What We Want

I’m a middle child, which is awful enough, I suppose. But in addition to being neither youngest nor oldest, with all the benefits that accrue to each, I’m also the only one of my parents’ children who never took a debate class. As a result, growing up I lost pretty much every argument. And as an adult, I still pretty much do.

Maybe that’s why I’m so conflict-avoidant; it’s not that I bristle at the tension that accompanies a spirited debate, it’s that I know in advance I’m going to lose. And I also know that my opinion, despite losing, is not likely to change.

Debate is a core strategy in the conventional wisdom of the contemporary church—particularly the evangelical church. The emphasis on conversion—a change of heart and mind—has debate built right into it. To become an evangelical is to admit you’re wrong—and not just that you were wrong to bite your sister or to cheat on your taxes or to kill your bookie. To become an evangelical is to admit that you’ve been wrong from the beginning about the nature of God and God’s relation to creation. You’ve been wrong about everything. If you want in, you’d better get your head on straight.

Sounds delightful. I’m going to watch TV.

Don’t get me wrong; beliefs are important—particularly beliefs about the nature of God and God’s relation to creation. So is our behavior: I firmly believe that killing bookies is unacceptable conduct. In fact, I think they’re linked. We act, for the most part, based on how we’ve come to understand the natural order and our place in it. We develop core beliefs, at least in part, based on what we observe as we engage in various activities.

So belief and behavior are significant—even, I daresay, fundamental. But should assent to someone else’s beliefs, and conformity to someone else’s code of conduct, dictate what and whom we belong to?

Beliefs and behaviors, I’d like to suggest, are secondary developments to the community that we find ourselves attached to. We belong first, in other words, and then we believe and behave accordingly. That’s an oversimplification—in reality these three spin off and inform one another. But putting belonging first is reflective of what we observe in families, for instance: infants don’t “opt in” to the parents’ belief structure and code of conduct; if anyone adapts, it’s the parents.

This is hardly a new idea—that belonging precedes behavior and belief. But it does run counter to the logic of contemporary evangelicalism—including, most importantly, how evangelical churches organize themselves. First the altar call, then the membership class, then an appropriate time of scrutiny to make sure you’re not a psycho, then the privilege of serving in the nursery. Then you’re in the inner circle; it’s only a matter of time before you’re an elder (unless, in some cases, you’re a woman.)

What’s needed more than this intellectual and behavioral guardedness, I think, is a commitment to struggle well together—to offer a safe place for people to wrestle with questions of their existence. No such place exists these days beyond the church and, to a lesser extent, the campus. Even the home isn’t a guaranteed laboratory for these central issues anymore. People need to ramp up to questions of core beliefs, to an articulation of their code of conduct. The church can offer that, but when belief and behavior precede belonging, the church effectively becomes a secret society that doesn’t hide its secrets very well. The church effectively becomes a fight waiting to happen, a fight no one wants to take up.

In The Fidelity of Betrayal, Peter Rollins imagines a way of flipping this script, allowing the culture of the church to become a safe place for people to uncover their core beliefs and behaviors, and expose them to a scrutiny bracketed by acceptance.

There is a vast space within the tradition to form communities that celebrate belonging to one another in the undergoing and aftermath of the miracle, a belonging that manifests itself in communally agreed rituals, creeds, and activities. In the midst of all this these communities can also encourage lively, heated, and respectful discussions concerning the nature and form of belief.

In an atmosphere such as this we become more than what we are individually or even collectively. We become a sort of covenant community—the great Us.

Every covenant community needs a creed. I’ve got one started, but a good creed doesn’t come first; it comes next.

1. We want to know God. An unseeable God is known through revelation—through words, works and committed community. We aim to seek God in all three.

2. We want God to know us. We are known through what we confess and through God´s probing questions of who we are. We aim to grow in opening ourselves to both.

3. We want to know ourselves. In a frenetic world, we aim to resist the temptation to live unreflectively.

4. We want to know one another. In that same frenetic world, we seek to make our relationships safe places for reflection and growth.

5. We want to experience love—both the giving and the receiving. If, as the Bible says, God is love, and if, as the Bible says, human beings are created in God´s image, then love will increasingly characterize our conduct and identity.

Rollins finishes his thought with this notion of love: “The conclusions we come to [must] bring liberation and healing.” Liberation and healing aren’t beliefs or behaviors; they’re existential feelings that only emerge out of a sense of belonging, which is itself an experience of love.