One Sunday on vacation many years ago, Mom and Dad took my brothers and me to this outlandishly large contemporary church for one of their services. I remember feeling less like I was going to church and more like I was going to a concert. We were sat in auditorium-style seats listening to a modern-era praise band and a preacher who’d used a video in his sermon. I don’t remember much about that morning, not even which city we’d been in or how old I’d been, but I did remember the video.
It was of some Jay Leno type guy walking up to people in the street with a mic and a camera and asking them to name the Ten Commandments. The crowd-slash-congregation had laughed along with the multitude of people who could only name one or two, or the people who made up a couple, or this one particularly memorable guy who’d gotten almost all of them right so that we thought he knew his stuff, only to comment to the camera that he thought there were five more. I don’t remember what the preacher tried to teach from the video, but I remember learning that good Christians were Christians who knew the Ten Commandments.
For a good long while after that, I made it my goal in life to memorize the Ten Commandments, and I might have even succeeded. The problem was that I wasn’t learning them in order to follow them or be closer to God – I tried to learn them because I wanted to be a *airquotes* “good Christian”. It’s a problem I still struggle with, wanting to do things related to the church, not because I feel called to them or because I think they are what God would want me to, but because they’re things “good Christians” do.
That’s not all that uncommon, though, is it? There’s a tremendous push in our society, as heavily based in Christianity as it is, to be a good Christian and promote Christian values above all else. And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as we remember the shortcomings of our society’s interpretation of that idea.
For example, one of the most common add-ons to the idea of a good Christian is to be “God-fearing”. A good, God-fearing Christian. There’s basis for that requirement all over the Bible, including in today’s reading. At the end of Exodus, Moses tells the people that God “has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin”. The Matthew text can be interpreted much the same way. The servants of the parable did not fear God enough to do as he asked, and so it is agreed even between Jesus and the Pharisees that they should meet their just punishment.
I have a lot of problems with those interpretations, though. First of all, I think reading the Matthew text that way is a willful misinterpretation of the lesson Jesus tried to tell. The sin of the servants in that passage wasn’t that they did not fear their master enough, but that they literally killed multiple people out of greed and malice. Their punishment is in direct correspondence to their rather extreme sins. And while Moses does talk about putting the fear of God in people, he literally begins the sentence with “Do not be afraid.”
That, more than anything, I think defuses the God-fearing part of being a good Christian. The phrase “Do not be afraid” and variations upon it are one of the most numerous themes throughout the whole of the Bible, usually spoken by God or one of his prophets to the people who lay trembling as the hills quake around them. Besides, most of the story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt is really the story of the people turning from their faith in God over and over again, and Moses dragging them back by the scruffs of their necks. The whole of their story proves that they are not the ones to emulate in that moment, but Moses. We should be Moses in that story, who takes on the role of God’s mouthpiece because the people were too afraid to speak to him themselves.
Which brings me to the next problem with the push to be a “good Christian”, and that’s a certain tendency – intended, accidental, what have you – to segregate ourselves away from people who don’t fit that stereotypical mold, whether in our lives or simply in our minds. And I have to admit, I’m as guilty of this as anyone else.
I don’t know how many of you are aware, but I’m currently secretary of an organization at UL called GLASS, which stands for Giving Love, Acceptance, Safety, and Support. It’s UL’s version of a Gay-Straight Alliance, but named in such a way as to include people who are neither gay nor straight, my bisexual self included. Just about all of my closest friends fit somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. I don’t know this for certain, but I’d say at least half of them are atheists. And I generally don’t bring up that part of myself in this or any church environment. I certainly don’t bring up my religion with my friends unless someone else brings it up. For the past few years, I’ve been okay with leaving that part of my identity at the church door, but increasingly over the past year, I’ve been finding it difficult to do so.
About a week ago, some friends and I were hanging out when one of my friends joked about how they were going to Hell. I’ve heard jokes like that before, hesitantly made them myself once or twice, but this particular instance hit me hard. Because just about everyone at the table laughed and agreed. “Me too,” they said.
Now, I know you don’t know these people, and I’ll admit that I don’t know everything about their lives, but take it from me that those people were some of the most generous, kind, and strong-willed people I’d ever met. But more than anything, they are some of the best examples of what Christ wanted from his disciples I have ever met.
And look, I know how strange that sounds, considering a good portion of them don’t even believe in God, but I stand by it. The people I’ve met in GLASS are a lot like Moses to me, wandering around in the desert and refusing to tremble in fear when the world quakes around them. In a day and age where people – good, Christian people – can and do condemn us to hell for daring to love someone of the same sex or express our genders the way we choose, it is an act of courage, but most of all, faith to even walk out of the door every morning or to stand up for our friends when they are suffering.
There are very few times over the course of my life in which I can honestly claim that I have seen God moving in the world, but watching atheist friends of mine back up my argument that no one at that table was going to hell with their own, non-Biblical but no less valid rationales, I can truthfully say that I saw him there that night.
But what does that mean for the “good Christian” standard we’ve grown so attached to? And what does that mean for us as followers of the Triune God, first and foremost?
I think it starts where Moses did: “Do not be afraid.” Easier said than done, I know, but God calls us to move forward as a church without fear or judgment. We are called as a church to step outside of our comfort zones, even with something as simple as overcoming a dislike for public speaking. We are called as a church to reach out to the people of the world who are treated as lesser. We are called not just to tell them but to show them that in God’s eyes, they are the greatest of us all. We are called to drop the harsh boundaries and self-righteous charades of the attempt to be a “good Christian” and choose instead to actually act as God demanded of us.
