May 23, 2004
Too
Much Tolerance Cannot be Tolerated
Riley E. Jensen
We have this problem don’t we? And it is peculiar to our brand of religion, which advertises itself as broad, and accepting, and open, and loving. We want to put the word out that our doors are open to all. We’re not like that church down by St. John’s at the gas station that is rigid and unbending, that demands narrow theological conformity, or those other churches that put out the message that there are very narrow limits on the definition of a good Christian.
However, could it be that we have a problem too? Perhaps, not the problem of being too narrow but being too broad -- of having the spine of a wet noodle and convictions that blow with the wind. Recently, The New York Times cited an incident in which Los Angeles school officials discovered anti-Semitic commentary in an edition of the Koran, and ordered all the offending books pulled off the shelves.
The article then pointed out that the school district (in its zeal to be fair-minded and tolerant) failed to take into consideration an existential element of every religion; an adherence to the kind of exclusivity that believes it is the best, that it offers a path to God not found in the others. The summary, of course, is that if every faith persuasion is watered down to its lowest common denominator, we will lose in the name of political correctness much that contributes to the richness of our diversity.
Frankly, our scripture lessons offer two offending texts that lift up our own claims to exclusivity. In Deuteronomy we are told not to bow down to those other gods. If we do, we will perish and not inherit the promise. The passage in John reminds the reader boldly and without condition that Jesus is “the true vine” and those who do not abide in the true vine can look forward to the awful consequences of “being thrown into the fire”.
It’s not a pretty picture! You didn’t want to hear it on a promising spring day. But it’s there. Clearly, we think we have something good going and if we are faithful in the observance of our faith, good things will happen. Furthermore, those of you who are following those other gods may want to get with the program or you’d better watch out!
The point, of course, is that in this day of tolerance and political correctness, is it legitimate to brag about our faith -- to lift it up to say, “I am a Christian and I’m proud of it -- for these reasons!” Obviously, I am not going to argue against tolerance this morning because we live in a world where we have too much of the opposite -- mean spiritedness, bigotry, and judgmentalism. But I do want to challenge that kind of thinking which says, “Every religion is the same anyway so it doesn’t matter what you believe.”
If you are going to be a Christian, you’d better know what one is. You’d better know what is at our center and what gives our faith meaning and purpose.
I. It’s not about us; it’s about God.
First of all if you are going to be a Christian, you’d better know that it is not about us; it’s about God! That is the constant tension of the life of faith dating back to the Garden of Eden. Somewhere along the line Adam and Eve missed the first bullet point in God’s memo to the created order. You will remember that it read, “In the beginning God created…” In the job description of creation God has God’s work to do and we have ours. God’s came first and it was the work of creation.
But Adam and Eve challenged that arrangement when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, having been suckered by the serpent into believing that they could cross the line and become like God. So it has ever been. We have been uncomfortable acknowledging that there is something greater than we are so we have continued to build higher and higher towers.
Marcus Borg calls this “Reductionistic Religion” by which he means that religion is reduced to a human invention, which sees all religions as human constructions, as human projections. According to this line of thinking religion is a purely human product created by us in part out of ignorance about the way things really are, and also to serve psychological and social needs. Some years ago a Berkley sociologist wrote a book about how the individualism of our culture has influenced our religious sensibilities.
In that book Robert Bella described what is very obvious today as the movement away from institutional religion. He held up as an example a young woman named Shelia who claimed to have given up on traditional religion and invented her own which she called “Sheliaism”. In her view faith was totally subjective anyway and was all about whatever made her feel good. For her religion was a human invention so why shouldn’t she invent her own.
Therefore, I submit that the first thing we need to get straightened around in our thinking is that it is not about us, it is about God! We believe that ours is a revealed religion not something we have invented. The center of our faith is about the God who has come to us from outside ourselves. And so our perspective on reality is informed by what God has done, is doing, and will do.
If that is our starting point, then we are going to be driven back to the Bible.
II. It’s not about somebody else’s book; it’s about our book.
Liberal religion has often been accused of not taking the Bible seriously. A minister friend of mine in this congregation shared with me recently how religion is the one subject he can never discuss with his in-laws. Their divergent views are so far apart that it just becomes an exercise in frustration. As an example, he shared that a typical response from his father-in-law might be, “Now, I don’t claim to be as smart as you are, and I haven’t had all of that education you have had, so I just have to take the Bible at face value and believe what the words say.”
Unfortunately, that is the view of more than just a few people who themselves are smart and well-educated but somehow can’t conceive that the Bible can be taken seriously but interpreted differently by people of good will. Furthermore, even liberal Christians have to some degree accepted this argument and allowed the Bible to be co-opted by those who read it with a narrow literalism.
Frankly, I believe that our problem in this area as moderate religious folks is not too little tolerance but too much tolerance. We have adopted the Dwight Eisenhower dictum of, “Everybody ought to have a religion and I don’t care what it is.” That is a wonderful statement of tolerance but it is not rooted in the Judaeo-Christian scriptures.
When we look at a passage like Deuteronomy 30, we are struck by its authority and exclusiveness, “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, then you shall live and God will bless you.” We are left with the question, “Can we be faithful, Bible-centered, people in a pluralistic world?"
