The Sanctification of Christianity

I love to talk with Roy about what I'm learning in seminary, because as someone outside of Christianity, he points out things I don't usually see and makes me think a lot more deeply.  I told him about my latest lecture in Old Testament History, in which Dr. Allman made a case for equating the Genesis 1:28 mandate of humankind to "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" with the biblical theme of servant leadership.  Dr. Allman suggested that perhaps ruling over nature means serving nature--growing plants and caring for animals, helping to make them the absolute best and most beautiful that they can be.

Roy was excited that environmentalism was being taught in a seminary, and honestly, I shared the story because I wanted to impress him.  But he then took the conversation in another direction.  "It's interesting that Christianity is changing.  Do you think culture is changing it?  Like, Christians see the culture caring about certain things, so they jump on board?  Why else would people have ignored that passage for centuries?  Why is it suddenly relevant now?  Did people interpret it differently before?  Why the change?"

My brother does not cut my faith or my brain any slack.  And I'll be honest, in conversations like these, my immediate reaction is fear and an intense desire to defend, defend, defend!  But I'm trying to learn to be open and honest about both my beliefs and my doubts.  So what I ended up saying was,

"Well, I think some Christians have always cared about nature.  But yeah, we've ignored that passage for a long time, or yes, interpreted it differently.  I don't know if it's so much culture changing Christianity as it is that culture revealed this problem that Christians had been blind to for so long.  And maybe it wasn't a huge issue until lately.  The human population just blindly abused the earth, and now we're starting to realize what problems we've caused.  When a new problem arises, Christians have to go back to the Bible to see what it says about the issue.  Maybe we didn't look too hard at Genesis 1:28 because it didn't seem necessary until lately."

I tend to talk before I know what I'm saying, but as I shared my opinion I realized, wow, yeah, this is definitely my opinion.  The thing is, Christians cannot get every issue right.  We are probably not even aware of fifty thousand issues we should be dealing with.  And maybe that's okay.  Maybe we are called to deal with the issues of our time, knowing that as we find the proper worldview about one particular thing, we're missing the boat on many other important conversations.

It reminds me of myself.  For most of my time as a Christian, I have wanted to know everything and to act perfectly.  It took a lot of humility for me to accept the fact that although I am justified before God, I am still in the process of being sanctified.  A process that will not end any time while I'm alive.  So if I am an imperfect person struggling to make sense of life and culture and faith, what would a community of imperfect people look like?  The Church is simply a mass of people all struggling to make sense of life and culture and faith.

I am on a journey of sanctification, and Christianity is on its own thousands-year journey of sanctification.  Sometimes we really look good as the representatives of Jesus, and sometimes we backslide into hatred and worldly pursuits, sometimes for decades in a row.

Although I would still like to be perfect, and I would like Christians as a whole to be perfect, I know neither of those things are going to happen any time soon.  The best we can do is deal with the problems of today with as much grace and honesty as possible.  I like what Aaron Weiss said in Daniel Radosh's book about Christian pop culture Rapture Ready!:

"Sometimes I see it like a ship that we're all trying to steer together.  You set your course for truth, and if you see it going to one side, maybe it's your job to turn right.  If you see it going to the other side, it's your job to turn left.  I think if there were an overabundance of Christian culture emphasis on giving to the poor, serving the needy, visiting the prisoner and the orphan and the widow, and peacemaking, and so on, and there was never any mention of the need for prayer, the need for meditation, contemplation, fasting, the humility of confessing that ultimately it's not my efforts that are going to bring peace to the world--if the emphasis was flipped, I would probably be preaching more of that, about God's goodness in mysterious and esoteric ways.  Whereas what I see is overemphasis on holy talk and I don't see any holy action, so I've got to try and put feet to our prayers, I've got to try to put hands and fingers to language."

Being a Christian is confusing and complicated, which shouldn't surprise anyone.  Life is confusing and complicated.  None of us have completely figured out how best to live, and well, if you think you have, I would suggest you haven't thought through all the implications of your worldview.  Does that mean we should stop pursuing truth, because we can never fully attain it?  Of course not.  We should reach for truth and wrestle with doubts, all the while giving ourselves, and others, grace.

That's the only way we're going to survive this individual and communal journey of sanctification.