Last fall I read something in a book that I really like by a guy named Steve Chaulke. The book, whose shamelessly sales-oriented title makes my eyes roll, is called Intelligent Church. ("Oh, finally! I've always wanted my church to be intelligent! This must be the answer I've been hoping would come! I'll buy it today!") It actually was an excellent summary of ideals that I've felt forming in my own outlook, and I would recommend it to anyone despite its cheesy name. (If anyone's curious, here's a link to the book on Amazon.com.) Anyway, the part I really liked had to do with these geese that live on farms in England, and I don't remember exactly what the book said, but I've thought about it a lot. Here's my version:
So, there are these geese that live on farms in England. They live in pens with fences and gates, and they're fed and overfed and fattened up for Christmas. Nearby the farms are little forested areas where wild geese live, who eat far less and aren't nearly as clean or as pretty. Every year when autumn falls, the wild geese fly south over the heads of the farm geese in big "V" shapes, and when the farm geese see them in the sky, they suddenly remember Mother Nature's voice and hear her calling them. They start running around their pens, flapping and flapping, but they're far too fat to fly, of course, so after a little while they settle down and return to their troughs for thirds and fourths. Then life goes on as it has for as long as they can remember, that is until a few work-weeks later when the wonderfully fat farm geese are wrung. No, not like on the phone.
The spiritual metaphor is nearly perfect. (Except for the part about being wrung. Wrung is a good word though, which is why I used it. Wrung. Good word.) Modern American 'church-ianity' is like pens of safety all across the countryside, stocked with plenty of spiritual food week after week. The two big differences from the story I just told about the English geese is that (1) pastors don't usually kill lazy church-goers, and (2) the gates of our pens are wide open.
God is in the forest. God is in the sacred wild.
And there are a lot of geese out there. And I want to know what's out there and what it's like to explore the countryside and what it means to be a goose. I want to face the treacherous forest, come what may. But most of all, I want to fly south when it's time. I don't even really know what I mean by that, but I know there's something missing in the life of a goose who never flies south.
It has seemed to me that a lot of what happens at mainstream evangelical churches is rather shallow and over-simplified. Like there's the emotional music part, and then the intellectual sermon part, and then come back and do it again next week. Outlines and bullet-points and smooth, formulaic prayers. We get together and listen to a guy up front dispense facts about Jesus in three-step, self-help sermons. It's 'Easy Mac' theology. (You know, the easier version of the easier version of the real thing, which was originally only a side dish anyway.)
[A music-nerd side note: the geniuses of several hundred years ago like Bach and Beethoven, from whose work nearly all of our modern music has descended, didn't first study the rules of music theory and then write their masterpieces. Rather, scholars of music theory studied their compositions in order to discover musical principles. Of course, everyone sees further by standing on giants' shoulders (i.e., Bach and Beethoven were certainly aware of what had already been done), but it was the very nature of human experience--the union of physics, biology, and soul--that begat our understandings of musical truth. Funny how 'truth' pharisaically evolves into 'rules' of how music 'ought' to sound or how life 'ought' to be lived. In this way, rules represent a departure from truth when love (of music, of people, etc.), as their motivating source, is replaced by control.]
Here comes the disclaimer: By now it might sound like I'm mostly all about protest. Not so. My point is not that 'they're wrong, and I'm right.' I'm not here to boycott people who are also trying to do the right thing. Having read countless 'emerging church' blogs over the past few years, I'm pretty weary of 'griping'. Yes, I agree with many of their points, but when their tone lacks the compassion of Jesus, they don't end up sounding much like the voice of Jesus to me. So, I've rewritten this post a few times in an attempt to purge it of gripe.
My point is merely that there has got to be more to life and knowing God than what I've seen so far in the version of Christianity I've known. Yes, the truth of God is there at church; it's everywhere because God is everywhere. But merely going to church every weekend and trying not to sin during the week is a disturbingly unhealthy idea of what it means to live in relationship with God in Jesus.
Along those lines, I must say that I feel no resentment towards the guy up front trying to be as cool as possible, just in case there are first-time visitors who might be, you know, on the fence about coming back next week for part-three of this great teaching series. I've been that guy, trying to attract people to Jesus by being slick and offering the gospel truth in five simple steps. I don't know if anyone who takes the Great Commission seriously will ever fully escape being that guy. I mean, come on, right? Responsible Christians wear khaki pants on Sundays and worry about the unsaved. It's what we do. It's the rules.
Or maybe not. Maybe 'not being that guy' is somewhere in the woods on the other side of the mountain. What if 'not being that guy' actually exists somewhere outside of the pen? I mean, I have poked around out past the gate a few times, out where the grass starts to get tall and bugs buzz much more loudly. So, I can't see it, but it's gotta be there. Maybe venturing out into the sacred wild is a step toward letting go of the endless pressure that runs that guy's life.
That is the hope that has begun to grow in me for myself and for Christians and non-Christians alike. Yes, I think 'not being that guy' is definitely over the mountains to the south. It's there, and someday I'll smell the end of August on the breeze and know that the time is right. Maybe it will be on a Tuesday morning that I'll wake up a little earlier than normal and walk over to the gate without really thinking about it, you know, as if that's just what I do every day. I'll flap a bit, gain some momentum, and climb up onto the misty sky. And there, from the vantage point of God's windowsill, I'll see the sunrise and the countryside and the little forests and farms scattered about the land. He'll point out where to go, and I'll coast for about 20 minutes and find that 'not being that guy' happened miles ago.
Yes, I actually believe the future is a bright, happy thing because I believe that God is empowering people to seek Him in the sacred wild. May you ask Him questions about who He is and what He wants, and may you have the strength to follow where He leads you.