Author: David Opderbeck

In our Intro to the Christian Tradition course at Biblical Seminary, we’re reading Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s lovely little book Lord Teach Us: the Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life.  Following are some portions of the journal I’m required to keep for the course as we read this book.

It’s somehow embedded in my spiritual consciousness that the “Christian life” is primarily an exercise in avoiding dangers. My posture, unconsciously, often has been one of defensiveness and fear. “We” need to be on constant vigil against moral laxity, heresy, “liberalism,” “secular humanism,” and other threats. If there were something like the “Homeland Security Threat Meter” for spiritual things, in many of the settings in which I’ve lived, it would constantly have been on “Red.”

Hauerwas and Willimon present instead a faith that recognizes its own weaknesses. As they note at the start of the Introduction, “[b]ecause of the nature of the Christian faith, all of us, no matter how long we have been around Jesus, are always learning anew how to ask the right questions. No one of us ever becomes so faithful, so bold in our discipleship, that we become experts in being Christian.” They are able to make such a statement because they conceive of the faith “not primarily as a set of doctrines, a volunteer organization, or a list of appropriate behaviors.” It is rather “a journey of a people.” To be Christian, they say, “is to have been drafted to be part of an adventure, a journey called God’s kingdom. Being part of this adventure frees us from the terrors that would enslave our lives if were not part of the journey.”

Why is it that we often unconsciously or consciously think of the Christian faith as something that brings slavery to terror? My Christian commitment was in some important ways born of fear – the fear of Hell. As a young teenager, fire and brimstone preaching motivated me to think, do and say the right things. We lived under the cloud of the Great Tribulation, the scourge of Antichrist followed by eternal flames, from which only proper faith in Christ could rescue us. The vast majority of the human race was on a fast train to Hell, and only a small remnant of us who got things just right would escape.

Thankfully, there were other influences on my faith besides those fire and brimstone prophecy preachers. There were youth leaders, college professors, family members and friends who really did catch the “adventure” of Christian faith. And there was a kernel of truth in the pulpit thumping – Jesus himself, after all, was the source of the imagery of sheep and goats, good soil and rocky soil, Abraham’s bosom and Gehenna.

Yet, even now, it’s hard for me to fully assimilate the truth that the Christian faith is fundamentally “a prayer that [we] must learn to pray” rather than “a set of beliefs.” I’m baffled sometimes when I meet former Roman Catholics who have gotten “saved” and joined evangelical churches. Their testimonies uniformly concern freedom and security: they traded what they perceived as a rigid system of doctrines, good works, guilt and penances, for the blessed assurance of simple faith in God’s grace. I suppose they just haven’t realized that in many of our evangelical churches, particularly for those of us who have grown up in the church, the system of doctrines, works, guilt and penances is just as rigid as it is in any version of cultural Catholicism – and perhaps it’s more insidious because it’s under the surface. Scratch the skin of many life-long evangelicals and you’ll find the same iron blood as that which flows through the most traditional of Catholics.

So, when I read Haurewas and Willimon’s meditation on God as “Our Father,” it banishes some of those old demons and encourages the whisperings of better angels: “It is comforting to know that even though you don’t always feel like a Christian, though you do not always act like a Christian, much less believe like a Christian, your relationship as a friend of God is not based on what you have felt, done, or believed. Rather, you are a friend with God because of God’s choice of you in Jesus through the church.”

Indeed! Yet – “through the church” . . . . This is our fundamental weakness as “independent” evangelical churches. How do my Catholic friends who embrace and live their Catholic identities know they are accepted by God? Why don’t they suffer from the same guilt and fears as those ex-Catholics I know who left that faith for evangelicalism (or, more likely, for no faith at all)?

I think it’s because they’ve learned to receive the blessing of the Church. They’ve learned to recognize that their friendship with God is far bigger than their own personal strengths and weaknesses. Sure, they realize the need for a vibrantly personal faith, but it’s a faith that’s far more than “personal,” and that therefore is far stronger than their personal weaknesses. And here, they can more readily grasp the significance of Hauerwas and Willimon’s thoughts on the fact that “Our Father” is “in Heaven”:

“You may not be good with words. Don’t worry. George Herbert, St. Francis, and Teresa of Avila pray with you. You may not have your head straight on Christian doctrine. Go ahead and pray with confidence. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Georgia Harkness pray with you. You may find it difficult to make time to pray. Pray as often as you can. Your prayer joins those already in progress by Dietrcih Bonhoeffer and Dorothy Day.”

We may demur for any number of reasons to the authority of Popes and Cardinals or Metropolitans. Maybe those reasons are good ones rooted in the Reformation, or maybe at this point they’re still born of the fear of change, or maybe there’s some of both at work. Regardless, it’s vital that our “personal relationship with Christ” be far more than “personal.” We thrive as we’re ingrafted onto the vine of Christ, rooted in soil that is thousands of years deep, in communion with branches spread across time, place and history.