Pharisaism is alive and well

Institutionalised religion keeps its practitioners imprisoned in the human condition 

Religion vs. Freedom

Of course it is not just popular entertainment that is keeping us institutionalised: we are beset by institutions from all sides: government, educational, informational, religious, to name a few. Let us examine religious institutions, as they were in Christ’s time, his response to them and how their legacy is still seen in today’s society.

The religious leaders of the time were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. It was against the latter group that Christ was most outspoken, because they believed in oral tradition as well as the letter of the law to such an extent that they used these to keep control over the population. A key incident in Christ’s dealings with this group was where he confronted them in Matthew 23. He accused them, among others, of the following:
• Preachers who do not practice what they preach.
• Placing heavy burdens on the people, but not lifting a finger to help them carry those burdens. In their book The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, Johnson and Van Vonderen discuss the hundreds of contemporary case studies of people who have been abused spiritually by church leaders who offer “placebos in the form of easy answers, ‘try hard’ sermons and the latest ‘get rich’ formulas” instead of dealing with “the ugly and messy relational process of meeting people’s real needs” which are “sacrificed for a better-looking but false peace.”
• Doing things to make them appear holy in the eyes of the populace, like tying phylacteries (little bundles of scripture in boxes) to their foreheads and wearing impressive garments showing their position in the religious order.
• Insisting on being called ‘Rabbi’ (Teacher) and Father. Jesus warns his disciples not to address anybody by these titles, because they have only one Teacher and Father (God) and are to refer to one another as brothers and sisters instead.
Yet even though Christ was so vehemently outspoken against this, what happened in the traditional Roman Catholic Church and subsequent churches from the 5th Century onwards was the following:
• Flowing robes of office worn by priests and the higher clergy,
• The title ‘Father/Reverend/Your Grace/Pastor’ etc. given to these officials.

Furthermore, he pronounces seven ‘woes’ on these people:
• Hypocrites (a Greek word from the time meaning ‘actors’) who will not enter the kingdom of heaven and prevent others from doing so.

• Hypocrites who will travel far and wide to win one convert and subsequently corrupt that convert. Singer Steve Taylor in “I want to be a Clone” criticises the unhealthy conformity in modern day churches, where people are evangelised, come into the church and then… “if you want to be one of his/Got to act like one of us”: become a religious clone who can say all the right things and go through all the motions to fit in, even if it means losing your original conviction (“Be a clone and kiss conviction goodnight/Cloneliness is next to Godliness, right?”).

• Blind guides who make up their own traditions and superstitions regarding religious life and forcing the populace to conform to these. Jesus also warned about the “yeast of the Pharisees” – as soon as we act out of religion instead of the prompting of God’s spirit, we mislead others into conformity with the institution, making them clones of the institution, rather than conforming with  God’s will.

• Hypocrites who are punctilious about small matters of God’s law but totally oblivious to the things that really matter: justice, mercy and faithfulness. How often today do we see people straining out the gnats of “evil” rock music and “abominable” gay marriage but ignore the dead camel, the metaphor for the lack of these three important qualities (justice, mercy and faithfulness) of the Christian walk?

• Hypocrites for whom exterior appearances matter more than what is inside of the person. But fix the inside and the outside will clear up. Today we see people going to churches that are run as slick business and entertainment operations, housed in beautiful buildings, but inside they are full of division, greed and corruption, with the scum rising to the top – from the Summoner and the Pardoner in Chaucer’s time, whose characters were based on typical church officials of that time, to the problem that the church in America faces, according to Brothers and Sisters, we have a Problem by Nicky Cruz: “But inside, they are actors – hustlers playing the angles of their own imaginary religious game show – saying all the right things at the right times.” Who can forget televangelists like Jim and Tammy Bakker who defrauded thousands of people and became rich?  Ray Stevens’ song “Would Jesus wear a Rolex” (on His television show) sums up the gross materialism of these charlatans.

• Whitewashed tombs that appear righteous but inside are full of dead bones. Today we see people who are outspoken against those “gnats” of contemporary society and have the appearance of righteousness, claiming to be Christian, but in their condemnation of others show themselves to have no love or compassion for the human condition. In Shawshank Redemption, Warden Norton has a verse up in his office about God’s judgment – in his opinion – of those in the prison under him. But the irony is that of a man who believes in the letter of the law, standing in judgment over those condemned by the world yet is blind to his own sin: greed. The judgment comes for him in the end, indicting him for his greed and corruption. Today we have in-your-face materialism and consumerism in churches, well-heeled pastors preaching words about prosperity as a sign of God’s blessing, words that tickle the ears of their well-heeled congregation, but they do nothing to help those who are in desperate need, as seen in Johnson and Van Vonderen’s case studies.

• Preservers of traditions and history who claim allegiance to the prophets of the past, yet persecuting those of the present – Jesus and John the Baptist being the case in point here. Throughout church history we see persecution by the established religious order of those who dare criticise it:

Catholics have persecuted Protestants: Protestants have pursued Catholics: Lutherans have hunted Anabaptists; Episcopalians have burned Puritans ; Puritans have hanged Quakers; Calvinists have tortured Unitarians, and all have united in persecuting the heroic Infidels who have refused to believe in any of the multifarious and conflicting creeds. (Bennett RM.  The champions of the church: their crimes and persecutions. D.M. Bennett, 1878, p. 832)

All because the church became a worldly institution with its own political and materialistic agenda.

