The Myth of a Christian Religion

by Gregory A. Boyd

  I’m aware that this probably sounds Victorian, repressive, mean, and unfair to people conditioned by the Western “sex-is-recreation” mindset. But for Kingdom revolutionaries, that should be considered one more piece of evidence that it’s saying something right!

  CHAPTER 14: THE REVOLT AGAINST SECULARISM

  Return to the Source. Your revolt against secularism is only possible to the degree that your innermost being is nourished by the Life found in Christ alone. As long as we crave idols, our attention will remain imprisoned. Commit yourself to getting your worth, significance, and security from Christ. Throughout the day remind yourself of your identity in him and express prayers of gratitude for who God made you to be.

  Introspection. Alone and with friends, honestly reflect on the extent to which your confession of Christ as Lord has been merely theoretical. To what degree do you live, think, and experience the world moment-by-moment as a functional atheist? If you discern that you have, in fact, been entrapped in the secular world-view, don’t judge yourself. That is never helpful. Simply return to practicing the presence of God in this moment. What matters is not how many past moments have or have not been surrendered to God. The only thing that matters is that this moment is surrendered to God—and now this moment.

  Practice the presence. While we need to cultivate an awareness of God’s presence on a moment-by-moment basis, it’s helpful to set aside special times to engage in this spiritual discipline. Carve out a segment of time in which you stop all other activity and simply become aware that you are surrounded by God’s eternal, perfect, unconditional love. Attend to the details of what you see, hear, touch, smell, and perhaps taste in this moment, but do so against the backdrop of this infinite love. In other words, allow God’s loving presence to be the canvas on which your experience of the world is painted. See how long you can remain aware of his presence. When you notice that God’s presence has drifted out of your awareness, don’t get frustrated with yourself. Just become aware, once again, that you are engulfed in his perfect love.

  Along the same lines, many people have found it helpful—and sometimes revolutionary—to go on a silent retreat. These can last anywhere from a day to a week. The goal of these retreats is to take a break from the business of our ordinary lives, to quiet one’s mind, and to grow in one’s capacity to remain continually aware of God’s loving presence.

  Reminders of God’s Presence. Our secularized lives run on habit. Almost all of our thoughts, whether we’re conscious of it or not, are determined by habit. This is why remaining aware of God’s presence on a moment-by-moment basis is so challenging. To counter this, consider putting Post-it notes in places you come upon during the day: the bathroom mirror, inside your front door, the car steering wheel, the refrigerator, and other places. Let them remind you to wake up to God’s presence that surrounds you in that moment.

  Act on a nudge. As you train yourself to listen to God throughout the day, commit to spontaneously responding to inner promptings you receive. I encourage you to begin by doing at least one thing each day that you hadn’t planned on doing. You’ll find that spontaneously acting on these impulses sometimes brings about what I call “Kingdom coincidences,” that is, you do or say something that just lands perfectly in the moment, and it’s evident that the prompting is not “just you.” Over time you begin to develop an ability to discern what is and is not “just you” (though we always need to remain humble and careful not to assume our thoughts and impulses are from God).

  Also by Gregory A. Boyd

  The Myth of a Christian Nation

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: GIANT JESUS

  1 See, for example, John 13:15; Ephesians 5:1 – 2; 1 Peter 2:20 – 21; 1 John 2:6. Many today embrace the erroneous view that getting “saved” is about avoiding hell. The biblical concept of salvation is not about avoiding the consequences of sin (hell) but about being freed from the sin that leads to those consequences. It’s about being empowered to walk in a Kingdom way that leads to eternal life, not death. This is why the New Testament speaks of salvation as something that has happened, is happening, and will happen. When I speak of salvation, or “being saved,” throughout this book, this is what I mean.

  2 This sermon series can be found at whchurch.org/content/page_721.htm. The story was later picked up by the New York Times (July 30, 2006) and can be found at nytimes.com/2006/07/30/us/30pastor.html. This sermon series formed the foundation for my book The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006).

  3 The term “Christian” was used by non-Christians in the New Testament to refer to followers of Jesus (Acts 26:28; cf. 11:26). Never did Jesus-followers refer to themselves as “Christian.” Given the significant negative associations many today have with the label, I prefer to refer to followers of Jesus simply as “Jesus followers” or “Kingdom people,” though I’ll occasionally use the word “Christian” in contexts where its true meaning is understood.

  4 Following the pattern of the New Testament, I’m using the word church (Greek, ecclesia) to refer to the tribe of those who have responded to God’s call to live differently from the world by pledging their lives to Jesus. I’m not using the word to refer to any identifiable human institution.

