Just Jesus and Nothing Else?

At this sad time, as Benedict XVI leaves the See of Peter, I have been browsing various websites and soaking up the reaction the news. This reaction from Andrew Sullivan, the gay libertarian blogger, seems fairly typical.

"This church, whoever is elected Pope, will rise again. It will rise because in a world of such potential destruction, the message of non-violence and peace is more vital than at any time in the history of humankind. It will rise because the global capitalist system, while bringing so many out of poverty, is also now creating vast inequalities and straining the planet’s eco-system with a frenzy that we have an absolute duty to slow and control again. It will rise because the supreme values of the current West – money, power, fame, materialism – are spreading everywhere. And they lead us not to some future hell but to a very present one, in which the human soul becomes a means, not an end, in which human life is regarded as disposable not sacred, in which even the more enlightened countries, such as the US, legitimize the evil of torture and pre-emptive warfare."

Sullivan, however, believes that Pope Benedict's doctrinal orthodoxy is not the way to go; in fact, he seems rather sceptical of an institutional Church at all.

It's a familiar refrain. How often have you heard it said that we can simply "follow Jesus" without bothering with organized religion or creeds?

I want to ignore the obvious objections to this, such as "How do you know anything about Jesus in the first place?", or "if Jesus's message was so simple, why do so many people disagree on what it was?"

I want to wonder; what would a Christianity that was not organized even look like?

Those who write about Christ's "simple message" all too often seem to boil it down to moralism, as Sullivan has done in the passage above. It is as though Christ, whether he was divine or not, was simply a messenger, somebody delivering a moral philosophy that could in principle have been delivered by somebody else. A cursory reading of the New Testament (but then, if you don't need a church, why should you need a definitive Bible text?) seems to suggest otherwise. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no Man cometh unto the Father but by me". "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he hath sent."

If Christ was simply a moralist after all, wouldn't it all be unbearably...boring? The whole drama and profundity and tragedy of the New Testament story lies in the fact that something utterly unique is happening-- the most important event in all cosmic history.

Christ just does not behave like somebody who is simply teaching. He acts as though everything he does is of supreme importance, from the baptism in the Jordan to the wiping of the apostles feet. He speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven, not as some kind of doctrine, but as a reality, a fertile and life-giving thing that is appropriately symbolized by seeds falling on soil. He speaks of his Passion, not simply as the logical outcome of the world's hostility to him, but a fulfilment of the Scriptures and a necessity of his mission.

After all that, to accept Christ simply as a guru seems anti-climactic in the extreme. He did stuff. If he is to "light a fire on Earth", if he is to be "with us, even to the end of the age", it just doesn't seem enough that he will live on in his precepts and his example. He has to go on doing stuff. Whether that is through sacraments, answered prayers, miracles, or some other medium, the essential principle seems to be that Christ remains a living presence on the Earth, not simply a mentor.

Accepting that, we are left with two options-- either Christ works through some accepted and conventional means, such as sacraments, or he operates in more unpredictable and idiosyncratic means, such as appearing directly to individuals, speaking to them, inspiring them, moving their hearts, etc. The latter option seems to open the door to a chaos of fraudulent visionaries, crackpots, egotists and cult leaders, and general delusion. Organized religion, it seems to me, is a much more responsible and reasonable way in which Christ would manifest himself-- one less open to the abuses of zealotry and manipulation.

(Mind you, I am not suggesting for a moment that Christ and the Holy Spirit are dependent upon the sacraments to act upon this world, or restricted to them. But it is in the sacraments that an orthodox Christian can be sure of Christ's presence.)

But even these considerations are rather metaphysical and high-flown. The thing that really bothers me about "unchurched" Christianity is-- what do you actually do that makes you a Christian, if you are unchurched?

Is it really the case that those who leave institutional Christianity behind free up more time to read the Bible, to pray, and to perform good works? Is there any living examples of Christians who eschew organized worship but who devote as much time and energy to practicing their religion as those who remain "churched"? Could anyone really believe that this is how human beings work?

Is it not, rather, obvious from the history of the Protestant Reformation (in Europe, at least) that when we rationalize and streamline and "purify" religion-- when we free it from ceremonial and ritual and what are seen as "fripperies"-- there might be a temporary intensification of piety (for instance, the Puritan era in England), but that this ebbs away after a few generations. Where is the fire of the European Reformation now? The Catholic Church is hanging on by its fingernails in most of Europe, granted, but where in continental Europe will you even find the ardent heirs of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli? Several waves of religious enthusiasm since the Reformation (for instance, Methodism and Pietism) were not enough to stop the Protestant cause from dwindling away to an irrelevance.

