The chapter I wish I wrote...

Chapter one of the book When "Spiritual but Not Religious" Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church is worth the cost of the book. 

When "Spiritual but Not Religious" Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church

By Lillian Daniel

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I wish I wrote it. ​

Chapter one reflects her thoughts on the "spiritual but not religious" people she encounters. Just to share a few quotes: ​

​People tell preachers stuff they would never tell others:

When I meet a teacher, I don’t feel the need to tell him that I always hated math. When I meet a chef, I don’t need to tell her that I can’t cook. When I meet a clown, I don’t need tell him that I think clowns are all scary. No, I keep that stuff to myself. But everybody loves to tell a minister what’s wrong with the church, and it’s usually some church that bears no relation to the one I am proud to serve.

To those who find God in nature (my riff):​

But push a little harder, on this self-developed religion, and you don’t get much, at least much of depth. So you find God in the sunset? Great, so do I. But how about in the face of cancer? Cancer is nature too. Do you worship that as well?

To the self-established spiritualistic people (my riff): ​

But their parents, so afraid that the church is a place where they force you to accept their answers, have set up a vacuum in which the answers get invented without any formation or guidance. So when there are rainbows and happy kids it all works, but it’s not so successful in the face of temper tantrums, selfishness, and dare I say it, sin. Because most self-developed Sunday morning ritual has little room for sin.

To those who feel they cannot be associated with religion because it has done so much harm:​

The church has done some embarrassing things in its day, and I personally do not want to be associated with a lot of it. But, news flash, human beings do a lot of embarrassing, inhumane, cruel, and ignorant things, and I don’t want to be associated with them either. And here, I think we come to the crux of the problem that the spiritual but not religious people have with the church. If we could just kick out all the human beings, we might really be able to do this thing and meet their high standards.

​To those who express they are blessed by not having pain in their lives (a riff):

But when you witness pain and declare yourself lucky, you have fallen way short of what Jesus would do. When you witness suffering and declare yourself to have achieved salvation in the religion of gratitude, you have fallen way short of what God would have you do, no matter what religion you are called to. And by the way, while I think God does want us to feel gratitude, I do not think God particularly wants us to feel lucky. I think God wants us to witness pain and suffering and, rather than feeling lucky, God wants us to get angry and want to do something about it.

Jesus was not a soothsayer, he knew humanity

Many understand Jesus is able to see into the future because he was God (indeed) and had a divine (non-human) ability to see into the future. The thought being that some have the gift of seeing into the future, like a soothsayer, and some do not - like some people have brown eyes and some do not. 

The truth is, Jesus was not a soothsayer. He did not need unique access to divinity in order to see that he was going to die. 

Humanity has always sought out release valves to the tension of society. The most wide spread valve we have discovered is finding a scapegoat to the problem. Rene Girard is the one who articulates this the best, and I have written this notion before, but as we close in on Easter it is worth recalling the great revelation of Christ. 

Everyone could sense the tension in the culture in the days of Jesus. There were so many players biding for power: Rome, Zealots, Pharisees, Sadducees, tribal leaders, etc. And all of a sudden there is this guy who is getting a following that continues to grow - Jesus. The traditional players in the power struggle take the unique position of "the enemy of my enemy is my enemy." No one is interested in allowing another player into the system of power. And so tensions rise and the release valve must be pulled. A scapegoat must be found. 

And who fits the bill? No one who is in the traditional power player camps (otherwise Barabbas the Zealot would have been ​killed.) No, an outsider of who the majority of people, the crowd, must agree upon. 

Jesus was not a soothsayer, he just knew humanity. 

God is the main actor in the preaching moment, but sometimes preachers forget.

When preachers ​one of the questions that comes up is "what are you preaching?"  This sounds like a fine question, like a group of scientists getting together asking each other what they are researching. 

This question generally breaks down into two types of answers: The "brag" and the "life changer". 

The brag is when preachers talk about how innovative the sermon or series was. Generally it is expressed in modest terms but it is clear that the sermon was nothing short of greatness. It was flawless and it is shared that this sermon is just one of a 'typical' sermon. The brag also contains any gimmicks that were used: videos, text messages during the sermon, painters while preaching, etc.

The life changer is when preachers talk about how many lives were changed or affected by the sermon or series. This is a more nuanced version of the brag but it is much more acceptable because preachers feel that we are in the life changing/transforming business.​

In the same way that farmers like to talk about the quality of the harvest, preachers like to talk about the quality of the sermon. But unlike farmers who also talk about the processes they used to get such a harvest, preachers are not very good or interested in talking about the process we use to craft sermons. 

But I want to talk about the process of preaching. I really am not interested in the product of preaching that we call the sermon.

Here is why.​

Regardless of how clear I think I am, people get from sermons things that I did not say or did not mean. People get from sermons what they get from sermons and I believe that God is the man agent of the preaching moment.

Rather than talking about the product, the sermon, of which the preacher has much less control over how it is heard and interpreted  I would rather talk about the process of how the preacher crafts sermons. 

Perhaps preachers don't talk too much about process because few lives are changed by sermon processes and it is much harder to brag. ​