Sermon from January 17, 2010
"Doesn't Christianity Squelch Personality?"
1 Corinthians 8:1-2; 13:12

Does Christianity squelch personality? Before moving on to the substance of this sermon, you should know that once upon a time critics said that Christianity squelched personality by causing people to be guilt-ridden, stifled personalities. If you wanted good mental health, then you should avoid Christianity.

Certainly, there are such people, but I have to say that without trying I have known very few Christians like that. The Christians I have known, who took that accusation seriously, have tried to show how Christ gives people an abundant life. I think the Christians won the argument, because I no longer hear the accusation that Christianity turns out psychological misfits. Good riddance!

So, if Christians turn out to have good mental health, how is Christianity supposed to squelch their personalities? One answer is that it squelches personality, because it doesn’t allow people to think for themselves. Christians are ignorant and easily led, as a Washington Post article once put it. I’ll spend most of my time on this accusation. A second answer says that Christianity squelches personality, because Christians try to impose their ideas on other people, presumably making other people ignorant and easily led. I propose that we take each accusation, try to hear the merits of each, and then offer a reasonable response to each.

Thinking for Yourself
First, Christianity squelches personality, it is said, because it doesn’t allow people to think for themselves. Here’s how one young woman put it in her answer to a survey question: “A ‘one-truth-fits-all’ approach is just too confining. The Christians I know don’t seem to have the freedom to think for themselves. I believe each individual must determine truth for him- or herself.” (Quoted in The Reason to Believe, 35)

I hope we all agree that a failure to think for yourself represents a defect. If Christianity causes that defect, then one of two things is true. Either Christianity itself is defective, or your understanding and practice of Christianity is defective. You should consider both possibilities, if you are thinking for yourself. A truly open-minded person would entertain the possibility that the problem might be with him, not with Christianity.

Let’s talk about two beliefs that critics of Christianity take for granted. These beliefs make it difficult for them to entertain the possibility that the problem might be with them, not with Christianity. The first belief is that you have to be skeptical of Christianity, if you want to think for yourself.

Many years ago, there was a talk show called The Dick Cavett Show. Cavett was a kind of David Letterman with brains. He once interviewed a university professor, who stated clearly that his mission in the classroom was to cause religious students to question their faith. Cavett asked him why he needed to do that. He said, “Because they unquestioningly accept the faith they learned growing up.”

Now, it is good to challenge college students to think about their faith by raising questions they can’t answer. The issue is whether an all-powerful university professor intends to help students to keep their faith and deepen it or to undermine their faith.

In all your experience as college students, can you remember any university professor, whose mission was to undermine the unbelief and religious ignorance of students? Universities are full of students who unquestioningly accept the unbelief and religious ignorance they learned growing up. My conclusion is that professors who undermine the faith of college students are not teaching them how to think for themselves. They are teaching them to substitute the skepticism of the professor for the faith of the parents.

You don’t have to give up Christianity in order to think for yourself. But you will have to give up a second article of secular faith. This second belief says that thinking for yourself means that you forget the past and see how far you can get on your own brainpower. You might as well try to build a jet engine by yourself. We actually have a name for the experience of forgetting the past and seeing how far you can get on your own brainpower. We call it dementia, and it will break your heart.

If you really want to think for yourself, you have to give voices from the past a place at the table. They were better thinkers than you are, and if their ideas are still around, it means their ideas have stood the test of time and merit your careful attention. Among those voices from the past are: Moses, David, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, John, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Edwards, Barth, C. S. Lewis, and those most formative of theologians, your Christian father and mother.

I have spoken briefly about two articles of secular faith: you have to be skeptical of Christianity, if you want to think for yourself, and thinking for yourself means that you forget the past and see how far you can get on your own brainpower. Christianity offers a better skepticism and a more constructive use of the past. Let me show you, starting with a more constructive use of the past.

Tradition and Truth
Let’s start with Deuteronomy 6:6-7: These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Next is Psalm 78:2-4: I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old – what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.

One more example from 2 Timothy 2:2: And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

In all three examples it is old birds teaching young birds to fly, so that when they are old birds, they can teach the next generation of young birds to fly. There is veneration for old ways and traditions, and there is a way to venerate them without living in the past. We don’t want to live in the past. Old birds will teach young birds. They will teach them well, or they will teach them poorly; but they will teach them. Let me show you how that matters in one important way.

I once drove a babysitter home, and we had a conversation about Christ. She said to me, “My parents do not go to church, and they do not want me to go. They want me to wait until I’m older, so that I can make up my mind for myself about religion.”

Do you think those parents were allowing her to make up her mind for herself? I think they were teaching her that no religion is as important as her power to choose a religion or no religion at all. In the language of Deuteronomy they were teaching their daughter when they sat at home or walked along the road or lay down or rose up, not the commandments of God but the supremacy of human choice over any and every thing that claimed to be God. Children are naturally religious. I wonder if the refusal to teach them about God is not the perfect squelching of personality.