(I admit that America is an apparent exception to this. The Protestant Reformation still burns brightly in America, and there are millions and millions of Evangelicals and Presbyterians and other Christians who put Christ at the centre of their lives while keeping visible and sacramental acts of worship to what seems like a minimum to us Catholics. But these Christians are not unchurched. They do have sacraments, they do attend church, and they do accept an ecclesial discipline. It is not do-it-yourself Christianity.)

The truth is that human beings are fickle creatures. Our enthusiasm tends to wax and wane. When it waxes, we positively need some outlet for our enthusiasm. The man who is crazy about cars isn't happy with driving one-- he wants to have model cars on his desk, to read car magazines, to talk about cars with other car enthusiasts, to put up a calendar with illustrations of vintage cars in his kitchen. The man besotted with a woman is not happy just to be with her as much as possible-- he wants her picture to look at when she is not there, he wants to keep her letters and postcards and locks of her hair, he wants to look at the places she grew up and went to school. All enthusiasm naturally overflows. Why should religious enthusiasm be any different?

A while ago, my non-religious (but not ant-religious) brother saw my rosary beads (which I now use rather seldom), and asked me whether it would not be more appropriate for them to be wooden-- presumably as a sign of austerity and simplicity. I don't really understand this attitude. Everybody, no matter how frugal, tends to lavish money and attention and care on the things that are most important to them. Would a man decide not to give Christmas or birthday gifts to his family in order to demonstrate that his love was too pure to be expressed by such trifles? If he did, I fear that his loved ones might not be too impressed by the gesture.

Just as enthusiasm inevitably flows over, in most of us it just as inevitably ebbs. As anyone who has read a few posts on this blog might have noticed, I am an avid fan of both G.K. Chesterton and of cinema. But there have been times when I felt I couldn't read another word of Chesterton-- when the few things I find grating about his style seem to become intolerable, and his paradoxes and levity seems tiresome beyond words. Similarly, I have gone months without going to the cinema, and months of feeling a positive distaste for it-- when it seemed merely a superifical and flashy and cheesy form of entertainment.

Having admitted to finding Chesterton tiresome sometimes, I will make up by turning to him to express this very phenomenon, which (once again) he described better than anyone else ever could:

The principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. The joy of battle comes after the first fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore of learning him; the glow of the sea-bather comes after the icy shock of the sea bath; and the success of the marriage comes after the failure of the honeymoon. All human vows, laws, and contracts are so many ways of surviving with success this breaking point, this instant of potential surrender.

In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor. It is then that the Institution upholds a man and helps him on to the firmer ground ahead.

No matter how fiery and fervent a Christian might be, I imagine that pretty much every Christian who has not yet attained sainthood sometimes says his prayers reluctantly, reads his Bible reluctantly, goes to church reluctantly, forgives his neighbour reluctantly, resists arrogance and greed and lustful thoughts reluctantly. Without the encouragement and discipline of organized religion, it is more likely that, at such moments of lassitude or temptation, we will not do those things at all, rather than doing them reluctantly. I often think that the requirements of organized religion are like artificial sandbanks, designed to prevent coastal erosion-- without them, the coast is eaten away slowly but surely, perhaps over generations.

Sacrifice is at the very core of the Christian faith. It is all very well to decide that, if it was really necessary, you would sacrifice your life for Christ, or for another human being, or that you would sacrifice a job or a promotion if your beliefs as a Christian stood in the way of taking it. But those opportunities for dramatic sacrifice rarely come along. For most of us, most of the time, the question is-- what sacrifices do you make every day? What sacrifices of time, money, inclination? Sacrifice seems to be the natural language of love (what has it cost you?). And organized religion demands small, regular sacrifices of us in a way that a personal religion never will, not least because in a personal religion, no matter how spectacular the sacrifices, it is still us choosing them for ourselves. Some people might find it easier to go forty days and nights without eating than to sit in a confessional and confess their sins to a priest, for instance.

And what about prayer? Isn't it easy to see how the prayer of the unchurched seems almost destined to lapse into a mere quest for an endorphin rush? A woman may discard formulaic prayers, deciding that she will speak from her heart rather than repeat stale words by rote. Surely the next logical step is to discard words entirely, and let her heart commune with God. And why should this happen in a church, or kneeling before a crucifix or an icon? Why not walking along the promenade on a glorious morning, when she feels closest to God anyway? But, ultimately, what is then the difference between "praying" and enjoying a sunny morning on the beach?

What is there to arrest this trend towards formlessness, and eventually to the inevitable outcome of formlessness-- apathy? I don't think there is anything, in the resources of a mere personal religion. Even if a single person or a single family stays true to their purified creed, can something so intangible, so abstract, be passed onto the next generation, or to other people? Perhaps. But I imagine it is a rare, rare occurence.

"Just Jesus" Christianity is, I think, a chimera. And (as far as I'm concerned) not even an appealing chimera at that.