Have you ever been the recipient of a gag gift?
Not the kind of gag gift you might receive at a White Elephant party. Rather, I'm referring to the kind of gag gift where you open the box, and there's another box inside, and then another, and then another. Or the kind of gag gift where it's wrapped with so much tape it's nearly impossible to open.
Sometimes kids' toys come in packaging that seems like a gag gift. Why toymakers make it so difficult to unravel a brand-new toy from its package I will never understand.
Why do we bother with such nuisances? Why do we keep struggling with packages that are difficult to open, rather than giving up and throwing them away?
I suppose the reason why is because we have hope and faith that what awaits us within the packaging is worth it.
The reason why I am musing about packaging today is because I've been pondering how we package Christianity. How do we "market", for lack of a better word, Christianity to others? What do we tell them about what Christianity means or entails?
It seems to me that all too often, our "packaging" includes a set of requirements and pre-requisites and obligations, as well as a to-do and not-to-do list that is ever growing.
I propose that much of the "packaging" we use nowadays, at least in the U.S. Church, is often more American or Republican than it is Biblical. It takes a lot of digging through all the layers of junk that we have surrounded Christianity with to actually get to the good inside.
The good inside being, of course, Jesus, and a relationship through Him with our Creator.
Why do we make it so difficult for others to see Jesus?
Back in Jesus' day, there was a group of leaders called the Pharisees. The Pharisees were laymen - not priests - who came together during a time of Jewish history when the Jewish people had been conquered and conquered again by non-Jewish people groups. They no longer had autonomy as their own country and culture and were becoming more and more influenced by the different cultures around them.
The Pharisees were afraid of losing their uniquely Jewish identity. God had, after all, set them apart as His people with a distinct code of conduct (the Law). They feared what it would mean if they lost their way.
The Law as laid out in the Old Testament includes 613 commandments. The Pharisees enforced not only the 613 written laws, but additional laws, called "oral laws"*, which were designed to create a buffer around the written law, explain the written law, and enforce it.
Jesus had a lot to say about the Pharisees' use of the law. Consider this from Matthew 23:23: "Woe to you, scribe and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former."
The Pharisees plotted against Jesus and ultimately brought Him to His death because they feared Jesus' message encouraging the "spirit of the law" rather than the "letter of the law" would destroy their Jewish culture and identity**.
Sound familiar yet?
It should.
We're doing the same thing here in America.
Christianity in America is packaged in American ideals and Republican values so tightly it can be hard to unravel.
We have believed lies. Lies that we live in a Christian country. Lies that we must make everyone look like us and act like us and believe like us if we want to keep our "Christian country".
We have believed that our "Christian culture" is at risk. That others are "out to get us" and destroy our culture and so we must fight to maintain it. (I still remember the church I visited with the young, white pastor who said we needed to "prepare" ourselves for the day we would have to "fight back" and "reclaim our country".)
We have packaged Christianity with beliefs about what political party to support and what to vote for or against and what values to uphold. Even to the extent of voting for an incredibly un-Christian man who has broken every single one of the Ten Commandments, all for the name of "Christianity" and merely because he ran for the "Christian" party.
How confusing this is to non-believers! How confusing this is to us within the Church, as well.
I mentioned before how when I condemned Christian support of this man because I believed it would tarnish the Christian witness, I was told to "repent" because to not support him was "sacrilege". Politics and religion should not be so interlinked that a political difference is equated to insulting God. That... doesn't even make sense.
We have to unravel the packaging around Christianity.
Previously, I favorably mentioned the group, Red Letter Christians. They are attempting to remove the packaging from American Christianity by focusing on the red letters of Scripture - the very words of Jesus. By centering on what was important to Jesus, what He actually said and taught and did, they believe we can have a purer faith. I'm a big fan of the Red Letter Christians group, and have read the books written by one of their founders, Shane Claiborne, as well. Some people think they take the words too far by living in intentional communities as the first believers did, but I admire them for their commitment.
We could learn a lot from them.
One of my main purposes in writing this blog is to unravel the packaging. Because I'm sick of the layers. I've been jaded by, hurt by, disillusioned by, the packaging.
I want to get to the core of what it really means to have faith in Jesus.
I want to live that core. To soak in it, bathe in it, be in over my head in it.
And I hope that by writing these blogs, I can encourage others to do the same.
Christianity is growing in countries where it has been stripped bare. Where the cultural packaging has been removed, and people are so sold by what's inside that they are suffering and even dying for it. For HIM. For Jesus.
We, on the other hand, face a shrinking Church. Christianity is dying in this country and not because of "culture wars". I believe the reason why we see a declining Church is because we have hid Jesus too well. We've wrapped the Christianity package so tightly no one can get into it.
It's time to unravel Christianity and be the Church God calls us to be.
Another reason why I wanted to write this blog, was to reach those who have given up on the Church because the packaging is so very, very unattractive. Because they've been jaded by, hurt by, disillusioned by, the packaging.
I want you to know - there is something of value inside. And it's worth finding. It's worth... everything.
I hope that you'll be encouraged by my journey and realize that you don't have to lose your entire faith because of bad packaging. It is possible to hold onto faith without all the extra cultural junk.
I'm doing it.
You can, too.
*Jewish tradition states that these oral laws were passed down from Moses himself, though it should be noted there is no written record of the oral tradition until right around the time of Jesus.
**Sometimes people say, why didn't the Jewish people recognize that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law and everything they had been studying their whole lives? But we should remember that many Jewish people did - the majority of the first disciples, the first churches, and the first evangelists were all... Jewish. In fact, Christianity was at first considered a Jewish sect, rather than its own separate religion.
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