You may not like the power you have over your children, but either you will have that power, or someone else will have it. They will learn from you or from someone else indelibly how to think about God and the world and man. Don’t pretend it is otherwise. Accept your power as a gift from God, and use it to teach your children the faith, including the proper use of skepticism, to which we now turn.

Look with me at 1 Corinthians 8:1b-2. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. The apostle came back to the tension between love and knowledge in the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:12. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Then he clarified what he meant. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

I know in part. All knowledge of God is partial. Humility about our knowledge requires that we always be willing to have our knowledge corrected and enlarged. We are not skeptical about God, but we are skeptical about our understanding of God. We see real advantages in having our faith challenged by science, art, or the local loudmouth at Stanley’s Tavern. This healthy skepticism prevents us from living in the past, and it avoids the impression that we are know-it-alls. We are willing to learn from the other person, even if the other person is uncomfortably different from us.

Now, think about that for a minute. Christianity teaches us that God has revealed to us truth that applies to all people at all times. That’s why we say we have definitive truth about God. It also teaches us that our understanding of that truth is partial and that we have to remain open to correction, even from people we disagree with. It takes courage and an open mind to do that, and it won’t squelch your personality. It will grow your personality.

Before leaving this first accusation, I’d like to make an observation. I think people who say that Christians don’t have the freedom to think for themselves often mean that the Christians they know are not good listeners. Guilty as charged! We can be so preoccupied with what we are going to say next that we don’t hear what the person in front of us is trying to make us understand. Nine times out of ten, if you listen with patience and sympathy to what someone is saying to you, that person will think you are the most open-minded person on the planet.

Imposing Your Ideas
Now, we come to the second accusation. Christianity squelches personality, it is said, because Christians try to impose their ideas on other people. For a brief moment I need you to bear up under a discussion of Post-modernism. Post-modernism is a way of thinking about the world. I find some of its insights helpful, but I disagree strongly with its skepticism about truth.

According to many post-modern thinkers, what we call truth “serves the interests of the powerful in a society, by perpetuating its ideas and values” (McGrath, Theory, 265) at the expense of alternative ideas and values. There is a lot of truth in that. Think about the propaganda machines of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia and how they justified their brutal treatment of political undesirables. In our own country think about how the line between news and editorial opinion has been blurred, and how a powerful news organization can silence undesirable points of view.

The Church has done that in the Patristic period of the 4th and 5th centuries after Christ, in the Middle Ages in Europe, and in colonial Massachusetts. Islam does it everyday in Saudi Arabia and Iran. “Knowledge is inextricably linked with power.” (ibid)

Is truth always linked with coercive power? That question brings us back to I Corinthians 8:1-2: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. If we are not skeptical about our knowledge of God, then the truth about God will be used coercively.

Pope John Paul II spoke for all Christians when he said, “The Church does not impose; she only proposes.” Jesus is the icon of what that means. Look at Mark 10:17-22. A man had come to Jesus, asking him how to have eternal life. Jesus told him. The man thought he measured up, and then Jesus dropped this bomb on him in verse 21: Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Well, friend, you said you wanted eternal life. What’s it worth to you? How badly do you want it? Eternal life is no small thing. It is not a collector’s item. Do you even know what you are asking for?

Verse 22: At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Well, Jesus, why don’t you go after him? He said he wanted eternal life, and you say you offer eternal life. How can you just let him walk away? The Gospel of Mark doesn’t answer that question, but in my mind’s ear I hear the Lord say, “I love him too much to go after him. He knows what to do. I respect his freedom too much to coerce him into doing something he isn’t ready to do.”

In building bridges to people of different religious understandings, our aim is not to win arguments but to bear faithful witness to Christ and to listen courteously and actively to the other person’s understanding. That takes courage, and it will not squelch your personality; it will grow your personality – and a whole lot more.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Jesus said something one time that has been chiseled in stone into many a library archway and has made its way into many academic and political speeches: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” – John 8:32. In their hasty manner the speech-makers and stone chiselers have neglected what preceded that memorable one-liner. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” – John 8:31-32.

Jesus did not blather generalities. The truth will set you free. If you want to know the truth, then hold on to His teaching. Holding on to His teaching requires us to make a personal commitment to His teaching in the sense that we allow it to shape the way we think and live, and we are willing to talk to other people about that truth.

How serious are you about doing the will of God? Where will it cost you to do the will of God? Are you willing to pay that price? Costly discipleship will not squelch your personality. It will liberate your personality from the chains of habits, customs, and regrettable social pressures. It will release you to become sons and daughters of the living God, to participate in the life of God itself. Don’t settle for less.