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Despite my best efforts, I seem to always end up awake late at night with some existential rhetorical question stuck in my head. We had the School of Theology at Vintage earlier tonight and we were talking about what the costs of being a Christian are. Obviously, here in America at least, modern day Christians don’t have to fear Roman soldiers breaking down their doors and feeding them to the lions, but that doesn’t mean our lives are all honey and lattes. One of the main things we talked about is how crazy it seems when you start looking at what Jesus said it takes to get into heaven. Time and again you read of Him giving people tasks that are impossible. For a person to enter Heaven based on their own merits requires them to be absolutely perfect and blameless. Since this is impossible in a post-fall world, it is by the grace of Jesus we are able to cross that hurdle and gain entry. Now, think about this for a second, what if Jesus ministry had been based around the idea that if you just tried hard enough or had good enough intentions you could gain entry to Heaven? Suddenly there is no need for the cross, no need for grace, no need to be compassionate and love your neighbor. The fact perfect adhearance to the law (ie the Old Covenant) is the only way a person can gain entrance to Heaven is one of the things that makes what Jesus says make any sense at all. Jesus doesn’t so much tell us to ignore Rabbinic law as He provides an end around for post-fall creation to be reconciled on the cross. By becoming the final ultimate sacrifice under the old covenant, He broke down the barriers and made it possible for us to attain the impossible.
I hate heights. Ladders, ledges, cliffs, platforms, whatever. You name it, I get all weak kneed going near the edge. I especially don’t like trust falls and cliff diving. I’ve never been on a zip line before last week, but it seemed like the kind of thing that would be right up there with the others. So when I found myself flying through the air 150 feet above Bean Creek at Mount Hermon last Friday, I just kept reminding myself of one thing. Breathe.
See, here’s the thing. I may hate high places, and if I can avoid them I do, but it is an irrational fear. Fear is good, it keeps us safe, keeps us from making stupid decisions. Fear keeps you from driving 120mph on the freeway and jumping from second story windows. But like other irrational fears, it reaches a point where it takes control of you and inhibits your ability to enjoy life or even function. When we recognize this and can face our fear head on, it makes us better, more confident people.
It seems so cliche but every time you let go of your fear and fly, it becomes that much easier to face down other things we are nervous or afraid of. So next time someone offers to push you off a platform 150 feet in the air, take a deep breath and ask where to sign up. Trust me, it’s worth it.
Imagine taking all of the worst things about Christianity, the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the Inquisition, Manifest Destiny, the brutal subjugation of the New World and Africa, the guilt, the poor treatment of women, the persecution of men like Galileo who dared to oppose the Church on questions of science, the legalism, the closed-mindedness, the hypocrisy, the apathy toward suffering, everything, all the worst of the worst, and then threw out everything else. No love, no compassion for the suffering, no Mother Theresa, no C.S. Lewis, no Wounded Healer, no grace, no acceptance, no love for right and justice and peace and hope. Just a painful trudging through the horrible bleakness of a broken world until finally one day we die and melt away into nothingness. This is the world of the Golden Compass, this is the Christianity Philip Pullman, this is the world he believes we live in. I don’t want this to sound like a flat out rejection and denunciation of the books (which as you might guess I just finished) but rather as a rebuttal.
First off, on a literary point, I was frustrated with Pullman because I felt like the first book, The Golden Compass, was far and away superior to the other two books in the trilogy. I felt like he had a clear focus to the book and it was exciting and daring and then the further into The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass I got the more the books started to loose their focus and sound more and more like propaganda. Characters randomly popped in and out of the story, what seemed like things that should be major plot points ended up being little more than a paragraph before being passed by, there was no liberating meaning to anything. It’s as if Pullman decided to turn the phrase, “life sucks, then you die” into a trilogy. That is one of the things I don’t understand about atheism as a whole however. It isn’t really an alternative to Christianity. It is Nihilism. It is nothingness. There is no reason to strive for justice and peace and righteousness because in the end nothing matters. You pass from this world into nothing. As the character of Mary struggles with in the book, it is freeing but leaves you feeling disconnected. Even as a political theory Anarchy promotes the idea that when we strip away government and artificial command structures, man will naturally choose what is good and right. Pullman just says live for the present because there isn’t anything else. I refuse to accept that premise! I reject it on the basis that I have inside me a compulsion to be compassionate and seek to help others even when I gain nothing more than the feeling that by doing right I have somehow made the world a better place. I believe in doing right because I look at the world and see it scared and broken and longing for some meaning to the pain and suffering we see every day and I want to give it some hope. As long as we are striving to love each other and be good and caring people I think we will make a difference and I feel it is my faith calling me to these things.
