Spiritual Hiccups - Wombs and Breasts

For some reason I have found myself talking with church members a lot lately about why people do or don't participate in the life of a congregation.  Some of these conversations have simply been about how the cultural landscape has changed, how the world I grew up in, where everything shut down on Sunday morning and people were "supposed" to go to church, no longer exists.  But often the conversation has made a natural progression to talking about how congregations are to connect with people around them given this changed landscape.

If people no longer come to churches out of habit or because they are expected to, then it stands to reason that they must discover something compelling about Christian faith or church participation to draw them in.  And congregations often have mission and service activities that help the community see how being in Christ makes a community and its members different and compelling.

But in my reading the last few days I have been reminded of how some traditional Christian claims can be extremely off-putting to people not reared in the faith.  I'm thinking especially about some expressions of "Christ died for you."  Often such statements are connected to the threat of eternal damnation to hell.  God must punish and condemn unless Jesus comes between us and God.

The problem with such formulations is they envision an angry, vengeful, easily offended God.  This God is out for blood, and only the substitution of Jesus' blood can placate this raging deity. 

Yet the Old Testament speaks over and over again about Yahweh's steadfast love and mercy.  In fact, the deepest character of God is sometimes stated as "merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness."  And today's reading from Isaiah draws deeply from such a picture of God.  To exiles in Babylon who fear God has abandoned them, Yahweh says through the prophet, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." 

I find the contrast between the prophet's description of God in terms of a mother's love and some Christians' picture of a God out for blood to be quite striking.  And I wonder if we church folks don't sometimes inadvertently give our non-church neighbors a frightening glimpse of a God they want nothing to do with.  But if God's love is so like the love of a mother, how could God be this scary?


Yesterday a colleague posted something on my facebook page that spoke to this.  It was a story  about Fred Craddock, great preacher and Professor of Preaching and New Testament, Emeritus at Candler in Atlanta.  While on sabbatical he visited a little Appalachian church one Sunday and happened upon a fire and brimstone sermon from Deuteronomy 23:2 about how no one from "an illicit union" could be admitted to God's congregation.  The preacher explained how this required sexual restraint for any child born out of wedlock would be condemned for all eternity.


At this point in the service several men in the congregation came down the aisle, picked up the pastor and his things and unceremoniously dumped him outside, telling him to leave and never come back.  As people milled around afterward, Fred Craddock asked what had happened.  When they explained that this is what they did to preachers that didn't preach the truth, Craddock reminded them that the preacher was quoting straight from the Bible.  To which they replied that even if it was in the Bible it couldn't be true. "There's not a one of us here that would do that to a tiny little baby, and we figure God's at least as Christian as we are." 


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