How do we define Openness?
Saturday, August 04, 2007
My post a few days ago about the Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors advertising campaign drew a surprising amount of feedback (You can see it here). At a basic level, I think everyone probably agrees that 'openness' is a gospel imperative. Jesus invites all to come into his fellowship, and as his church, we echo that same open attitude because we believe that God's redemptive love is intended for his whole creation.
I came across a passage in Augustine's Confessions that made me think about this yesterday, when he says in Book IV, "Blessed is he who loves you, and loves his friend in you and his enemy for your sake. He alone loses no one dear to him, to whom all are dear in the One who is never lost ... No one loses you unless he tries to get rid of you." We actually have to run away from God, intentionally rejecting his grace, in order to lose communion with him. That's the nature of his overwhelming love.
The issue for us, then, is in how we express that love through the fellowship of the church. And that seems to be the root of where the disagreement was coming from in my previous post. I am convinced that God's desire for us is a desire for transformation of our bodies and souls. This seems to me to be a universal message of the New Testament; see, for example, Romans 12:1-2; 1 Thess 1:9-10; Colossians 1:15-23; and perhaps especially Hebrews 12:3-11.
The expectation that the Christian life involves sanctification is not a denial of the church's openness; it is rather, the path that Jesus calls us to walk upon once we accept the grace that has been offered to us. To one of the comments on that previous post who brought up Jesus' acceptance of the woman caught in adultery, I would say, "Yes, but he also told that woman to go and sin no more" (see John 8:11). Jesus' call for all to come to him (Matthew 11:28-30) is not a call to open fellowship and no more; it is a call to discipleship, the very root of which is the Latin word for "to learn" (disco, discere).
So how does this relate to Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors? Though I accept my critics' warnings that an outright dismissal of the slogan runs the risk of sending the wrong invitational message to nonbelievers, I continue to hold that the slogan shortchanges the totality of the gospel message, which is one of transformation. Some apparently thought my comment that the Open Hearts campaign was was false advertising was a bit snarky. Perhaps, but I made it with the firm belief that it does, in fact, send the wrong message exactly because it does not show the full grace offered in Jesus' invitation. It is not an invitation to the kind of individualistic liberty contained in popular notions of "freedom," but rather an invitation to a particular form of community shaped by Jesus' own sacrificial love.
H.R. Niebuhr sums up what I'm talking about in his work, The Kingdom of God in America, written in the 1930s. He criticized that watered-down form of faith in which, "A God without wrath brought [a people] without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." If anything, our weakened notion of discipleship today tends even more in this direction.
I started this post with the intent of talking about baptism and what a rigorous form of discipleship means for that holy sacrament. I fear I've gone on way too long now. But I am beginning to believe that baptism should require a process of serious formation before it is allowed in the church. Right now, United Methodist churches often offer 'baptism on demand,' with little or no counsel about what it means. Is that something we should be doing? I would say no. I'll try to expand my thoughts on this issue in another post.
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 3:56 PM
4 Comments:
Andrew, I'll comment on baptism as it is the heart of the "openness" debate.
On baptism: I've struggled with this very issue of how much is required of a person before we make him/her a church member. Some obviously want an "easy in" approach. Some want "easy in" followed by an ever more challenging discipleship. Some want it tough from the get go (my reading of the Church Fathers).
The question is before us as both Methodists and Protestants in general is this: what does church membership mean? Does membership into this local church grant me entry into THE Church? Reflex might incline us to shout "YES," but most Protestants think that the very moment you say something like the "sinner's prayer," THEN you have entered the body of Christ, regardless of whether you ever step foot into a worship service, have communion, receive baptism, etc.
My point is this: for all the high talk we give baptism in Methodist churches (whether United, Free, or otherwise), at bottom we're still just Baptists. Either baptism is a key component (as entry into the Church) in our salvation process (i.e. sanctification), OR baptism is (as many Baptists say) just the first step of obedience to Jesus.