Mozart, freedom and the human condition

In the previous post we saw how Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption explains to his fellow prisoners how listening to Mozart brought him freedom while he was in solitary confinement.

Music and hope for the human condition

The idea of music and hope going together is not new: praise and worship in Judeo-Christian faith has the purpose of lifting the spirit, making one forget about earthly troubles and dire situations. David, before he became king, played the lyre and sang to King Saul when he was troubled by an evil spirit and this gave the king peace. Isaiah 61:3 talks about putting on “a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” Despair is the antithesis of hope, therefore singing songs of praise brings about hope.

Praise-singing is of course a religious activity, but a part of the human experience is the fact that any music can affect mood by either lifting us up out of our despair (who can honestly say that the last movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D doesn’t lift the spirit after the fairly sombre preceding movement?) or by showing us that we are not alone in our situation – blues music and, lately, certain heavy rock/metal achieve this as well. As Andy Dufresne puts it, “Here [in prison – real or metaphorical] is where it [music in its truest form] makes the most sense” – transporting us to a place of hope or helping us realise that we are not alone.

We find this reaching beyond the material world, beyond this prison of the soul, in the song “Spirits in the material world” by The Police. The song is about the disillusionment with human political institutions: “There is no political solution/To our troubled evolution/Have no faith in constitution/There is no bloody revolution” speaks of human history littered with broken ideals and promises, revolutions that have only brought new tyrants (and, by implication, new institutions) to power. The song reminds us that we are the spiritual occupants of the physical realm – “ghosts in the machine”.

Music, in its truest form, helps us make sense of the world and gives us hope in our human condition. Music in its most banal form, however, imprisons us even further in materialism: listen to a lot of contemporary pop and rap, and you will hear lyrics glorifying sexual and hedonistic excess, the partying lifestyle, in-your-face materialism and self-obsession, disrespect for women and fellow humans or promising sweet syrupy Hollywood style love which is totally out of synch with reality. Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption had to contend with “The Sisters”, a gang in the prison whose sole purpose was to dominate fellow inmates through sodomy. Anyone aligning themselves with them would gain political power in the prison, yet Andy chose to fight them even though Boggs, the leader, had made overtures towards him at the start ("We could all use some friends"). Andy could have given in after they had beaten him up and sodomised him, yet he chose to resist to the bitter end. These men are institutionalised and relish their institutionalisation; this is their kingdom.

In the same way, we can say that the aforementioned banal pop and rap is music that tries to make people believe that this material reality is what it’s all about, keeping us institutionalised and controlled, obsessed with the immediate and keeping our eyes off the eternal. Yet we see artists resisting the lure of fame and artistic compromise, living on the fringes of stardom, showing Andy Dufresne-like integrity through giving us beautiful music that gives hope to the soul. Listen to Imogen Heap's "2-1" - the cello on it is a moving experience. Are the lyrics Christian? That depends on how you want to read them. Is Imogen Heap Christian? I very much doubt it. But if God could use a donkey to speak to a prophet (Balaam), then surely he can use a secular musician like Heap to transport us to a place of freedom for the soul?

Monty Python's Cheese Shop and the Church

Andy Dufresne’s fellow inmates in Shawshank Prison (in Frank Darabont’s Shawshank Redemption) could not escape the prison institution even when they were outside. The same can be said for institutionalised Christians whose institutions have come to resemble the Monty Python “Cheese Shop.”

Institutional religion vs. Christ’s intention

How did things come to this point where people who call themselves Christian are in flagrant contradiction of what Christ said (see previous post)? Is it perhaps that we have come to love and rely upon the institution (organised religion, the church of the Establishment) and the people who run it so much that we have forgotten about the person of Jesus Christ himself?

Like newly released prisoner Brooks Hatlen in Shawshank Redemption, people don’t know how to function outside of the institution. The Church has not equipped them for life in the real world; they relapse into their original fallen state as soon as they walk out the doors. Their religion is dead bones, a club to which they can claim membership. Luckily for institutionalised Christians, they come back to the institution every Sunday so as to feel part of the organisation, or they can join the “Sisters” - those who relish their institutionalisation - and spend all their time there, lording it over their inmates as part of the clergy or Church Board, working their way up through the human hierarchy, fulfilling their own ambition and agenda. According to Robert Shea, in the online article "Empire of the rising scum", "The better an organization is at fulfilling its purpose, the more it attracts people who see the organization as an opportunity to advance themselves."

Jesus said that where we saw the vultures, there the corpses would be. Shea talks about organisations and how they foster the type of person who functions best in these organisations: the apparatchiks. "The more an organization succeeds and prospers, the more it is likely to be diverted from its original ideals, principles and purposes," according to Shea, through the wheelings and dealings of these apparatchiks. What Jesus meant by these corpses was dead religion, fed upon by those who stand to gain materially and politically from it. During the Renaissance the Medici, or “God’s bankers” made a fortune from their connections with the Roman Catholic church, collecting 10% of the population’s earnings for the Church – the alternative was excommunication and the fires of hell. The Pope had a massive overdraft with them. They had the power to orchestrate new appointments to higher office depending on what the appointees’ standing with the bank was.  These “vultures” are not restricted to financiers of the 15th Century, but we see them alive and well today as part of church organisations where they flourish through lording it over the flock, collecting a salary and other perks but with no real intention of helping lift the burdens of hurting people – in fact, making things worse by offering super-spiritual “solutions” as seen in Johnson and Van Vonderen’s case studies, instead of real compassion.