I am angry, in a way, with Pullman for not representing all of Christianity. He only chooses to represent the corrupt and deceitful portions that seek to use guilt and sin as a club with which to batter people into submission to a worldly authority while taking some perverse pleasure in claiming they are saving souls. I can only imagine when the final day of judgement comes all those who have done wicked deeds in the name of God will look at those they persecuted and weep when they see how their victims exalted all the more in Heaven for their suffering. I don’t purport to be any kind of saint myself but I can only hope one day when I am judged God will take joy at the times when I strivved to make some kind of difference in the world. That might be what angers me most with Pullman, the idea there is no ultimate justice.
Not everyone can be a C.S. Lewis or Mother Theresa or Desmond Tutu or Dietrich Bonhoeffer but I don’t think God calls us to be. I hope though that when non-believers encounter true followers of Jesus their lives are made better for it and they can’t help but ask the reason for their hope.
I was talking at work today with a friend who just found out that a guy she grew up with was killed in a car accident this weekend. This combined with Dan’s first Sunday back after his dad’s passing, I’ve been thinking a lot again about the eternal dance of life and death and faith. The more I think of it the less scary and confusing it becomes. I know that must sound incredibly strange to read so let me try to explain. As I’ve written about before, when I read the first question and answer from the Heidelberg Catechism I can’t help but feel at peace with the reality of my mortality. It is strange sometimes to realize that at any given moment, any number of completely random events can occur that can end life, car crashes, random shootings, freak heart attacks, and yet, the knowledge God has a purpose for my life and until that purpose is fulfilled, not a hair on my head will come to harm, how powerful! At the same time, acknowledging the broken state of our human nature frees us from the fear of death when it does one day come. When we come to accept we can never achieve perfection in this lifetime or state, how beautiful it becomes when we are made complete in the presence of our loving Savior!
I’m a big cry baby. Really, it’s true. I actually felt myself getting teary eyed during tonights episode of House. I don’t know quite why but when I watch TV shows or movies that deal with slow, inevitable death it always gets me. Even back to the movie Phenomenon with John Travolta I can remember empathizing with the situation. Tonight’s episode of House dealt with the death of a patient who was suffering from a chronic debilitating physical condition before finally dying of a parasite. The final scene when he actually dies he asks the doctors to put his service dog up with him on the bed and place his hand on the dogs head. Then through his last raspy breaths he said goodbye. For the doctors in the room it was their (presumably) first code and they were visibly shaken (yes, I realize they are just playing the part). The whole scene was so sterile and sad and final.
Now, as a Christian I obviously believe that when I die, I will go to Heaven. That said, my heart aches at the sight of reminders of the brokenness of the human condition. Death was never God’s intention and I think he is just as pained by human suffering as we are, more so even! Death and sin and brokenness are reminders of how we screwed things up, screwed up His Perfect Creation. The existence of pain and suffering in the world is very frustrating to me. I want to fix it, I want to find the cause and be rid of it and the fact we cannot cure the ailment tears me apart sometimes. In the grand scheme of things it would be very easy for me to sell all my possessions and give the money to the Red Cross or World Concern and then feel all warm and fuzzy about the good that I did. That is too easy, too small. God doesn’t want my stuff, it’s already his. He wants me and I want Him to have me! I want my photography and computer skills and interest in world affairs and love of people to open doors that people might see the light of His love in my life! I pray that my joy in Him would be overflowing and infectious to those around me so that when people ask me for the reason for the hope I have I can show them the wonderful Majesty that is our God! And if wanting God to be evident in my every action means that I get teary eyed when I see an emotional movie, who knows, maybe that will open up a door someday. Now, pass the tissues. . . 
