Amy Welborn muses about understanding Christianity historically — as a movement with a history, and one which has left an indelible imprint on it. A movement whose history means something. It’s not just about the now. It’s about what happened once — what really happened.
Christ is not a state function, I suppose.
She’s right that most Christians lack a sense of the historical reality of Christianity. Some out of ignorance, some out of apathy (and the concomitant willful ignorance).
I can muster some sympathy for the attitude that Jesus is my savior and that’s good enough for me. Why settle for good enough? I suspect it contains a stab at humility: I don’t need a bunch of fancy education, just a simple faith in the Lord. And that’s not demonstrably false, of course.
But neither is it demonstrably humble. Does it only depend on your decision? Why so little curiosity about how it all came down to you through the centuries? A little gratitude for the one who taught you, and the one who taught him, and the one who taught that one, back through the ages until you sit at the feet of the Rabbi? Not just teachers in that line, either: martyrs, and soldiers, and people driven into hiding. It’s an exciting story.
I have a cousin who gave us all for Christmas last year a portfolio containing genealogical records and supporting materials that told the story of one particular branch of our family. My aunt and uncle and cousins excitedly pored over it and speculated about it for at least an hour. Our family used to own that? We’re descended from whom? It’s not just us, of course — lots of people enjoy tracking their genealogy, digging names/dates/occupations out of census records and even commissioning calligraphers to craft elegant family trees. Americans, at least, enjoy having an ancestor who scraped a living out of the dirt, or even one who was a bit of a shady character, as much or more than they would relish being descended from some kind of nobility. At heart we are searching for a good story.
The metaphor of genealogy is strong. In the engineering department where I studied, one of the most interesting professors (deceased this past year) — a man who was at least as much poet as scientist — was honored some time ago with an "academic family tree" poster, depicting his many "children" — the graduate students he had advised — and "grandchildren" — the students they had advised after they became professors — and great-grandchildren and so on.
Well, we have such a thing in our religious life as well. Every one of us received an entire heritage from someone who came before. Dare we consider that unimportant?
Amy writes,
[F]or decades now, countless homilies have been preached that focus more on "the church that produced the Gospels" and "What Matthew is doing here" instead of on Jesus. And then, to add to it, any reflection that goes on about this Jesus, in the great tradition of American Protestantism, skips 2000 years and asks, "Okay, what does that mean to you, now?"
No examination or reflection on Christianity as a faith with roots in history, no further consideration of how these Gospels came to be, how the New Testament evolved, what early Christians testified to about Jesus – no rationale is offered for how we got from there – a few well-known parables and sayings of Jesus – to here – what it means to us today.
So eventually, thinking people start to wonder. Not unreasonably. How do I know this is the real deal? How do I know that this is what Jesus said anyway?
What this has produced, besides an ignorance of Christian history is a cool distance between too many Christians and Jesus as he becomes a figure that is essentially unknowable because the people that told his story weren’t really concerned with what happened, but simply what it meant to them.
bearing blog 