Exit Interviews

When religion is shuttled off to its little island of irrational subjectivity, the leap of faith, when evangelism bases its appeal on personal experience and moral usefulness with the slogan "deeds, not creeds," when "I feel" edges out "we believe," and when churches target niche markets for spiritual consumers, we should hardly be surprised when Monday's cheerleaders for our spiritual brand are something else by Friday.

To the extent that Protestantism makes the individual consumer the center of the universe, the enemy of all external deities, forms, structures, creeds, rites, and authorities, it is basically Gnostic. Like the ancient second-century heresy, modern spirituality celebrates the inner self. A spark of divinity, the soul loathes not only its bodily prison but everything similar to it. Like everything physical, the visible church is a distraction from the invisible church; what happens inside of the individual, spontaneously and without creaturely means, is more real’more "authentic"’than the hum-drum ministry of preaching, baptizing, communing, and looking after the material as well as spiritual health of the flock. The Gnostic soul longs to be liberated from its chains and fly upward at last to claim the reward of its striving ascent.

A host of sociologists study this "search for the sacred" that is the perennial religion story in American life. Although he does not mention the ancient heresy, Wade Clark Roof's description of contemporary American spirituality picks up Gnosticism's main characteristics: a religion that "celebrates experience rather than doctrine; the personal rather than the institutional; the mythic and dreamlike over the cognitive; people's religion over official religion; soft, caring images of deity" that can even be described as "feminine and androgynous," over images of God as Creator, Redeemer, Lord, and Judge. (1)

According to James Davison Hunter, "The spiritual aspects of evangelical life are increasingly approached by means of and interpreted in terms of 'principles,' 'rules,' 'steps,' 'laws,' 'codes,' 'guidelines,' and the like." (2) Roof adds,

Salvation as a theological doctrine…becomes reduced to simple steps, easy procedures, and formulas for psychological rewards. The approach to religious truth changes’away from any objective grounds on which it must be judged, to a more subjective, more instrumental understanding of what it does for the believer, and how it can do what it does most efficiently. (3)

According to Roof's studies, "The distinction between 'spirit' and 'institution' is of major importance" to spiritual seekers today. (4) "Spirit is the inner, experiential aspect of religion; institution is the outer, established form of religion." (5) He adds, "Direct experience is always more trustworthy, if for no other reason than because of its 'inwardness' and 'withinness'’two qualities that have come to be much appreciated in a highly expressive, narcissistic culture." (6) So the real question is: Where can I best find this inner enlightenment for the upward ascent?

Some years ago, Gilles Quispel suggested that the Western cultural tradition consists of three rival visions of reality and how we come to know it: "Reason," "Faith," and "Gnosis." Through all of the transitions from ancient to medieval to modern and now postmodern, these remain enduring sources of meaning. The exit interviews that we hear often fall into these three categories. If I may be so bold, let me offer some advice.

First, let's consider those friends who believe that the choice between reason and faith had to be made, and it was made in favor of reason. Many of the most vocal atheists today (and in the past) have been reared in fundamentalist and evangelical circles. Think of how often in the Gospels the disciples ask Jesus a question, and then let's ask ourselves how often we encourage believers to know not only what they believe, but why. When we answer their honest doubts with "Just pray about it" or "Just read your Bible more," thoughtful people are pressed to conclude that they have to either build a sturdy wall between their faith and their ordinary thinking or check out if they don't swallow our dogmatism whole.

But let's not let rationalists off the hook, either. Reason is a tool; rationalism is a philosophy. Rationalists already know what's true before actually examining the evidence. People don't rise from the dead, because people can't rise from the dead. This is a logical fallacy, called "begging the question." Naturalism is the worldview that makes certain things possible and impossible, and therefore God, miracles, and the like are a priori impossible. No use engaging arguments and evidence to the contrary. Rationalism is a reverse dogmatism. It cannot justify its own policy; at the end of the day, when pressed to defend their position, rationalists will usually throw up their hands like any fideist and say, "Well, that's the way it is."

The alternative to rationalism is Gnosticism. I don't actually think that they are that far apart’and they're certainly closer to each other than either is to the Christian faith. Like rationalists, Gnostics already know everything inside themselves. Whether it's identified with reason or spirit, both lodge ultimate authority in the individual's inner light.

However, some move back and forth between traditions within the Christian faith. Although the Reformers excoriated Gnostic "enthusiasm" ("god-within-ism") among radical sects in their day, it finds a welcome home in many churches today that are formally connected to the Reformation. American revivalism helped foster this "enthusiast" spirit. It's no wonder then that so many Protestants, liberal and conservative, are casting a longing eye toward Rome and the East. Many evangelicals are rushing into Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy without the Reformation even being a whistle-stop along the way. That's probably due in part to the fact that Reformation Christianity is marginal in American religion today, even sometimes in churches that are confessionally committed to it.

Years ago, psychologist Robert Jay Loftin described the passion for perpetual change among many in Western societies today as a restlessness for something new. He drew on the Greek myth of Proteus, who would change his shape to elude capture. The "Protean Self" is how he described identity in our age. What used to be identified as pathological (multiple-personality disorder) is now actually quite normal. According to Lofton, it is an obsession with personal makeovers that has its origins in a sense of guilt whose origin and solution the self cannot clearly identify. This analysis makes sense of the conversations I've had with so many who have tried just about everything. Where does the feverish striving for self-making and remaking stop?

According to Scripture, Proteus is chained by the law, forced to hear what he doesn't want to hear, so that he can be addressed by the gospel’the news that even though he can't make himself new, he can be forgiven, clothed in Christ's righteousness, and recast by the Spirit as a character in Christ's unfolding drama: the New Creation.

Paul Avis observed that the Reformers were preoccupied with two questions that were inextricably linked: "How can I find a gracious God?" and "Where can I find a true church?" Actually, they are not only linked; the answer is the same for both. The true church is found "wherever the Word is preached and the sacraments are administered according to Christ's ordinance." Only when Proteus is chained, his anxious self-transformations stopped dead in their tracks, can he really be free. The true church is not wherever we like the music or wherever we have the best chance of finding props and costumes for our life movie. It is not wherever we are awed by mysterious transcendence or hi-tech immanence, or wherever we find a group of people like us. We find God (or rather, he finds us) where he has promised to meet us: in his Word proclaimed, administered, and applied in the covenant of grace. That's where you find a gracious God’in Christ, as he is clothed with his gospel.