Tuesday Miscellany (On Weakness and Strength)

Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files are always a welcome sight when they show up in my inbox. I don’t always agree or resonate with his responses to queries from his fans, but they are almost invariably interesting. Today, for example, Cave responds briefly (often only a word or a sentence) to a wide range of questions from around the world. Naturally, I am always drawn to the ones that have to do with faith. Two fans were fairly disgusted with Cave’s, for lack of a better term, “religious turn” in the latter part of his career. One American fan wondered how anyone with “half a brain would believe in God.” Another, JL from Canada, queried, “Is religion not the refuge of the weak?” Cave responded thus:

Yes, JL, it is precisely that. Christianity in particular.

When I was a younger man, a question like JL’s would have sent me marching off to my keyboard to do battle. I would have summoned my best arguments, quoted all the impressive intellectual figures I could think of who were religious, and generally tried as hard as I possibly could to prove that that there were strong, smart, respectable people who were Christians. I resented the implication that only weak, the gullible, the credulous, the uneducated, those in need of a “crutch” would be drawn to faith.

I’ve grown up a bit since then. I think Cave’s response is brilliant and absolutely correct. Christianity is absolutely a refuge for the weak. Some of us just take a bit longer to realize that we all belong in that category than others.

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A friend and I often discuss the state of the Mennonite church (in the West) and of the vaguely liberal Protestant ethos in which we tend to find (or situate) ourselves. The “mainline church,” to use an American term. Not Catholic or Orthodox, not evangelical (sometimes a little too desperately so), somewhere in between. Politically liberal-ish, a bit light on doctrine and conviction, very morally earnest (if inconsistent) and socially engaged. Eager not to offend. And, as it happens, mostly dying.

My friend tells me that one day we will probably all have to either become Roman Catholics or Evangelicals if we want to find a church. This is uncomfortable to hear as a pastor of a church that is neither. But it’s hard to argue with her. Especially in light of a recent book by Ryan Burge called The Vanishing Church which was the subject of an article I read today. According to Burge, all the talk of the decline of the church in the West is a bit misleading. It’s the decline of a particular expression of church. Roman Catholics and Evangelicals seem to be mostly holding on. It’s the mainline churches whose numbers are falling off a cliff. The number of people claiming no religious affiliation (atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular) has increased dramatically, but according to Burge, the data suggests this has come almost entirely at the expense of mainline Protestantism.

There is so much that could be said about the data (What is it about this expression of church that makes it so easy to leave? What are people not finding there? What cultural assumptions is it validating?). But at the very least, it seems that people seem to prefer stronger stuff when it comes to religion. They’ll take the full dose or nothing at all.

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I spent yesterday out at the jail as I do most Mondays. I’m always struck by who volunteers at the jail and who doesn’t. At least in my context, it tends, broadly speaking to be the Roman Catholics and the evangelicals. The mainline is mostly absent. Theologically, it tends to be the conservatives not the liberals. Which is kind of interesting to me, in light of the article above…

At any rate, yesterday I was waiting for the guard to bring the guys to the chapel and was kind of absently perusing our meagre “library.” I came across three books by Philip Yancey. Where is God When it Hurts?, What’s So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew. I read all three in my twenties and deeply appreciated them. Yancey might have been one of those guys my twenty-five-year-old self would have pointed to in order to prove that smart, strong people could be Christians.

I’m long past the point where Christians behaving badly surprises me. As I’ve said many times on this blog, I have a fairly low (and, in my view, deeply Christian) view of human nature. But the news of Yancey’s eight-year extramarital affair a few weeks ago was still most unwelcome. Seriously? Eight years? A one-night stand is understandable, I suppose. But eight years involves a remarkable level of deception and duplicity. I was especially annoyed because the week prior I had just enthusiastically recommended What’s So Amazing About Grace? to an inmate.

I decided to change course for one of yesterday’s chapels. I told the story of Yancey, his books and their effect on me, his affair, his confession, his wife’s agony, his remorse, etc. I held the three books up. “What should we do with these in light of all this?” I asked.

“Burn ‘em,” one guy enthusiastically responded. “Dude’s a hypocrite, nothing he says means anything now.”

There were a few enthusiastic affirmations.

“Okay,” I said. “Any other responses?” A guy across the room responded with a bit less bluster and bravado. “I don’t think any of us should cast stones here. We’re all here for stuff we’ve done wrong. We’re all hypocrites in some way.”

There were a lot of silent nods.

I said, “If we resolved to read only the books of people who didn’t sin, how many books would we have to read?” “None,” one guy replied. “We’re all sinners.”

We talked about King David and Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite, about Psalm 51, about the amazing thing about grace being that it is for miserable sinners like Philip Yancey and like each one of us. About how Christianity is indeed a refuge for the weak, for those who know their weakness and those who will.