Bring Your Imaginary Friends to Church!

Post-Baptist therapy, part 2

“This missionary did amazing things! Look how they dealt with crippling hardships and harsh persecution, but it was all worth it to bring people to Christ! What a hero, huh? Would you like to be a missionary like that? It’s easy! Just bring your friends with you to AWANA, VBS or Sunday School!”

I looked around. All my friends were already there with me.

Framework: Certainty and Fear

In my previous entry of “Post-Baptist Therapy”, I explored how the fundamentalist evangelical movement sought certainty of salvation through dramatic decisions for Christ. The reason we wanted certainty was because we were afraid. “The world”, as we saw it, was a scary place. Violence, drugs, sexual carelessness, and broken families were running rampant. Where could we be safe?

Why, in the church, of course.

This was another function of the dramatic decision: it was a clear marker that distinguished insiders from outsiders. Insiders — that is, Christians like us — could be trusted completely and implicitly. They were full of the Holy Spirit, devoted to Jesus, all on the same page. Leaders in our movement — that is, the professional pastors, missionaries, and evangelists — could be trusted even further. They were the ones who led us in the way of certainty. By their fruits we would know them; and by “fruits”, we meant how many people came to a decision for Christ through their work. Also, if they had theology that helped us understand exactly what the Bible was talking about, that was a big plus.

Outsiders, on the other hand, were never to be trusted. They were either to be feared or to be pitied. They didn’t have the certainty and knowledge that we had, either because they were evil and rejected it or because they were foolish and didn’t know/understand it. Outsiders were gross, with all their immodest clothing and foul language. They were dangerous, always ready to either tempt us into evil or persecute us for being different.

This category encompassed the obvious unbeliever, of course, but also other kinds of “Christians” (quotes inserted by arrogant Baptist brain). Those idiotic Lutherans and Presbyterians, baptizing their babies as if that did any good! Those heathenish Catholics, praying to Mary and the saints like they never left polytheism! Those weird Pentecostals and Charismatics, thinking they could speak in tongues and magically heal as if they were the twelve apostles! Oh, there may have been true Christians in those denominations, but only by accident, if they happened to make the right decision or figure out the true faith from the Bible on their own.

Now, these categories weren’t completely set in stone. An outsider could become an insider by conversion, by the dramatic decision that I talked about in the first post. We never talked about going the other way, except to deny vehemently that it could ever happen. If it did, it wouldn’t be permanent. Someone might have a period of backsliding in the teenage years and then come back with a dramatic rededication. But once saved was always saved, no matter what. If we acknowledged the possibility of permanent apostasy…well, then no one would be safe.

Sheltered Kids

I was the most sheltered of the sheltered: homeschooled, my entertainment carefully monitored, not involved in any extracurricular activities until junior high. Everyone I knew in my early years, from extended family to minor acquaintances, was a fundamentalist Baptist. We talk about echo chambers online; I lived in a real one. It’s hard to tell from this distance how much of my social anxiety (when I finally started entering “the world”) stemmed from my natural introverted tendencies and how much was a result of being trained in the idea that those nasty outsiders couldn’t be trusted, that they were just waiting for the chance to tempt or persecute me.

At the same time, everything in our church was focused on reaching out to the outsiders and bringing them in. Missionaries and evangelists were held up as the ultimate heroes. Every church service ended in an altar call, meant for the outsiders who might have been invited. The youth group held training sessions for door-to-door evangelism. Next to the front doors was a huge wooden rack of gospel tracts for any person or circumstance. Every year in AWANA, bringing a friend counted toward the ultimate achievement trophy. As an achievement junkie, I was tormented. How could I possibly be a missionary when I didn’t really know any unbelievers? Was I a failure as a Christian? Was I (gasp) not even a real Christian, since I never managed to share my faith??

Now, I did have some limited contact with “the world”, starting around age 8 or 9. I had music teachers, orchestra, and music camp, where I interacted with many public-schooled, non-Baptist, and even non-churched kids. But all those interactions were fraught with tension, at least on my part. One inner voice was constantly judging them for their crass language, immodest dress, and careless attitudes. Another inner voice was constantly judging me for not witnessing to them, sharing my testimony or the gospel or at least a tract or something. Under such conditions, whatever relationship I had with my music “friends” could only be superficial. “Acquaintances” or “colleagues” would be a better word. This feeling would follow me into college, even after I had been Evangelical Free for a few years and had started to loosen up. My “bubble”, so to speak, had expanded to include other denominations. But non-believers — that is, many of the people who surrounded me at college — were still those icky outsiders, out to corrupt me or bully me. Fear shut off any chance of building real relationships.

