We’re reflecting on an excellent essay by Christian Smith, “On ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’ as U.S.Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,” which I found at the website for the Princeton Theological Seminary.
Christian Smith wrote Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
MTD teaches that God does not so much compel us to live a certain way as provide a means for us to live well. God gives us self-esteem. God gives us emotional health. God gives us good marriages. God gives us friends and happy relationships. God gives us congregations filled with good people who want to help us be better people.
We somehow figure that, in exchange for a profession of faith and an immersion and regular church attendance, God will shield us from pain and loss and suffering. God will help life be, you know, nice.
Therefore, when things go badly, we get very, very angry with God. After all, that was not the deal! God was supposed to take away the pain! God was supposed to give me a soul mate who would never, ever leave me!
Where did this view of religion come from? Well, largely from preachers. And Sunday school teachers. And youth ministers. And dumbed down Sunday school curriculum. Indeed, it all results from an Americanized, market-based, consumeristic approach to selling Christianity. To grow our churches and create converts, we tell people what we think they want to hear. We give them “good news” that is a lie. We promise them good mental health and perfect relationships and happy lives — all in exchange for a confession and baptism.
We fill our churches with worshipers who are there for self-improvement, and wonder why our most selfish, most entitled members are the ones who’ve been attending the longest.
Meanwhile, our members still suffer from unexplainably horrible diseases, good people suffer divorce, good parents have children who bring them unspeakable heartache, children die way too soon, we lose beloved friends, good church-going people stab us in the back, and we have no answers for how God could let these things happen.
And so we’re left with platitudes — “It’s all God’s will”; “God has a plan”; “It’ll all work out for good in the end”; “You just have to believe that God still loves you” — in a Christianity that no longer reflects reality.
All those slogans we hang on our doors and stick to our refrigerators about “eagles wings” and “peace like a river” don’t do much for us when our wife or husband is walking out the door and taking our children away.
No, there’s something serious, desperately flawed in the Christianity we so often preach, teach, and live.
Anyone here ever attend a class on Lamentations? Why not? Well, because Lamentations runs contrary to our pasteurized, homogenized, marketed, packaged, slick Christianity —
(Lam 1:2 ESV) 2 She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.
(Lam 1:11-14 ESV) 11 All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O LORD, and see, for I am despised.”
12 “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.
13 “From on high he sent fire; into my bones he made it descend; he spread a net for my feet; he turned me back; he has left me stunned, faint all the day long.
14 “My transgressions were bound into a yoke; by his hand they were fastened together; they were set upon my neck; he caused my strength to fail; the Lord gave me into the hands of those whom I cannot withstand.
Pretty depressing stuff. And what about the Psalms of lament?
(Psa 13:1-6 ESV) How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 3 Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, 4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. 5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
David cries out to God in misery. He begs for answers — but none come. Nonetheless, he trusts God, not because God hasn’t taken away the pain but because, in pain, he remembers the blessings of God.
He doesn’t blame God, but neither does he expect that God will magically solve his problems. Rather, he weighs the joys of God’s love and salvation against the pain he is suffering, and so he turns toward God despite the pain.
(Psa 89:46-52 ESV) 46 How long, O LORD? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? 47 Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man! 48 What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah 49 Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? 50 Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations, 51 with which your enemies mock, O LORD, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed. 52 Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.
Again, David finds consolation, not in God taking his problems away, but in praising God while lamenting his fate. David doesn’t pretend everything is just fine. It’s not. And yet his faith sustains him even when God doesn’t answer.
[to be continued]