Throughout history churches and movements have sprung up that were wonderful when they started, but they were doomed to become institutions, and as soon as an idea becomes an institution, the spirit behind it dies. Robert Shea: "Apparatchiks do to organizations what cancer viruses do to cells; they promote purposeless growth. Whatever the original aim of the organization, to publish books, to heal the sick, to share information about computers, once it has been taken over by apparatchiks, it will acquire a new aim - to get bigger." This started with the Emperor Constantine who reportedly was given the sign of the Cross by which to conquer and so made Christianity the state religion – note, a religion which supported the state and was supported by the state by making “conversions” – bringing people to Christianity at the point of a sword. The Roman Catholic Church was thus born and became the model for all institutionalised churches afterwards and would always be referred to as The Church, a monstrosity which existed to be served instead of serving its people, the body of Christ. Jimmy Carter, past President of the United States, indirectly indicts this period in church history in an article in Women’s Press for subverting the role of women in the church: "It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy." This gives an idea of the kind of worldly ambition that drove the early leaders of this “church,” instead of displaying “justice, mercy and faithfulness” as Christ requires. Ian Farr in the blog post "Seeking the Kingdom or building an empire" sees this kind of hierarchical church structure going even further back to the time of the Apostles.

Institutionalised churches would persecute every new movement, every revival of the true Christian spirit, that came after them. Shea again: "The apparatchiks not only want their own organization to get bigger; they also want it to swallow up or defeat and destroy all other organizations."  As seen in the quote from Bennett in the previous post, this is exactly what happened in church history: Episcopalians, Calvinists, Lutherans and just about every church organisation frothed at the mouth at the idea that there might be someone with a nicer religion than theirs with prettier robes of office, more hip reverential titles for members of the clergy and more impressive buildings - just like the Catholic Church and just like the religious order of Christ’s day.

Like the Monty Python cheese shop which was “very clean” and “certainly uncontaminated by cheese”, institutionalised churches have become very efficient in their hierarchy and administration but are only faintly (if at all) “contaminated” by the spirit of Christ. Johnson and Van Vonderen in The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse refer to Jesus’ description of the religious leaders as a “brood of vipers,” describing how the real vipers lay in wait in cool, sheltered places where weary travellers sought refuge – metaphorically, the church. The relief of the new Christian at finally finding rest turns to dismay when the performance-based religious views of their apparent rescuers demand more than the members of an exhausted flock can give. They are bitten and the viper latches on until the victim dies. The cheese shop had no cheese to offer after all, even though the sign outside said “Cheese Shop.”

Please note that not all traditional churches are like this – there is a vast number of congregations, in fact, where the spirit of God is still present, where people care for the needy and visit those in real and metaphorical prisons, do good not for show but out of commitment to God’s command to love one another unconditionally. How long though, before these churches are in danger of becoming totally secularised, when denominations are fighting on the world stage about issues such as same-sex marriage and the ordination of women to the clergy?

The issue here is not about gay or women’s rights, but about Government telling the churches what they can and cannot do. Perhaps the Church has given Government a foothold in its affairs precisely by certain Christians kicking up a sanctimonious noise about the morality of same-sex marriage, turning it into a civil rights issue instead of demonstrating God's love towards all people. But perhaps it is because of worldly principles sneaking into the church through the legal rights of married couples (married by legally ordained ministers of the denomination) which have now blurred the lines here between Church and State and, State following the vox populi, it has to decree illegal any refusal by Church to marry homosexual couples.

Will government one day have a say in what church ministers may and may not preach? It looks almost as if that day has come for the Church of England, if we were to go by an article that tells of David Cameron feeding "fears of persecution" and wholesale secularisation of the institution.

Whatever the outcome of the marriage equality debate and other issues, it seems doubtful that the cheese shop of organised Churchianity will stock cheese: the Spirit of Christ has long departed the portals of many of these marvels of architecture and slick organisation, no matter whether they believe in infant or adult baptism, geriatric immolation or marriage between straights, Mormons, males or Martians. The freedom that Christ won for us on the cross cannot be bound by earthly machinations and ambitions. The corpses are only food for the vultures, the apparatchiks who promote these loveless structures.

A "guerrilla" approach to Christianity does away with all the baggage of maintaining the crumbling facade of tradition and ritual that has become part of mainstream, popular Christianity. It puts the priesthood squarely on the shoulders of the ordinary citizen who wants Big Brother to think for him and is really to blame for shirking his responsibility in his salvation: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus," (1 Timothy 2:4-6) - not the guy in the fancy suit in his pulpit which is that little bit closer to Heaven than you and me. It's up to us to be Jesus, fountains of living water, compassionate friends, colleagues and participants in whichever facet of life God has placed us so that the world will taste and see that the Lord is good.

