AnderspeaK
A Call to Prayer/Arms
Shooting after shooting, school after school, community after community traumatized and permanently affected—something is going on—and we should know it is more a spiritual failure than a political one. To think that politics can fix soul-sickness is itself a soul sickness.
Guns have always been around, but mass shootings were rare until today. The states with the strictest gun laws still tally the highest gun violence statistics. Something much deeper has changed—something in the American character—that has born the fruit of these mass killings/suicides.
Guns are merely the means, not the cause, of such murders. If we remove guns, the sickness remains. If the soul-sickness is not addressed, we will only see a change in the tools of destruction. We'll be dealing with mass stabbings, mass poisonings, mass bombings, and desperate politicians pushing to abolish knives, poisons, and explosives. In other words, we will be exactly where we are now—no progress made—just changing the band-aids on an endlessly festering wound.
Christian action is not the same as worldly reactions. While politicians continue their endless search for more expensive band-aids, the Church aims beneath the skin. Unless we attempt to reach the depths where the sickness originates, we will only be making mid-flight adjustments on a plane flying in the wrong direction.
America seems to be sicker than it once was. At times, it looks as though our nation is committing a slow—perhaps unintentional—suicide. Alienated loners, overmedicated and under-loved, come to hate life(including their own). They feel hopeless because they are Godless. It's not complicated: our death ends everything if there is no God to whom we must answer. If there is no God, then when we die, it is as though the universe never existed. For the Godless person, reality all begins and ends with them, and if reality ends with them, it means nothing for them to shoot up a school of innocents on their way down. If they have come to the unholy conclusion that their own life doesn't matter, then why would they value the life of anyone or anything else? It's not complicated at all.
Our problem is neither guns nor government; our problem is moral and spiritual. America has a faith problem and a love problem. Faith and love can—and will—prevent even the most darkened souls from acting on the worst of their worst instincts. Those who believe in God can believe that birth is not the beginning, nor is death the end of the story.
America needs faith, hope, and love if it is to be saved. I believe these virtues have no basis without God, and I believe you and I serve the mission to deliver antidotes for soul sickness.
We can make an enormous difference in the world. Love one person—particularly a lonesome outsider—and you may save lives. Tell one depressed neighbor that God loves her and means for her to flourish and know joy, and she may affect dozens of other lives. Tell the truth that you know in your heart; namely, God is known and knowable through Jesus Christ, who came that we should have life and life in abundance. Tell the hard truths: "You're mistaken," "You seem confused," "You're better than that," "Don't fool yourself"—and the lovely ones: "You matter infinitely to God," "I will be your friend," "Let me help you see how wonderful your life can be!"
America must turn from its current moral decline. The Church of Jesus Christ is its best hope for doing so. We bear full rights to distribute the antidotes freely, and there may be dozens of means to help turn the nation, but every one of them depends upon prayer first.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor executed for complicity in the plot to assassinate Hitler, held prayer as the foremost tool of activism. He says prayer is neither apathy nor passiveness, but prayer is a display of the most robust possible activity.
We need to believe this and believe it deeply. We must trust with our whole hearts that our prayers move mountains, change hearts, and redirect nations. We must pray and pray constantly for national renewal and let no one naysay the value of doing so.
As for other actions, they come to people humbled before God in the form of God's calling. We need not trust our best ideas and self-made schemes of correction; instead, let us go to God, encourage others to do likewise, and set before him (as an early American Presbyterian put it) our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Tribeless Christianity
The Grateful Dead may be as well known for their “deadheads”—fans who follow them from venue to venue, year after year—as for any of their music. I’ve spent several hours listening to their best-loved songs, at times attended by devout deadhead friends most eager to secure my endorsement. I love my friends, and I hate disappointing them, but I don’t “get” the Dead.
Likewise, I like some Bruce Springsteen songs. He has penned some excellent lyrics and artfully phrased them, and I like a lot of what I hear, but when Springsteen fanatics urge me to agree that his music is genuinely great, I don’t get it. I admit that the problem may be me; I may suffer a fails-to-fully-appreciate-the-Boss gene.
At the same time, I deeply love lots of other music, and I would stand by the greatness of that music whether or not others share my appreciation. But here’s the thing: there is a kind of love that has little to do with the medium itself and everything to do with the tribe that celebrates it.
Deadheads love and relish their community, which may translate into such phrases as “Isn’t their music [Grateful Dead] absolutely the best?” Springsteen fans claim, “If you ever see him live, you’ll be sold!” Certainly not all—but some—of the appeal is the community surrounding the music. That’s the love of one’s tribe, which one can conflate with one’s feelings about the music itself.
This long set-up has nothing to do with music and everything to do with the gospel’s truth. In short, there is a kind of Christianity that is more in love with the tribe of Christendom than of Jesus Himself. When “being a Christian” is more about one’s own identity than the truth claims about Christ, it has become tribal. Fill in the blank: “I am a Catholic/Orthodox/Reformed/Evangelical/Independent/Presbyterian”—all of these are statements merely about oneself and one’s chosen tribe. Even to say, “I am a Christian!” is all about oneself. A group of Christians can quickly become a tribe and suffer a fall from true faith to tribal self-interest. Whenever a group of Christians becomes more interested in tribal self-preservation than the mission of the gospel, it has ceased to be the Body of Christ. When a church fails to think theologically—that is, when it no longer cares for the particularities of its beliefs—it quickly becomes little more than a self-preserving tribe. At that low point, there is no difference between a congregation deliberating over which hymns to sing and a group of Deadheads picking out which tie-dyes to wear to Coachella.
When Christians celebrate their tribe—be it by denomination, congregation, or the lure of good ol’ church nostalgia—they practice tribal Christianity, which has nothing to do with the gospel. We would do much better to embrace tribeless Christianity, total devotion to Christ without regard to a tribe.
Tribeless Christianity sloughs off whatever is not critical to the gospel mission. Tribeless Christianity insists, “It’s not about us—what we want or like does not matter—all that matters is God’s glory and the pursuit of the gospel mission.”
We may form great communities (local congregations) and have some ideological affiliations (denominations), but we are not interested in developing an identity based on those things. Our identity is in Christ alone, and the degree to which we embrace any tribalism affects the integrity of our faith. We lose touch with the quality of the music and merely celebrate our own in-groups. We think what we believe is good and true only because everyone else in the tribe thinks it’s good and true. We don’t really know, and we don’t do our homework. That is a failure.
Becoming a group of tribeless Christians means we will not allow our group identity (be it denominational, ideological, or otherwise) to determine the gospel. We will find our gospel in Scripture alone, and we will make sure our hearts’ deepest affections and devotions hold focus there.
We are in this for God’s glory, not our own. We are devoted and committed to Christ, not the groupthink of our beloved communities and church family. We will study God’s Word and shape our beliefs accordingly, whether the rest of our tribe “gets it” or not.
The cheerful irony is this: when we go tribeless, our faith finds its proper focus, and the members of our community connect more richly and more deeply than before. So let us abandon tribalism—including Christian tribalism—and embrace Christ. Without a doubt, our life and its music will grow more wondrous than ever. †