Richard Hays, in his book, “The Moral Vision of the New Testament“, gives a succinct statement that summarizes the mission of the Church:

“[T]he New Testament calls the covenant community of God’s people into participation in the cross of Christ in such a way that the death and resurrection of Jesus becomes a paradigm for their common life as harbingers of God’s new creation.”

I just love it!

Adam and Eve’s fall from communion to autonomy was a tragic event that haunts us today. As I’ve been thinking about their experience and what we can learn about ourselves from it, it dawned on me that Genesis 3:10 contains in miniature the whole dynamic of the Fall. I call that dynamic, “Fear of Frying”, and it still functions in us today.

It goes something like this:

Withdrawing from communion leaves one alone to engage reality with their own scant resources. Therefore, when they come upon something good, they are afraid because it highlights their lack, and this sends them running for cover.

Take a look at Genesis 3:10:

He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

We can sum up this process in three steps: Sees Good => Fears Lack => Hides Self.

The following chart outlines the “Fear of Frying”:

The dynamic of the Fall works in us today. Because we mistrust God and try to be independent from Him and others, we experience a false sense of shame and insecurity that prevents us from meaningfully sharing ourselves with others, and often leads us to actually hurt them. Broken communion with God becomes broken communion with others.

It’s a miserable existence God never meant us to have.

I recently gave a message entitled, “Faith in Fig Leaves”. The message uses the chart from my last post as an outline. The pdf version of the chart is a little easier to follow.

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Right click the link to download the mp3.
faithinfigleaves.mp3

We’ve been thinking a lot about Truth versus Pietism these last several weeks. One of the interesting insights has been how the rejection of truth goes right back to Adam and Eve’s experience in the Garden. It seems appropriate during this season of Lent to think about the Fall and how that dynamic is still at work. Below I’ve tried to map how the Fall played out in our first parents and how it functions in us. Mankind, abandoning his faith in God, now has faith in fig leaves.

Step 1 – Kingdom of God

Life in communion. God is a community of persons (Trinity). Reality is by nature communal. Being human is good.

Faith, relationship, and peace. Trust and truth (honesty) are the essential elements of relationships. Wholeness is found in communion (shalom).

God is the definition of good. In God is all reality and goodness. There is no other good besides God.

Symbol: Tree of Life. Path (tree) to life is union with God. Life is found in union with God (which also implies union with reality).

Gen. 1:31; 2:25; Luke 18:19; 1 John 4:8 Creation is very good. Naked & unashamed (complete through communion). Only God is good. God is love.

Step 2 – Mistrust

Withdrawal from communion. Without confidence (trust), relationship is impossible.

Doubt, self-preservation, isolation. Doubting God is doubting reality. Trust requires a risk of personal survival. Loneliness is rejection of relationship.

The definition of good is something other than God. Mistrust in God implies that good is found somewhere else other than in God. God is opposed to my ultimate good.

Symbol: Serpent. Satan works by introducing doubt about God’s character (accusation). Mistrust starts from concern about being cheated out of something.

Gen. 3:1,4-5 Did God say??? (accusation). You will not die (autonomy works). God knows you would become like Him (God is hiding something & cheating you).

Step 3 – Fractured Reality

Life distorted. If God can’t be trusted, then there is no truth. Life is irrational.

Compartmentalization (secular/sacred). Truth of heaven is different than truth of earth. Spirituality (the meaningful) is divorced from truth.

Good is confused. With no absolute, good is relative. Good is subjective.

Symbol: Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Path (tree) to knowledge of good and evil is death. Good and evil can’t be understood apart from God. Evil is anti-relational.

Gen. 3:6 Woman saw tree (path) was good for food (nourishment/life). Delight to eyes (her view, not truth). Desirable to make one wise (sufficient).

Step 4 – Inadequacy

Wholeness lost. Autonomy is incompleteness.

Fear, worry, anger. Inability to insure wholeness breeds insecurity and demand.

Good is not found in self. Mankind is finite, vulnerable, and fallible. Not “good”.

Symbol: Nakedness. Human frailty is weakness. Being human is shameful.

Gen. 3:7a Their eyes were opened (they swallowed the lie). They knew they were naked (humanity unprotected by communion).

Step 5 – Self-righteousness

Adequacy manufactured. Use any means to look and feel adequate.

Pride, ambition, power. Boast in talents. Don’t admit lack. Compete with others. Dominate others.

