A Gold-Foil Idol

My Art History teacher recently mentioned that Christianity is a text-based religion, meaning that it's built around a book. I don't think I like the idea of text-based religion (or "spirituality", if "religion" is a dirty word to you). I think text is good (I'm a student, remember. I know the value of books.) but I don't want the focal point of my life to be a book. I want the focal point of my life to be servanthood, selflessness, and love.

After thinking about this a bit I decided many Christians would agree with me. I'm sure that many would say their religion may be text-based, but it's not text-focused or text-contained. They would say that they too pursue love as their highest goal and that they've found the Bible to be an indispensable guide in this pursuit. I certainly have no objection to that. What concerns me is that all too often text-based becomes text-focused, or doctrine-focused. The logic seems to be that if a book is our basis, then proper understanding of this book must be our goal. This is tragic, because it turns Jesus' revolution into just another brand of Phariseeism.

Jesus was all about people. He healed people, he fed people, he taught people. But more than that, he went to people's parties, he stayed up late talking to people, and he spent time with the people no one else in his society cared about. And I don't have to tell you that the one group Jesus didn't get along with was the doctrine-obsessed religious elite. It wasn't their vast knowledge of the scriptures that Jesus objected to, nor their zeal for righteousness - these things are of course good. But their lack of love, their obsession with their own legalistic purity, this Jesus found intolerable.

When Jesus was gone his followers wrote down the things he said and did. Of course they did - how else could this important knowledge be preserved for future generations? But I believe many Christians make the mistake of caring more for the text its self than for what it represents. How is it possible that those who know best the life and teachings of Jesus can become so preoccupied with headcoverings and translations and speculation about end times? How is it possible that such people are more interested in denouncing those they see as sinful than in loving them?

Look through the New Testament. (Do look, because I may be forgetting.) When Jesus met a "sinner", did he first confront him with his sin? Did he reason with him about the wrongness of his actions, or quote scripture at him, or urge him to turn from his wicked ways? Did he place more emphasis on the sins of the "especially bad" sinners than on those of the "pretty good" ones? Did Jesus ever start a conversation or a relationship by making it clear that he disagreed with the other's lifestyle? Jesus came to everyone on their level, he treated them with dignity, he listened to them, he helped them physically and practically, and he didn't condemn. And he certainly didn't give a shit what the religious people would think when they saw him hanging out with sinners and scum.

Jesus was not about the Bible or the church, he was about people. He didn't sit around pontificating about obscure points of doctrine with the ultra-religious, he brought hope and inclusion and practical wisdom to the oppressed and the godless. Jesus didn't hold his nose or hitch up his skirts as he walked through our world and he was more pissed off by self-righteousness than by wickedness. Jesus came to heal the sick; we've pulled him out of the hospital, scrubbed and groomed him, and made him the patron saint of the germophobes. Jesus was not afraid of sin-cooties or guilt by association. And he didn't place any book or doctrine or religion above the sheep he came to save. The minute our high-minded chapter-and-verse piety gets in the way of being the servants of all, we've abandoned the Gospel of Christ for a gold-foil idol.

(On a related note, I just read an interesting modern take on the Woman at the Well, over here. Thanks to Bruce.)