Living Faithfully in a Crazy World

Sometimes the condition of life is just too much to handle. Sometimes the hatred, fear, greed, violence, and superficiality rampant in our world is disheartening at best, and crushing at worst. So, how can a person live a healthy Christian life in the midst of all that?

One possible factor in all this dysfunction might be called “externalizing.” Externalizing is attributing all the potential problems and challenges in your life to something or someone other than you. Businesses do it when they exclude the cost of their pollution from their “bottom line,” or when they drive local businesses into the ground by radical cost-cutting. Consumers don’t even realize that they are negatively affecting the long-term health of their communities by chasing short-term “savings.” Countries do it when they tag enemy countries (or enemy combatants) with dehumanizing names like “axis of evil” or “terrorists,” without recognizing the existence of the same behaviors in themselves or learning the oft repeated lesson of history that violence never brings lasting peace; it only generates increased violence in return.. Once you’ve branded your enemy as evil, then you no longer need to treat them as human beings – they are now undesirable objects that you are justified in removing by any means. Investors externalize when they consider only the immediate return on their money without looking at the larger and more long term human costs.

Some religious traditions also externalize consequences by putting the only real value on the afterlife, believing that the evil ones (not themselves, to be sure) will reap eternal punishment while they get the reward. This example appears to contradict my concerns about looking only at the short-term. You see, once they “receive” the (eternal) protection of Christ, then they need concern themselves with nothing else. The short-term benefit is simply “being saved” in the present moment.

But do we have a choice in the matter? Or is it inevitable that we will always externalize our responsibility to live ethically? If so, I believe that we all are doomed!

Healthy Liberal Christianity attempts to offer us a different route, although at the moment, I don’t think the approach is enjoying very much success. The different route is that we must begin with ourselves and our own ethical responsibility without either shifting the responsibility to someone else, or simply ignoring the problems because we’re doing just fine ourselves, thank you very much.

Sometimes we liberal Christians need to turn to the Bible for some guidance. Today, I’m thinking about Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In the fifth chapter, he articulates two lists of consequences: those of the “flesh”, and those of the spirit. (Now before we go any further, I want to comment on Paul’s juxtaposition of “flesh” and “spirit.” That the “desires of the flesh” are treated as evil does not mean that human “bodies” are evil. I would suggest that the meaning is clearer if we juxtapose “narrow self interest” vs. “God’s loving perspective toward all of life.” Self care is important and encouraged, but narrow self-interest is tantamount to setting one’s own needs against those of anyone else.) It is with this understanding that I move to Paul’s lists.

The “works of the flesh” are: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” That is to say that if narrow self interest is your guide, these behaviors are among the likely consequences.

On the other hand, the “fruits of the spirit” are: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Paul is not saying that we should will ourselves to behave according to the second rather than the first list. Rather, he identifies both lists as consequences of whether our focus is narrow self-interest or the broader life-loving perspective that the “Spirit of Christ” embodies in people.

From a psychological perspective, the more we focus on narrow self-interest, the more anxious and afraid we become. Anxiety and fear often serve as the motivation for list-one behaviors. When we open ourselves up to the divine (spiritual) perspective that was and is embodied in Jesus’ life and ministry, however, then we are most likely to enjoy list-two fruits, beginning with the “love that casts out fear.”

The task of healthy liberal Christianity is to offer this “good news” that the Spirit of Christ can motivate us to behaviors and relationships that are healthier for all of us, individually and collectively. Our world needs this good news because we are destroying ourselves and our world with list-two behaviors.

Now, I can preach about this perspective and I can write blogs, but we need something more to help ourselves first, and then other people as well to create the space in life where we all can experience the spiritual transformation leading to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So, what are your ideas about how we can live faithfully and encourage others to do the same?

Wayne Gustafson
"Our faith is 2000 years old, our thinking isn't"
The United Church__of Christ