Giving Up Christianity for Christianity: The True Meaning of Incarnation

What if Christianity actually looked like Jesus? I don't just mean the church or people. What if God looked like Jesus? What if the religion constructed in the name of Jesus looked like the humble peasant from Nazareth?

First of all, as a religion, Christianity would be diametrically opposed to the triumphalism of fundamentalist religion. Why? Jesus was not a triumphalist. Jesus didn't try to force his enemies to convert to his way. He embodied it and was willingly crucified for it.
Would Christianity be willing to undergo crucifixion for the way of Jesus?

What if Christianity was more concerned with embodying the emancipating way of Jesus than making its own name great? Jesus wasn't concerned with making his name great. He was concerned with inviting people into the way he embodied in his life, the way that leads us to the loving Father of creation and into the heart of reality.
Jesus invited people into a gracious understanding of reality, a view of the universe not as indifferent but as a relational cosmos grounded in the love that is the subsurface unity of reality.
Jesus was more concerned with the well-being of humanity and creation than his own life.

Christianity must take up its cross and incarnate the cruciformity of Christ.
The truth of Christianity is not propositional but relational and contextual, not abstract but operational.
Jesus was the truth not through his words but his actions.
The truth of Christianity must be contextualized through incarnation in the life of the one who would follow Jesus. In this way, Christianity may actually look like Jesus.

What if Christianity was more concerned with the well-being of the world than its own survival? If we seek first the kingdom of God then maybe, just maybe, Christianity will be added to us. But we first have to give up our triumphalistic notions of a God who loves and cares more for Christians than everyone else. And who knows, perhaps we will realize with the kingdom that we no longer need Christianity.

Perhaps upon seeing the kingdom we will realize that as a temporary vocation for the children of God in human history, Christianity is over, and that the goodness harbored within its event has been resurrected into our material reality as an all-encompassing presence and the revelation of the children of God in every human body loved and cherished by God. When Jesus died, Christ was risen in the body of those who remembered him and who carried forth his presence through the indwelling of the Spirit.
Perhaps Christianity will also pass away, and the Spirit within will be risen again in the whole of creation as the kingdom fully arrives with the peace of God covering the entire cosmos.

Religion without Religion, or the Deconstructive Gesture in Christian Thought

In a world torn apart by religious and ideological conflict, it's easy to see why people are quick to claim that they are spiritual but not religious, or more paradoxically, Christian but not religious. Christianity is a religion, and fully functions as a religious order when it demands either affirmation of certain propositions or conformity to a spiritual path. It seems quite obvious here that Christianity is a religion by definition. But perhaps there is a self-deconstructive nugget of religious criticism present in Christianity, one with the potential to eventually overturn religion altogether one day. This is what I want to explore at present.

In the doctrine of the incarnation, Jesus as icon of God symbolizes a self-restriction on God's part culminating in the crucifixion and confirmed in resurrection. This resurrection ultimately leaves behind not the permanent fleshly body of the rabbi from Nazareth but the mystical body of Christ, the divine body and temple of God's presence on earth birthed in Eucharistic immanence. The human community thus becomes the ultra-particular locale of God on earth, eradicating the holy of holies in the heart of the temple in Jewish tradition. We become the ark of the covenant, the presence of the Holy Mystery. Thus transcendent, universal Being empties itself out (whether in a primordially symbolic or historically ontic sense I cannot say) into the fluid structure of universal Becoming as an immanent Presence mediated through interpretive structures in human experience.

Thus the end of the supernatural-moral-metaphysical God finds historical inauguration in the crucifixion, and the immanent-evolutionary-panentheistic God emerges in resurrection in our very flesh.   This is the Christ-event.

For this reason God becomes most present not in triumphalistic power structures of authoritarian dogmatism or militant coercion but defenseless orphans, friendless widows, and ostracized minorities. God is not found among the religious elite but their victims, regardless of identity.

In fact, since God cannot be kept out of humanity locked in a transcendental structure of blind abstract universal interpretation, God cannot be kept exclusively on the side of one singular culturally-constructed identity. Thus, identities crumble and God becomes present behind all identities and interpretations, in the simple ontic facts of human existence and suffering.