Of course we can and should! I don’t accept the premise that only those churches that advertise themselves as Bible-believing Christians have a corner on the market. We are Bible-believing too. But to take the Bible seriously is not the same thing as taking it literally. If on the one hand it is the Bible-believers that challenge us, on the other hand there are those well-meaning folks who ask questions like, “Why do we read every week from the Bible and not from other books? Couldn’t we hear from the Qur’an or a Zen philosopher or the Upanishads? Aren’t they sacred books too?
Those are great questions. And our ability to respond to such questions with clarity and conviction is crucial for the church’s identity and vitality. Perhaps the analogy to the Constitution will prove helpful to some. We in the U.S. may find the constitutions of other nations to be interesting and instructive, but they aren’t ours. We have a special obligation to our own constitution. We grant it authoritative status so that we can remember and know who we are. It is crucial to our identity.
In a similar way while there are undoubtedly many beautiful and inspiring books, the Bible is our book. It is our book in a two-fold sense. First, it is the creation of the church, our forebears in the faith. Secondly, it reminds the church who and whose it is. The Bible is our library -- that is what the word means. It is certainly the story of our past, and the repository of our identity, but it is also for us a mediator of God’s presence and power.
It is not a magical book where we close our eyes and point to a verse and suddenly have God’s direction. Some of us have tried that, like the person who opened her Bible thrust her finger into the middle of the page and read, “And Judas went out and hanged himself.” Deciding that was obviously a mistake, she tried again, this time reading, “Go and do thou likewise!” By the way that’s a joke, but it cautions us against reading the Bible mindlessly as an answer book for life.
Rather for us the Bible is a sacramental book. It is not a book that we are to take literally. It is not a book that is without error. But like the bread and wine that we share at the communion table, it is something finite, less than perfect, communicated through human beings, but nevertheless providing us a way to come into contact with the holy. Therefore, the Bible is our family history that shows us what God has done, is doing, and can do to transform us into the kind of people we were created to be.
And finally.
III. It’s not about Deity in general, but the Trinity in particular.
Bob Hope, bless his dearly departed soul, used to say that he did benefit performances for all religious faiths because as he explained it, “I’d hate to be sent to hell on a technicality.” In this tolerant world in which we live, there are some who feel that believing in God at all is a technicality. Certainly others would feel that having the Bible hold a special place of authority is a technicality. But I suspect that I run the risk of losing even the most faithful Christian when I introduce the topic of the Trinity as one of our core convictions.
However, it has to be said that we are Christians because we believe it’s not about deity in general but the Trinity in particular. Now I realize that I am running the risk of having a number of you get finished with this sermon before I get finished. However, I am encouraged to say a few things about the importance of the Trinity to our faith at this point because a member of your pastor search committee that called me felt the need to press me on the subject. I have to admit that when Geoff first raised the subject, I thought he might be less than serious, maybe having a little fun at my expense. But he wasn’t so I am emboldened to think that there may be others out there with the same kind of curiosity.
I had a philosophy professor in college who used to say to us with an air of great gravity and profundity, “When you discover the secret of the one and the many, you will have discovered the secret of life.” That, of course, is the secret of the Trinity, which long ago was declared a mystery but which at the same time is the best description we have of this God we believe in. The orthodox statement is -- one God -- three persons!
Why is that so important? Because it helps us to understand how God has worked and is working in our world. We see God at work in the world as the Creator God, as Jesus Christ, and as the Holy Spirit. More recently it has become popular to speak of the Trinity as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. But whatever the formulation, the concept of the Trinity is important to us because it lifts up how we see the One God working in the world.
As creator, God is God of history, nature, and the universe. This God is vast and not to be identified with any one nation, race, culture, or even religion. And yet, we are Christians because we believe that this vast, often hidden God is made particular in the life and person of Jesus of Nazareth. We believe that Jesus shows us what God is like in the concrete situations of life. Furthermore, this great cosmic God while revealed in a particular time and place is not stuck in the past. But by the Holy Spirit is God’s active presence in the world, in the life of the church, and the life of the believer.
I am greatly helped by Anthony Robinson’s description of the Trinity as a system of checks and balances that keep us from becoming too rigid in our orthodoxy. “When we imagine we’ve got God figured out, it turns out not to be so simple. During the 1930s, when God became so vast and vague as to be easily identified with nation and race in Nazi Germany, the confessing church protested by pointing to Jesus who alone is “the way, the truth, and the life”.
“When a kind of Jesusolatry sets in with Jesus becoming “our special guy” and the exclusive property of our group or church, then God the Creator and God the Holy Spirit broaden and correct our understanding. Or when it’s all about being filled with the Spirit (and caught up emotionally), the second person of the Trinity reminds us of the cost of discipleship. The doctrine of the Trinity keeps us from settling for a God who is too small, or so big and vague that God becomes “the sacred blur”.
This has been a heavy sermon. If you stuck it out, I congratulate you. If you finished early, I understand. But if you walk away with nothing else today, walk away with this. Huston Smith offers the metaphor of digging a well, “If what you are looking for is water, better to dig one well 60 ft. deep than to dig 6 wells 10 ft. deep.” For by living more deeply into our own faith, we will become more centered and more fulfilled, and so able to appreciate those who are living more deeply into their own faith.
Amen.