If That's Moving Up, Then I'm Moving Out

[redacted]

An evangelistic trope to get people to recognize that they are sinners is to ask if they have ever stolen anything, or lied, or looked at someone lustfully and then follow the inevitable "Yes" with:

-Well what do you call someone who lies...?
-You've lied, you're a liar. Liars go to hell.
-You don't want to go to hell do you?
-Oh, okay... Well then let me explain how bad hell is. It's hot and desolate and you're tormented night and day by the cries of the damned and the devil's minions get to torture you.
-Well, I suppose it does sound a bit like San Bernardino...

In fact it goes a little something like this.

I don't know why, for those who bear witness to a Christ via this script, this type of essentializing isn't universal. That is, if I've lied ergo I'm a liar is true, then why is it not just as true to essentialize the good things about me? I've told the truth, I've sacrificially helped people, I've saved others from all manner of crud, I've given generous gifts, I've acted morally. Hell, I guess I'm pretty great. You know, even in thinking about the Ten Commandments right now... I'm golden.

I don't buy it. I guess it's supposed to help people reflect upon who they really are, but it's a bit superficial isn't it? Maybe that's as deep as you can get with people you don't know- people you've approached on the street or who happen across your web site but will never actually meet. It's hard for me to find that worth much.

I know for many people it's revolutionary and it feels like it's at the heart of what they think they should be doing as Christians. I don't know what to do with that. On one hand I think it's important to help people grow into their particular roles in a community. Maybe this has some place in that and I need to accept that. On another hand I think it's false.

The Christ it presents seems just as shallow as the reflection it supposedly forces. It doesn't confront what's really wrong with us, part of which is that tendency to think abstractly about ourselves. It's a part of that inability to think how we really exist. I mean, even though you can get someone to admit they have lied at some point in their life, and may be able to get them to think of themselves as a liar, and then might even get them to say they don't want to be a liar and will become a Christian so they are now a liar but identified through Christ- that's still a pretty abstract way of thinking about one's self. It doesn't require much self-examination or reflection about their actual life or what a life pursuing right relations and actions might look like in light of our interconnected existences.

I mean, right now, at this very moment, I really am golden. At any given, objective and frozen moment in time I am very easily perfect. If that is my goal, all I have to do is further remove myself from any interconnections that might spoil that. I can do this by fleeing humanity-living in a cave or choosing some Stylitic existence or by reifying the idea of sin so that it is some stilted and permanent concept that has no meaning to my actual existence except as some facile artificial identity which leads a just as artificial remedy. But it's easy.

Unfortunately I have not been able to live like that. I have to live with other people, not in sin, but in overcoming sin. Only we can't overcome sin if we see it as something static and objectively overcome- then we really are living (as it were) in sin.

[redacted]

ed- I've removed a large portion of backstory and set up before posting. I thought it offered a very helpful context, but I guess some people, crybabies mostly, might think it improper to give light to our Yearly Meeting, I mean, our EFCSW's problems, even obliquely, in this forum. That's kind of ironic isn't it? I think it makes less sense without that context, but as of posting it seems best to do this.

Have You ever Sung? Then You're a Singer
Mic Check- Rage Against the Machine
Blister in the Sun- Violent Femmes
Santo- Pixies
Body and Soul- Stan Getz
Life on a Chain- Pete Yorn
Positively 4th Street- Bob Dylan
Infinitely Late at Night- The Magnetic Fields
Rudie Can't Fail- The Clash
Holidays in the Sun- Sex Pistols
Holiday in Cambodia- Dead Kennedys
(That's a weird coincidence isn't it- I wonder if iTunes knows it's Christmas time... or it knows I'm so punk rock grading papers in my knit sweater)
Inner Vision- System of a Down
F**k the System- System of a Down
Many Rivers to Cross- Jimmy Cliff
Coney Island Baby- Lou Reed
Cut Your Hair- Pavement