Hope, the Human Condition and Shawshank Redemption

Hope, the human condition and The Shawshank Redemption: Jesus and Andy Dufresne against institutions

Good art – whether it be painting, music, literature or cinematography – can, in the words of the Wachowsky brothers (creators of The Matrix) provide answers to the “big questions” in life. In The Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King and Frank Darabont have shown the viewer much of the character of Christ through the main protagonist Andy Dufresne, exposing the character of their enemy: the institutions of the world and of the mind and spirit that seek to imprison us.

Fallen

A man wakes up in a cell. He has been convicted of a crime of which he is innocent: his wife and her lover have been found shot dead and he had the means and the motive. But he didn’t pull the trigger. Can you imagine the despair, the indignity and frustration this must hold for him? This is Andy Dufresne, the main protagonist in the film The Shawshank Redemption, bringer of hope to a dismal institution.

A baby is born in a dark, fallen world. This world was doomed due to the actions of its first occupants. This child becomes the man who knows that he is the Son of God, the supreme of all beings, imprisoned in human form, having to eat, drink, urinate and defecate with his fellow prisoners. This is the Man Jesus Christ, through whose suffering, death and resurrection, hope of something beyond the material reality around us came into this world.

Andy is unlike his fellow inmates. He is educated and well-spoken. Red, who became his close friend, puts it this way: “I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place.”

Hope in a dark place

“This place” is Shawshank Prison, a sprawling bleak stone building housing those who have been judged and convicted by a society which has no interest in the edification of these inmates, but wants to see “more walls, more bars, more guards” to keep them inside. Andy wants to reverse this: he campaigns for funds for a new library for the prison and he strives to educate fellow inmates like Tommy Williams so that they don’t have to resort to a life of crime outside prison. In this struggle he is up against the prison of the mind, the state that the building, the bars and the guards strive to create: institutionalisation.

Red, the narrator, puts it this way: “These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.” Inmates like Brooks Hatlen would commit a crime in order to get put back inside, or commit suicide, because they cannot fit into society when released. Red himself, after his release says, “There is a harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole.” But Andy Dufresne has given him that which he thought had no place in prison: hope.

Hope was also key to the ministry of Jesus Christ when he lived among the people of his day who were condemned by the religious powers. Like Andy Dufresne, he was imprisoned innocently. Not in a building of stone, but in an earthly body, in the human condition. Many parallels can be drawn between Andy Dufresne and Christ: Andy drove his wife into the arms of another man through his neglect; Christ came to atone for the sin of Adam who had lost his wife and freedom to the serpent’s seduction. Christ had to endure death on the cross and three days in the realm of death to redeem humanity’s sins; Andy Dufresne had to endure nineteen years in prison and a 500 yard crawl through human sewerage to redeem himself for being a bad husband. Christ mysteriously disappeared from the tomb, leaving just a shroud behind; Andy Dufresne “upped and vanished like a fart in the dark” leaving only a muddy set of prison clothes behind. The symbolism of the tomb here is significant: Christ was “swallowed up” by the earth and was rebirthed from it; Andy Dufresne escaped through a tunnel concealed by the poster of a woman - at one point the word “Mother” can be seen above the poster, again symbolising rebirth. The focus of the following discussion, however, is on the hope they both brought while among fellow prisoners (or prisoners of the flesh) and the enemy they faced.

Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption had a walk and a talk like no other prisoner. He displays the character of Christ by offering his fellow inmates freedom and hope.

Freedom for the prisoners

According to the Bible, Christ was the Son of God, or he was God himself, who had become incarnate (i.e. clothed in flesh and blood) and came to minister to the people of his time with a message that would resonate to this day. Christ’s commission, stated in Luke 4 when he stood in the temple at Nazareth, was this:
“He [God the Father] has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free” [own italics]

It is his intention “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners” which pertains to Andy Dufresne’s situation in The Shawshank Redemption. Christ did not literally come to throw open prison gates to let loose a horde of criminals in some sort of prison break. Instead, he brought a freedom that cannot be pinned down by any physical means. For Andy Dufresne, this was the freedom of the mind and the human spirit. We see this in every situation where he opposed the oppression of the institution.

Andy proves that, even though he is educated and different from his fellow inmates, he is a man like them and wins them over when he organises, almost miraculously, to get them beers while tarring a roof. Red says of the situation: “We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men.” This is strongly reminiscent of Christ who, even though he was the Son of God and had “a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here”, proved that he knew what the small pleasures in life are to ordinary people by changing water into wine (of a good vintage!) at the wedding in Cana. This wasn’t just an act of divine benevolence: he loved to socialise with all manner of people – tax collectors, prostitutes, “sinners” in the eyes of the religious people of that time, and he loved to eat and drink wine with them. In Luke 7 Jesus says, “34 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’” He was criticised by the Pharisees, the religious order that partially governed the Jews, for mingling with common folk and sharing their pleasure. In this way, Andy Dufresne and Jesus prove themselves sensitive to the pleasures of the ordinary people, not putting themselves above them. They are both well acquainted with the human condition, the metaphorical prison of the human spirit, and the little things that set us free from it.