I know, I know, people who really read Wesley deeply will want a third option, one which emphasizes that salvation IS sanctification. I wholeheartedly agree that salvation is sanctification, but if that is so, then that suggests that baptism is much closer to a Roman Catholic notion of baptism, i.e. one in which baptism is ESSENTIAL to baptism as the gateway to the salvation life found in the Church.
IF active communion with the Church is at the heart of my growth in Christ, THEN some kind of serious preparation for baptism is necessary. Whether that goes so far as to say, "Well, Joe, we found out you lied last week, and you're supposed to be baptized next week! Sorry; you're out." I'm not so sure about that, but maybe I'm just a wimpy Protestant (though Catholic RCIA is more cognitive than formative).
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“…I am beginning to believe that baptism should require a process of serious formation before it is allowed in the church.” – I find your choice of the word “require” very interesting.
Christianity – especially from the conservative right - has devolved into a dogmatic, literal-factual tradition focused on the afterlife. Shouldn’t the Christian life be about transformation in this life, in which the focus should be about becoming more loving? Instead Christianity has retreated to a place where its focal point is on requirements and rewards or punishments after we die.
True Christianity is not about beliefs and requirements. The Christian life is about entering into a relationship with God as known in Jesus Christ.
Do you really think that if your repentance is earnest enough, if your faith is strong enough, if your righteousness is good enough, and if you feel guilty enough about the times that your righteousness isn't good enough that God will have some special place for you after you die? These are all conditional forms of the Christianity, and once you have a conditional form of the Christianity, you're no longer talking about grace. You're talking about performance and measuring up.
To me, it is a shame that the church has become a system of “right beliefs” and requirements that detract from the message of grace. It seems to me that if the church were more focused on God’s grace and living grace the world would be a much better place.
I don't think there is something fundamentally evil or sinful about being human that needs to be washed away with Baptism. The idea of “original sin” plagues the Christianity.
Hasn’t the church frightened enough parents into baptism by suggesting that their un-baptized infants might be damned to an eternity apart from God? And likewise the church has preyed on adults in the same fashion. Don’t you think God is offended by the above? Who would worship such a god?
Traditionally, Baptism speaks of our “fall” that requires a supernatural act of redemption and asserts that we are born in sin and that without this act of baptism our life is doomed.
Don’t you find the Christian emphasis on humanity's sinfulness psychologically abusive?
As long a Baptism remains a requirement that is thought to purify us of the sin of Adam, rather a ritual that calls us to be all that that we were created to be – the church will continue to become less of a factor in peoples lives.
JBush -
Thanks for your comments. You touch on a lot of issues, so let me confine my response just to the issue of baptism's intent.
I do not hold that original sin is literally washed away as the baptismal waters are conferred on the baptismal candidate's head. It is a sign of that cleansing, but the work is done by God's grace.
But what I was talking about at the end of that post was not so much that as it was helping the baptismal candidate (or the candidate's parent/guardian, if an infant) to understand what he/she is entering into by making the decision to respond to God's grace through accepting baptism.
You touch on this in your own reply, when you write:
"Shouldn’t the Christian life be about transformation in this life, in which the focus should be about becoming more loving? ... True Christianity is not about beliefs and requirements. The Christian life is about entering into a relationship with God as known in Jesus Christ."
I say, "Right on!" But the crux of the issue is in that word, "transformation." Transformation - or in our Wesleyan language, growth in grace or the nurturing of holiness of heart & life, is a serious process that requires a lifelong commitment.
Let's not forget that the liturgy of baptism involves a renunciation of sin and a confession of faith in Jesus Christ. A part of that confession is a promise to serve Christ as Lord.
Now, by anyone's reckoning, that is a huge step to take. So what I meant by my last paragraph of the post there was that some period of preparation for that step needs to be made. It is simply not fair to allow someone to ask for baptism on the spur of the moment and then require them to make terribly serious vows, when they might not even know what they are confessing and promising.
We need to recover a real sense of the catechumenate, especially for adult baptismal candidates who will have probably missed out on the Confirmation process.
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