Curious Christian

A Christianity Today article was brought to my attention the other day which warrants some sober reflection from a missiological perspective.

Entitled, “My Sister Rejected God,” the article tells the story of the emotional turmoil the author went through upon learning his sister had ‘walked away’ from God.

The author comes a long way over the course of the story – from reeling back in abject anger and horror and estranging herself from her sister through confrontational arguments – to reaching the point where she can offer some sagely advice to other Christians on listening to New Age seekers with respect. I imagine some Christians may think this quite admirable – and to a limited extent it is – but I must critique this article on many levels. For I believe that while she has come some way towards a more respectful stance she falls far short of genuine missional engagement and her advise is consequently thin on substance. In truth I see the text as little more than a lament of continued miscommunication.

The problems start with the very title of the piece – “My Sister Rejected God”. My first question is: has she? It is far from clear that her sister has rejected God in her own mind. That she’s rejected the Christian conception of God, that much is clear, but is she now godless? Or has she merely adopted alternate deities or alternate understandings of deity? Quite simply, the author seems to be operating out of a black-white modernist framework whereby ‘non-Christian’ is equated to ‘irreligious’ almost by definition, as if alternate religions don’t compute in his worldview at all. I mean please, how long have we been living with religious pluralism? The author sounds like she’s suffering from culture shock as much as anything else. Never quite understanding her sister’s pantheistic worldview. She listens enough to overcome her anger but not enough to actually understand her sister’s side of the story or identify bridges to real dialogue.

The misunderstandings go on: the author speaks of her sister’s ‘indoctrination’ as if she’s not a willing learner; she recognizes she uses the word ‘grace’ differently to herself yet never tries to learn her sister’s language – she merely gets her feathers ruffled at her sister using language differently; and she speaks of ‘New Age churches’ which is a false projection if I’ve ever seen one.

Even though I despair at times, I cling to the hope that someday I’ll hear her say, “I quit my meditation group. I don’t believe it’s right anymore.” Then, maybe she’ll be ready to hear the truth.

You can imagine how silly this sounds to me as a meditative Christian. If I can borrow the language of the apostle Paul, there’s a ‘gentile circumcision’ issue going on here. Not only does she want her sister to convert her back to Christianity, she wants to convert her back to HER brand of modernist Christianity. I see no evidence that she’s willing to meet her sister where she is at as Jesus did with the Samaratan (ie non-Jewish) woman by the well.

When you look at the author’s concerns how many are peripheral cultural issues that have nothing to do with core gospel essentials? Candles? Personal alters? Gemstones? These were all features of biblical worship at one stage or another. Instead of condemning them as ‘pagan’ why not explore how they were used to communicate the presence of YHWH to pagans in ancient times. Christians need to make the effort to differentiate between acceptance of the Christian gospel (which is essential to conversion) and acceptance of modernist Churched subculture (which is not).

I write this at the risk of coming across as a nasty critic who is indifferent to his pain. Let me assure you I am not, I have my own family issues to contend with. Yet having come out of the New Age myself I also identify with the pain of the sister and would not see others suffer unnecessary neglected by my silence. Let the witness of Christ be spoken forth in a multitude of tongues in this pluralistic society of ours and let us not artificially confine it to one dialect.