| Book Review: The Reason for God (part 6) |

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Buy The Reason for God by Tim Keller at amazon.com!

This is the 6th part of a lengthy interaction with Tim Keller’s recent book, The Reason for God. To start at the beginning, click here.

The Church is Responsible for so Much Injustice

Keller opens this chapter with a quote from Mark Lilla, a professor at the University of Chicago, who began questioning his faith after a family move that required them to find a new church.  Lilla describes the church as authoritarian and heirarchical, with members that were “dogmatic [and] eager to bring me into line doctrinally.”

imagine that.

Triablogue?  Pyros? 

that’s no Aflac duck…

Keller argues that a large chunk of the objections to Christianity that people profess are really more tied to the way they have seen Christians act.  hypocrisy is always an issue when anyone tries to take a stand, so i don’t pay too much heed to someone who just wants to say Christians are sinners – hell, we are.  deal with it.  Keller writes, “The mistaken belief that a person must ‘clean up’ his or her own life in order to merit God’s presence is not Christianity.”  well said.  again, we have to remind ourselves that championing integrity and character – or insisting that there are biblical “rights” and “wrongs” – must be done with humility.  Keller writes a sentence that could be analyzed a number of different ways: “The health of the people in the hospital is comparatively worse than people visiting museums.”  in other words, everybody’s poop, in the end (or just out of it…), stinks.

Keller does some interacting with Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the recent bestseller, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  Hitchens’ argument that “religion takes racial and cultural differences and aggravates them” is fair, says Keller.  but religion is not alone in this.  Keller writes, “We can only conclude that there is some violent impulse so deeply rooted in the human heart that it expresses itself regardless of what the beliefs of a particular society might be.”  yes, religion has a track record of injustice, but it is certainly no worse than any other group – especially atheistic regimes a la Stalin and Hitler.

Keller believes “the biggest deterrent to Christianity for the average person today is not so much violence and warfare but the shadow of fanaticism.”  one of the problems, Keller argues, is that Christians are “fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving, or understanding – as Christ was… [T]hey emulate the Jesus of the whips in the temple, but not the Jesus who said, ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’”

the antidote, Keller writes, “is not to tone down and moderate their faith, but rather to grasp a fuller and truer faith in Christ.”  religious people, Keller argues, have a tendency “to use spiritual and ethical observance as a lever to gain power over others and over God, appeasing Him through ritual and good works.”  my take: this is a call to the church to err on the side of grace, and not legalism – the yoke that Jesus offers is light, not burdensome.  so ANY list of do’s and don’ts is cast aside – that doesn’t mean we get licenses to steal (i.e, all the “don’ts” are gone), rather we are given a new and fulfilling responsibility (the “do’s”).

at the brass tacks level, it means abortion and homosexuality aren’t litmus tests.

the thrust of this chapter is that justice works when Christians put feet to their faith – when we see something that strikes us as wrong and we do something about it.  slavery.  women’s rights.  the price of a cup of coffee.  too often we get caught up at the debate level and miss the common goals that both sides probably have.  and we’re too quick to throw a stone at the glass house of past injustices – when what we really need to do, Keller writes, is this:

“When people give their lives to liberate others as Jesus did, they are realizing the true Christianity that Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other Christian voices have called for.” 

that’s what ‘taking on the mind of Christ’ means – you see things as He would have seen them, and base your actions on that.

WWJD, i suppose.

without the wristbands.

Continue on to How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?.

Buy The Reason for God by Tim Keller at amazon.com!

~ by mikerucker on March 10, 2008.