Reasons Why

“Evangelical” is based on the word euangelion, meaning “good news”. The older English translation of the word is “gospel”. Since the stakes were so high — eternally high — it seemed to make sense to focus on the gospel, the only thing that could save people from hell and get them to heaven instead. This was the extreme end of our desire for certainty and safety. Get that one thing taken care of, and you’re all good.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the very human desire for stability, safety, and a certain amount of certainty. Wanting that for yourself is natural. Wanting it for others is compassionate, to a degree. Little children especially need stability and shelter as long as they are small and vulnerable. It’s also very natural to gravitate towards others who are like oneself, and to fear the unknown or the different. And it can be very helpful and reassuring, as it was for me as a teenager, to hear a message that yes, we do know what we’re doing. We do have answers to some of those hard questions. You don’t have to doubt everything and be left flailing around in the dark.

Reasons Why Not

Safety is not a virtue. It’s something nice to have, a necessity in moderation, like food or clothes. We went wrong by turning it into the ultimate goal of existence. By doing so, we harmed both insiders and outsiders.

Insiders, as I described above, were trained to live in constant fear and arrogance. Clinging to our certainty, we were largely cut off from imagination, curiosity, novelty, and even the natural messiness of life. It wasn’t entirely so, of course; imagination, for example, was allowed to flow in approved channels, those that would either evangelize the lost or instruct the believer. That’s how we got so much stilted, preachy Christian fiction. (Gag.)

Insiders’ relationships with other people were ruined in a couple of ways. With outsiders, there could never be any trust. We assumed the worst of them: either stupidity or evil intent. However, we needed to get them to trust us in order to share the message of the gospel with them. Once that crucial decision was made, everything would be fine.

With fellow insiders, we could assume the best. Indeed, we had to. They were saved, they had the Holy Spirit. As I described in my previous post, the switch had been flipped and the spiritual prosperity gospel decreed that the insider (once completely surrendered) wouldn’t be one of those icky sinners anymore. They would just go from good to better to best. Our leaders especially were beyond question. They were the ones who led us in the way of certainty. They were the fruitful (i.e. soul-winning) ones. Of course they could be trusted!

In such an environment, there was no room for authenticity and admitting continual struggles. The advice that poured from the pulpit was simply “have another crisis” or “rededicate your life” or “make sure you’re fully surrendered to God”. Again, relationships could only be surface-level because we didn’t dare let anyone see the problems we still had (if we could even admit them to ourselves). But room was left wide open for abuse. If leaders were beyond question, if no one would doubt them as long as they brought in the “fruit”, then they could do anything they wanted in secret. Their victims would be shamed into silence, convinced that what happened to them was good and/or something was wrong with them.

Outsiders — that is, unbelievers — could see right through us. No matter how much we might say, “I tell you all of this because I love you,” our attitude screamed, “We know everything and we’re better than you, now become one of us or else!” Who wants to be constantly looked down upon, mistrusted, and dehumanized? No wonder so many stayed away! No wonder, despite our most desperate efforts to become more “seeker-sensitive”, despite our most hyped-up events, despite our rigorous “missionary training”, no one seemed to fall for the bait-and-switch! The gospel itself has been tainted by association for millions who interacted with us at our worst. And so, they run to the welcoming arms of the devil, who affirms that just like those high-and-mighty Christians who claim His name, God is not good.

Conclusion

The euangelion or gospel is supposed to be good news. For years and years, I thought that the good news was some variant of “You don’t have to be one of those icky outsiders anymore! You can be an insider instead, one of us elites who know what’s really going on and how the world really works.” It was very like the attitude of the ancient Greek Gnostics or mystery cults, where the initiates — the gnostikoi or “knowing ones” — held themselves proudly aloof from the unenlightened outsiders. “Good news! We’ll stop looking down on you if you become as arrogant and paranoid as we are.” That’s only good news if you care about our opinion, or if you don’t mind becoming like us in order to get into our circles of influence.

So what is the actual good news of great joy that shall be for all people?

You might recall that last time, I ended on the note that Jesus is the certainty that I never could be. He is the one who doesn’t depend on anything else and can therefore be fully depended upon. The good news is that He, this person who holds the entire universe together, has reached out to us tiny finite beings. He came to share His life with the insiders and the outsiders alike, to break down the walls between us and make us into a glorious new creation. This isn’t just for those who are certain of everything or those who are “in the know”. It’s for all who rest their certainties and uncertainties in Him. And when our security depends on Him instead of on our man-made boundaries, we are at peace. We can reach out to the people who scare us. We can truly love our enemies, as He told us to. We can enter into the icky spaces in the world and in our hearts, knowing that cleaning them up isn’t all up to us. He is already there before us with grace and power we can’t even imagine. Thanks be to God.

(Next time on Post-Baptist therapy: Fun Is The F-Word)