Bent To Love ‘Humanity’ But Hate Actual Humans
A certain Donald Miller has been in the news for claiming he really doesn’t care for the local church.
There are many good responses to this. Derek Rishmawy addresses the first Miller bit, and Mike Cosper rebuts Miller’s double-down.
Another response is this: if you do not love members of Christ’s Body in a local church, you cannot love the big Church.
You could also claim to love “man” or “humanity,” while disliking or even hating actual human individuals.
Could either perspective make you into a madman?
C.S. Lewis’s novel Out of the Silent Planet offers this perfect example. In this science-fiction story, part 1 of the Ransom Trilogy1, the hero Dr. Elwin Ransom plays interpreter for Dr. Weston. Earlier in the story Weston and his henchman kidnapped Ransom and brought him to the planet Malacandra. Now free, with Weston the captive, Ransom must interpret the scientist’s excuses for the planet’s angelic archon, Oyarsa, who rules under Maleldil (God).
[Weston:] “No care for hnau [Old Solar for, roughly, ‘living sentient creatures’]. Care for man.”
[Oyarsa:] “But if it is neither man’s mind, which is as the mind of all other hnau—is not Maleldil maker of them all?—nor his body, which will change—if you care for neither of these, what do you mean by man?”
This had to be translated to Weston. When he understood it, he replied:
“Me care for man—care for our race—what man begets—” He had to ask Ransom the words for race and beget.
“Strange!” said Oyarsa. “You do not love any one of your race—you would have let me kill Ransom. You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kin as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, that what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left.”
“Tell him,” said Weston when he had been made to understand this, “that I don’t pretend to be a metaphysician. I have not come here to chop logic. If he cannot understand—as apparently you can’t either—anything so fundamental as a man’s loyalty to humanity, I can’t make him understand it.”
But Ransom was unable to translate this and the voice of Oyarsa continued:
“I see now how the lord of the silent world [the Devil] has bent you. There are laws that all hnau know, of pity and straight dealing and shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, thus bent, to be a little, blind Oyarsa in your brain. And now you can do nothing but obey it, though if we ask you why it is a law you can give no other reason for it than for all the other and greater laws which it drives you to disobey.”
- Also called the Cosmic Trilogy or the Space Trilogy. ↩
I have been struggling with dryness in church settings this past month, but not because I don’t feel comfortable in traditional modes of worship. There’s a lot of changes going on at my home church, and as a just-graduated single adult, I don’t fit in either of the two major “blocks.” So I can somewhat see where he’s coming from, but I’ve read Blue Like Jazz in the past and think he’s close to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
WTF? I see nothing about how he supposedly hates humanity or the people in his church. He just doesn’t like how churches typically go, with the sitting and the programmed singing and the lecture-type sermon. I don’t mind the ritual so much myself, but I can see why other people would. His issue is with the format, not with the substance.
And I feel him because I’ve been church-bouncing a bit. I’ve decided I need to switch to a large Calvinistic Baptist church pretty much only because it’s large and it has more people my age and not just the typical breakdown of married-with-kidses, the kids of those unions, and elderly people. I can admit that this is an act of desperation — I mean, Calvinists. But hopefully I’ve practiced enough on you people that I can disagree tactfully enough that no fistfights break out.
Also: more link! I heart this lady so hard: http://defeatingthedragons.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/and-yet-another-internet-controversy-going-to-church/
Yay, notleia! As a Calvinist Baptist, allow me to bestow a huge kudo upon you for deigning to fraternize with all us black-and-white, self-assured Reformed folks. Though we tend to error on the “truth” end of the “truth-and-grace” spectrum, we want to love others, too. Hopefully, you’ll find some quality fellowship among our denominational midst. 😉
As for Stephen’s comparison of Donald Miller to Weston, I agree that it’s a bit of an extrapolation, but I think the same core error is present in both examples. Neither Miller nor Weston would say that they “hate” people; they just fail to love ’em as individuals. Broad, general abstractions they can accept — “the universal Church,” “the human race” — but when it comes down to the messy, wearying slog of actually interacting with individual people on a daily or weekly basis … well, that’s just stifling. Repetitious. Dull. There’s no glamor or grandeur in it. Much easier to just take a step back from it all, rise above the obligation associated with congregation, and do whatever’s best for your own self-actualization apart from trying to meet the needs of others. That’s the message of Donald Miller. In Weston, such a belief is extrapolated to its logical result: a man who cares nothing for people and everything for “humanity.”
It’d be easy to paint this controversy in terms of “self-fulfillment” (i.e. connecting with God on one’s own terms) versus “duty to others” (i.e. participation in a local church body), but that’d be an incomplete assessment. It’s crucial to spend quality one-on-one time with God, yes, and it’s crucial to pay attention to one’s own personality strengths and learning style. But a retreat from active fellowship with other believers in order to pursue personal fulfillment will inevitably lead to personal degradation. If personal fulfillment is the goal, emotional independence is counterproductive.
It’s been said that one can cultivate anything in isolation, except maturity. This is self-evidently true. And it’s one of the primary reasons that scripture exhorts us to not neglect meeting together. Indeed, the single most emphatic biblical directive to gather as local churches — Hebrews 10:24-25 — adopts as its justification our need to “stir up one another to love and good works” and “encourag[e] one another.” These are not passive directives. They don’t tell me to “go therefore and sit in a pew.” They tell me to love other people. Regularly. In groups.
