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You ever meet one of those true believer college football or basketball fans? These diehards still criticizes NFL and NBA players as being all about the money while praising the NCAA’s tradition of pure amateur athletics. I sit there listening and am inwardly marveling, ‘It’s been three decades since Blue Chips burst this bubble. How is this level of continued naivety even possible?’ That’s exactly how I see a lot of Christians’ loyally optimistic view of the Church. Their high ecclesiology reflects a Myth: the Church is good… because it’s the Bride of Christ… so it must be good. 😀 1
We’ve all heard some version of the thought-terminating cliché, “If you find the perfect church, don’t join it! Then it won’t be perfect anymore.”2 I loathe that glib response, but the one thing it does well is reveal how how most Christians have been enculturated to think about the Church. Again, they believe it’s overwhelmingly G-O-O-D, which means the glaring “opportunities for growth” cannot be perceived as any greater than, say, one-tenth or two-fifths. They optimistically believe those shortcomings are must be outweighed by its positive contributions to the world.3
To quote Bill Lumbergh of Office Space infamy, “Ooooo, yeah, um, I’m gonna have to go ahead and sort of disagree with you there. Yeah.” The proportion is inversed. I’m being charitable to say the Church is awful and is messing up two-thirds of the time. You don’t talk about this in polite company, but most of us have had the experience of meeting someone awesome who you really click with only to be disappointed upon meeting their awful spouse. yyyyyyyeah, hi, welcome to Christianity, mkay? Jesus is great but the Bride of Christ can be a real bitch a lot of the time.4
Some might wonder how it’s possible for a Christian to have this view. It’s quite simple, actually. First, remove the rose-colored glasses. Second, remember all the good and all the bad together. There’s a lot of truly incredible stuff like preserving Greco-Roman manuscripts in monasteries, creating the first hospitals and universities, drilling water wells, medical missions, homeless assistance, food drives, kids’ backpacks, mentorship, etc. Unfortunately, it’s dwarfed by such systemic problems as spiritual abuse, scapegoating, gaslighting, and protection of predators.5
The original beatniks often came across as antagonistic toward Christianity, but I’ve always gotten the sense there was always this undercurrent of profound confusion. It’s like they were asking, “You’re seeing what we’re seeing with racism in Southern White churches, right? You know about Christendom’s deliberate genocide of Native Americans, right? You’re aware of the Nativist BS against ‘Christ-killing’ Jews, right? So how can you possibly see the Church as a near-absolute societal good?” Valid. I don’t believe in the Myth of the Church’s mandatory goodness.6
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In the sports world, these diehard fans placate their conscience with thoughts that NIL deals are improving things or simply ignore the systematic corruption and exploitation ‘cuz they love college sports. You just kinda go with it because what else are you going to do? It’s sports and has no ultimate significance. In the spiritual realm, however, I struggle to know how to dialogue with fellow Jesus followers who hold to this sacred Myth. How can we take seriously the Church’s corruption, deviation from The Way of Jesus, and need for renewal if we can’t even entertain the conceptual possibility that so many things have gone terribly wrong that it’s not been functioning as a net good?↩
There’s a reason it’s most always said with that dismissive chuckle. Do us all a favor and strike the phrase from your enculturated vocabulary. That’s a cheap hack that only makes things worse. All it does is protects institutions, ignores neglect, covers abuse, papers over mistakes, and indefinitely delays culpability. I immediately lose significant trust in anyone who appeals to this particular example of spiritual bypassing.↩
For many Christians, it seems believing in a high ecclesiology is an essential tenet of their Christian faith. It’s intrinsic to the sacred Myth around the Bride of Christ’s mandatory goodness. I reject this premise. For me they’re separate. There’s biblical precedent for this perspective in how Israel was portrayed in Hosea, so why do we assume “spiritual Israel” is going to be more faithful than was “biological Israel”? I see faith in Jesus, and a commitment to the lifestyle known as The Way of Jesus, as quite distinct from an appraisal of the Church’s past and present faithfulness to our Lord.↩
I mean “bitch” in gender-neutral terms.↩
I don’t minimize the insidious racism that goes on to this day because we’re uncomfortable having hard conversations. I don’t gloss over the lives that have been profoundly damaged by blocked ordination processes only after investing 3 years of life and taking on $100K in student loan debt. I don’t forget when a female staff member gets fired and pressured to sign a NDA in order to get a severance package after being sexually assaulted by the senior pastor. I don’t dismiss it as an unfortunate outlier when a couple loses all of their church friends of 20 years for not disowning their gay son. I don’t ignore all the people who’ve been stupidly excluded from Communion or poisoned by the “means of grace” because the stubborn pastor refuses to switch to a gluten-free wafer. I don’t overlook all the marriages that have been devastated by the guilt and shame of Purity Culture. I don’t shrug when a Christian university prioritizies its public reputation and the quality of football program over the well-being of rape victims. And I don’t exercise charity when a healthy Christian downplays the seriousness of the Covid pandemic, gets it, selfishly returns to church while still contagious, and carelessly spreads it to congregants who then die. Again, the Church does an awful lot of good in this world. Sadly, I stand by the appraisal that all that good is is overshadowed by all the bad. Oh, and don’t go trying to appeal to the visible vs. invisible church distinction to weasel your way out of this. I’m tired of that delusional, No True Scotsman defense.↩
Just to be clear, I don’t see the Church as a near-absolute good or a near-absolute bad. False dichotomy. Those are not the only options.↩
