Church Voices

Imagine a bleak world where disaster has struck. Call it the Haitian earthquake on a grand scale, only bigger than that. Disaster has engulfed the world, and the world we knew is never coming back because something has happened to the soil so that nothing grows. Everything is dead or dying, including humanity. Ten years out from the biggest one the landscape is filled with roving gangs of scavengers who will kill and consume anything and anyone they encounter. And in this bleak world is a father and son searching for something other than death. That is the plot for the book The Road. It was a powerful enough story that when I listened to the audio book on a long trip I realized that as I drove I had tensed up my entire body.

Recently, I’ve started watching a TV show called Supernatural. Its kind of like the X-Files, but not nearly as good, and far more dramatic (it is, after all, aired on noted purveyor of drama the CW Network). Its much lighter fare than The Road. At least on the surface. Its about two brothers who wander around the country fighting ghosts, demons, and other things that go bump in the night. Needless to say (though I’ll say it anyway) the brothers always win, everything ends up ok in the end, evil is vanquished, good is vindicated and we all learn something at the end of the show (usually what I learn is that the entire world is populated by beautiful, young people with skills beyond their years). But underneath the surface of the world of Supernatural it is at least as dark, and bleak as the Road. Throughout the show there is not just a belief, but a hard, unyielding truth that hell exists, and that most, if not all people are going there. There’s doubts about the existence of God, no mention of the kingdom of God generally, or heaven specifically. In fact, there’s the assumption in the show that pretty much everyone is going to end up in hell one way or another.

Now that’s bleak.

Unfortunately, many churches and many Christians mimic the world of Supernatural. On the surface everything looks ok. Everyone is smiley, everyone likes what they’re doing, and all is right with the world, even through the bumps of life. But underneath all the rhetoric, encouragement, writing, and speaking is hopelessness and bleakness. This happens when Christians become so focused on condemnation that there is nothing else.

When Christians see nothing but the bad things of this world, and can do nothing but focus on the condemnation of those sins, they create a spiritual wasteland that is as bleak as The Road, and as insidious as Supernatural. In fact, this mindset is far closer to Islam than it is the mind of Christ because ultimately, we are not people of bad news and condemnation. We are not people of hopelessness, and when we dwell on the small victories of sin it is possible to miss entirely the ultimate victory we share in through the resurrection of Christ.

Unfortunately, if you eavesdrop on services and conversations among Christians you’d think that Good Friday was never followed by Easter Sunday, you’d think God’s message to humanity is nothing but condemnation. Maybe its about time we live up to our billing as people bearing Good News that God has reconciled himself to his people, and that sin and hell have been defeated. Because if we don’t, we can make the world seem to be a bleak, hopeless place, far more so than any dystopia ever conceived of by any author or director.