What Stephen’s saying, I think, is that Donald Miller’s detached approach to Christian fellowship has the potential to lead to a Weston-style unconcern for actual human beings.
That’s if he were being detached. He wrote a follow-up at some point, saying that he does actually go outside and fellowship and commune and whatall, just not really in churchy-church settings. Maybe he’s involved with a soup kitchen or something.
That’s not a local church, though.
Austin spelled out how Christ wants His people to participate in a local church.
In fact, Austin did a long-range mind-meld with my head, then wrote his comment — especially with the bit about this not being about saying “Miller hates humans.” Instead I’m suggesting: Miller claiming to like the Church and then having little to do with any actual local church frankly belies the claim.
And in cases such as Weston’s — or with real people — this does lead to madness. You end up only “loving” imaginary abstracts you’ve invented in your head.
Going out into the woods can be a very spiritual experience. So can meeting in a coffee shop to talk theology, or going to a soup kitchen, or what-have-you. For that matter, so can discussing such Deep Magic on a site such as SpecFaith.
But it’s not the local church that Jesus Christ prescribed: a local church with servant-leaders, all God’s people working as ministers, the teaching of the Word, the praise of our Savior, and the administration of the sacraments such as the Communion ceremony/meal and baptism. No one who avoids local church will be able to participate in those essential, outward-showcasing of what Christians believe through the sacraments of baptism and Communion.
What happens if we get into a personal conflict with someone? We can resort to nasty legal squabbles or verbal hostility, or we can follow the processes Jesus Himself taught in Matt. 18 when He presumes people will be part of a local church whose elders can prayerfully resolve personal disputes.
What happens if a Christian is being an abject hypocrite? We can write blogs or be passive/aggressive in denouncing him, or else shrink back and refuse to acknowledge nasty behavior that slanders the Name of Christ to other Christians or to a watching world. Or we can read a passage such as 1 Cor. 5 in which the Apostle Paul specifically commands the organized, active, sin-hating church to “expel the evil one from among you.” This also counts for worse sins such as child molestation. A good local church will counsel the victims and bring the offenders to the civil authorities. A bad local church may cover it up — but you can’t even have a chance of good church counsel with no local church.
So yeah, local churches are disgusting when they’re bad, but great when they’re good. Much like local government. Or national government. Or anything else. That’s why Jesus Christ wants us in churches: for our eternal joy and benefit.
So Notleia, if you’re in a good, loving, Biblical church — even with all of those blasted Calvinoids! — you’re being more obedient to our God than Miller.
Live long and prosper, Stephen.
And yeah — outside of a local church, it’s possible to skate through life without ever being forced to deal with brothers and sisters you dislike. It’s like the difference between family and friends. You choose the former, but the latter you’re stuck with. And the Body of Christ is described in familial terms, not as a loosely-associated group of like-minded individuals with common interests.
So two years ago when I left my church of eleven years, it felt like a breakup. It hurt. I was invested in those people, that place. Matthew 18 in that case wasn’t a relief, but rather a heavy obligation. As C.S. Lewis says, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” Vulnerable to irritation, grief, hurt, boredom, manipulation, and even the disturbing self-awareness of how little I actually care about others.
These things are easy to ignore when I’m by myself, “alone with God.” When my only companion is invisible, I can pretend that I’ve arrived. But when I can’t just throw up my hands and walk away from others, when I’m forced to interact with the same immature, idiotic people in close confines on a weekly basis, only then do I begin to see myself in their faces. Only then can I begin to love them for who they are, not just for what I want them to be in the aseptic idealism of my mind. Only then can I love them as Christ loves me. Only then can I begin to mature.
Oh, and btw — I can’t stand most modern worship services. It’s very difficult for me to actually focus on God amidst all the raucous noise and braindead mantras.
But that’s neither here nor there.
But where the shell did he say anything about disliking the people at whatever church he was referencing? Are you saying that I hate the Methodists I hung out with because I’m switching to the Calvinists? Do I hate married-with-kidses because I’m trying a place with more single, childless twenty-somethings that I can probably develop better connections with? (But that assumes I’m capable of more than surface-level competence with IRL socialization, something I am doubting more and more as time goes on.)
And of course I don’t hate them. I’m just not jiving well with the married-with-kidses, but that’s okay. I was actually willing to give the Methodists a longer trial, but my therapist wanted me to begin to develop an actual social life in my new town, and those Baptists offer more and better opportunities.
I just read Donald Miller’s first post and skimmed his second, and I can sympathize with him. I don’t think he’s saying anything very radical.
I’ve also always been a believer in self-denial and cold, miserable duty, and I can understand the arguments of those who say that believers should faithfully stick to their congregations no matter how little they might like them. I’m also not part of the non-religious Christianity movement. I want more religious tradition. (Mostly for myself as personal preference, but I even feel that Evangelicalism would be a whole lot stronger and better able to reach the world if it embraced the solemn majesty of traditional structures.)
Despite this inclination, I agree with Miller’s argument that we can’t really define what a “Biblical church” is. Going to church every Sunday morning is a historically orthodox tradition, but I’m sure someone can fill a pew every week and still fail to obey the admonition of Hebrews 10:25 to meet with other believers for mutual encouragement. Likewise, we can’t know for sure that someone who doesn’t fill a pew every week is disobedient.
(The guy loses credibility with me due to the fact that he’s peddling a workbook that will change your life and give you meaning and a story. Yeck. I’ve tried it, thank you very much, Rick Warren.)