The Problem with the Church

Many decry the Church’s cultural influence as its primary problem — its tendency to adopt the desires and behaviors of the surrounding culture. Indeed, such influences exist, but the Church’s failure to continually mature in faith and love is far more debilitating. Neither is the problem adhering to the original faith and practice of the Christian tradition nor “getting back to the Bible.” The Church needs to address why cultural influences can distort faith in the first place. True, constantly maturing faith should be far more satisfying than our culture’s half-truths and shortened desires. The problem is far more systemic than simply avoiding our culture’s sinful desires or failing to follow the traditions of our past.

I can count on one hand the theologians and pastors I have met who seriously integrate the Apostle Paul’s foundational passage, 2 Corinthians 3:18, into their spirituality and theology: by simply beholding God’s glory, the Spirit of God transforms us from one degree to another into the image of Christ. This is central to Paul’s theology. Yet most relegate this concept of ongoing transformation to the closet of theological denial, refusing to integrate a theme that runs throughout the Bible.

Why does the Church work so hard to avoid the idea that the Spirit of God is constantly attempting to transform our lives, our faith, and our love, as well as the Church throughout redemptive history? They avoid it because it is a dangerous concept, and, simply put, most Christian leaders are hard-pressed to facilitate such transformations in our lives. When churches become spiritually impotent, they generally “return to the Bible,” repeatedly seek the ways the Spirit once moved, or return to the doctrine and understanding of their faith that originally directed their denomination to its original prominence. The real problem, however, is institutionalizing the Church in a way that fails to keep its faith open to further expansion, ongoing transformation, and maturation — anticipating greater than what Christ accomplished in his earthly ministry (John 14:12).

If we acquire Christlikeness through an endless series of transformations, the primary issue is not returning to some past state of faith, exactly as it was understood and practiced, or even continuing at the level of faith with which we first encountered Christ. Openness to this transforming process is far more important than any single level of attainment, for Christlikeness is never fully attained in this lifetime. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but we, the quality of our relationships, and the Church are not. After all, Christ is a person, and a person in relationships that should always be maturing and expanding. There is no orthodoxy to return to; stasis ultimately destroys living faith. There is only an orthodoxy to which our faith and understanding must expand. If it stays exactly the same, it does not align with true orthodoxy. We are called to a faith in which ongoing transformation is a primary characteristic! One of the few theologians who implements this entire passage, let alone centers his theology on it, is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who argues:

Therefore, if we are not open to that call within our hearts and our churches are not constantly seeking and facilitating those transformations into greater faith and love, the hearts of our children, like the Prodigal, will search for them elsewhere. If we simply clone them well and mold them into our Christian collective, they too will forfeit a greater fullness, locked inside a castle so strong they’ll never be able to escape. A collective within a static community becomes an ideology; an ideology is an isolated form of thought and interaction unwilling to live — unwilling to open itself to honest, transforming interaction. This has nothing to do with the nonsense of 18th-century liberalism or with setting ourselves on its “slippery slope”; it is a constant growth toward greater orthodoxy, directed by the Spirit of God. There is a big difference, and we will know it by its greater fullness of life.

The continuity of the Christian tradition is not measured by exacting creedal confessions or doctrines of faith, though such things can help if allowed to mature and expand. We should measure the Church by its growing clarity and understanding of our faith, and by the increasing power of our faith and love to foster greater intimacy and satisfaction in our relationships. Such relationships should reflect, not duplicate, the power of Christ and his early disciples. I have found no church today that fully reflects that same faith and love. Therefore, it begins with constant anticipation and the pursuit of further growth and understanding; from there, we must always begin again. How do we pursue such transformations? By searching into our deepest longings and disappointments — the playground of the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:26–27).

The Church has largely resisted this theme of change and transformation throughout the centuries because it is too dangerous and too difficult to institutionalize, domesticate, and control. We all, especially church leaders, prefer stability. Change, specifically ongoing transformation, carries the potential for things to go wrong, to get off course, and often leads to institutional failings (not unlike the Prodigal). And, admittedly, our former ways of relating and institutionalizing need time to mature. After all, the passage says that our transformations are from one degree to another, not all at once, and there is a reason for this. With each level of relational growth and increasing freedom from the law (Heb 8:7–13; 10:14–18), we need time to integrate these transformations into the fabric of our interactions. With each transformation, we need time to dissolve our former enactments of the law into intuitive acts of love that far exceed the law’s capacity. Therefore, though premature freedom can destroy the Church altogether (Rom 14:20), we must always remember that the Prodigal left the family in search of something more, and this cyclical phenomenon within the Church and culture will not cease until the Church opens itself to and facilitates ongoing, timely transformations.

A Church comes alive when it acknowledges and applies these difficult passages. Avoiding them allows a subtle perversion of faith to slowly infect the community. A living faith in one generation, unwilling to continue its transformation, will become an antiquated distortion of faith in a later generation (Fiddler on the Roof). With courage, we need to risk what we have attained for even greater fullness of life. Our love must grow, and our understanding of ourselves, our faith, and God must continue to deepen. This is Christian biblical faith.

Reinforcing the Church’s past understanding of the Scriptures and reinstating its former understanding of our doctrines and sacraments will not attain new dimensions of maturity. New qualitative dimensions of growth must emerge, not merely changing or adjusting our behavior, but new ways in which we interact with each other and the world. That is the difference between change and transformation, between merely following or adding to the law versus greater “fullness of life.” These new ways of relating should exhibit deeper levels of intimacy that have never before existed in human community (John 14:12).

We will identify and verify these new ways of relating when we see them emerging into dominance from their recessive internment within the Scriptures, through our transforming vision into the Scriptures. They will know us — be attracted to us — by the advancing level of love they see in our community. Greater clarity should emerge in the biblical stories and in the historical stories within Christian history. Eighteen-year-olds may believe the same things when they are forty, but they later believe in them differently; they see them more completely and with less perforated innocence.

Once again, Christ is calling the Church to grow in greater fullness of life. Those inside and outside the Church are pregnant with anticipation for more meaningful ways of relating, and, with the Prodigal, fumbling to find them.

Those outside the religious system flocked to Jesus, yet many of these same people today refuse to enter a church because it fails to exhibit a fullness of life or an expression of faith that draws them. What they often see is a moralizing community that offers an exact replica of faith from five hundred years ago or earlier. Don’t misunderstand me: our faith is part of an ancient tradition that traces back to Jesus and his disciples, but it is a living faith that continues to grow and expand, ultimately reflecting the very nature of Christ himself. After all, something in us is being transformed from one degree to another, and everything alive, including all Creation, groans for that future (Rom 8:18–27).