Browsing Tag

Sermon on the Mount

the straight and narrow

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

If I had to guess, I think I’ve heard that verse preached on more than any other verse from the entire Bible, and since this verse only had one possible interpretation for Christian fundamentalists, I’ve heard that particular sermon a lot. This verse, in the communities I grew up in, was meant for us, because we were the only ones who had it figured out. The “straight and narrow way” equaled the fundamentalist lifestyle, being “separated from the world,” the “salt of the earth”– in short, we were of bunch of judgmental legalistic assholes.

But, we were convinced that we weren’t legalists because we wanted to follow the rules– all of which we got from the Bible, anyway!– because they were our personal convictions. And we weren’t judgmental– we were just right, and how can we help it if people were convicted by our modesty and our “upright conversation” (conversation here in the archaic sense).

We thought this verse applied to Christian fundamentalism for a few reasons: first, we thought of ourselves as a persecuted minority, so the “few there be” part was literally true (I thought at the time. I now have serious doubts about how much of a “minority” fundamentalists actually are). Second, we were extremely proud of ourselves for being one of the precious few who were truly committed to living a holy, righteous life. Any supposed “Christian” who didn’t look, talk, and act like us was on the “broad way that leads to destruction,” the sorry bunch of liberals.

Now that I’m one of those liberals, I’ve had to re-think this verse, but I’ve had to be careful. A huge part of me wants to keep the same exact idea, but instead of applying it to fundamentalists I’d claim it for the liberals; I could so easily take the “straight and narrow way” and make it mean “be a Democratic anti-capitalist yuppie,” thereby rendering people like me the “few there be who found it.”

I’ve been thinking about what “the straight and narrow” could possibly be over the last week. I’ve been driving the same four-hour route a couple times this week, and I’ve passed a church with “Straightway” in its name each time. I also just finished reading 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker (the first thing I’ve read by her, and I really liked it. Enjoyable but challenging, too), and she raises the point that if Christians were truly following some of Christ’s simplest commands, so much of what is desperately wrong with the world would disappear (for example, there are 4o Southern Baptists for every child in the American foster system).

So, what in the world is Jesus talking about in Matthew 7?

Well, it’s part of the conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, for one– a passage I’ve wrestled with more now that my viewpoint has shifted so drastically over the last few years. Judging, fasting, giving generously and sacrificially, loving your enemies, trusting God, the Golden Rule, bearing good fruit . . . it’s all there: The Teachings of Jesus: Condensed Version.

Interestingly, my ESV groups this “straight and narrow” bit with the Golden Rule:

So whatever you wish that others would do to you,
do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Enter by the narrow gate.
For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction,
and those who enter by it are many.
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life,
and those who find it are few.

And as I’ve been mulling this over this week, something occurred to me– maybe I should be reading this passage just a little more literally, especially because of its context. Whose “destruction” is Jesus talking about? What does “life” mean here? And I’m wondering if Jesus might be talking about our world, our communities, as a whole. If we’re not making sure the needs of those around us are met, if we’re spending all of our time pursuing wealth, if we’re petty and vindictive to each other . . . are we not destroying our communities– literally?

Could it be that what Jesus meant by saying that “few there be” who find the “straight and narrow” was simply a statement of fact about the destitution of our world? That there is far more suffering and pain and death and sickness and poverty– destruction– than there is life? Isn’t part of the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount to instruct his followers in what it looks like to be a Christian in the day-to-day? That we must be the life-bringers, the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers?

The more time I spend reading about Jesus and hearing his words for what feels like the first time, the more I think I understand about what it means to be a Christian, and it is so far removed from the ridiculous pettiness of the Christianity I was raised in, where we were obsessed with “practicing our righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.”

September 5, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism, Theology

blessed are the peacemakers

by Bradley Schenck

Muckracker.

Yellow journalist.

Rabble rouser.

A lot of names like these have been tossed in my general direction in the last month, and I’m fully expecting that they will continue to be hurled at me. Calling me a liar and telling me that I’m writing about these things just so I can be internet famous for 15 mintues isn’t going to stop me from talking to survivors and collating their stories. It doesn’t scare me.

However, I’ve been in a few conversations recently where I’ve been accused of going about this an entirely wrong way. I should never have published that article about PCC. I’m stooping. I’m stirring up controversy for no reason. I have an agenda and I’m attacking an institution with nothing more to gain than making them look bad.

When I explain that no, the only reason I had for publishing that article was to help make sure these things don’t keep happening, most of the time I’m told well, if you actually want things to change than this was the worst way to do it. All you’ve done is made them defensive– now they’re simply going to entrench themselves deeper. Their only response to anything you say from now on will be damage control or dismissal. You’ve accomplished nothing– you’ve made it worse. You had a real opportunity to make things better and you blew it. If you keep publishing stories, you’ll be nothing more than a bitter gossip.

If you wanted things to change, you should have approached the administration privately. You should have engaged in conversation with them, shown them gently and lovingly how they were failing, and worked with them in Christ to make things better.

You should have followed Matthew 18.

If you’re not familiar with Matthew 18:15-17, it’s the go-to passage on how Christians are supposed to handle confrontation. If you have a problem with someone, go to them in private first and tell them; don’t just sit there and stew about it. If they don’t listen to you, go back with a moderator. If they still don’t listen, that is when you can bring what they did into public.

However, Matthew 18 isn’t the only thing the Bible has to say about confrontation (and I also have problems with forcing Matthew 18 to be about confronting power systems, hierarchies, and institutions). There’s also Ephesians 5:

Let no one deceive you with empty words … Therefore do not be partners with them … Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them … everything exposed by the light becomes visible–and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.

What PCC has been doing for decades and that they are continuing to do today are the deeds of darkness. They have done wrong, damaging, hurtful, and evil things in order to protect themselves as an institution, and they are still doing them. I will have nothing to do with it, but will rather expose them. If there’s another institution or system that hurt people, I will do my best to expose that, too.

It’s the difference between being a table-sitter and a table-flipper– or a table-burner, in some cases.

I’ve slowly worked my way into becoming an activist, and one of the things I’ve learned is that it takes all kinds is especially true of activism, no matter what sort of activism you’re a part of. Movements need Martin Luther King Jr.– and they need Malcolm X and Huey Newton.

The problem is, most of the MLK-types I’ve encountered want everyone else to be MLK-types and they tell the Malcolm Xs of the world that we’re wrong. That what we’re doing is counter-productive and we’re hamstringing our own cause. We need to be nicer, calmer, more logical, more compassionate; otherwise, the institutionalized power will never listen to us. We have to talk to them the way they want to be talked to, or it’s pointless. Anger and rage, they say, is fruitless. You’re screaming into the wind. We all need to sit down at the same table and talk. Take the time to discuss our differences politely and respectfully.

There’s actually a word for that in conversations about race: respectability politics.

Another term is tone policing.

I will never, ever tell someone that they can’t sit down at the table that I’d sometimes prefer to burn to the ground. So please stop telling me that I should not expose the deeds of darkness that an institution has been committing for decades. Don’t tell me that if I talk about the rampant abuse present in the IFB movement I’m “sowing dissension.” Don’t tell me that it’s more important for us to engage with our oppressors than it is to expose their oppression. My activism and my writing isn’t for the institutions– it’s for the oppressed. Sometimes, it’s simply to let other hurting people know that they’re not crazy and not making it up, that it happened to other people, too, and they have a right to their fury.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said “blessed are those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.”

There can be no peace as long as injustice and marginalization and silencing are daily experiences.

Peace-making doesn’t have to be peaceful.

April 9, 2014 by SamanthaField