  CHAPTER 2: CHRIST AND CAESAR

  1 Early Christians of ten pointed to the uniform commitment of Christians to love their enemies rather than use violence against them as proof that Jesus is Lord. It was, I believe, a profoundly biblical apologetic. See, for example, Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho,” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds. (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1999 [1885]), Vol. 1, 254; Tertullian, “An Answer to Jews,” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, 154; Origen, “Against Celsus,” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, 558. For a classic overview of Christians’ attitudes toward the use of violence throughout history, highlighting the uniform pacifism of the early church, see Ronald H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Reevaluation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960).

  2 On the meaning of Jesus’ ironic command to “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” see Myth of a Christian Nation, and Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, Jesus For President (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).

  3 On the other hand, some make a rather compelling case for Christians to abstain from voting as a matter of principle. See Ted Lewis, ed., Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2008). In America where so many mistakenly assume it’s a “Christian’s duty” to vote, this perspective desperately needs to be heard.

  4 See Gregory Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997), especially chapters 2 and 3.

  5 On the apocalyptic worldview, see N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), especially 280 – 99, and Boyd, God at War, 172 – 80

  6 For a discussion on illness and deformities as demonically caused, see Boyd, God at War, 182 – 84.

  7 Here I’m following the example of Walter Wink in his acclaimed trilogy, The Powers. See especially Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).

  CHAPTER 4: THE REVOLT AGAINST JUDGMENT

  1 For a full development and defense of the relationship between judgment and “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” see Gregory A. Boyd, Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).

  CHAPTER 5: THE REVOLT AGAINST RELIGION

  1 For those who might be interested, I wrote about the beliefs and practices of this brand of Christianity in a book entitled Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992).

  2 On a few of the more notorious moments in church history where “Christians” were involved in perpetrating violence and slaughter, see Joseph Perez and Janet Lloyd, The Spanish Inquisition: A History (
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2006); David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). For a succinct overview, see “Chamber of Horrors” in Bruxy Cavey, The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2007), chap. 4.

  3 For a good account of this, see Ronald H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Servetus (Boston: Beacon, 1953).

  4 On the persecution and martyrdom of Anabaptists see Thieleman Van Braqt and Joseph F. Sohm, Martyrs Mirror, 2nd reprint ed. (Scotdale, Penn.: Herald, 2001).

  5 See David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, unChristian: What a New Generation Thinks about Faith…and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), for an overview of non-Christian perception of Evangelicals.

  CHAPTER 6: THE REVOLT AGAINST INDIVIDUALISM

  1 Our main ministry is called Providence Ministries, and it was started by Marcia and Greg Erickson (providenceinhaiti.blogspot.com).

  2 R. C. Kessler, “Prevalence, Severity, and Unmet Need for Treatment of Mental Disorders in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 291/21 (2004): 2581 – 90; J. Colla, S. Buka, D. Harrington, and J. M. Murphy, “Depression and Modernization: A Cross-cultural Study of Women,” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 41/4 (2006): 271 – 79.

  CHAPTER 7: THE REVOLT AGAINST NATIONALISM

  1 For information on this ministry, go to goodnewstour.com.

  CHAPTER 8: THE REVOLT AGAINST VIOLENCE

  1 This event is depicted in the award-winning French film Joyeux Noel and thoroughly discussed in Stanley Weintraub, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce (New York: Plume, 2002).

  2Raca was an expression used to call someone “worthless.”

  3 Something similar could be said of Jesus’ command to offer one’s coat to anyone who demands your coat and going the extra mile when someone forces you to go one. See Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), 175 – 84.

  4 Space doesn’t permit delving into the thorny issue of how to reconcile the Old and New Testaments on the issue of how to respond to enemies. For several perspectives, see C. S. Cowles, E. M. Merrill, D. L. Gard, T. Longman III, in Show Them NO Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003); P. Craigie, The Problem of War in the Old Testament (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2002 [1978]); V. Eller, War and Peace: From Genesis to Revelation (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2003 [1981]). Right now I would simply emphasize that Christians are called to base their view of God and their lifestyle on Jesus, not the Old Testament.

  CHAPTER 10: THE REVOLT AGAINST RACISM

  1 I continue to speak of “race” and “racial reconciliation” only because this is how most people continue to speak, and it’s therefore the most effective way of identifying the issues that need to be confronted.

  2 For example, Luke 9:52 – 54; 10:30 – 37; 17:11 – 19; John 4.

  3 I apologize to my non-American readers for my restricted focus at this point. But racial dynamics differ significantly from country to country and are highly complex. I can only speak with confidence about the specifics of the race dynamics in my own country.

