Bleeding Kansas

God’s Own Fool

My post “God’s Own Fool” was picked up by the CRC Network and a number of pastors made comments about why pastors become bitter and burned out, unlike my father and those like him. I can understand how my article can be read as perhaps blaming hurt and burned out pastors for their own pain. Over-generalization on both sides here is not our friend. Churches DO grind up pastors.

Churches Are Made of People

I’m reading a fascinating book on moral psychology called The Righteous Mind. Even though the author is a secular research psychologist who finds the reason for our nature in our evolutionary past, he comes to the same conclusion as many conservative Calvinists about our current natural state:

I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.

The link also appears in the term self-righteous, which means “convinced of one’s own righteousness, especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others; narrowly moralistic and intolerant. ” 5 I want to show you that an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition. It is a feature of our evolutionary design, not a bug or error that crept into minds that would otherwise be objective and rational. 6

Haidt, Jonathan (2012-03-13). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Haidt’s conclusion about who we are and what we are down deep isn’t far from Calvinist doctrine. We are ardent self-salvationalists holding tightly to the conviction that we are right and righteous (and sometimes those we agree with or like) and others are immoral, means spirited, and judgmental, which they likely are, given the universality of this condition. We can’t see the log in our own eye.

Churches often heightens this condition even if the church has as its doctrinal position a confession of this state itself. Because we hold to the doctrine and confess it we imagine we are resistant to it. While confession of it is a helpful first step (Heidelberg Catechism “Misery”), confession of this to our abstracted condition is non-specific and insufficient to really address our self-righteousness and hatred towards God and our neighbor.

Because church deals with such ultimate things the effect on our moralism and judgmentalism is heightened. The neighbor that we condemn is not just guilty of a shaggy lawn or a barking dog, but jeopardizing God’s mission to the world and God’s message of salvation. When a pastor is seen in these terms the pitchforks and torches will emerge and little short of banishment and destruction will satisfy the wrath of the “righteous” and “faithful”. Should we be surprised by this?

Churches are Institutions

Os Guiness notes “Without individuals nothing happens. Without institutions, nothing survives.” Andy Crouch follows up with “institutions are very subject to institutionalism”.

The church NEEDS to be an institution despite many of our fantasies to the contrary. Institutions require policy, order, fairness, etc. to function. Institution marshal power to sustain and accomplish. Institutions prioritize the community over the individual. For this reason institutions are not always kind to individuals. Pastors are individuals.

Pastors of course know this and are often stressed by having to wield an institutional solution to an individual problem. This will hurt a loving pastor sometimes more than the individual at the blunt end of the institution. Sometimes the pastor IS the individual at the blunt end of the institution.

Combine the moralistic, self-righteous pitchfork mentality with institutional power and you have a recipe for harm and hurt.

Yet The Church Endures

Then why do we continue on with people and institutions? Because we have no other option. Jonathan Haidt will probably deepen my understanding of why we are as we are, but I’ll probably conclude the book pondering my experience with the church that says “even if I am aware in the abstract of my malady that knowledge alone is insufficient for me to overcome it, and surely insufficient for me to try to overcome it in others.”

Pastors should get into this business KNOWING we are getting into a cage (institution) with a wild tiger (human nature) and that there will be blood. Not abstract blood and pain, but real blood and pain. Expectations ARE preconceived resentments so we should own them.

The Christian religion is founded, however, on blood and pain. Jesus’ moment of great triumph on the cross was the same moment when his friends and disciples imagined he was being utterly defeated. It has always been the case that it is in failure, loss and pain that the church endures and sometimes overcomes. It is not unusual that it is sometimes in a pastor’s brutal humiliation and defeat, if that defeat is met with the love and forgiveness Christ exhibited on the cross that other great work is done, sometimes quietly an unseen, but sometimes not.

The church is not likely to “triumph” in the eyes of the world as an institution, as does Apple or Google, because its goals are so much larger and its enemy so much more grim. Pastors will not triumph as Steve Jobs or corporate CEOs. Shouldn’t we imagine they will triumph more like Christ triumphs in crucifixion and resurrection? This is our standard, not the corporate world.

Why Get In the Cage with the Tiger

So of course anyone should ask “what sane, rational human being would get in the cage with a wild tiger?” The best answer is belief in the gospel. That in the incarnation Christ got into the cage with us and we mauled him. He didn’t do it out of necessity but out of love.

Some of us have been fortunate with our congregations. I count myself in that number. My church has been simply lovely to me in good times and bad. Others I know have not been so lucky.

I also know that this post may inflame a messiah complex among pastors which is an equally deadly thing. It is a corrupted parody of the real Messiah because none of us are Jesus. At the same time the contours of the gospel are clear and the truth is that if they are not true then we are wasting our time with the faith and the church and we might as well join the materialists, make money, be hedonists until we decay away.

Churches will continue to grind up pastors until Jesus comes, yet the age of decay will grind us up anyway. If we are going to die we might as well choose for what we will die and if you find the gospel and church more beautiful that its competitors why not die in that way.