Good is artificial. Someone is always better. Success is fleeting. Others get hurt.

Symbol: Fig leaves. Mask true self. Image more important than truth. Lies & hiddenness.

Gen. 3:7b; Eccl. 1:9 Made themselves coverings. Nothing new under the sun.

Click here for a pdf version of the chart.

Right before the Super Bowl, my son and I were discussing the “Truth versus Pietism” material I’ve been blogging about. He began sharing some interesting insights on sacred places. So I’d proudly like to introduce as my first guest blogger, my son, Timothy Krell:

A few days before Super Bowl Sunday, the idea of people watching the game in their churches was brought to my attention. I don’t know about you, but when I hear about people getting together in their local church to watch a football game, I cringe. But, instead of simply brushing over that feeling and moving on, I’d like to exercise the unique human ability of thinking about thinking and examine that thought. Where does this cringing come from?

Let’s assume that the game watching is not replacing any normal church service. Still there is the cringing. Our community has a room where we come together each Sunday for our Sunday service, cleverly termed the “Meeting Room.” I recently suggested that we watch the game on the TV there, but I did not feel the same cringing. Is this being a little hypocritical? I don’t think so. Allow me to explain.

In our meeting room, not only do we have our Sunday service there every week, but we have also watched movies ranging from The Passion of the Christ to Spider-Man, played games from musical chairs to Pictionary, and listened to music from worship to classical. The Meeting Room is simply another room that we happen to have our services in. It elicits no “spiritual” feelings from me like one would expect a temple or sacred sanctuary to. This is not to say, however, that the room is secular or that all our rooms are secular. Rather, they are all sacred. It is the life that I live together with my Brothers and Sisters every day that makes it so.

The reason, then, that I don’t have this mindset with a church is that it is designed to separate the secular and the sacred. Think about it. A church is built as a place for people to come once a week to worship God and hear the Gospel, away from their busy lives out in world and apart from their home and career. I realize that for some congregations there is need for more space than one member’s living room can offer, but it seems the problem is that the building is not part of the people’s daily lives. It is a reserved and sacred place, and hence comes the separation of the experience they know Monday through Saturday and the experience they know on Sunday. Even though it is not intended to be, the church building itself becomes a Pietistic symbol of the separation of secular and sacred.

I believe that it is much more beneficial to the congregation when the place where they come to worship on Sundays is not reserved for that alone, but also used for group activities, common meals, times of meditation, etc.. It is best when the church is a place where one can hear laughter, worship, weeping, praise, silence, and teaching throughout his daily life. This way we can symbolize to ourselves and to our children that every part of our lives together is sacred.

Adam and Eve chose to believe that the truth of heaven was different than the truth of earth. In doing so, they became the world’s first pietists. Pietists divide reality into two realms: sacred and secular. They see life divided into compartments, some spiritual and others not. This kind of thinking causes them to confront a fractured reality. The visible world and rationality become less valid and important. “Content, truth, and logic take second place to experience, fervor, sincerity, and rule-keeping” (Schaeffer 201). For the pietist, the exploration of truth isn’t as important as feeling and looking spiritual.

In Eden, our first parents experienced wholeness as they walked and talked with God in paradise. Their humanity, in all its weakness and vulnerability, flowed in perfect harmony with heaven and earth. They lacked nothing. “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31a). All this changed after their fateful choice to split heaven and earth by embracing the lie that God was hiding something. Their mistrust of God left them with a broken reality and the impossible task of creating their own wholeness. Even though God had never told them that they were naked (lacking or inadequate), they now felt ashamed and incomplete.

Their first order of business was to hide their real selves. Truth no longer mattered. They must look and feel adequate, and now through their twisted view of reality they no longer seemed that way either physically or morally. Their imperfections of body and soul terrified them. And so began the war against truth as they covered their bodies (fig leaves: looking spiritual) and covered their souls (blame-shifting: feeling spiritual). Pietism was born.

As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Pietism informs many people’s attitudes. Looking and feeling spiritual (or righteous, holy, good, etc.) takes precedence over truth. This manifests itself in all kinds of ways.

God’s redemptive plan involves a reuniting of heaven and earth where wholeness is restored. This is what the Bible calls salvation. In community, we try to live honestly and truthfully with one another, embracing the values of the Kingdom (Matt. 5-7), in order to “prefigure and embody the reconciliation and healing of the world” (Hays 32). While we wait for the Kingdom to fully come, we can reject the temptation of false spirituality and really care for one another as brothers and sisters in God’s family.

