More Beliefs Worth Doubting

A while ago, I began a Top Ten List of beliefs that I claimed, only a little whimsically, Christians might be better off without. By the end of that column, I had gotten through six of them, and promised somewhat vaguely to get to the other four sometime. Well, here they are. Which of them should be last, and which first, I leave up to you.

We will never really change society until we first experience a change in our own hearts. There is a lot of truth conveyed in this affirmation. Part of it is that social change is a very high priority for Christians, and that working to bring it about is something we should be doing practically all the time. Another part of the truth is that positive social changes have a better chance of lasting when the people who are affected by them are themselves changed for the better in the process. Actually, the only thing wrong about this belief is that little word, "first," in it. Putting it in there all too often turns a principle for bringing about needed social change into a rationalization for never even beginning. If we have to "set our hearts" right in order to make things better for other people, then they had better not count on us for very much. What God asks us to seek first is the Kingdom. If we get a changed heart at the beginning of doing so, so much the better. But even if we do not, we can still be sure of getting it by the end.

The Bible contains all that we will ever need to know about anything. At least, this is what a lot of uninformed Protestants have been saying since the Reformation. The implication is that Christians are people of one, and only one, book. Any other books and any other kind of learning can only distract us from, or even undermine, the foundations of our faith. This strange view is a far cry from what Protestantism as a whole has stood for through the centuries: the view that the scriptures contain the truths that are necessary for our salvation, but not all truth whatsoever. In 1763, John Wesley took an interesting tack on the issue at a meeting with his lay preachers. Pushed hard for permission to rely only on the Good Book, Wesley admonished his interrogators that going this route would be tantamount to setting ourselves above St. Paul, who relied on many books and not just one.

People with strong faith do not get overwhelmed by fear or anger. I hear this a lot, especially when someone is not only overwhelmed by these feelings, but is also guilt-ridden from having them in the first place. The fact of the matter is that fear and anger are exactly the way that we "should" respond in all kinds of situations, so much so that not feeling anxious and resentful can sometimes become even more problematic for us than the stressful situation was originally. A good example is the harm we do to ourselves by not acknowledging our fear and anger after a significant loss. Jesus himself got angry a lot, and felt sheer terror at least once, during his own lifetime. In ours, especially now that they must be lived in the aftermath of "9/11," not honoring feelings like these can dangerous both to our health and to our survival.

There is no salvation apart from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Many Christians are such because they feel very deeply and personally the presence of the Risen Lord in their lives. Some of their friends, however, are the Christians they are simply because they have been raised that way, or simply because the Christian way of life makes sense to them. Is the first group "saved" and the other not? Possibly, but only God can possibly know for sure. What interests me especially about Evangelical Christians' insistence that we have to make a conscious, personal decision for Christ is the implication that any relationship with the Lord has to be forged by us, that God's prior decision to draw all men and women to himself in Christ doesn't count for as much. Sad but true to say, there is a great deal about humanity's relationship with God that is one way, and running in the opposite direction: God keeps on embracing us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

This column ends with a disclaimer. No one Top Ten List can fully encompass all the beliefs out there that are being entertained seriously by Christians who would be better off by setting them aside. And so, someday, when you least expect it, you just might be looking at still another list, or two, or…