Practical Christianity

“So what?,” one might ask.

The endless debate between Christians and other religionists on the one hand and secular skeptics on the other is, well, endless, and – at the end of the day – one might be justified in asking if it makes any difference anyway. A difference in this life, that is, as distinct from any possible life to come beyond the grave.

What follows is my apologia for the practical implications of Christian faith in the context of our ordinary lives in this world.

First, a brief “impractical” theology.

The human problem is Death, Death understood as a challenge to “our ineradicable confidence in the final worth of our existence” (Schubert Ogden). All religions, including such secular “isms” as exclude explicitly religious language in the false belief that by evading religious language one has evaded questions of religious significance, seek to address that challenge.

Death (capitalized in cosmological / mythological deference to the New Testament writers for whom Death was chief amongst the powers and principalities) is not merely the biological end of life. It is, instead, all the many ways in which the darker events of life (depression, illness, suffering, failure, rejection, etc.) force us to anticipate our own deaths and challenge us to consider the strong possibility that our lives and loves and struggles may ultimately amount to nothing. (*)

As process philosopher Charles Hartshorne put it, "If 'All's well that ends well" is a sound principle, what are we to make of the apparent facts that a human life ends in death and that being dead seems as far as possible from being well?" (Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes)

The failed human response to this challenge is sin, which is either a direct attempt under our own power to overcome death (by bombing the evil-doers?) or an attempt to run away from or deny death through distraction and escapism or, finally, an attempt to “do a deal” with death through achieving something (riches, fame, a relationship, family, even, as a last resort, religion as Luther was shrewed to note) that we presume will survive us and thus sweeten the bitterness of death. (See Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death for a secular form of this argument in detail.)

The biblical term for these unsuccessful coping behaviors is idolatry – worship of something other than God as a means of securing our lives in the face of death.

And its destructive impact on both individual and communal life and, for that matter, the entire ecosystem, is grievous.

But God in Christ has in fact defeated Death on the cross. This defeat of Death, however, has both an irony and a hiddenness to it as Christ defeats Death precisely by succumbing (as the world sees it) to Death.

In the Christian tradition, God in Christ is the true Lord of this world but that Lordship is exercised from a cross rather than a throne and that makes all the difference.

Which brings us to the new human possibility in Christ, which is the point of this essay.

Two things...

First, it doesn't happen all at once. The act of being saved, what the Church calls “justification,” may happen in an instant. But the full capacity to recognize the new reality in which one lives and to fully live out its implications (which the Church calls “sanctification”) will last a lifetime. For slackers like myself, even longer. Maybe two lifetimes. :-)

Second, it doesn't entail any particular lifestyle. Christians can be poor or rich, supportive of what they consider to be “just war” or pacifists (see Bonhoeffer, who was both), fully engaged in their society with all its moral gray areas or isolated and sectarian (with, I might add, all it's moral gray areas). They can be meat eaters or vegans, pot heads or teetotalers, gay or straight, pro-choice or pro-life. I suppose one could follow the slippery slope and say they could be racists or serial killers but – while there may be Christians who happen to be committed racists or serial killers – one would certainly be justified in at least questioning their understanding of Christian belief, the sincerity of their belief, the seriousness of their commitment to that belief or, finally, their sanity.

The point is, the beginning of the new human possibility in Christ is an attitude that is profoundly and ultimately hopeful while remaining penultimately realistic.

Christians should be ultimately hopeful about human existence and the existence of all Creation in their acceptance of Christ's resurrection as a sufficient ground to know that God is Lord over life and over death. And this confidence in the Resurrection allows that hope to be accompanied by the clear-eyed capacity to look at and deal with the darkest areas of human experience which is as should be expected by followers of a savior whose destiny in this world was crucifixion.

Those who encounter, share and live out their belief in God in Christ should be marked by their hopeful yet realistic engagement of life in all its aspects, be they light or dark. And, as they surrender their anxieties about the ultimate security of their own lives' worth, they should become progressively more available to the needs of others.

It is this hopeful yet realistic engagement of life coupled with an increasing availability to others rather than any simple bright-line cultural badge (e.g., hard working, law abiding, ethically serious, family oriented and religious) that marks the life of an individual – or Christian community or any community - that encounters, shares and responds to the reality of God in Christ as that reality is consistently encountered in the every day events of life.

Bill Bekkenhuis
(Bethlehem, PA)
[I warned you all that once you got me going it would be difficult to shut me up :-) ]


* People might notice a relationship between my take on this and that of the late William Stringfellow. That relationship, as 'Professor' Peter Schickele of P.D.Q. Bach fame once put it, is “identity” :-)