Andy Dufresne presented the human spirit most defiantly when he put the Mozart record on and played it through the prison PA system, locking himself into the warden’s office so that he could continue playing it to the inmates until the door was broken down and he was dragged off to solitary confinement. But until that moment, the inmates were transported by the music – in Red’s words: “those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.” [own italics]

When Andy comes back from solitary confinement, he stresses the importance of music in keeping hope alive:
Andy: I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company.
[points and taps his head]
Andy: It was in here.
[gestures over his heart]
Andy: And in here. That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you. Haven't you ever felt that way about music?
Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here.
Andy: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.
Red: Forget?
Andy: Forget that there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside...that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours.
Red: What are you talking about?
Andy: Hope.

The role of Red is interesting in this film: unlike the other prisoners, he is "the only guilty man in Shawshank". When asked what they did to land up here, all the other prisoners blame their "lawyer", but Red freely admits that he actually did commit a murder. In the same way, the people who have hope of salvation are those who admit their guilt, who know that they are feeble stumblers in a dark world, people who need hope. It is for this person that the innocent Christ came to earth, to give him the key to a life after being set free from the prison of the soul; it is for Red that the innocent Andy came to Shawshank, giving him the hope that he will meet him in his life after prison in a place that has no memory - the coast of Mexico and the vast expanse of the Pacific. Again, we cannot escape the parallels with Christian motifs here: Andy wants to take anglers (fishermen) out in his chartered boat - Jesus' disciples were fishermen.

Andy sees music as a means of remembering, in spite of the physical evidence of the prison around him, the concepts of hope and freedom. We shall examine the role of music in uplifting us from the human condition in the following discussion.

"Hollywood's war on God," or cringing Christians?

Fearful Christianity has shied away from the "big questions" posed by the secular arts. Perhaps the time has come for the followers of Christ to face squarely the issues raised by a world desperate for answers, instead of wasting their energy straining out gnats while swallowing the camel. 

Hollywood's War on God takes the blue pill
It is in the fearful "Cringing Christian" spirit that the documentary Hollywood’s War on God was conceived. This film has much to say about the evils of Gnosticism which have crept into modern filmmaking, looking behind the scenes at the lives and philosophies of the actors and directors of these films. What seems to cause most offense is the portrayal of a false messianic or Christ-like theme in many of these films. This is, however, exactly what makes them good and thought-provoking. As the Wachowski brothers, who directed The Matrix are quoted in HWOG: “We think the most important sort of fiction attempts to answer some of the big questions.”

In Acts 17 Paul addresses the Athenians, using the statue of “The Unknown God” as the opportunity to speak on a non-Christian forum, quoting from an Athenian poet as part of this discussion. We also need to do this: where the “big questions” are being raised, we should be there to answer them with “salty words.” We run away from these things in a spirit of fear and panic, when we can be using the Christian narratives within them about an "unknown" god to show vital truths that they contain. Christ himself used stories (parables) to illustrate truths about life, as will be seen later in the “Hope, the human condition and Shawshank Redemption” post.

Fearful Christianity assumes that we will be polluted by the ideas and philosophies presented by these works of art, whereas if we approach them in the fearless Christian spirit, they can be really valid discussion points about the real Christ: at least there is a Christ in them, someone who points to a reality outside of the current material world. The Matrix is a film where this theme is prevalent. I love the image of the red pill and the blue pill: fearfulness, the desire to be safe and not have our thinking challenged is like taking the blue pill. We are meant to live red-pill-dangerously, taking every opportunity to challenge the reality presented to us by the media and mainstream religion. In The Truman Show we see how we can be manipulated by these forces (“principalities and powers” according to the Bible) beyond our awareness, puppet masters hiding behind the smokescreen of our everyday, TV-manipulated life. The list goes on: V for Vendetta questions totalitarian religious authority, Lord of the Flies spells out human evil as opposed to human (and spiritual) good. In an interview on the DVD version of the South African film Spud, John Cleese talks about The Life of Brian as making fun, not of Christianity, but of the kind of people who misinterpret and twist Christianity around to suit their own needs. He talks about how, in the United States, Obama had to convince rich people that nowhere in the Bible does Christ say that the rich should not pay more tax than the poor. The Life of Brian does a splendid job of pointing out this kind of hypocrisy.

Yet the producers of Hollywood’s War on God have chosen the fearful, blue pill position, ignoring the Christian narratives in these works, playing straight into the hands of those who want to see Christians in paranoid stereotype. If we are to be vilified and persecuted, let it at least be for the right reasons: not because we rant against homosexuals, “Gnostic” film directors and the like, but rather because we stand for God’s justice in being a voice for the voiceless, taking care of those in need without expecting their bums on the seats of our church. Let it be because we are taking a stand against unrighteous worldly institutions that cause people to wage war on one another for the sake of the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of the many, a stand against principalities and powers using politics and mass media to keep the world population in the static unthinking safety of the matrix. Let it be because we stand for a real, eye-opening education in a world that seeks to create stupid, blind consumers of mass culture aimed at the lowest common denominator. The words of George Carlin ring very true here: “Governments don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. That is against their interests. They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept it.” Thank God for art, music, cinematography and literature that still seeks to provoke thought, teaching us to question the status quo in a world of bland, shallow values. Let us not shy away from these works of art in a cringing spirit of fear, but let us rather apply these sound minds that God has given us so that we can show his glory in a real dialogue with a world that is hungry for answers to the "big questions."

