Damned or Not
by John McLarty
On Sunday night I was at a dinner party. A psychiatrist asked me about some friends of hers: They called themselves Christians, but they did not believe in the Trinity. How could they call themselves Christians? They saw Jesus as more of a teacher and guide for life.
I accepted the question as a straightforward invitation to offer my professional assessment of the appropriateness of their self-identification as “Christians.” I talked about the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. I talked about the variety of views on the Trinity among contemporary Christians. Finally, I argued no one denomination or group of denominations is fully qualified to define Christianity.
Throughout the conversation, which must have gone on for half an hour, the psychiatrist never disputed my facts, but kept repeating her question: How can these people be Christians if they don't believe in the Trinity. I should have realized her question was not transparent. Her real question was not a question of mere labels.
Finally, after everyone else had been to the kitchen and back for dessert, I said I wanted to get some ice cream.
We went into the kitchen. As we served and began eating—she, her coconut, pineapple sorbet and I, chocolate—we continued our conversation.
She continued her story, “my parents were Buddhist but they sent me to Catholic school. So I guess you could say I grew up Catholic. For Catholics, the Trinity is the essence of our religion. Every religion teaches people to be good, to be kind and moral. Most religions believe in some kind of God. But the Trinity, that's what makes us Christian. That's the way I grew up.”
I still didn't get it. I repeated some of what I said about followers of Jesus in the 200s and 300s who are universally recognized as Christians and had unorthodox views on the nature of Jesus. I was still arguing about labels.
“One time when I was in the sixth grade, I told the nun I didn't see why people had to twist nature around. I thought Jesus would be just as special even without the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception. I was just telling her what I thought. She was horrified. She told me with ideas like that I would burn in hell. So I've always wondered.”
Maybe the psychiatrist really did have friends who denied the Trinity and still called themselves Christian because they respected Jesus. But I think the reason she kept me in conversation about the proper use of the label “Christian” because she really wondered whether heaven had a place for her. In the world in which her deepest religious instincts were formed, the difference between non-Christian and Christian equaled the difference between damned and not damned. In the world of parochial education—Catholic and Adventist—it's easy for kids to become persuaded that unless they can fit their minds into elegant and venerable boxes of orthodoxy, the Kingdom has no place for them.
“The Trinity is an idea,” I said, “with ancient roots and broad acceptance in the contemporary church. But in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus explicitly and emphatically insisted that salvation came to those who followed his teachings, especially his teachings about mercy. You don't have to persuade yourself the Trinity describes a metaphysical reality in order to escape damnation. There will be no quiz about the Trinity in the judgment. You look up to Jesus? You see him as your guide? That makes you a Christian.”
“You think so? Really”
“Yeah. Really.”
Her body relaxed. We headed back into the living room where we were teased about spending all night doing theology. Not that I minded.
Friday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours with a longtime acquaintance at Starbucks. In her voice mail asking to see me she had explained she needed to talk to a liberal pastor. Now, face to face, she apologized. She had deliberately avoided me for years because of her conservative convictions. Now, she was coming to me because if anyone could help her, I was it.
I was wondering where all this was going. Her congregation was about to split? Her pastor was in trouble? Her son? Her marriage? What?
She came right to the point. Her son had come out to her. The story line was convoluted. She jumped from descriptions of her bewilderment to outrage to concern for her son. She was furious at the callous condemnation expressed by church people and family. Urging her to disown him. Promising to pray for the death of her grandson (to spare him the shame of his father’s perversion). Quoting all the relevant and irrelevant Bible passages that supported their abhorrence of people like her son.
Why was she telling me all this? She loved him still. As she conversationally wandered around the devastation her new knowledge had created, she repeatedly talked about “my son.” She did not understand. She could not approve. She knew all the Bible verses. She was deeply enmeshed in the apocalyptic Adventist obsession with “a perfect final generation.” She studied her Bible and Ellen White's writings. Now all of that crumbled against the massive bedrock of her mother's love. She would not damn her son. Would God? Was there even the slightest hint in the Bible that God had room in his heart for her son?
“By far the most dominant metaphor for God in the Bible is Father. And Mother is in there, too. You as a parent cannot imagine cutting off your child. I've heard you say 'my son' over and over again as we've sat here. If your son still belongs to you, I know he still belongs to God, because I think God is at least as nice as you are.”
She thought that was something she could work with.
Not every idea or every condition of life is ideal. There is certainly a place for the church to put a lot of energy into articulating the doctrine of a Godhead that lives in community and the ideal of sweet, life-long marriages that give rise to healthy, happy, educated children. Advocating the ideal is easy. The great challenge for those of us who imagine we are followers of Jesus (and not merely part of a culture group called Christian) is how we respond to people whose ideas and bodies are other than our ideals. Damning those whose irregularities are different from our own misrepresents God and warps our own souls.
When you say, “Your view does not make sense,” you mean:
1) “I don’t see the sense you are making, yet. Please tell me more about it.”
2) “I don’t like the sense you are making. I know you make it. I just don’t like it.”
