HOBBIT

The scriptures referred to are in the text.

It was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. (Acts 11:26) And for a long time no modifier of that title was needed. But as the church grew and spread and became more diverse, and as Christians differed in their emphases on various aspects of the faith, people began to add adjectives to specify what kind of Christians they or their opponents were. Sometimes the modifier merely indicated their nationality or language, such as the Coptic Christians of Egypt. But often along with the nationality came a cultural tradition or even a denomination, such as the Greek Orthodox Christians. As theologies diverged, we got Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians. And even within denominations you will often find conservative and liberal Christians. No wonder outsiders get confused. And no wonder C.S. Lewis entitled his collection of radio talks on the basics of the faith Mere Christianity.

It would be nice if we could simply go around calling ourselves mere Christians. Unfortunately people won't let us. If they have any knowledge of the differences among Christians, they want to know if you are Fundamentalist or Evangelical or Mainline Protestant. They want to know if you are a “Cafeteria Catholic” who picks and chooses the church teachings you will support. Or they might have heard of “Red-Letter Christians,” who are primarily focused on believing and obeying Jesus' words, which are printed in red in some Bibles. And indeed, we need to think clearly about what we believe and why we believe it. Both Pat Robertson and John Spong considered themselves Christians. Who was closer to the truth? Or did they represent opposite errors, with the truth somewhere between their extremes?

I was thinking of how I would characterize my faith. There is no one modifier that encompasses all that I believe but there are several words that at least describe the broad outlines of it and give it a shape that distinguishes it from many of the other versions out there.

I believe in a Christianity that is historically informed. That is, it is not a novel twist or radical revision of the truth handed down over the centuries. Nor, however, is it stuck in the past. But I believe in a Christianity that is aware of its own history, of the challenges it faced, of the responses it came up with to deal with them and of the reasoning behind them. No church practices Christianity as they did in the New Testament. Times have changed. Some of the things that shaped the early church have fallen by the wayside. Nobody worries about buying meat from pagan shrines. Nobody today argues that Gentiles should be circumcised before becoming Christians. But understanding the social and theological reasons why it nearly split the apostolic church can help us as we face some of our own divisive issues. Christians that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I believe in a Christianity that is orthodox. This Greek word simply means “right teaching.” Despite what some sensationalist writers have published, Christianity was never so diverse that there was no widespread consensus on its most basic beliefs. The universal summary of its foundational truths can be found in what we call the Apostles Creed. Most of the controversies were not about those basic articles of belief but about how we are to understand them. The majority of churches granted that Jesus was both human and divine; the question was: How did that work? What was the relationship of his divine nature to his human nature? All but the Gnostics believed that Jesus died for our sins; but Christians wondered about it and put forward different thoughts on the exact nature of the atonement. Anything that calls itself Christianity but throws out those most basic of truths—the nature of God as loving but just creator, the incarnation, atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ his son, and the purifying, transforming and illuminating work of the indwelling Holy Spirit—is not orthodox. And it is missing out on the full measure of riches available in Christianity.

This is not to say that everything in the Christian tradition is nailed down. But some things must be. In any building a solid foundation and load-bearing walls are essential. The style and placement of the furniture are not. Or to change the metaphor, the essential part of a bicycle wheel is the hub. The spokes are important but can be changed if need be. The tire, where the wheel makes contact with the world, needs to be changed periodically. But the hub is essential. The hub of our faith is Jesus—who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us, and how we respond. If that is not in the center of our faith, our Christianity, like a badly made wheel, is unbalanced.

I believe in a Christianity that is Biblically balanced. If you say you're a Biblical Christian, people will probably assume you're a Fundamentalist. And, sadly, that no longer means sticking only to the fundamentals. A lot of decidedly non-essential issues have become attached to that label as well as to the term Evangelical. The biggest problem with self-described “Biblical Christians” is that they usually concentrate almost exclusively on certain parts of the Bible and ignore or minimize the importance of other parts. We all do that to an extent but it is especially hypocritical when it is done by those who declare their commitment is to the whole Bible. For instance, there are 7 passages in the Bible about homosexual behavior but there are 668 references to the poor, the sick, the disabled, the fatherless, widows and foreigners and our duty to take care of them. So why do the number of sermons, books and social media comments on gay issues by Bible-believing Christians vastly outnumber those they make on alleviating poverty, expanding healthcare and welcoming immigrants? A Biblically balanced Christianity should strive to more accurately reflect scripture's priorities.

