Exposed

I feel like Anne of Green Gables, who in response to Marilla's criticism that she talked far too much, reasoned that Marilla should be glad for all the things she could say but didn't. I do apologize if there is some unwritten rule about how often a person should post. I assume it means I'm a little more screwed up than the rest of you.

The last Books & Culture (click on imaginary link) featured a review of a book that feels to me wonderfully damning of this evangelical culture we are resisting together. The book In the Land of Believers was written by a self-proclaimed atheist, who carried out a kind of ethnographic experiment to see if she could learn to “live as an evangelical” and thus learn what evangelicals were like as people “on their own terms.” Her participant observation involved pretending she was a new convert, joining a church, participating in sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, going on a mission trip and leading a little girl in the sinner’s prayer… She hoped through her experiment to find more appreciation for these evangelicals, more compassion perhaps, and much to her surprise she succeeded. She felt like she actually found belonging and affection, even while her beliefs didn’t change at all! How damning is that!? She came to the conclusion (as she calmly resumed her secular life) that evangelicals would eventually see the light and become more moderate, more adaptive to the culture around them. She arrived at a belief that they weren’t really bad people, just somewhat misguided, and needed a little time to see the light, the “mystical oneness of all things.”

This is completely believable to me. I successfully lived as a believer for years, but am quite sure looking back that my actual understanding and embrace of the gospel came gradually and much later, in spite of the culture not because of it. Does this not seem like the ultimate indictment: that we can live happily and successfully in evangelical communities, without the notion that belief is actually the core? What kind of community might Jesus have in mind for His church to be that this kind of experiment would not work? Or is that the great mystery: that this kind of an experiment could always work, that it would always be possible to buy the field for a million other reasons than its true value, the pearl of great price? It seems plausible to consider that the gravest danger to the gospel may well be the very religious cultures in which it lives, replete with their easy distractions of superficial performance—activities—rather than the inconspicuous realities of roots growing deep into the hidden sources of nourishment and sustenance that comprise real spiritual life. It drives me to my knees.