We exist in a time and place where many people are afraid for their homes, their jobs, their futures, their lives… We exist at such a time as this to tell and prove to those people, our siblings in Christ, “Do not be afraid, for God is with you. And so are we.”
It was of some Jay Leno type guy walking up to people in the street with a mic and a camera and asking them to name the Ten Commandments. The crowd-slash-congregation had laughed along with the multitude of people who could only name one or two, or the people who made up a couple, or this one particularly memorable guy who’d gotten almost all of them right so that we thought he knew his stuff, only to comment to the camera that he thought there were five more. I don’t remember what the preacher tried to teach from the video, but I remember learning that good Christians were Christians who knew the Ten Commandments.
For a good long while after that, I made it my goal in life to memorize the Ten Commandments, and I might have even succeeded. The problem was that I wasn’t learning them in order to follow them or be closer to God – I tried to learn them because I wanted to be a *airquotes* “good Christian”. It’s a problem I still struggle with, wanting to do things related to the church, not because I feel called to them or because I think they are what God would want me to, but because they’re things “good Christians” do.
That’s not all that uncommon, though, is it? There’s a tremendous push in our society, as heavily based in Christianity as it is, to be a good Christian and promote Christian values above all else. And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as we remember the shortcomings of our society’s interpretation of that idea.
For example, one of the most common add-ons to the idea of a good Christian is to be “God-fearing”. A good, God-fearing Christian. There’s basis for that requirement all over the Bible, including in today’s reading. At the end of Exodus, Moses tells the people that God “has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin”. The Matthew text can be interpreted much the same way. The servants of the parable did not fear God enough to do as he asked, and so it is agreed even between Jesus and the Pharisees that they should meet their just punishment.
I have a lot of problems with those interpretations, though. First of all, I think reading the Matthew text that way is a willful misinterpretation of the lesson Jesus tried to tell. The sin of the servants in that passage wasn’t that they did not fear their master enough, but that they literally killed multiple people out of greed and malice. Their punishment is in direct correspondence to their rather extreme sins. And while Moses does talk about putting the fear of God in people, he literally begins the sentence with “Do not be afraid.”
That, more than anything, I think defuses the God-fearing part of being a good Christian. The phrase “Do not be afraid” and variations upon it are one of the most numerous themes throughout the whole of the Bible, usually spoken by God or one of his prophets to the people who lay trembling as the hills quake around them. Besides, most of the story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt is really the story of the people turning from their faith in God over and over again, and Moses dragging them back by the scruffs of their necks. The whole of their story proves that they are not the ones to emulate in that moment, but Moses. We should be Moses in that story, who takes on the role of God’s mouthpiece because the people were too afraid to speak to him themselves.
Which brings me to the next problem with the push to be a “good Christian”, and that’s a certain tendency – intended, accidental, what have you – to segregate ourselves away from people who don’t fit that stereotypical mold, whether in our lives or simply in our minds. And I have to admit, I’m as guilty of this as anyone else.
I don’t know how many of you are aware, but I’m currently secretary of an organization at UL called GLASS, which stands for Giving Love, Acceptance, Safety, and Support. It’s UL’s version of a Gay-Straight Alliance, but named in such a way as to include people who are neither gay nor straight, my bisexual self included. Just about all of my closest friends fit somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. I don’t know this for certain, but I’d say at least half of them are atheists. And I generally don’t bring up that part of myself in this or any church environment. I certainly don’t bring up my religion with my friends unless someone else brings it up. For the past few years, I’ve been okay with leaving that part of my identity at the church door, but increasingly over the past year, I’ve been finding it difficult to do so.
About a week ago, some friends and I were hanging out when one of my friends joked about how they were going to Hell. I’ve heard jokes like that before, hesitantly made them myself once or twice, but this particular instance hit me hard. Because just about everyone at the table laughed and agreed. “Me too,” they said.
Now, I know you don’t know these people, and I’ll admit that I don’t know everything about their lives, but take it from me that those people were some of the most generous, kind, and strong-willed people I’d ever met. But more than anything, they are some of the best examples of what Christ wanted from his disciples I have ever met.
And look, I know how strange that sounds, considering a good portion of them don’t even believe in God, but I stand by it. The people I’ve met in GLASS are a lot like Moses to me, wandering around in the desert and refusing to tremble in fear when the world quakes around them. In a day and age where people – good, Christian people – can and do condemn us to hell for daring to love someone of the same sex or express our genders the way we choose, it is an act of courage, but most of all, faith to even walk out of the door every morning or to stand up for our friends when they are suffering.
There are very few times over the course of my life in which I can honestly claim that I have seen God moving in the world, but watching atheist friends of mine back up my argument that no one at that table was going to hell with their own, non-Biblical but no less valid rationales, I can truthfully say that I saw him there that night.
But what does that mean for the “good Christian” standard we’ve grown so attached to? And what does that mean for us as followers of the Triune God, first and foremost?
I think it starts where Moses did: “Do not be afraid.” Easier said than done, I know, but God calls us to move forward as a church without fear or judgment. We are called as a church to step outside of our comfort zones, even with something as simple as overcoming a dislike for public speaking. We are called as a church to reach out to the people of the world who are treated as lesser. We are called not just to tell them but to show them that in God’s eyes, they are the greatest of us all. We are called to drop the harsh boundaries and self-righteous charades of the attempt to be a “good Christian” and choose instead to actually act as God demanded of us.
We exist in a time and place where many people are afraid for their homes, their jobs, their futures, their lives… We exist at such a time as this to tell and prove to those people, our siblings in Christ, “Do not be afraid, for God is with you. And so are we.”
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