Reference and Bibliography

All scriputres quotes from The New American Standard Version. Lockman Foundation.
Schaeffer, Franky. Sham Pearls for Real Swine. Brentwood: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers Inc., 1990.
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1996.

In my writing about “Truth Versus Pietism” I explored how these two views of reality impact one’s approach to the gospel, Christian maturity, and engaging the world. My last post presented a chart that contrasted different aspects of these paradigms. Now, I’d like to look at the very first Pietists – Adam and Eve.

In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve enjoyed a blessed life of freedom, beauty, and fellowship with God and one another. According to Genesis, it was God’s custom to commune regularly with Adam and Eve in the garden. Both the spiritual and the physical came together in Eden. Heaven and earth kissed, and this was paradise. There was no division between secular and sacred. Everything was sacred, and it was as natural to work in the garden as it was to converse with God.

In this primordial world, secrets and shame, pretenses and lies were unknown. Naked humanity lived in complete harmony with the earth and with God. There was nothing to prove, and a vast universe of unthinkable beauty awaited to be explored. Wholeness and happiness flowed like a river.

But in the midst of this utopia, the deceiver, the Father of Lies, worked his malice and struck a blow that for ages to come would split heaven and earth. Beguiled by Satan, Eve bought the lie that the truth of heaven was different than the truth of earth. Indeed, God was hiding something. His reality was different than hers. If she and her husband were going to survive, they must reach out and know His truth, too.

With this fateful step, all of the rules seemed to change. They now confronted a fractured reality. Their world and home seemed inadequate. They were inadequate. The devastating shame of their humanity, in all its imperfections and weaknesses, frightened them. They no longer felt whole. Alone, with their own resources they would have to create sufficiency. They would cover their imperfections and make their own way in the world. The fig leaf would mask their weaknesses and would forever symbolize mankind’s pietistic attempt to make himself acceptable.

Mankind’s world was now at war with the spiritual world. Adam and his wife couldn’t bear heaven and earth’s communion anymore. Hearing the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hide themselves while an agonized God calls out, “Where are you?” Racked with shame, Adam confesses his twisted fears. God asks, “Who told you that you were naked?” He had never told them that.

In a series of posts I’ve been discussing a concept called, “Truth Versus Pietism”. This is a model of two ways to understand reality. A Truth approach to reality means that reality is seen as an integrated whole created by God. A Pietism approach splits reality into two realms, namely, secular and sacred. The following is a chart that contrasts these two paradigms.

Franky Schaeffer has a chapter entitled “Truth Versus Pietism” in his book, Sham Pearls for Real Swine. “Truth Versus Pietism” describes two ways to think about reality, basically seeing it either as a unified whole or as split into secular and sacred realms. How we understand the gospel, pursue Christian maturity and engage the world is determined by which of these two views we embrace. In previous posts I’ve discussed what the gospel and Christian maturity is like from the perspective of these two paradigms, and now I’d like to consider how the idea of engaging the world is affected.

“Truth” and “Pietism” think about the world differently. A Truth paradigm sees the world as good and sacred. Schaeffer explains it this way, “[Truth] holds that God is the Lord of all reality and that He created all that is visible and invisible. Because of this, we live in an orderly universe that can be rationally investigated and understood through science and the arts.” Consequently, those who embrace the Truth tradition are at home in this world because it is God’s, even though it is fallen. Fallenness doesn’t mean the visible world is illegitimate or evil, rather it describes the moral state of man and its impact on creation.

The Pietism tradition divides the spiritual from the visible world around us. The “truth” of the spiritual and the “truth” of the physical are not one. Something can be “true” spiritually and not “true” physically. The Church can be right spiritually but wrong scientifically. Schaeffer elaborates, “Pietism gives people a fractured reality, one in which the physical world, the body, the arts, economics, the sciences, the humanities, and sexuality are believed to be at war with the soul.” A pietist is ambivalent towards the world. Three examples where this ambivalence affects the way a pietistic Christian engages the world are how commitments are made and kept, activities are conducted and the arts are understood.

