A Way Forward?

Today I learned that I am suffering from CRIS. CRIS is short for Conflicted  Religious Identity Syndrome. I might have thought I caught it from reading Brian McLaren’s new book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? in which I learned the term and the symptoms. But the fact is I have suffered from CRIS for decades, since I became a Christian. 

According to McLaren, you can self-diagnose CRIS by answering the question: Do I compulsively need to add an adjective in front of the noun Christian?  If you find you need to qualify your Christianity, e.g.,  “I am  a/an _______ Christian.” or “I am a Christian, but....”, yep, you got it, CRIS.  (examples: conservative, liberal, Bible-believing, social gospel, ...)

A few years ago, author Anne Rice, apparently, with a severe case of CRIS, renounced Christianity. Rice concluded she would never truly belong to the “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group” known as Christians unless she becomes, “anti-gay...anti feminist...anti-artificial birth control... anti Democrat... anti secular humanism...anti science... anti life.”  So, Rice renounced Christianity qualifying it, “if being a Christian means following Christ’s followers.” 

But that’s just the thing. Being a Christian is not about following Christ’s followers, but its about following Christ. In the Bible God’s people are called to be faithful: stewards of this planet, lovers of justice and mercy, a people who turn the other cheek and even pray for their enemies. In short, the call is to love as God loves.  Jesus once said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything...”

Right now self-identified Evangelical Christians in the USA ranks statistically highest in support for the use of torture and lowest in support for foreign aid.  Among this group, the Bible is used to defend Israeli colonists in spite of their growing violations of Palestinian human rights.  And Christian radio in the United States has accused the environmental movement of being a Satanic conspiracy known as the “Green Dragon.”

This disconnect is why CRIS is more than a symptom of people who have lost their old faith, but an indicator that Christianity has indeed lost its way. In the least, the CRIS epidemic should call us to examine what is now passing for Christianity.

I just want a way forward where following Jesus looks more like Jesus. What does it mean to be faithful to the Jesus of the Gospels?  Isn’t it possible to have a faith in the creator God that is big enough not to be offended by science, where the faithful work toward justice and mercy among all peoples, where our call to be stewards of the planet is embraced and where following Jesus is about His Kingdom rather than our own national exceptionalism and manifest destiny?