's more about caesar's image than Christ's. christianity and america have become emeshed. this emeshedness is obvious when we see images of the flag and the cross paired together, but christian theology has been influenced by america in profound ways as well. the focus is getting out of hell rather than ridding the world of hell. and this is why my friends, who are the poster family for american evangelical christianity, can compare the least of these to a bacteria or virus. because getting involved with the messy parts of the world, the parts jesus and the apostles got involved with, isn't part of living the nice, shiny, suburban life (christian) americans strive to live. it's just not part of the image.

what did i say to this friend, whom i love dearly, but who represents a completely different understanding of what it means to be a christian? well, there wasn't much i could say because what he thinks christ came to do is so radically different than from what i think, it's a herculean task to carry on that discussion. and this is what always happens: nothing; just a change in the subject. the theological differences have created walls that i'm still trying to learn how to tear down. there are enormous pre-suppositions that have to be tackled first, but i do think there's hope.