For all of you that responded to my posts of "including wild...", thank you for your thoughts and heart...here is my paper, a bit lengthy, but it's grad school, get over it.
Exclusion vs. Inclusion
Christ’s message, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one come to the Father, except through me,”
[1] hits the world hard with a message of exclusion. Yet, the Bible also teaches that all have been saved through the death and resurrection of Christ. How does one begin to hold both messages of exclusion and inclusion? On one hand, Christ seems to be preaching a message of exclusion, but on the other hand, did He not die for all peoples? I must admit that as I look out upon the Christian community, I see a very exclusive club of righteous believers. Why does the Christian community put out such a message of separation between what is sacred and what is secular? Do we really believe that the message is for all people? And if we do, is the message preached with invitation or with condemnation?
Douglas Harink, in his book, Paul Among the Postliberals
[2], suggests that the original translations of Paul’s letters read that it is the faith “of” Christ that saves man, not man’s faith “in” Christ that saves us. What’s his name gives a very detailed and heavily supported argument in order to prove the original text of Paul. He suggests that when Luther translated these verses into German, he changed this preposition in order to stress his message that grace is free. Under his vicious relationship with the Roman church, it is easy to understand and support Luther for his words. Yet, in years to follow, these gracious words would be used for power with the rise of colonialism and consumerism. In the last few hundred years, Paul’s words have changed from words of freedom to words of power.
In order to understand what went wrong, we must break down the message that each preposition causes. The faith “of” Christ refers to Christ choosing to follow the Father’s will for Him to die on the cross. In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ sweat tears of blood, pleading, begging His Father not to ask Him to do this. But, Christ accepted the call of the Father, and chose to die for all mankind. So, it was the faith “of” Christ that saves us. Jesus paid the price once and for all for man’s sin. The Bible seems to portray this very clearly. But, if Christ died once for all mankind, does that mean that everyone is going to heaven? This message sounds like universalism, and so then many will ask, are we all saved no matter what? No matter what we humans say or do, we are all going to heaven because Christ has justified all of man’s sin? Can this be possible? Surely, there has to be a choice on man’s part. If we had no choice then all mankind would just be robots with no choice. And, if there was no reason to not sin, then why don’t we all continue sinning? Why would God make it that easy? This message requires nothing of man?
At first, the message that it is our faith “in” Christ that saves us brought so much freedom and life to those who believed. But, as Christians overtime gained wealth and success, the message has changed. In man’s search for identity and power, the freeing invitation of salvation has become a condemning message striking fear in the hearts of those who do not believe. Somewhere along the line, Christians created the great divide between the sacred and secular, between those who believe and those who do not believe. I feel that this gap widened with the growth of consumerism. I have this and you don’t. Life nowadays seems like a race to see who can acquire the most material things. I see that Christianity in America has now become just something else to buy. I think that salvation is just another product that if we follow the 8 step plan, we will achieve this wonderful perfect life.
The Bible makes it very clear how to gain eternal life. “If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
[3] All these things are done of human effort. So, there must be a compromise, or conglomeration, or combination of “in” and “of”.
But, what if all this is just a semantics game? What if it is just a matter of rephrasing ourselves. What if the man’s choice or choosing is replaced with the word, acknowledged? What if when Christ chose to die for us, and then He did die for us, what if everyone one of us was saved right then. But, like a lover who loves us and yearns for us, if we do not acknowledge their love, we will never step into relationship with them. So, before we ever step anywhere, if we cannot feel or realize their love that burns within us and for us, how can we ever step to them in authenticity? How many of us have been caught in a relationship where we force ourselves into making ourselves love the other? What if we truly never discovered the “fire that burns within”, and so there is nothing to hold on to, so we force ourselves to love the other. And, I feel like sometimes, all that this leads to is embitterment and shame towards the other and ourselves.