3) “You don’t make my sense.” – People never make other people’s sense. They make their own…
Understanding – To see someone’s sense as different from yours. To grasp their validity.
All people make sense all the time…
John,
Thank you for such a practical illustration of our need to understand God's love better, both individually and as a church!
This past Sabbath the lesson was about the Trinity. Afterward I was visiting with a woman who has begun attending after being raised in the Church of Christ when she said something profoundly practical: "There are many things about God that we do not understand and there are many things we will never understand because God is so much greater than we are. So, as long as we're in a growing relationship with God, it really doesn't help us to debate whether God is one or three because He exists and is working in my life. It doesn't help me to argue about something I can't prove or disprove."
As for your second story, that mother can choose to either stay stuck in her conflict or let her maternal instinct follow God as it leads both her and her son into a deeper understanding of God's love. Remember God's promise that "he is able to save unto the uttermost all who come to him by faith." How far is the uttermost?" How inclusive is "all?" That is why it was a homosexual who taught me the real strength and power of the Gospel and some of the people I know who have the deepest faith in God are variations on the gender spectrum.
Timo,
Heartily agreed! Miss you as well my friend!
We all perceive reality from the limited scope of viewing around our small little corner. Samir Selmanovic states: “We look at others and say, We are insiders with God, and God is an insider with us. We are right and in, and they are wrong and out. We thus keep God in our servitude, in a cage built with words, meanings, and the teachings of our religions.” Selmanovic asks, “Have we turned our religious texts, traditions, and rituals into containers and dispensers of God?”
It takes work and a love for understanding to widen our view and try to see the world from many angles. Myopic vision causes division, the death of the ego unifies.
What an exemplary thread! Even though I am no longer an adventist and cannot honestly believe what the church teaches (and seems to require that its members accept), I recognize that people can have an honest belief in God, without blindly accepting those doctrinal details. I very much appreciate the views expressed here that recognize that "putting God in a box" unacceptably narrows the relevance of the "good news" that was articulated by those who described the life and teachings of Jesus.
I am not even slightly interested in suggesting to anyone here that God does not exist. Science cannot even address that question, as it is in the spiritual dimension, whatever that may be. I do not pretend to understand anything at all about the spiritual dimension. Even though I doubt that there is any such thing as a spiritual dimension, I am supportive of the rights of others to believe.
Ivan,
What is your definition of "making sense"?
Rudy,
You ask, "What is your definition of "making sense"?"
Making sense is ~ What an individual and/or group asserts to be valid based on their understanding quantified via cognitive and/or emotional comfirmation.
Timo,
I was trying to figure out how to relate Ivan's comments to the post (still wondering about that).
His comments really don't "make sense" to me … haha….hoped they would if I knew the definition he was using. And perhaps when they "made sense" to me, I could relate them to the post.
My guess is that what most of us mean when we say something "makes sense" is that we feel
that we understand what was meant. And, we might. Or we might not. The illusion of understanding
what was meant is about all we have without looking closer and communicating with the originator
of the information. The message sent is not always the message received.
Thinking we understand what someone intended to convey, and labeling the message as sensible
(or not), does not, of course, imply that one agrees with the point s/he thinks is being made. It
does, however, suggest that one is not rejecting out of hand as nonsense what s/he thinks has
been said.
I have always thought that a Christian was a person who attempted to keep the will of God/Jesus/Spirit and knew that they were not perfect but were working towards perfection.
Is perfection in and of itself really the goal of a Christian? Or is it, like Eve eating the fruit in the garden so she could be 'like God', a misguided attempt to gain for ourselves something we have already been given as a gift (Hebrews 10:14)?
The blog makes some good 'sensible' points but 'damned' is a rather strong term to use in my opinion. Even the most ultra-conservatives amongst us won't say this to anyone (at least in public). Lost is more commonly used but in the context of 'the lost sheep/lamb" and the ninety-nine in the fold. A belief in Godhead/Trinity has a strong Biblical basis for most Bible believers and would more accurately define what true Christians believe. There is so much that is admirable about a mother's love for her offspring. Mom's can be such good Shepherds too. No true Christian would want anyone to be lost and while we may at times have to discriminate to make a decision in accepting our personal beliefs and may also be required to express our reasons for what we believe, this should not be miscontrued as condemning or damning. That would be an overkill. [John 3:17] sums it up well.
According to some estimates there are 40,000 different versions of Christianity with most of them believing that their way is the only true way. When I was a believer it was very difficult to answer the question, "How do I know that I am saved?" The problem is that there are a whole variety of answers each claiming to be the true Biblical answer. And many of them conflict with each other. This would have been alright accept that the consequences of getting it wrong was eternal death and a possible few days in a lake of fire while the saved viewed on. In other forms of Christianity the consequence is eternal torture in a lake of fire.
If I want to illustrate this in a group of Christians all I have to do is take a page from the playbook of Jesus and ask the question, "How do I know that I am saved?" It quickly becomes evident that nobody really knows a clear answer to this and yet one would think that this would be crucial to becoming a Christian.
The truth that this demonstrates to me is that Christianity is based on fear, not love.