In our last blog we discussed how Christian faith offers a transcendent vision that creates a holy discontent in our hearts - “a disquiet heart within us” causing us to become unsettled with the status quo around us, and deeply motivated to see the world become a more loving and just place for all people. In this way, Christian faith is less like an opium of the people and more like jet fuel for the loving action our world needs most. But the last thing our world needs is a bunch of religious folks running around with a messiah complex… Can I get a witness? We need more than a transcendent vision, we need an incarnate Savior as well.
An Incarnate Savior:
The world needs people who believe they have a responsibility to care for their neighbors in deeply sacrificial ways, but the world doesn’t need people who think it’s their job to save the world. There aren’t enough capes to go around (or tights for that matter). We need heroic people but we don’t need anymore heroes. We need people to serve and love and give and not center themselves in the process… But how will we find such people? First, let’s ask why people develop a messiah complex to begin with. Author Phillip Pullman once said, “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” I believe he’s right. In fact, I’ve heard it said that we interpret the complex data of life through the lens of story. In an attempt to process the world around us and make sense of it, we tell a story, and we place ourselves in that story. And here’s the problem… Most of us aren’t good storytellers. Here’s what ends up happening– we create simple stories to make sense of a complicated world. These stories include the usual characters of hero and villain– good guys and bad guys.
And we rarely make ourselves the bad guy.
Life is complicated beyond words, and in an attempt to make it less complicated we can be tempted to tell oversimplified stories- to make the problems of life simple, and the perpetrators of those problems clear to identify. But if we’re honest, I think we would admit that simple stories with binary categories are a far cry from our actual experiences of life. And when we tell stories like this, we end up dividing our world…good guys and bad guys…heroes and villains. But as one of my favorite hip hop artists, Propaganda, puts it, “our halos stay balanced on the tip of our horns.” None of us are as heroic as we wish we were, and few people are as villainous as we often say they are. That kind of reductionist approach towards life might temporarily relieve our heartburn but over time it corrodes our insides. Simple stories are dishonest stories. And, they get passed down from one generation to the next like bad genetics. Why? Because they make life easier (sort of). Simple stories create two dimensional villains responsible for all the bad stuff in life…and when we write those kinds of stories, we not only rob our characters of their depth but we flatten the plot of the story as well.
This kind of over-simplified storytelling can lead to a few devastating outcomes.
We abdicate social responsibility by blame shifting. Simple stories give us an excuse to look away and go about our business, because after all…the problem is someone else’s fault.
We grow cynical and self-righteous, pursuing justice with a messiah complex. Simple stories blind us to our own shortcomings, making us unable to see the various ways we contribute to the suffering of our world. If your story only includes heroes and villains, and you’re not the villain…well, I’ll let you do the math on that.
Neither approach leads towards the reconciliation our world is groaning for. In fact, both approaches deepen the wounds of our world.
The first approach – the path of willful ignorance leaves the wounds of our world unattended. When everyone blames someone else, there is no one left to take responsibility. We just keep passing the buck…and as these wounds go unattended, they fester and become infected. The longer we push off the responsibilities of justice and righteousness, the deeper the distrust and suspicion will grow from those we need to be reconciled to most. Can you imagine being the fifth generation in your family to grow up in a community suffering under the boot of American poverty? Imagine the stories you grew up hearing. Imagine the hopelessness you might feel. Now imagine what it would be like if those socially positioned above you were fighting tirelessly to blame someone else for your problems - including your own parents and grandparents. And what for? So they can absolve themselves of their guilt and ignore your plight with a clear conscience. How could you ever come to trust those persons who have been scrubbing tirelessly to get your struggle off of their hands and out from underneath their fingernails? All around America there are people baptizing their indifference in the waters of “personal responsibility” blaming economic woes, crime rates, and housing instability on the personal choices of the poor and disenfranchised. It’s easier to blame the poor for their problems than it is to address the history of injustice, marginalization, and forced segregation that continues to afflict the very people we belong to.
The second approach – The path of cynicism drives a wedge into the greatest fractures of our time until it splits the world in two. When we divide the world into good and evil (unwilling to reckon with the reality that we are all wandering somewhere in the middle) we end up truly dividing our world. And this division brings the greatest harm upon those with the least amount of social power. My generation is full of justice warriors who are haunted by self-righteousness and driven by a messiah complex (and you don’t have to be religious to have one, by the way). A messiah complex is developed when you believe you can fix something that someone else is responsible for breaking, unable to see your own contributions to that very same brokenness.
This approach to justice work and community development creates the perfect environment for cynicism to grow. And make no mistake about it - cynicism is antithetical to reconciliation. Cynicism lacks the integrity to confess one’s own contribution to a problem. It inflates our view of self, and deflates our view of the other– the villain– the one responsible for the problem. To borrow croatian theologian Miroslav Volf’s words, “I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners.” The fatal flaw of the cynic is that they are unable to see themselves in their enemies. And if that happens we inevitably find a group to villainize for the problems of our world, fighting to fix the problems of our world in ways that further steal from the dignity of our neighbors. Any form of social good done from an inflated view of self will deepen the shame being experienced by those you are trying to “help.” And there is no greater enemy to upward mobility than shame. Shame steals the most valuable resource someone needs to overcome poverty - a secure and dignified identity. Guilt is an equally bad motivator for justice work. While it may not inflate our ego, it centers our wounded ego. We become the subject of the ministry instead of the person(s) we’re ministering to. We serve in order to heal ourselves of our guilt. This kind of self-centeredness leads to all kinds of trouble.
The world doesn’t need simple narratives, or self-serving saviors. We need an incarnate Savior who came from heaven to rescue each of us. From what you might ask? From our own sin, the sins of neighbors, and the powers in our world that oppress us all. The Christian story is far more complex and honest than the simple narratives we tell ourselves. The story of the scriptures reminds us that each of us is flawed beyond words, and desperately in need of outside help. There is no such thing as an autonomous person who is solely responsible for their successes (or failures). The christian story teaches that we are born sinful, we inhabit a fractured world, and we live under the boot of “the powers.” Each of us needs to be forgiven of sin, healed from our wounds, and set free from sins' power - the Bible calls that salvation. And we need it on an ongoing basis.
I think this story is more honest to the human experience. The world needs a Savior - and that Savior is not you or me. And our world has very few villains. Most people are just deeply wounded, and insecure, doing their best to navigate the complexities of life. And as we navigate our way forward, we make mistakes which harm those around us and complicate our own lives. Can we be honest about that? The world doesn’t need people hiding their bruised cheeks with masks or their bandaged arms with costumes and capes. We need to point our neighbors in the direction of the great physician who can bring them healing - a physician we know well…because we visit him frequently. We need humble people willing to admit their finitude, and confess the ways they’ve contributed to the deep pain in our world. Only then will our acts of courage and sacrifice be healing instead of damaging. This transforms our actions from pride-motivated, shame-inducing acts of harm, or guilt-motivated acts of self-repair to Gospel-motivated (empowering) acts of love. These kinds of actions, from these kinds of people, will heal the world.
But it’s hard not to grow weary in a world marked by devastating suffering. The question remains: How do we face the problems of our world with courageous honesty, without growing weary over time?
That’s next.
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