Pietists have no problem breaking commitments if they “feel led of the Lord” to do so. Since the spiritual is supreme, it doesn’t matter what damage is done to another person if the “Lord wills” the pietist to change his direction and break a commitment. Or he may be loose with the facts when making a commitment because he feels it’s God’s will to pursue this particular course. The pietist often will not do the “due diligence” necessary simply because he “senses” it’s God’s will and that is good enough for him. This makes the pietist somewhat unreliable and manipulative, but it also makes him vulnerable to emotional appeal and being taken advantage of. In my experience, some of the worst contractors and business people one can deal with are Christians. I think this is because of Pietism.

For the Pietist, ordinary life and activities need to be “Christianized” in order to be legitimate. Watching a football game with church members must include a half-time devotional and prayer. The refrigerator needs to get decorated with little scripture versus. A missions trip is the only justifiable way to travel and see the world. “The pietistic need to Christianize reality indicates a worldview that does not fundamentally understand or believe that reality is already God’s and the Christianity is truly Truth,” says Schaeffer. More often than not, a full fledged pietist is motivated by a guilty conscience to sanitize all they do in a misdirected attempt to feel spiritual.

Art is misunderstood by Pietism. It is seen from a utilitarian point of view. It must be useful. In other words, art must spread the Christian message. Beauty isn’t seen as its own justification. Truth can’t be explored without some “spiritual” goal. Again quoting Schaeffer, “…good art, like good science, describes the truth of a small or large part of reality without regard to maintaining the respectability of the artist. The fit subject for Christian art, therefore, is reality.” With Pietism, however, art is betrayed. Christian fiction tends to be one long, boring evangelistic tract. Christian music is often uninspired and banal. All stories must have a happy ending or at least a moral. This may be why many Christians’ tastes never rise above kitsch.

There are many more areas where Pietism stunts or distorts our participation in the world. I’ve only touched on a few. Schaeffer covers more in his book. Next post, I will make a chart that contrasts many aspects of Truth and Pietism.

I’ve been writing about Truth Versus Pietism which are two paradigms for understanding reality. A Pietism paradigm splits reality into secular and sacred areas, whereas a Truth paradigm sees all reality as sacred, since it was created by the Lord of reality, God. The consequences that flow from these two views of reality are felt in a Christian’s life. The Christian with a Pietism take on reality has difficulty engaging life fully. There is a subtle ambivalence towards the physical world that often makes him narrow minded, irrational, and frankly, less human. When reality is seen, however, as all of God’s, and therefore sacred, the effect is a Christian who is curious, reasonable and compassionate.

These contrasting views of reality make themselves apparent in all kinds of ways. Not the least is how the gospel is understood. Pietism sees the gospel through an individualistic lens. The focus is on securing one’s personal salvation and happiness. Truth, on the other hand, sees the gospel as the comprehensive plan of God to restore mankind to a community of love, justice and kindness. The gospel is understood as primarily relational.

This theme is carried through as we consider what Christian maturity is for these two views of reality. Pietism, being individually focused and feelings oriented, makes Christian maturity a “moralistic quest for spiritual experience.” Introspection is the name of the game, and the Christian caught in this mentality puts a great deal of value on correct motivation and spiritual feelings. He aims to maintain an interior experience of peace, free from disturbance. The complex, the difficult, the uncomfortable are all resisted in the name of seeking spiritual maturity. This aversion to the hard and raw aspects of life leads him to dishonesty and hiddenness about his own problems, dullness toward others and a lack of integrity towards life. The mature pietistic Christian is an odd, self-righteous and earthly irrelevant person posing as a witness of God (who is supremely relational and unafraid of the reality He made).

Maturity, for a Christian embracing a “Truth” paradigm, is a journey toward greater faithfulness to reality. He constantly seeks to discover truth and align his life with it. Consequently, this kind of Christian is eager to learn and is a “lover of the truth” (2 Thess. 2:10b). His goal is to be a “doer of the word” (James 1:23). He recognizes that life is full of difficult and perplexing questions as well as real people with real problems, all which will require him to lay down his life for others (Phil. 2:3-8; Mark 10:45). Not concerned about looking spiritual, he is able to confess his own lacks since he realizes that admission of ignorance is the first step toward education. While not seeking conflict, he understands that it is often a necessary step to clarify things between people. The mature, truth-oriented Christian is a fully human person in love with God and committed to others.

Next, we’ll consider how these two ways of thinking influence how Christians engage the world around them.