Battling the Holy Self

For the past few months, when I have some drive time, or can't-fall-asleep time, or in those other little spaces during the day where your mind isn't otherwise occupied, my thoughts have been occupied with what it means to be a Christian. I know this is a question that others have addressed more thoroughly and more eloquently than I ever will. But I also know that it is a question every Christian ponders, in various forms, throughout his or her spiritual journey; it seems to be part of the process, an exercise that either keeps us from straying off the path or helps us get around obstacles or through deep valleys.

This time around, the variation of this question that is haunting me is, How much of my Christianity - my spiritual beliefs and practices - is a true and accurate interpretation of following Jesus, and how much of it is just cultural norms? I've assimilated a lot of evangelical Christian culture through a lifetime of church attendance, Sunday school, youth groups, worship services, choir singing, Focus on the Family, mission-trips, Vacation Bible School (as student and teacher), Christian books, Christian newsletters, Christian music. I've also assimilated, right along with that culture, my American culture of consumption and materialism, worship of youth and beauty, reduction of thought processes to sound bytes, independence and rebellion, rugged individualism. All of that - all of it! - is mixed together like one big soup in my spirit, my soul, my identity. I am a product of my culture, my upbringing, my place in time and space (20th-21st century U.S. of A.).

So, how much of my faith is true faith, and how much is fluff? Or worse, deeply held convictions that are just plain wrong?

I’m wrestling with this issue, then I read an article in the NYTimes (tried to link it, but it's been too long and now you have to pay to read it) about a pastor who had the courage to tell his congregation, Enough. Enough with calling America a “Christian nation” and accepting every American military campaign as God’s will. Here’s a quote:

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

I grew up in the kind of church where American flags were flown and political candidates were endorsed. It never occurred to me to question this, until adulthood. And it makes me wonder what else in the church I grew up with is also way off base.

And then I start reading Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book. Listen to these quotes:

Our lives, that is, our experience – what we need and want and feel – are important in forming the Christ-life within us. Our lives are, after all, the stuff that is being formed. But they are not the text for directing the formation itself. Spirituality means, among other things, taking ourselves seriously. It means going against the cultural stream in which we are incessantly trivialized to the menial status of producers and performers, constantly depersonalized behind the labels of our degrees or our salaries. (p. 23)

We learn early, with multiple confirmations as we grow older, that we have a say in the formation of our lives and, within certain bounds, the decisive say. If the culture does a thorough job on us – and it turns out to be mighty effective with most of us – we enter adulthood with the working assumption that whatever we need and want and feel forms the divine control center of our lives. (p. 32)

Sorry, I know that’s a lot of quoting – but it’s powerful, isn’t it? Here's one more:

What has become devastatingly clear in our day is that the core reality of the Christian community, the sovereignty of God revealing himself in three persons, is contested and undermined by virtually everything we learn in our schooling, everything presented to us in the media, every social, workplace, and political expectation directed our way as the experts assure us of the sovereignty of self. …We are hardly aware that we have traded in our Holy Bibles for this new text, the Holy Self. (pp. 33-34)

You can see where he’s going with this – that we need a new way of reading the Bible in which we accept its authority as higher than that of our own experience. And I’m feeling like I need to develop a new, sharper sense of discernment that I can turn upon my convictions – all of them – and test whether they come from Scripture or from some other deeply imprinted place from my past. I have a feeling this discernment is not something I can develop on my own, either. It feels like it will have to come from somewhere outside of myself – will have to be a work of the Holy Spirit.