"Oolon Colluphid's" question, "Who is this God person, anyway?" will be addressed in the next post, where the person of Jesus Christ will be discussed in the light of Stephen King's character Andy Dufresne in the Frank Darabont film The Shawshank Redemption. 

Guerrillas for God

A break with religious indoctrination and with "Church-ianity" might just be the medicine for the ailing body of Christ today. 

A guerrilla army
The followers of Christ are meant to be a guerrilla army, delightfully different from the stereotypes that the world cherishes. Crazy, joyful, passionate followers of our brother commander, with salty words and deeds of grace in a world that knows only how to consume and abuse. We need to stop being religious robots and open ourselves to what God’s spirit prompts us to do in the moment, which often means saying and doing things that go against a lifetime of religious indoctrination. We need to gamble the two, three or however many minas we have been given and do something new and unexpected wherever we can, as some (sometimes whacky) Christian movements have started doing.

A BBC News article. "The Heavy metal-loving Church"  deals with people’s disenchantment with the traditional church and the rise of “Heavy Metal” churches that are reaching people on a completely different level, but with the message of Christ’s redemption and grace still firmly embedded. “Michael Bryzak plays in Bloodwork, a band he defines as ‘extreme metal’. ‘It's a mixture of death and black metal. Anything that sounds distorted and nasty,’ he says. ‘We sing about how bad life can be but always make sure there's a bit of hope.’ Echoing the views of many in the group, Paula Spirandio sees a difference between being Christian and being religious. ‘I'm totally against religion. To me, it just means tradition and going through the motions.’”

This is a far cry from the fearful Christianity I encountered in a girl at the school where I taught in South Africa. This school had a Christian organisation called JiK – Jesus is King. Lindy was the chairperson for this club. A very talented, intelligent girl, she was also part of the guitar club that I ran at the school. She was also devoutly Christian. What got me worried was one day in JiK when she announced that members of the organisation need to be more visible amongst their non-Christian peers. She suggested carrying Bibles around in plain sight. What bothers me to this day is that I didn’t point out to her that the religious people at the time of Christ had portions of Scripture tied to their foreheads, showing everybody how devout they were. And it was against these people that Jesus was the most outspoken. I also said nothing when she expressed concern at the fact that we were playing Pink Floyd songs at the guitar club, because she had heard some bad things about Pink Floyd.

Hell has been plundered
What fearful people like Lindy (I know there are many like her) do not seem to understand is that hell has been plundered! When Christ entered the realm of death he defeated the enemy totally and utterly. The light of God shone in the darkest place in existence and the light overcame the darkness. Nothing that originates in evil (or that which we think is evil) can harm me: I am clothed in the robes of royalty, no matter where I am. Listening to my children’s “satanic” music will not change my salvation one iota. Trying to understand what bands like Suicide Silence are trying to say – their justified dissatisfaction with this crazy world – will do more good in guiding my teenage child through his troubled years than forbidding his listening to this dark music. I have nothing to fear in this valley of the shadow of death. Jesus said: “Do not call that evil which God has not.” The closest Jesus came to calling anything evil was the people against whom he was most outspoken – not the prostitutes or wine drinkers, but the religious leaders of his time, the hypocrites who pretend holiness but lack love.

Love should compel us to having a fearless conversation with the world: keep your “bad” Facebook friends! If the god we are serving is the highest authority in this world, we have nothing to fear when we enter into a meaningful conversation (not a browbeating, Bible-bashing one) with the world. Remember that we are to BE Jesus, not “talk Jesus,” i.e. trying to convince people with our words. They are to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” I have worldly friends whom I love dearly. I am in contact with them on Facebook and they are well aware that I am Christian – but I never post anything overtly Christian. I do, however, subtly comment on any atheist rants, pointing out misconceptions about Christ and Christianity that they might harbour.

What, in the end, is “Christian”? The term seems to be one of those neat little categories by which the world is trying to lump together the followers of Christ. Sifted, filed and reviled, anachronistic. The enemy is trying to sift us – he is trying to sort us into neat little pigeonholes: if you like rock music, you must be a Satanist or on your way to becoming one; if you are Christian, then you only listen to songs with “Jesus” lyrics, wear “Jesus” T-shirts and drive a car with a “Jesus” bumper sticker. Safe little covers, fleshly insurance against evil, keeping us sanitised, blind to the social barometer, the gauge of the human condition that is fearfully called “the devil’s music” or “movies with Gnostic messages.”

We should stop being a paranoid army in our fortified holy huddles screaming "Heresy!" at anything outside of our ken. Think about the parable of the ten minas (or “talents”). We take everything that God has given us and we go into the world to show the fullness of life in Christ: our musicianship, our ability with beautiful words, our wicked sense of humour, our integrity in business, our warmth and acceptance of all people – poets, prostitutes and poofs alike – in order to show (not tell) that God is good. Fearful Christianity sits in a corner with its one mina (some notion about Christ and evangelism), burying it somewhere and shouting about it, but never showing God’s love and compassion to the world by entering into a conversation or a friendship in it.

Beautiful, illogical, unstoppable Faith

"And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same" - "Little boxes" by Pete Seeger. 