Jesus claimed that he brought a sword which would tear families apart. The family was the central tribal identity in his culture -- not the nuclear family of the West but the patriarchal model of Middle-Eastern life (neither of which represent any sort of permanence in history). Jesus was inviting people into the simple reality of a universal human family of one blood -- that of the human race. "In Christ" they would realize their commonality in one blood - Christ's blood. This is not magical. Christ stands in as a representative of primordial humanity outside of any roles projected onto to him, not because this "identity" can be posited as a distinctive cultural role but the very opposite -- he is the negation of all identities that might have fallen on him during that time. Sure, he is like a prophet, but no regular prophet. Like a king, but no ordinary king. He is crucified outside the city walls over the valley of Gehenna -- a cultural symbol of identity-negation. Thus, "in Christ" identities are crucified and "new creatures" are born into one universal family beyond singular identity. This is why for Paul there are no biological, policial, or religious boundaries "in Christ," epitomized in his erasure of the "male and female" binary (biological), the "slave and free" binary (political), and the "Jew and Greek" binary (religious).

In this sense, Christianity invites us beyond religion, beyond itself, into the Holy Mystery and Presence which encompasses every particle of matter without selling itself out to conceptual interpretations but flowing through them as a life-giving force and empowerment of human beings in relation to each other.

Fundamentalism as Idolatry

The fundamental core of the “fundamentalist” brand of any faith tradition is a commitment to holding one’s articulation of all things spiritual as having the corner on the market to the exclusion and damnation of every other faith tradition. This position is damnable in itself. The problem is not a claim to authority, which works to a limited extent, but a claim to absolute authority over and above extra-traditional witness. This leaves the Divine no wiggle room.

Take for instance the extra-traditional movements of the Divine testified to in the Jewish scriptures. YHWH speaks directly to Nebachadznezzar, Gentile king of Bablyon, showing grace. God calls Abraham out of a world of utter mystery and ignorance, showing favor. In the record of Ezekiel, the Jewish temple priest Ezekiel finds himself in exile, banished from the territory of his God and his God’s temple (his God’s dwelling place), and in exile in Babylon. Babylon is the land of Ishtar, the Pagan goddess. His God surely cannot be found there. And yet, he has a surreal vision beyond words, witnessing strange creatures and wheels inside wheels and all kinds of odd stuff, and his God comes through in this vision. His God is there in the land of Ishtar, far from the temple where he “dwells” and “lives,” wrapped in mystery: the same God who called himself “I Am” to Abraham. And later this God, known as the mysterious, transcendent God who dwells behind dark clouds rather than in stone idols, becomes human! And no one would claim that the incredible accessibility of God in this human body means that God no longer transcends, although God has become very immanent. God is both transcendent and immanent.

In fundamentalism, the religious text confines God to human words and human witness. In Christian fundamentalism, the Bible itself becomes an idol. The Bible is understood quite “literally,” and the cultural worldview and language which composes the text is ignored or regarded as divinely inspired. The reader’s first or second impression of the text, apart from deep cultural study and very biased and personalized, immediately organizes itself into a theology and cages God up. The words of man in response to an encounter with the Divine become the very words of the Divine, thus solidifying the witness against any other.

Theology, like the Bible, is a witness and testament to the mystery of God. Human beings throughout history had many incredible encounters with the Divine, including the incarnation (Christ), and the product was this incredible response: the Bible. But the best words of humanity about God are not divine. They are still human words, translated through human and cultural metaphor. When a theology becomes the last word about God, it territorializes God from further revelation, denies God’s transcendence, and raises itself to the level of the Divine. Theology is our best Spirit-led understanding of a sacred text produced by a sacred witness of God, and it testifies to future witness and revelation. When we read the Bible as Christians, our stories intersect with God’s story and the stories of those before us, and out of that intersection comes a localized theology. That theology is local and limited, and yet profound and beautiful. And there will be those after us who will have other local theologies that are also beautiful, enabling them to join in the same dance with the Divine in which we are now also engaged. Let us honor this sacred witness and narrative, joining in and articulating and embracing, all the while allowing God to speak in whatever context he/she pleases.

Why People Are Afraid of Universalism, or the Possibilities of "Love Wins"

Our reality is wired to a state of action and consequence, and this sequence is abstractly referred to as “Karma.” From our vantage point within a historical cycle within historical cycles (think of Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel), we often feel as if we are trapped within what Hindus call “Samsara,” the great wheel of life. In Buddhism Samsara is a vicious cycle, only escapable by Nirvana – the total detachment from self, identity, and the world. Christianity often mirrors this reality rather than challenging it. Salvation comes through a detachment and disenchantment with this world, in hopes of transcending it and reaching another higher world.

Even the Eschaton presented in our theology does not see this world as becoming redeemed from Samsara, but being destroyed along with it – marking a break between “time” and “eternity.” Because of our Karmic understanding of reality, we have a difficult time imagining a reality where all would be redeemed and the ultimate consequence of destruction for evil would be defeated for all.