The Bible is a library of 66 books from more than 40 writers. It is amazingly coherent in its picture of God but it does offer more than one perspective on certain things, just like a 3-D picture gives you a more rounded and complete view of its subject. There are passages in the book of Proverbs that speak of how the righteous prosper and the evil suffer. (Proverbs 10:24) And then there is the book of Job, a godly man who suffers terribly. The Bible says that our salvation is a matter of God's grace received through faith and not works. But then in the very next verse it says we we created to do good works. (Ephesians 2:8-10) And Jesus tells us that the last judgment will center on what we have done for the disadvantaged, whom he calls the least of his siblings. (Matthew 25:31-46) In Romans 13:1-7 we are told to obey human authorities and in Acts 5:27-29 we are told we must obey God rather than men. These are not contradictions but recognitions of the subtlety and complexity of reality. Generally speaking the righteous do have better lives and being evil is a liability, but sometimes bad things happen to good people. We are not saved by our works, but genuine faith manifests itself in good works. Usually it is right to obey human authorities but when they conflict with God's clear commandments (don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't preach about Jesus, etc) we must follow Christ rather than Caesar. That's what Christians had to do under Hitler, hiding Jews and sticking to the real Bible and not the edited and rewritten one the Nazis put out. A Biblically balanced Christianity takes into account all passages on a subject, using their varied insights to craft nuanced theological and ethical positions.

I believe in a Christianity that is intelligent. For 15 centuries the overwhelming majority of great thinkers, from the apostle Paul to Saint Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to Erasmus to Blaise Pascal, were Christians. Many of the greatest scientists, like Nicholas Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Roger Bacon, Hildegard of Bingen, Isaac Newton, Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, Kurt Godel, Francis Collins and more, were or are Christians. There is no contradiction between being a thinking person and being a person of faith.

Contrary to what Mr. Spock says, logic is not a position on anything. It is merely a method for teasing out the implications of a premise or series of premises while staying self-consistent. It was the premise that the cosmos was created by a God who made humanity in his image that gave early scientists the confidence that their minds could therefore study and understand the product of God's mind, the universe. The problem comes when scientists think they can make pronouncements on theology or when theologians think they can do science better than scientists. This is akin to psychologists trying to take over the field of mathematics or mathematicians thinking they make better psychologists. This is not to say that the insights of one specialty cannot shed light on another. There are people who have been trained as both scientists and theologians, such as John Polkinghorne and Alister McGrath. But outside of such exceptions, scientists and theologians are not interchangeable. They are asking different questions. Broadly speaking, scientists are dealing with questions of how: how do things work and how are they structured. Theologians deal with questions of why: why did God make us and why should we act in certain ways towards each other and not in other ways. A scientist can tell you which species eat their young; they cannot tell you why humans should not.

Being intelligent means admitting that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. No one actually does that anyway, or we would see fundamentalists who have cut off their hands or plucked out their eyes for offending them. (Matthew 5:29-30) Like any writing, some of it is meant in a literal sense and some is meant to be metaphorical. In most cases, the intended way to read a passage is obvious to all but the most naive or the very foolish. In Revelation, the beast with 7 heads and ten crowns, with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion who will rule the world is obviously not meant to be taken literally but to have a symbolic meaning. The physical resurrection of Jesus who can eat and be touched is meant to be taken as an actual event. The book of Jonah works just as well as a parable about God mercy for all. King David was an historical person, who is referred to in recent archaeological discoveries. Intelligent Christianity sifts modern scholarship on history, culture and literary forms for help in understanding the Bible. It uses reasoning based on Christian premises to explore theological and ethical issues.

I believe in a Christianity that is Trinitarian. This important doctrine ties together two universal conceptions of God: as a Creator separate from his creation and as a Spirit who is in and works through all things. And it bridges these two concepts with Jesus Christ, the infinite and invisible God focused into a form we can relate to and understand: a human personality. The Trinity also demonstrates that when we say God is love, we are not being sentimental. We are being literal. God is a love relationship between the eternal Father and Son, united in the Spirit of holy love. And it says that the image of God in humanity is most fully seen when people live and act together in love.

So I believe in an Historically-informed, Orthodox, Biblically Balanced, Intelligent, Trinitarian Christianity. That's a mouthful, so let's make it into an acronym: H.O.B.B.I.T. I am a “Hobbit” Christian.

Which illustrates another aspect of the faith that often gets forgotten: humor. The Old Testament is riddled with wordplay in the original Hebrew. Because Sarah laughed when God said she would have a son in her old age, that child is named Isaac, which means “he laughs.” God got the last laugh on doubting Sarah. (Genesis 18:10-15; 21:2-3) Jesus' audience had to smile when he spoke of people walking around with beams of wood in their eyes trying to get a splinter out of someone else's eye or of a camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a sewing needle! One of the problems of trying to uphold an orthodox faith is that you can become so focused on defending the truth that you lose your sense of humor. Yet the book that brought me to Christianity was C.S. Lewis' satirical The Screwtape Letters. Humor recognizes the paradoxes of life through sudden shifts in our perspective. Only the humble can laugh at themselves. (Matthew 11:19) Humor leads to humility. That's why Jesus uses it so much. That and it's fun.

I am, however, loathe to announce yet another movement within Christianity. I am reluctant to throw out another adjective for Christians to divide themselves by. And I doubt anyone else will adopt this modifier. But whatever they are called, the world needs H.O.B.B.I.T.s: humble providers of big truths, ordinary people on an extraordinary quest, little guys filled with outsized virtues. Because the smallest person can change the world.