How to Be Miserable in Your Christian Life
Chapter Two: How to Deal with the Bible
(Section Two: Reading the Bible through a Cultural Filter)
Another strategy for limiting the
Bible’s potential to destroy our misery is to read the Bible through a series
of filters. Most of us already do this anyway. We have cultural filters,
political filters, and even our own customized filters based on individual
preferences. All of these filters help us to focus on the things we like, to
ignore the things we don’t, or to convince ourselves that the Bible is saying
things that we already agree with.
First up:
cultural filters. The truth is, you’re already reading the Bible through a
cultural filter. You really don’t need my advice. In fact, you might be better
off skipping this section entirely, because it likely has things in it that you
may not have thought about before, and thinking about them might prove to be a
dangerously broadening experience. But, for the sake of being thorough, here we
go.
If you’re
an American Christian reading this book, you might be surprised to know that
the vast majority of the world doesn’t think like you do. (But who really cares
about the rest of the world, right?) The United States, along with other
Western nations, are a wide mix of diverse cultures, but there are some
overarching themes that bind us together. We’ll just touch on one here today:
American culture is individualistic.
When I say that, I don’t just mean
that all Americans are selfish materialists, but that our mental life is framed
in individualistic terms. We view our lives from the vantage-point of a
personal worldview in which I, myself, am the absolute center of my own
identity. My decisions are my own, and my life is my own. We live by
Shakespeare’s marvelously unbiblical maxim: “To thine own self be true.”
Sounds
pretty ordinary, right? Of course everybody sees everything from the
vantage-point of their own personal identity. What other possible vantage-point
could there be?
Well,
here’s the wacky thing: the majority of cultures throughout the world’s history
have favored a communal perspective
on identity, decision-making, and life in general—not an individualistic one.
That is, most cultures in the world are not
seeking to follow the advice of being true to yourself; rather, they are
seeking to be true to their group identity. Their understanding of their
identity begins with the group of which they’re a part, and not with their own
name, occupation, and set of interests: they see themselves as part of their
family, clan, tribe, or nation. And that’s their primary lens for viewing the
world.
Okay, so why
does this dry bit of anthropology matter? Because the cultures of the biblical
world were largely driven by a communal perspective, not an individualistic
perspective. This underlying difference between our culture and the culture of
the Bible is a tremendous asset to your Christian misery, because it means that
you will be perpetually misunderstanding and misapplying the Scriptures.
Take one
particular example: in Ephesians 3:17b-19, the Apostle Paul says, “I pray that
you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all
the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the
love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be
filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Great
verses! It’s pretty easy to read these and get all the warm and fuzzy feelings
of knowing that I, in my personal
relationship with God, can be filled to the measure of all the fullness of
God. Wow!
The only problem is, that’s not
exactly what these verses are saying. Paul might not disagree with an individualized
application, but that’s not his main point here. His point (as it is throughout
Ephesians) is that the grace, power, and plan of God are made manifest in the community of the church, and that it is
in our communal relationship with God
that we can grasp how wide and long and high and deep his love is. Our primary
identity, here as in most places in Scripture, is not “me-and God,” it’s “us
and God.” It’s not “I am a Christian,” it’s “We are the Body of Christ.”
The verses immediately around the
passage I quoted (and really, the entirety of Ephesians) make it absolutely
clear that Paul has in mind not individual Christians and their private
devotional experiences, but the whole towering and triumphant life of the
church considered in its unified, communal splendor. Even within the verses
above, there was a hint of this meaning, which, if you’re a good American
individualist, you probably just glossed over: “together with all the Lord’s
holy people.” That doesn’t just mean that you personally get to know God’s
love, and, oh, as an afterthought, all the other Christians get to know it too,
each in their own private devotional lives. It means that it is within the context of our togetherness that
we may deeply know the full depth of God’s love for us.
Do you see
why this matters now? Our individualistic culture helps to blind us to the
absolute necessity of Christian community in our spiritual lives. (The English
language helps out, too, by not indicating a difference between plural and
singular “you” in some places where that distinction is important.) Thanks to
our individualism, we can remain blissfully ignorant of the call to connect
deeply with other Christians. We can imagine that we’re free to go it on our
own, to develop a personal relationship with God that is unconnected to our
commitment to a local church. That’s an idea that would have made the Apostle
Paul start shooting off angry letters in ALL CAPS (Gal. 6:11).
We’re really off-base from New
Testament Christianity in thinking that Christianity is about “me and God” and
that deep connections with a church are a peripheral concern. Almost nothing
could be further from the actual message of the Bible. The church is absolutely
central to God’s work here and now, including God’s work in my own heart, and
there’s no getting away from that. Unless, that is, you can read the Bible
without coming to that realization at all.
So it’s a
marvelous thing that our culture fits us with such a nice set of blinders, so
that we don’t even have to think about such things. (And, along those lines, I’d
recommend that you forget these last few pages.) Then you can just go about
your Christian life of individualistic “me and God” spirituality, and that will
effectively cut you off from the powerful experience of knowing his love in the
context of his church. The result, of course, is what we’ve wanted all along:
the fashionable misery that’s all the rage these days.