  CHAPTER 11: THE REVOLT AGAINST POVERTY AND GREED

  1 Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity (Nashville: Nelson, 2005), 24 – 25.

  CHAPTER 12: THE REVOLT AGAINST THE ABUSE OF CREATION

  1 I know it’s heresy to many to even raise this possibility, but there are actually some interesting (though mostly ignored) arguments calling this into question. See, for example, Bjorn Lomborg, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (New York: Knopf, 2007); Patrick J. Michaels, ed. Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (New York: Row-man and Littlefield, 2005); S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming—Every 1,500 Years (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). For my part, I’m not convinced either way.

  2 There’s a number of ways to reconcile this biblical teaching with the scientific evidence of millions of years of violence in creation leading up to the creation of humans. See, for example, Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Developing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001) 293 – 318; and “Evolution as Cosmic Warfare: A Biblical Perspective on ‘Natural’ Evil,” in Thomas J. Oord, ed., Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2009).

  3 I go into much greater depth on this in an essay entitled “Satan and the Corruption of Nature: Seven Arguments” at gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics /problem-of-evil/satan-and-the-corruption-of-nature-seven-arguments/, and Satan and the Problem of Evil, 242 – 318.

  4 See Boyd, God at War, 182 – 8 4 ; E . Yamauchi , “ Magic or Miracle? Diseases, Demons and Exorcisms,” in The Miracles of Jesus, eds. D. Wenham and C. Blomberg, (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986), 90 – 93; P. Davids, “Sickness and Suffering in the New Testament,” in Wrestling with Dark Angels, ed. C. P. Wagner and F. Pennoyer (Ventura: Regal, 1990), 215 – 17; and J. Kallas, The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles (Greenwich, Conn: Seabury, 1961).

  5 Alfred Lord Tennyson, “In Memoriam,” LVI, in Christopher Ricks, ed., The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 27.

  6 See, for example, Richard Dawkins, The Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science and Love (New York: Mariner, 2005). For a more in depth discussion of natural evil and various responses to it, see Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, chapters 8 – 10.

  7 Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), 2.

  8 See Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 39 – 49, 294 – 95.

  9 This doesn’t mean he wasn’t also symbolizing the impending judgment of Israel, as commentators uniformly hold.

  10 For a fuller discussion, see Boyd, God at War, 205 – 13.

  11 For an introduction, I strongly encourage readers to view the film From Farm to Fridge (chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp). Other informative exposés on factory farms are We Are Awake ( http://weareawake.ning.com/video); Factory Farming Campaign ( http://www.hsus.org/farm/multimedia/); and Pig Farm Cruelty Revealed ( http://www.peta.org/feat/invest/index.html). For book recommendations, see gregboyd.org.

  CHAPTER 13: THE REVOLT AGAINST THE ABUSE OF SEX

  1 There is much debate over Jesus’ exception clause in Matthew 19:9 (“…anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality”). I’m most persuaded by those arguments that suggest that the exception clause refers to the betrothal period in which a man and woman were legally married but had not yet become “one flesh.” See J. Wenham and W. E. Heth, Jesus and Divorce (Nashville: Nelson, 1985) 169 – 78. There’s also much debate over what Jesus means when he says a divorced man who marries another woman “commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9). In my view, Jesus was again confronting self-righteousness attitudes by reminding his audience of God’s ideal for people to have a single, lifelong “one flesh” relationship. Even thinking about sexual activity outside of this ideal technically constitutes “adultery” (Matthew 5:28). But Jesus wasn’t thereby revoking the Old Testament’s permission to get remarried. Indeed, Jesus seems to assume that a divorced woman will get remarried, despite the fact that it falls short of God’s ideal (Matthew 5:32).

  2 See Deuteronomy 22:13 – 17, for example.

  CHAPTER 14: THE REVOLT AGAINST SECULARISM

  1 Though, interestingly enough, there is evidence the Western worldview is beginning to change. The last several decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in Eastern and pagan religions as well as the occult. This is generally referred to as “the New Age Movement.”

  2 Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God ( New Kensington, Penn.: Whitaker, 1982). />
  3 If you’d like to explore the practice of the presence of God in more depth, see my forthcoming book, This Sacred Moment: Reflections on Practicing the Presence of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009).

  WHAT CAN WE DO? AN ACTION GUIDE

  1 On the practice of resting in Christ, see G. Boyd, Seeing Is Believing: The Transforming Power of Imaginative Prayer (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).

  2 By the way, you will find you are much better at discussing theological “hot topics” with others in a calm, loving manner when you are freed of religious idolatry. Religious (as well as political) debates become acrimonious primarily because some element of the person’s core worth or security is being leveraged on the outcome.