The unstoppable faith
The fearful, reactionary “Christian” attitude has its source in doubt rather than love. It is relying on logic (which quickly disappoints because life and faith are not logical) and eventually self-righteous religious rhetoric which makes no sense to non-believers. We have to stand in the total and utter confidence that if our faith is indeed the only way to salvation, it will be proved to be so in the end, no matter what the world is saying about us, no matter how much we are being compared to and misrepresented by well-meaning but fearful (or sometimes downright evil) folk who claim to be Christian and try to keep their faith afloat with hot air. In Acts 5 when Peter and the apostles were brought before the Jewish council, they were in danger of being put to death, but a Pharisee named Gamaliel made a shrewd observation:  35 “Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men.” He then gave some examples of men of that time who had claimed to be “somebodies” leading revolts, but they all came to naught. He ends with: 38 “Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. 39 But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

Our faith can and will withstand everything that is hurled at it today, every act of ignorance and buffoonery practiced by non-Christians in the name of humanism and by errant, bigoted “Christians” in the name of Christ alike. We don’t have to rant and rave and get into quarrels about it, it just is. Christ’s authenticity has been acknowledged even by non-Christians who agree in principle with his teachings and spout patronising twaddle about concepts like forgiveness, turning the other cheek and other worthwhile principles, even though they try to skirt the issue of his divinity. Nominal Christianity, on the other hand, has used the divinity of Christ as a licence to ignore conveniently the true fundamentals of our faith.

Contemporary theologian and philosopher Richard Rohr puts this into perspective:

Christianity is a lifestyle — a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established “religion” (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s “personal Lord and Savior” or continue to receive Sacraments in good standing. The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.

The enemy of all life and growth is institutionalisation. Making our living faith a “religion,” contained in little boxes called “The Church” is stultifying and defeats the object of our commission to make disciples of the world. Such is the nature of a container in that it does not allow for anything that does not fit its particular shape. How can our diverse, organic faith reach a complex, diverse humanity outside of these prison boxes where people go each Sunday to sing, listen to an ear-tickling sermon  and pat each other on the back before returning home and putting their black Bibles away ‘til next Sunday? The lack of “lifestyle change” that Rohr mentions above is glaringly evident in this Sunday Christianity.

More Christian hot air, or tears for the world?

Fearful Christianity has alienated itself from the mission of Christ's love

Fruitless quarrels vs Love from a pure heart
What do I mean by “fearful” Christianity? Maybe the term “reactionary” is more suited to this type of Christian, who is better known to the world as the “fundamentalist” Christian. This is the guy who is getting himself into a quarrel with the world about values that the world does not understand, values of which he only has some dim notions himself. God warns us to steer clear of fruitless quarrel in 1Tim. 1:

5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. 6 For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, 7 wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

This person is casting pearls (his “Christian” beliefs) in front of swine (people who cannot comprehend or rightly condone these beliefs) and is being devoured by these “unbelievers.” I put “Christian” in quotes here because very often these beliefs are, in the final analysis of God’s all-encompassing love, not altogether Christian.

What about the “love from a pure heart” as seen in the above verse? William Miller in A Christian’s Response to Islam tells of encountering a Muslim cleric named Abbas in the town of Damghan who had become Christian. Abbas had gone to the local missionary to browbeat him with arguments to prove the superiority of Islam. The poor missionary, a Mr Wilson, was defeated at every turn with clever arguments from Abbas. According to Abbas, “I felt I had overcome him, and I felt very proud of myself. Then that man of God felt so sorry for me in my unbelief and pride that he began to weep.” So moved by the missionary’s tears for Abbas’ unbelief and pride, the Muslim cleric was converted.

Two issues here:
a) What are we doing, trying to use words and fruitless arguments to try and win the world to Christ? How about loving actions and living examples?
b) When we are trying to convert non-Christians, whose agenda are we following? The one that demands more bums on the seats of our emptying and increasingly irrelevant churches, or that of Christ who is weeping for the lost? I’m not talking about the pat clichés of the “Jesus loves you” ilk, but genuine, heartfelt “love from a pure heart,” tears of grief and frustration at a people obstinately blind to the great gift that is being offered to them.

Religious soap opera: Pride and Stereotypes

Christianity is under attack by atheists and blundering, bigoted nominal Christians alike. The one loves the stereotypical Christian, the other loves to oblige. Meanwhile, the true message of Christ's love gets unheard, even though we hear and see Christian metaphors in much secular music and cinematography. 

Trees by the stream
Some years ago, just after I had re-dedicated my life to following Christ, my wife and I were due to perform at a secular music festival in the countryside. On the way there, we visited two Christian friends who tried to discourage us because they had heard “bad things” about the festival, that it was somehow a melting pot of all sorts of evil. My response was, “Then all the more reason for us, as Christians, to be there.” Not to proselytise with words, Bibles and pamphlets, not to condemn and judge, but just to be who we are: fellow human beings and musicians out to enjoy a weekend of sunshine and good music. Moreover, we were renewed people, fountains of living water, strangely different, trees beside the stream of eternal life, trees in whose shade we have visited and shared life with friends – Christian and non-Christian alike. We didn’t need words to tell this to the world.

