Diversity of the Christian Sphere

This week has brought about an odd conglomeration of faith perspectives for me.  My week started with watching Lord of War for the third time and suddenly being reminded of how sick the subject matter makes me. The story is about gun trafficking but I don't want to get too much into its plot, you just need to watch it.  The question comes up, how do I reconcile these practices - and the complicity of my government in them - with my faith? On Monday I brought this up at a discussion/Bible study that we have with a Methodist campus ministry and we discussed violence, and the public role of the church.

Most people in the group are from the Miami area, a few of us are from other places.  These perspectives bring to light the differences geography has in our faith. Religion and church in Miami is not religion and church in the Bible belt is not religion and church in the Pacific Northwest. Religion and church in the western hemisphere is so far from religion and church in the eastern hemisphere.

Last semester I visited a couple seminaries, both were technically located in the Bible belt, but one seemed far more a stereotype of the Bible belt than the other.  While the Bible belt is believed to have the most churches per capita the Pacific Northwest is considered to be the most "un-churched" region of the country.  I seem to be much more at home in a town in which church attendance, much less belief in God are not assumed. http://www.usatoday.com/life/2002/2002-03-07-church-free.htm .  Naturally I found the seminary with the less "Bible-belty" feel to be a better fit.  The thing is while Jesus is my savior, and I uphold the authority of the Bible, there's something about the associated language that makes me cringe.  Again, perhaps it's a Bono quote that sums it up "Even though I'm a believer, I still find it really hard to be around other believers. They make me nervous, they make me twitch."

With this same ministry in which we have this discussion/Bible study we've been putting on what we call "The Love Campaign" (http://www.fiulovecampaign.com/ <--- Check it out. essentially God is love and we are endeavoring to show that love) coincidentally one of those crazy traveling preachers that likes to yell at everyone and tell them they're going to hell decided to show up on campus Wednesday and Thursday.  Generally I get the impression from the crowd he attracts that the non-religious amongst the crowd are fully aware that this man in no way represents the Christian faith.  On Wednesday however the situation seems to have been different.  What I have been told from a number of sources is that this time around there was a lot more hate in the air, not just for the man shouting but for the God he claimed.  While I don't take issue with this so much because if these people claim to hate crazy preacher man's God who doesn't sound much like the God I was raised to believe in, or read about in my bible then fine.  Truth be told these people probably weren't even yelling about his God either they were yelling about an oppressive god that was forced upon them.

In response to our professors comments about the preacher one of my fellow students in my senior seminar asked our professor what she believed assuming that she was an atheist.  The reality is that there is little she *doesn't* believe in.  Apparently the concept that Jesus is "the Way, The Truth and the Life" as he claimed and Hellenistic revival are silly, everything else is fair game.  She believes in a supreme deity following the spirituality of Judaism and Islam, but also in minor deities such as, and I quote, "Hindu gods and Catholic saints" yes, the saints that are not even meant to operate as deities in their own religion.  Not to mention that the concept of other gods is incompatible with Judaism and Islam.  I fully respect people who come to educated decisions regarding faith or the lack there of, but I guess I just fail to see how this is an educated decision.  By that token, fair is fair. She seems to find my faith silly, I find hers silly.  Perhaps what I found silliest about her faith is this insistence on rejecting a particular aspect of reality.  I suppose I cannot fault her, many a Christian that buys into the prosperity gospel accepts a religion that rejects this same piece of reality.  It is a truth we learn of in The Princess Bride... yes, the Princess Bride (Oh, the bible too - but I'm watching the Princess Bride right now).

Buttercup: "You mock my pain!!"
The Dread Pirate Roberts/Wesley: "Life is pain Highness! Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something."

Unless we're talking about someone preaching the prosperity gospel ('you've been trying the square peg of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll but the only thing that's going to fill that hole is the round peg of Jesus' sort of junk) Christianity is not about suddenly having perfect happiness and "the good life".  If it were, can you imagine how Peter, Paul and Stephen would try to sell that? There were all Martyred, John was boiled in oil and Paul was routinely beaten and jail hopping prior to his conversion was when he had the good life which also happened to be when he helped out with Stephen's stoning.  Peter was crucified upside-down.  Now there's an ad for "the good life".  No, the gospel is about suffering, suffering with joy to be sure, but suffering.  Ideally Christianity should be seeking to bring about heaven through their suffering ("Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.") it's never going to be perfect on earth, but we are to take the vision of a better world and run with it fully realizing that it's going to hurt in the process.  My professor is in fact completely aware of this, and she doesn't like it.  Since she doesn't like it it couldn't possibly be realistic.  The faith she has adopted is much more happy and pleasant.  The more power to her, I don't think I could suspend reality like that. When she described this I genuinely wanted to stand up and shout "LIFE IS PAIN HIGHNESS!" but I kept it to myself.

In Washington sometimes my mere acceptance of a deity paints me to be "too conservative", in the bible belt I could come off looking like a hippie and then in Miami I would say that I live in a very little inhabited limbo - my theology can be too liberal and too conservative for many.  Yet I feel the equal tension of not wanting to be "lukewarm".  The weird part of Miami, for me, is that religious background is assumed.  I don't know many atheists or agnostics in Miami, but the ones that I do know were at one point raised in the church and potentially forced to go, their rejection of the church is more out of pain it caused.

My roommate asked me the other day if apologetics were more important in the Northwest because they tend to take the more intellectual approach.  My personal opinion is that apologetics aren't that important... ever.  Which perhaps isn't all that true, they're good for you.  Apologetics can help you understand what you believe and why you believe it, however they're never going to defend the faith to someone else because once you bring it into argument you've lost.

I'm open to being wrong on this, but I feel like what I learned from growing up in the environment of the Pacific Northwest is that I don't need to try to defend the faith, it can take care of itself. Whether someone believes or not is on them there seems little value in trying to intellectualize faith. Jesus doesn't need us to argue with people, he needs us to serve them.