“The Heresy of a Privatized Faith"

 

 

 

 

A while back, sociologist Robert Bellah writing in Habits of the Heart, related this story: “Sheila Larson is a young nurse who has received a good deal of therapy and describes her faith as  Sheilaism.” This suggests the logical possibility of more than 235 million American religions, one for each of us. ‘I believe in God,’ Sheila says, “I am not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.”

 

“My little voice” and a “just Jesus and me” faith also guides many so-called “Christians.” We may  expand it a bit to cover “Sharpism” or Smithism” or “Chanism” or Hernandezism”. We may ask God to bless me and my wife, our son John and his wife, us four, but this is not the faith of Jesus and it is not the faith of the early church or historic Christianity. When his followers asked him to teach them how to pray, Jesus didn’t say that they were to pray, “My Father who is in heaven….” He taught them by example and word to pray, “Our Father,…” Christianity has always been a “communitarian” faith. Not communitarian in the sense of a political philosophy, although there are some connections there, but that at the heart of the Christian faith is “community.” God is a Triune God. In the beginning was God, and that means in the beginning was a relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Christians worship a God who has existed from all eternity in self-giving, outgoing love among the members of the Trinity. And that means that if God-as-Trinity is the core reality of the universe, it  means that the core of reality is community. And everything has to be seen from that perspective.  

 

This means that for the follower of Jesus who has been brought into this community of love and  nourished in the community of the faithful, I am to see things, process things, value things, make decisions in the light of how they glorify God who is a community of love and how they build up and strengthen the community of faith of which I am a part. Certainly this is what we see in Acts 2 and 4 and in the letters of Paul, especially 1 Corinthians and Ephesians. In the books of Acts, Chapter 5, there is a startling story of a husband and wife who forgot this. They decided to sell some of their property and give it to the church so that, as we can see in Acts 2 and 4, the proceeds can be used for the relief of the poor and those in need. They decided to say to the church that their contribution was the total amount they had received, although it wasn’t. They held back some for themselves. They lied. They lied not just to the church, but also to God and with that came a judgment. 

 

Society may operate on a social contract – I am an individual first who joins together with others when it serves my self-interest and can withdraw when it doesn’t. But this isn’t the way of the church or our life in God. Those who are connected by faith to Christ are “in Christ” the Apostle Paul likes to say. I am not alone. And so are all those who are related to God through Christ. It is not a social contract, but a covenant relationship in which I am bound to God and to all those who are my brothers and sisters. And I am not only to do good for the Body of Christ, I am also to do good for all people (Galatians 6:10) as I have opportunity. 

 

Because Christians belong to God and one another, we realize that all that we possess is loaned to us  as stewards. The Christian can’t really say “this is mine” in any exclusive sense. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” writes the Psalmist (24:1). And the Christian realizes that he/she is a steward of all they possess, materially and otherwise. Maybe we should put on everything the words: “for the use of [name]”. They are for the use of the steward of these goods. But they are not owned or possessed exclusively. It all belongs to God and we are privileged to use it for his glory and this means that I am called to share. This is a good reminder in the face of so much greed and selfishness and personal consumption that pervades our culture and even the lives of many professed followers of Jesus. But we are to invest in God’s kingdom and the Lord’s Prayer or the Disciple’s Prayer in  Matthew 6 reminds us that we are to pray that God’s kingdom/God’s will is realized in this world. But that is hard to do when faith becomes privatized. To pray the “our Father” and to live in the Kingdom of God is a rejection of all privatized faith. I wonder how our world would be different if the almost two billion people who claim to be followers of Jesus really lived that way? What revolution and transformation would take place in our life, society, our country, our world?