Six Neo-Christian Myths: Exiting the Arc of Christian History

Last updated on: April 3, 2015 at 4:31 pm by K. Mulhern

Six Neo-Christian Myths: Exiting the Arc of Christian History 2015-04-03T16:31:12-06:00 K. Mulhern

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Today I ran across a post by Donald Miller of Blue Like Jazz fame and more. I do not follow Donald Miller much or read his work—not out of any protest or high-minded posture, but, well, you have to pick and choose. I don’t have anything much to say about Donald Miller at all, really, nor should I pick on this singular post as representative of the man’s full contribution to Christian spirituality. After all, he’s clearly successful: multiple books, a much sought after speaker, a chosen public pray-er at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, a member of one of Obama’s task forces. He must be very important—he has his own Wiki page (where I obviously found much of this. Does that make it all true?)

Nevertheless, the post, which you can read here, caught my attention, because in it Miller seems to embrace many of the misconceptions we have today about “church” and many of the myths that so painfully gut our Christian spirituality of the deepest practices and purposes that have sustained faith over the last 2000 years.

Two things happen when you spend a lot of time studying the history of Christianity. First, you get depressed. Abuses, violence, confusion, faithlessness, more violence, pride, bad theology, lack of compassion, divisiveness, and on and on. For sure, studying Church history can be disturbing. But then, after a while, amidst the muck, the grace begins to shine through with a gentle, pervasive, even relentless certainty. The darknesses remain, but they are merely long shadows cast by a great light shining on small things.

For example, you read about the religious, political, and cultural chaos of the 14th century in the European arena—ongoing war, failures in spiritual leadership—and you begin to wonder, where are the believers? Where is the demonstration of faith? Where is the good God in all this? And then you read about Julian of Norwich or Walter Hilton or Gerard de Groote or Richard Rolle or a dozen other quiet people of prayer and great love for Jesus. They were there, singular witnesses standing in the light.

And then, the next step in studying Church history, once you’ve shouldered the melancholy and treasured the light, is to ask: what sustained these people in faith? What, in fact, has enable believers over the centuries to believe, to trust, to hope—to stand?

Each of them has his or her own story and unique experiences and practices that nourished faith, but they also all share some common experiences and practices. One such practice is worship, and yes, they all worshipped outside Church walls—in their work and writing and thinking and praying—but they also recognized that the regular gathering to worship in community was a vital part of their faith. Sometimes I don’t think they would recognize us in our freewheeling, independent, me-centered spiritual lives.

So, as a mini-series of posts for this new year, I thought I’d address one of these neo-Christian myths each week. Each of them, when understood as a commentary on worship within a church setting (I’m not talking about the building, of course, but of the community), leads us far afield from the rich, resilient faith of Christians who have preceded us and, I believe, will ultimately fail to sustain faith, both individual and corporate. They exit the great arc of Christian history.

Myth #1: Connecting with God has “feelings” attached to it.

Miller writes of going to a stellar worship service with awesome music, but disappointingly admits it left him cold. He says, “As far as connecting with God goes, I wasn’t feeling much of anything.” Perhaps this myth should be nuanced a bit. Maybe I should have written: “Myth #1: Connecting with God has good (warm, wonderful, exhilarating, jazzy) feelings attached to it.” Miller’s brief account has overtones of detachment and ambivalence, for sure not feelings you really want to cultivate in a worship service.

This was troubling to him. And if I thought that “connecting with God” should entail some sort of spiritual soul-rumbling, then yes indeedy a lot of the worship services I have attended have been much worse than mere disappointments. They’ve been a colossal waste of time. Lots and lots of time. I bet I’ve been to more church services than most of you readers all put together. (PK, remember?) Clearly I have not connected with God if I measure this by the boredom, restlessness, and frustration that I’ve felt at times in church services.

But anyone who has loved a spouse, parented children, or had a job knows that the work involved in each of these kindles a vast array of feelings—some painfully joyful and others just plain old painful. If we leave a relationship, give up on a task, shirk a responsibility because we’re just not feeling the love—because we have bouts of boredom, restlessness, and frustration—then there is no love, no commitment, no givingness. We do the work, care for the children, serve the spouse faithfully no matter the roller coaster of emotions that may assault us through the course of a day, a week, a month, or years.

In fact, I do believe this is one of the deepest and most powerful of spiritual disciplines: Let nothing distract you, nothing—not another’s faults, not confusion or anxiety or fear, not lack of fervor or coldness of heart, not even your own faults—from the constant turning to God in trust and repentance. None of it matters, press on, press on. This unremitting movement of the heart means patting those feelings (or lack of them) on the head, acknowledging their presence, and then moving again toward Jesus.

To go to church, gather with the community in worship, celebrate Christ, and expect to “connect with God” in ways that mollycoddle my emotions is to cultivate a rather shortsighted perspective of both connecting with God and the purpose of church at all. We connect with God through faith, through mutual love and service, through adoration, and all of that can be done without one iota of sensing his presence. Just ask Mother Teresa, whose posthumously published private writings, Come Be My Light, paint a picture of a woman whose “connection with God” was both shockingly bereft of the feelings we might expect and shockingly faithful in her trust in God and her desire to do his will.

Miller writes, “I worship God every day through my work. It’s a blast.”

I write, I worship God every day through my work too. Sometimes it’s not a blast. That doesn’t make it “not worship.” In fact, the saints tell us that when we can relinquish the need for pleasure as the price of our obedience, God might indeed be honored more highly.

So back to church. Myth #1 presumes that we go to church to “connect with God.” We don’t. We are already and always connected with God. (Another irksome contemporary phrase: “God showed up!” Really.) We go to church because we are connected with God and with one another, and there we express that connection through worship—song, word, Eucharist, greetings, prayers. We bring our feelings—whatever they are—to worship rather than expect to find them there. We baptize them in the truth to which we belong, and we cart them out of there to the work he has called us to do.

Six Neo-Christian Myths

Previous Post

September 24, 2013

Cancer and Divine Immanence

Next Post

February 12, 2014 Neo-Christian Myth #2: the Preaching Pickle

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Ascetical Theology Book Reviews Children and Parenting Easter Epiphany Friends of God Lent Life in the Spirit Ludolph Pascalian Spirituality: a series Politics Prayers Six Neo-Christian Myths Spiritual Formation Tales from My Father Trinitarian Spirituality: a series Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 July 2024 June 2024 December 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 January 2023 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 April 2022 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 October 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 November 2016 June 2016 April 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 March 2015 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 October 2011 August 2011 July 2011 February 2011 October 2010 September 2010 July 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 November 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does Proverbs say about "a soft answer"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

It brings riches It makes a fool wise It brings rain It turns away wrath