Christianity with Sanity
a sermon series by Robert J. Faser
(2) Humanity: Are we “totally depraved” or “the image of God”?St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Bacchus Marsh, Victoria
27th March 2011

Humanity: Are we “totally depraved” or “the image of God”?

One thing I’ve noticed, after over thirty years practice of ministry, is that some people who are regular worshippers in Christian churches suffer from painfully low self-esteem. In just about every congregation I’ve served, there was at least one person – frequently more - who had a very low regard for their own worth as a human being. Sometimes, this low self-esteem merely expressed itself as a low level of confidence in one’s own abilities. At other times, it bordered on a serious mental health issue. While I knew far more women with low self-esteem than men, this problem was by no means unknown among men.

I kept asking myself, “Why are there so many people with low self-esteem within congregations of Christian churches?”

And I discovered that this question is one of those where the answer begins in the way many old jokes begin: “I have some good news … and I have some bad news.”

As always, here’s the good news first. One reason why there are so many people with low self-esteem within congregations of Christian churches is that Christian churches – particularly the more mainstream, progressive, and ecumenical churches (churches like this one, churches like our ecumenical partners here in Bacchus Marsh, churches like other congregations each of us knows in other places) – mainstream churches are welcoming, hospitable communities where people are able to feel “at home”, valued, and loved: even those who have low self-esteem and who are unable to properly love themselves. That’s the good news, and please give yourselves a pat on the back for this. (And please also give a pat on the back to any of your friends who attend Catholic, Anglican, or other mainstream churches.)

Now for the bad news. Another reason why there are so many people with low self-esteem within congregations of Christian churches is that many people with low self-esteem learned their low self-esteem in church, particularly if they grew up within a church where they were given a steady diet from the pulpit of “You’re bad! You’re horrible! You’re sinful! … You’re bad! You’re horrible! You’re sinful!”

I grew up as part of a good, solid middle-of-the-road Methodist congregation where we didn’t get a load of “You’re bad! You’re horrible! You’re sinful!” from the pulpit. But I can remember visiting other churches in my youth – in my own case a Baptist church and an Assemblies of God church – where there was a lot of “You’re bad! You’re horrible! You’re sinful!” in the preaching. (Apologies to anyone here with a Baptist or AOG background, but that was my own experience.)

I’m sure most of us have heard sermons where it seemed quite obvious that the minister, priest, or pastor believed that everyone in the congregation combined in their own personalities the worst traits of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Jack the Ripper, Ned Kelly, Casanova, and Christopher Skase. (In traditional theological language – sometimes called “theobabble” - this kind of attitude toward humanity is called “total depravity”.) You won’t hear this stuff from me (and, if you ever hear this sort of thing from me, please, you need to say to me “Bob, you’re losing it! Retire now!) … Anyway, you won’t hear this stuff from me, but I’m sure you’ve heard it in the past. Believe me, I don’t see any Hitlers here … or any Stalins … any Jack the Rippers, … or Casanovas, … or Ned Kellys, … or Christopher Skases. I haven’t seen any of these characters in any of my congregations in the past … the occasional bigot, the occasional snob, the occasional gossip, the occasional Scrooge, … but no Hitlers, Jack the Rippers, or Casanovas. This sort of preaching all feeds into low self-esteem in some people.

Some of what we sing in church also can be license for low self-esteem. If a person with a existing tendency to low self-esteem find themselves singing about “a wretch like me” or how it’s a good thing to “pour contempt on all my pride”, this also can confirm a person’s sense of self-hatred. (And while I don’t plan to censor the use of these hymns in our worship, I think we do need to be careful as to the messages conveyed by these hymns to people who already have a tendency to low self-esteem.)

And this is a lot worse when it’s new music giving this message. When we hear these words in a hymn from the 18th century, we can put it into context by saying “This is what people believed in the past, but we don’t believe quite the same thing today.” Put similar ideas into more contemporary words and sing them to a rock beat, you give the impression that this is what all Christians today believe and are expected to believe. Voila! Another reason for low self-esteem!

We are made in the image of God. In the opening chapter of Genesis, we hear this statement:

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Like the vast majority of Christians in Australia, I believe that humanity evolved from other forms of life. But, just because we don’t have to take the Genesis creation story literally, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take it seriously. However we interpret the creation story, we hear the affirmation that we all exist in the image of God. We have God’s capacity to reason, God’s capacity to choose, God’s capacity to love. We are made in the image of God … all of us … regardless of our race … regardless of our gender … regardless of whether or not you may happen to suffer from low self-esteem.