Killed on the zebra crossing
Today, more than ever in my lifetime, I am witnessing an onslaught on Christianity by people claiming to be atheist and claiming to know what Christianity is all about through what they read in the media or experience themselves at the hands of people who claim to be Christian who are not “strangely different” but are strenuously conforming to the stereotype of “typical” Christians. These atheists’ judgment of the entire faith is neatly summed up by the passage from Douglas Adams’ Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God went wrong, Some more of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person anyway?”  “Oolon Colluphid” is obviously an intellectual who has become popular through making controversial statements and, without allowing himself to be in awe of the wonder and mystery of the Universe (where God did it just right), he has swept the Creator out of the equation. Like Man in another part of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he has proven logically that God does not exist and is going on to prove that black is white, getting himself killed on the next zebra crossing!

Metaphorically, we are doing just that: we are getting ourselves killed morally, philosophically and aesthetically because we have allowed our logic to deprive us of the wonder and beauty of the universe by reducing it to wheels, cogs and nuts and bolts – and worse; dollars and cents. If we don’t stand in awe of something greater than us, we are in danger of neglecting and trampling or exploiting those who are weaker than we are, because we become arrogant masters of an engineer’s universe which has no understanding of the respect for life. It is also a financier’s universe where everything that is not bringing in cash or adding monetary value to the pot is disregarded as worthless. C.S Lewis in Mere Christianity puts it this way: "As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you." It is pride, the idea that we are answerable to no higher power, that is the cause of many of the world’s problems today – from the abuse and exploitation of our environment to the scourge of rape which sees men answerable only to their all-consuming will to power over “weaker” women.

Useless stereotypes
Religious pride looks like the opposite, posing as the remedy for the humanist, atheist ideologies around today. Humanism is demanding equal rights for same-sex marriage, “fundamental” Christians seek to abolish homosexuality altogether, basing their view on a few passages in the Bible that call it an “abomination.” It is a literalist view of all that the Bible says and is also missing the point. Religious pride relies on human interpretations of the Bible, instead of allowing God’s supernatural spirit to open our eyes and ears to all the ways (not just the Bible) in which He is communicating with us – through things that people tell us, something we read by chance in a magazine, lyrics of a (yes, secular) song or a concept in a good film. Submitting to this spirit requires a laying down of Self and a taking up of trust in God’s will for us, trusting that he is indeed interested in us in a very real way and is actively communicating with us. Unfortunately the pride-filled, fearful view confuses “awe and wonder” with a wrathful, judgmental god, blinding us to the wonders that He has in stall for us, that instead of this hell-fire and damnation we have a common-sense faith presented to us by the real Christ, a faith which boils down to the simple, yet most mysterious (and misunderstood) concept of love – the nemesis of fear and pride. Love and faith go hand in hand: we have to believe in love for it to work. Ask anyone suffering from depression how difficult it is to love yourself when you do not believe yourself worthy of love. It is the lack of this love which is driving self-proclaimed, pride-filled Christians to condemn people for things about which Jesus Christ himself was inexplicably silent (what did he say about homosexuality?), and in so doing they are fuelling the stereotype of the Christian that we see today.

The world loves stereotypes. This is the picture that it has of the average Christian:
• An unsmiling, humourless robot with a Bible under the arm.
• Someone for whom nothing outside of the words and literal ideas in the Bible exists – in fact, science and scientific hypotheses are to be mistrusted and vilified as “the work of Satan” (whose image closely matches that of Darwin with horns on his head).
• Someone who says “Praise the Lord” lots and who is always saying things about “The Lord” in such a way that you can actually see the capital letters every time they say “The Lord.”
• Someone who will slavishly support the USA’s killing and torturing innocent civilians because the USA has a “Christian” government (and therefore can do no wrong).
• A self-appointed moral guardian who believes that stamping out homosexuality is right at the top of God’s “To-Do” list.
• Someone who wears a WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do”) bracelet and a “Jesus” T-shirt, advertising a moralising, judgmental and no-fun-at-all buzzkill whacko who lived 2000 years ago who still thinks he can spoil our fun today by telling us with “overly attached girlfriend” eyes and froth around the mouth that we will go to a place called Hell (apparently involving eternal fire and stuff) if we have fun, read Darwin and the Mad magazine or listen to Judas Priest/Nirvana/Avenged Sevenfold (pick your generation) backwards, forwards or sideways. I remember when I was at school some well-meaning, sincere people handing out little cartoon booklets published by well-meaning, sincere but totally off-whack Chick publications sketching out scenarios where the wayward lad or lass ends up in Hell as a result of slavishly following a friend who drinks and takes drugs and who reveals himself as a devil when they die.

Watch just about any TV programme like the teen soapie “Awkward” or any number of popular movies and you will see Christian robots set up and shot down, dispatched with disdain. Yes, the world loves this stereotype and the media will play up to this in any way they can, with fearful Christians always ready to oblige. What a wonderful way to keep the followers of Christ at arm’s length and disengaged from the pressing issues of philosophy, ideologies, morality and ethics that abound in the world today: keep them shouting irrelevancies from ancient, seemingly anachronistic scriptures and no-one will listen to them.

Perhaps it is time for the followers of Christ to enter into a meaningful conversation with the world; perhaps the arts - music, literature and cinematography - can be the meeting place for this dialogue to take place. See the next installment of this post for more on this.