Where this also matters is in the method of exclusion. If someone tells me that I am less than them because I am not part of them, how much more so do I now not want any part with those arrogant bastards? But, if they call me to acknowledge that within me, there is already everything I need? And, in my heart there is everything I want. The call sounds very different now. The call hits my heart with a deeper call to that which I already am familiar with. It is the call that my loneliness and brokenness longs for. Deep within, there is something that brings me to purpose and life and love. It is internal. I am good. I matter. I have the capacity to love and hope because there is good inside me. How many of us have been so beaten down by life, family, and the world that we do not believe that we have any capacity to love or experience joy anymore.
The Church, and the Christian world, has told us that we are worthless. You are evil. In the past 6 months, I have visited Mars Hill Church in Ballard, WA, at least a dozen times. And, for the majority of pastor Mark Driscoll’s sermons, I have heard the message, “you are evil. Nothing in you has any capacity for good.” And in my own words, what I hear is this- “we Christian believers are over here; we have it all figured out. You nonbeliever are pure evil. You are worthless and meaningless until you come over here and put on the Christian hat.” Yes, many will say, but there is evil in man. Man is separated from God and thus is evil. What about the Holocaust? What about Hitler? Obviously, man has much capacity for evil? But, at the heart, I ask, what is man, is he good or is he evil?
I feel that in the Christian realm, we preach that humans are born with an evil heart, not a good heart. But, what confuses me is that I have confessed to God my sins so many times. I have asked the Lord Jesus Christ to come into my heart at least infinite plus one times. But, I still do many evil things. So, once I accept Jesus into my heart, once I am baptized, is that evil gone? Surely not. Honestly, how have I changed? Have I changed at all? What has changed in me? What difference does it all make? I think what makes talk like this so dangerous is we begin to tell people that they are evil, and we Christians are good, so you are not good unless you’re Christian? What kind of invitational message is that? This seems like a message of pressure and condemnation.
I do not want to believe in a god that threatens me with condemnation. I do not want to believe in god that says my way or the highway. I do not want to believe in a god that is judging me for not being in his club. I want to believe in the God that has put a good heart within me. I want to believe in the God that has created me for a wonderful purpose. I want to believe in a God that has given me a heart of hope with a great capacity to love. And, I don’t want to believe that I have to or need to go anywhere outside of myself to get that. And for that matter, what does our narrow view of God say of Him. It makes him seem like most people in power these days. “I have all the answers and you inferior people are incompetent.” But, I want to believe in a god that has a pure heart for good and has created us for good. I don’t want to believe that I can not achieve or become or find this good or release this good or acknowledge myself as good outside of myself. Being excluded makes me feel so worthless and lonely. I want to believe that within my heart and within the heart of another, we share a common goodness, whether I wear the Christian hat or not. And, you cannot tell me that if I don’t believe in “Christianity”, then I have no capacity for good. And, if I do believe in your “Christ”, then I am fully good. Any nonbeliever can see right through our Christian inauthenticity and lies.
So, I ask this question to the churches of the world – do you promote a heart of inclusion or a heart of exclusion? Does your gospel preach good news? That deep inside you there is this spring, this fountain, this geyser of goodness and love and hope and joy and the ability to do beautiful things, to create the most beautiful artwork ever scene, to heal people with her hands, with your mind, with your heart, and the ability to bring others into their heart of gold and fire and life. And, do we spread this message to the world? The message that everyone out there is good and has the capacity for so much more goodness, if only they would acknowledge the beautiful heart and life that is within them. Or, do we tell them that until you say these words, put on this hat, kneel in front of our icons, put on this necklace, wear this ring, sing these songs, you cannot eat with us, you cannot drink with us, you cannot live with us, and we will not live with you? But, what did Christ do? He ate with the poor. He drank with the drunks. He slept with the broken. He went out to the worst of the worst. He stayed far away from those who called themselves superior and religious because he knew that religiosity breeds exclusion. His message would not be one of exclusion, but it would be one of inclusion. Come eat with me. Come drink with me. Come live with me.