As members of the human race, we exist in the image of God, therefore we cannot honestly say– with some of the more hard-line sort of Christians – that humanity is “totally depraved”.
• We are all imperfect, but we are not totally depraved.
• We are all flawed, but we are not totally depraved.
• We all make mistakes, but we are not totally depraved.
• Some of us make bad choices frequently, but we are not totally depraved.
• Some people are drawn to commit acts of terrible violence and cruelty (such as we read about in the newspapers or view on the evening news), but we are not totally depraved as a human race.

However flawed our lives may be, the image of God is found within each of us.
• Even the best of people are flawed.
• Even the worst of people contain the image of God.
All people have God’s capacity to reason, God’s capacity to choose, God’s capacity to love.

We are made in the image of God … all of us …yes, all of us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Copyright: Robert J. Faser, 2011

Christianity with Sanity
a sermon series by Robert J. Faser
(1) Do we worship “a god of wrath” or “the God of love”?
St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Bacchus Marsh, Victoria
20th March 2011

Introduction to the series:

In 1970, Dr. Wayne Oates, a psychologist and Baptist minister in the United States, wrote a book with the title When Religion Gets Sick. Wayne Oates wrote about how unhealthy expressions of religious faith, in any faith tradition, can lead some people to develop an unhealthy mental outlook on life.
• Some people have an approach to their faith that makes them very dirty-minded people.
• Some people have an approach to their faith that turns them into absolute bigots.
• And even (at times), some people have an approach to their faith that leads to full-blown mental illness.

We also see that the opposite situation can be true. In community after community, we find many congregations- such as this one - where a healthy-minded faith is taught and this healthy-minded faith has the result of developing a community of generous, hospitable, tolerant, healthy-minded, community-minded people: people like you.

In particular, congregations like ourselves have a strongly positive effect upon the children or young people we have the privilege to influence. Whether or not the young person chooses to practice their faith as an adult – or even whether or not they choose to believe as an adult – being exposed to a congregation such as this one assists a young person to grow into becoming a confident adult, who is also a generous, hospitable, tolerant, healthy-minded, community-minded person. We find this in community after community, in congregations of mainstream Christian churches, in congregations of mainstream Judaism and mainstream Islam, and in worshipping groups within the mainstream of other faith communities.

Essentially, the message of this series is:
• sick religion is bad, while
• healthy-minded religion is good.
• Sick religion is bad in any faith tradition.
• Healthy-minded religion is good in any faith tradition.
• I believe that the best way to combat sick religion is to promote healthy-minded religion.

In this context, this sermon series points to a number of ways that, in our approach to our faith, we can live and worship as part of a “Christianity with Sanity”

Now, mainstream churches being mainstream churches, I know that not everyone in the congregation is going to be here for every sermon in this series. So, the usual procedures for copies will apply. The sermons will appear on the website as usual. Those wishing either e-mailed or printed copies, please let me know. As well, this general introduction to the series will be repeated before the beginning of each sermon, so that anyone coming in at mid-series – or even at the end of the series - has an idea of what’s happening.

This week’s sermon:

Do we worship “a god of wrath” or “the God of love”?

To begin, let’s look at our gospel lesson, with the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. For many of us , it’s a familiar passage, with its climactic words set to music by Sir John Stainer; frequently memorised by Sunday School children, and shouted by street-corner evangelists; with its reference (John 3:16) seen on placards displayed at sporting fixtures around the world. In the New Revised Standard Version, we still hear an echo of the cadences of the old Authorised Version:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world may be saved through him.

Now, this passage initially turns on a pun in the Greek language. You may find it strange that Jesus and Nicodemus - two Jews - were speaking to each other in Greek, but this was not all that remarkable. They were from different regions: Jesus was from Galilee, Nicodemus from Jerusalem. If they spoke Hebrew or Aramaic, they may not have been able to understand each other’s dialect. Greek functioned as a basic shared second language throughout the region, as English does today in large areas of Asia and Africa. They may have been far more comfortable speaking to each other in Greek, in the same way that today two Indians from different parts of India will normally be more comfortable speaking to each other in English, if possible.

But back to the pun. Jesus spoke of the Spirit enabling people to be “born from above”. The Greek word anothen could mean either “from above” or “a second time”. The phrase Jesus used meaning “born from above” could also translate as “born again” or “born a second time”.

Nicodemus made a pun on the double meaning of the phrase: “What? Do I have to go back into the womb again? At my age?” It seemed essentially to be a mild and good-natured joke. Most people need to be fairly comfortable in each other’s company to crack jokes. It may be a sign that Jesus and Nicodemus liked each other, and got along well with each other. Jesus recognised the pun, but continued to make his point.