We yearn for the destruction of evil, and leave grace only a marginal area for ourselves and our tribe. We struggle to imagine a reality where Karma is totally and completely defeated and not just marginally curbed.

Many people claim they cannot understand why God would be gracious at all, and this illustrates why it is that they cannot envision a reality where grace reigns over all. They want at least some punishment and consequence, either for the worst of us (Catholics) or those of us who don’t repent (Protestants). And some of us cling to the penal substitution theory of atonement, which makes a way for grace to cease from interrupting and making even one small dent in the Karmic cycle. The solution is rather that grace is an alternative satisfaction of this blood-hungry Karma beast, opening a small tunnel out by redirected consequence while leaving the beast happy.

Universalism would mean the end of Karma and the Reign of Love in every crevice and corner of creation. It would require that the totality of Grace would rule, reign, and abolish Karma in its totality in every corner and crevice. Apparently, this scares some people.

An Incarnational Vision for Religion

The point of the incarnation is that the Divine comes to us where we are, not that we have to search for it tirelessly. Sadly, for many, Jesus is a barrier to God. By this, I mean that they cannot understand how, if people all over the world and throughout history have never heard his name or about the events of his life, God can be seen as loving and as holding that dogma up as a requirement for having a relationship with the Spirit of God. It is, in fact, a Christian doctrine that we need God to come to us or our searches will be in vain. It is certainly true that humans are meant to search for the Divine and for deeper things, but if that search is in vain, God appears weak and not very universal at all.

I would imagine that if God is universal, which God is if God is God, then God must be larger than any religion. This means that if the God testified to by the Christian religion is real, then Christianity must testify to something bigger than itself, bigger than any dogma or doctrine. Having said that, doctrines are certainly great utility and, like the incarnation, act as vehicles to seeing the Divine more clearly. This is what theologians call “special revelation.”

These doctrines are incarnational because they embody deeper truths that connect us to the Spirit of God, just as the body of Jesus harbored the Spirit of God and translated it for us in comprehensible, human ways.

The Bible states that no one has ever seen God. This means that every image of God – every conception or articulation of God – is an icon, a sign. To solidify those images is to make the icon into an idol. Unfortunately, dogma and doctrine have been used to solidify images of God into idols.

John says that God is Love, God is Light, and God is Spirit. The prophets of old said God is Holy, meaning transcendent of human understandings and images. These are the most authoritative statements made about the nature of God in the Bible, and none of them represent anything less than transcendence and sublimity except perhaps love because it acts as a signifier for every action God performs among people. If God is Spirit, God cannot be solidified in dogma. If God is Love, God is understood through loving actions before the nature of God can be excavated (an impossibility).

What we observe of God are not framed representations but fluid movements. In regards to our experiences, God gives before God is. God becomes for us an experience of the Sublime. In Jesus we have observed the movement of the Divine among humans in the form of love, and we have called this good news. It is good news for the whole creation and for the future of creation.

The universal Spirit of the Divine saturates everything and gives life to all things. This God is universal and acts through love. This universal God comes to all people and does not need help. However, having been called to the discipleship of nonviolence, love, reconciliation, and the good news about the incarnated Christ and the kingdom of God, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation and the imperative to share those things that have helped us connect with the God of Love.

We speak of incarnation and incarnate the Divine in ourselves – which is why we call it the “body of Christ” – and we carry that light forward toward the reconciliation of all things.

Modern Utopianism and the Unholy Trinity

Surrounding the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, there was a movement toward rationalism, reductionism, and a more mechanical view of the universe. With the growth of human knowledge came many good things such as overthrown superstition, new medicines and cures, higher and more effective levels of transportation, better living conditions, etc. However, with the rise of human knowledge and progress came the rise of human pride and over-confidence coupled with a higher rate of intellectual progress than of moral and ethical progress. In other words, knowledge was enthroned and ethics did not prevail at the same speed.

Around the same time as increasing scientific progress, a more utopian vision arose. The way I choose to summarize the vision is through three tenets in a new trinity for a new religion: science, technology, and education. The major, secular thinkers of this time sought cures through science, convenience through technology, and morality through education. This was how they sought to build a perfect world. They understood nature as mishap and in need of perfection, which they believed they could do with their increasing knowledge of science. Nature was a machine, and machines can be fixed. They believed that if people had more knowledge, they would naturally be good and moral citizens, contributing to this utopian vision. Of course, this vision never achieved its end; in fact, nature is now even more screwed up as evidenced by environmental degradation, our convenient communities of high technology that are losing sustainability and turning into impossibilities, and people who have more questions than answers. After scientific “laws” and “order” were established in a post-Newtonian context, turning our view of nature into clockwork and machinery, the laws began to collapse at smaller levels in Einstein’s new theories in physics.

