Unpopular Opinions: Church Edition

This will hopefully achieve the same goal and affect that Monopoly does: Ruin relationships irreparably and leave a bad taste in your mouth.

One: You don't need the Bible to have faith.

Abraham didn't have a Bible and he somehow knew it was Yahweh telling him to go into the wilderness to this random place. Isaac and Jacob also had deep and meaningful moments with Yahweh and they didn't have a Bible. They were pre-Judaic so they didn't have the Torah or the Mishnah. The Torah wasn't even in its final stages until Jesus had began His ministry. So how did they know it was Yahweh specifically? How did they know it was the God of Judaism and Christianity? They didn't. It's that simple. They were all hearing voices. We typically frame our ability to experience God through the Bible or the traditions of our respective churches. The Bible serves as the manual to how most people in humankind experienced God and this is what it tends to look like. But Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Samuel, Saul, Joshua, Caleb, Noah, Moses, etc. had no Bible and somehow knew it was God. Which makes a strong case for us not needing a Bible in order to have exemplary faith. They followed. Which means Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac by a voice in his head. I'm leaving that there and moving forward.

Two: You don't need a verse for something to be "Christian".

The Bible isn't prescriptive. Sorry. It isn't. The authors weren't capable of imagining, let alone capturing, every single instance of human behavior and thought to list in the Bible. The Bible is a template, a guide to help us rather than a rule book to tell us everything to do in every little instance. You don't need the Bible to tell you to be good to people. "Good" existed way before Judaism and Christianity came around and I can only imagine that people were being good (however "good" took shape back then) long before the Bible came around. You don't need an entire religious book, and a church dedicated to teaching that book, in order to know how to be good to someone. You don't need a verse to tell you how to love someone. Yes it helps but that doesn't make the verse a necessary requirement. If Christianity, boiled to its mere elements, is faith, hope, and love, then you don't need a verse in order to be faithful and hopeful and loving to someone.

Three: The church and its congregation members tend to rationalize their crappy behavior as good. Stop that.

When you sin you look at Christ up on the cross and say "You belong there". When you knowingly sin you look at Christ and go "I'll put the nails in myself". Augustine whines about this in Confessions, his choice sin of stealing pears even though he didn't even need them or want them, himself saying that he had better pears at home, as "sin for its own sake". The worst type of sin to Augustine. If you're going to knowingly sin, then commit to explaining to Christ that you chose to nail Him to the cross. Because that's what sin does. Don't hide from it. Don't sanitize your crappy behavior with rationalizing processes. Own your sin. You did it. You're held accountable for it at the end of your days. The church would be taken more seriously if it collectively went "Yeah we did all of this crappy things and it isn't pretty but it's us". More on this point later.

True faith.


Four: Heresy doesn't really matter.

My favorite one. Strap in kids, it's about to get wicked.

Heresy is a political move. It's a term we use for anything we don't like when it comes to our secure and stable notions of Christ, the church, and all it encompasses. It's a moving target, orthodoxy and heresy constantly shifting with generations and culture. Heresy typically is based off a true moment taken from the Bible and its taken in a contorted direction. Docetism makes sense (The idea that Christ appeared to die because Christ, God incarnate, can't die). Monophysitism makes sense (Jesus had only one nature, not two). Adoptionism makes sense (Jesus was adopted as the son of God at His baptism). Heresy doesn't limit grace though. God's grace is for all people, not the ones that commit to the Westminster Confession or the people that only use the KJV (the 1759 edition no less). I doubt God exactly cares about how we understand Christ's nature or the Trinity and its internal workings. As long as we care for the least of these then we should hopefully be good. Leave the Trinity explanations to God (seriously guys, that stuff is confusing).

Five: Saying "the church isn't perfect" isn't a get out of jail free card towards an aggressive pursuit of being better.

"We aren't perfect". "The church has a long way to go". And then you go back and continue the same nonsense you did last week. Changing is hard. It's scary. It's an uncomfortable, insecure, unstable process. We're used to sinning. We like it. It's fun. Christ isn't fun and He wasn't very likable in the Bible (He came off as an ass in the Bible and no Christ doesn't get a pass because He's God incarnate, He was fully human too so He can be an ass too just like everyone else). So we hear "the church isn't perfect", seek that as passive-aggressive validation for the remission of our crappy behavior for that week, and then go back out AND DO IT AGAIN. Repentance means being better. It means committing to being better. It means going through the ugly moments and forcing yourself to be uncomfortable. It means seeking the discomfort and not sanitizing it, deodorizing it, or bleaching it away. It means committing to the process of becoming more like Christ and less like us. If Christ was comfortable then He'd be a waste of time. But saying "the church isn't perfect" isn't uncomfortable. It still leaves Christ on the cross. And that's a comfortable place for us to leave Him because He can't get down. If He can't get down from the cross then He can't give us hell for our behavior.

But He did come down.
But He did see His disciples. His friends. His brothers. He saw them.
But He didn't give them Hell.

He broke bread with them. He ate fish and bread with them. Bring Him down from there so He can help you be better. The church, believe it or not, can one day say "we're on the way to being like Christ". And mean it.