Nicodemus’s pun still affects the church today. Some Christians today try to make an artificial distinction between two kinds of Christian.
• On the one hand, there are “born again” Christians, the more “religious” sort of Christian.
• On the other hand, there are regular, ordinary Christians, like most of us here.
Generally, those who make this distinction put themselves in the first group. This distinction was something that neither Nicodemus nor Jesus intended.

Anyway, to the main theme of this passage, when Jesus declared that “…God so loved the world that he gave his only son …” and that “…God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world …”.

For those of us whose faith was shaped in mainstream churches, this is pretty obvious. Our attitude, as I said a few weeks ago when reflecting on the various disasters, … our attitude here all boils down to that little verse which was probably the first bit of scripture most of us learned in Sunday School: “God is love.” But, as I said, many religious people try to qualify “God is love,” try to put so many conditions on “God is love” that God’s love becomes rather selective. “God is love, but God is only love for you if you jump through these religious hoops … and these moral hoops … and these cultural hoops.”

No, either “God is love” or “God isn’t love.” And that probably seems pretty obvious for us. But there are many people for whom this is not obvious.
• There are many people who were never taught a view of God as one who primarily loves, but as one who primarily judges and condemns. For many who have rejected any sort of religious faith, this view of God is a major reason why they have done so.
• But, as well, there are many people of faith, including many people of Christian faith, who see God’s love as very selective, and for whom their life of faith seems to be centered on pleasing a potentially angry deity.

Their attitude toward their god may be summed up in some words that some of us may have sung about someone else a few months’ ago:

He’s making a list, and checking it twice;
going to find out who’s naughty or nice.

And there are some people in the community who worship that sort of god. There are many people who cannot get their minds around the idea that God’s love seeks to embrace the whole world, without exception.

In this vein, and I’ve used this illustration before, the British writer Adrian Plass wrote a series of humourous books about the members of a small congregation, one of whom was a man named Leonard Thynne. Leonard grew up within a very rigid sort of Christian denomination, possibly Plymouth Brethren or something similar. In his adult life, Leonard Thynne still wore the emotional scars of this aspect of his upbringing through very low self-esteem. Leonard was an alcoholic – trying with rather mixed success to become a recovering alcoholic. One day, Leonard heard a sermon at his church by a visiting preacher – a monk, no less. He was impressed with the monk’s talk and commented to a friend in the congregation:

He knows a different God to the one I do. His God’s nice!

Leonard grew up knowing a different god, a god who was

… making a list, and checking it twice;
going to find out who’s naughty or nice.

But it’s not only fictional characters like Leonard who know that lesser god, and who have not yet encountered the real God, the God of “God is love”. And we hear about that sort of person a great deal in the media, particularly when people take that attitude to its violent extreme:
• shooting staff and customers at abortion clinics, or
• flying jets into skyscrapers.

But even when these attitudes do not result in violent actions, these attitudes are still destructive of human community, and these attitudes are still destructive of any meaningful faith.

As I said a few weeks ago, for those of us who worship a Jesus-shaped God, either “God is love” or “God is nothing”.

One final comment: some people make an artificial contrast between an “Old Testament” view of God and a “New Testament” view of God, with the “Old Testament” view being that of a simple “God of wrath” and the “New Testament” view being that of a simple “God of grace”. This view is completely false.

Throughout the scriptures, we find a balanced view of God:
• The God we worship is the God of radical grace; the God who is profoundly love at the core of God’s being. We see this in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament … equally.
• The God we worship is also the God who calls all people to practice justice, the God who calls all people to be ethical in their treatment of others; the God who calls all people to be ethically accountable. We see this in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament … equally.

There is as much grace in God as we find God described in the Hebrew Scriptures as described in the New Testament. Any artificial contrast between an “Old Testament God of wrath” and a “New Testament God of grace” is completely false.

In any event, either “God is love” or “God is nothing”.

I believe that “God is love.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Copyright: Robert J. Faser, 2011

“You just can’t tie Jesus down.”
a sermon by
Robert J. Faser
13th March 2011
Matthew 4: 1 - 11

I have it on good authority that this is a true story. It happened one December in a small town in the United States. Every year, a service club put up a big nativity scene in a park. One day, the president of the service club received a telephone call from the police: “Is your nativity scene missing anything? … Is it missing something particularly important … something particularly important for a nativity scene?”

As it turned out, the owner of a nearby café rang the police to tell them that the figure of the infant Jesus was found in the café, propped up as if sitting at one of the tables. Evidently, practical jokers had removed the figure from the nativity scene and left it there at a table in the café, the baby Jesus sitting in the café, having a hamburger and a cup of coffee.

As the president of the club arrived at the café to pick up the figure of baby Jesus, a reporter from the local paper also arrived at the scene. (Someone – possibly the practical jokers themselves - had tipped off the paper.)