As a result of such unforeseen failures, there has been a new attitude arising in critique of modernity, recognizing its victories while pointing out its failures – a posture scholars classify as “post-modern.” However, there are some who appear to still carry on the modern myth – what today could be called GTE, or a Grand Theory of Everything. The biggest proponents of this view call themselves the New Atheists – scientists who continue to believe that salvation will come through science and that religion is useless and destructive. Many post-moderns find themselves caught on the outside of everything, disillusioned at humanity’s over-confidence in answers and final, systematic explanations of everything. They are incredulous of the belief that all truth in every area, whether scientific, metaphysical, ethical, or whatever, can be summed up in a simple and elegant equation.

In the cross of Christ I see an event that stands in subversive contradiction to the religious, political, and social orders of its day. It is an event with no easy answers, with a man – both human and divine – who cries out that his God has forsaken him. Within this picture we find solidarity in the brokenness, disillusionment, doubt, and paradox experienced. We also find resurrection. Resurrection that follows a messiah who loved and forgave unto death, even forgiving those who were murdering him while the words left his mouth. In a world of disillusionment and doubt, where answers are scarce and intellect has bypassed ethic, I stake my hope on the giving of oneself to others. I may not have the empirical proof in my hands that this is the answer, but I have found glimpses of good and hope in those who love one another. It is my conviction that love could heal this world if people would commit to it. I know that people don’t want to, and this is why I look to a messiah who grants the power to do so. I don’t believe that the salvation of our lived reality exists in a utopian vision based on science, intellect, or easy answers, but in a revolution of transformative love.

Agnostic Christianity: Reconciling the Paradox of Faith and Uncertainty

Are faith and doubt antonyms? I doubt that.

The Scripture certainly speaks against "doubt", although I am not sure if the Greek word means the same exact thing as we mean by doubt. In context, it is normally speaking of making a conscious decision not to trust or believe. It seems to be more about the absence of faith than the size of it, because Jesus did say - it only takes the faith of a mustard seed.


Normally when we speak of doubt in our current religious context, we mean uncertainty. We aren't using doubt as to refer to decisively not trusting as much as to uncertainty. It is certainly true that most of us never see miracles, even if our friends say they have or know someone who has, or know someone who knows someone who knows someone who has...

For some of us, faith comes much more difficultly. This is due to the root of our faith. If our faith is based upon miracles, and we don't see any, we will lose it. If our faith is based upon God giving us material wealth and possessions, and we lack in those areas, we might lose our faith. If our faith is based upon historical or scientific evidence (which seems to be the prevalent basis for Western apologetics), and the facts we discover seemingly contradict our faith or what we believe about the Bible, then we are quite likely to lose our faith (as many have for this reason).

Jesus said that "they will know us by our fruit" and that we are his because we have love for one another. That is what Shane Claiborne means by "The Irresistible Revolution". When we follow the way of Jesus and the Kingdom of God, loving our enemies and each other, embodying peace and harmony and righteousness in a Christian community, then we will set the foundation for our faith. Following Jesus isn't about certainty, and neither is faith.

Because Jesus did say, "Blessed is the man who sees and believes, but more blessed is the man who does not see and believes".

Uncertainty means not seeing the holes in his hands. It means being faced with a value judgment. In other words, in our current context where knowledge and circumstances are unpredictable, what metanarrative/religion we choose is probably going to have to be based on a value judgment. We will probably have to ask existential questions about our humanity and nature, and go from there into exploring how Jesus' way completes our purpose and fulfills our humanity, making us into holistic human beings again, bringing us back to Eden in a metaphysical sense.

In That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, there is a place that speaks of this sort of thing. The character is being coerced into becoming part of a sketchy organization, being brought through conditioning and brainwashing, and Frost, an antagonistic character, asks him to beat and kick a crucifix while they are in the "Objectivity Room". Here is what follows:

Mark made no reply. He was thinking, and thinking hard because he knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the decision out of his hands. Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom he trusted had forsaken him - had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. They had been a safeguard ... they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making as he turned to Frost and said,

"It's all bloody nonsense, and I'm damned if I do any such thing."

Amen.