The rather embarrassed club president found himself explaining to the journalist the difficulties in maintaining the nativity scene. “All the other pieces,” he said, “can all be securely fastened to the ground: shepherds, sheep, wise men, camels, Mary, Joseph, the lot. They can all be secured, all except the Jesus figure. …” He explained, and then added (with an unexpectedly profound theological statement), “You just can’t tie Jesus down.”

“You just can’t tie Jesus down!”

But then, it’s not as if some people haven’t tried. Over the centuries, and in the present day, many have tried to “tie Jesus down”, to make him fit into their image of what - and who - he should be.
• The gospels confront us with Jesus who ate and socialised with his community’s “moral failures”, and who was scathing in his criticism of religious conservatism in his own cultural setting. But some have tried to “tie Jesus down” to make him the improbable standard-bearer of a new legalism, a new moralism, and a new conservatism.
• The gospels confront us with Jesus who honestly became angry at the abuses committed in the Temple by the money-changers. But some have tried to “tie Jesus down” into a vague, sentimentalised person who didn’t even have a temper to lose.

And, you know, it is understandable that many have tried to “tie Jesus down”. When he isn’t securely tied down, Jesus has this knack of encouraging people to do … well … uncomfortable things. In the gospels, how many successful fishing businesses had he disrupted? How many semi-privatised tax-collection enterprises had he ruined? And ever since then, Jesus has still been disrupting people’s plans.
• Francis of Assisi could have looked forward to inheriting his father’s successful business. But Jesus had another idea.
• Ignatius Loyola had a career as a professional military officer ahead of him. But Jesus had another idea.
• John Wesley, Albert Schweitzer, and Martin Luther King were all promising young academics. But Jesus had another idea.
• Mary MacKillop and Mother Theresa could each have expected comfortable lives teaching the children of the rich (or at least the middle classes) in highly respectable schools. But Jesus had another idea.

All had comfortable, successful, eminently respectable lives mapped out ahead of them. And then Jesus gave them another idea. It is understandable that many have tried to “tie Jesus down, in his own day, in our day, and in the centuries in between.

“You just can’t tie Jesus down!”

Our gospel lesson is an illustration of how Jesus always resisted being “tied down” by anyone’s preconceived expectation. Jesus went to the wilderness - to the deepest desert. There he fasted for forty days and forty nights. There he was tempted. Matthew tells us he was tempted by “the devil”. Some see the figure of “the devil” here as a real being. Others, including myself, see “the devil” as a symbol of that within ourselves that compels each of us to say “No” to God. Whichever you believe, the temptations were equally real.

Throughout his temptations, Jesus resisted being “tied down”.

The first temptation was obvious. Jesus was tempted by his hunger. The temptation may have sounded like this:

Jesus, you’re hungry. How long have you been fasting? Forty days … and forty nights … That’s a long time to go without food. Focus on your hunger. If you’re the Son of God, create some bread … nothing fancy, just a bit of bread.

The hunger was real. The temptation was real. But Jesus refused to be “tied down”.

The second temptation was a bit more “religious”. Jesus was tempted to reject the hard path to the cross and opt for a few obvious “signs and wonders”. The temptation may have sounded like this:

Jesus, all this suffering servant business sounds a bit drastic, doesn’t it? Take a short cut. Go for a flashy sign. Go up to the top of the temple and then … jump. If you’re the Son of God, angels will surely break your fall. Celestial trumpets will sound and everyone will know exactly who you are, with no ambiguity. Besides, aren’t you afraid of the pain, even just a little bit. Avoid the pain.

The fear was real. The temptation was real. But Jesus refused to be “tied down”.

The final temptation was an invitation to despair. Jesus was tempted to see his opposition as overwhelming and to “throw in the towel”. The temptation may have sounded like this:

Jesus, think of the power you’re up against. Don’t you have any doubts about your chances of success? Why not hedge your bets? Why not change sides? Go with the strength. If you can’t beat’em, join’em.

The doubts were real. The temptation was real. But Jesus refused to be “tied down”.

Throughout his temptations, Jesus resisted being “tied down”.

And, in our own day, just as we think we’ve finally “tied Jesus down”, there he is again:
• in surprising places,
• in the midst of surprising company,
• sometimes in our midst,
• sometimes far ahead of us,
• popping up like Candid Camera … “just where we least expect him”.

During this season of Lent, I invite you, as part of our Lenten pilgrimage, to resist that very understandable temptation to “tie Jesus down”. Instead, may we seek to follow the untied Jesus in whatever new and startling directions he may lead us.

“You just can’t tie Jesus down!”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Copyright: Robert J. Faser, 2011