As I read about the history of Christianity, I get a picture of a far grimmer religion than I see now. In centuries past, it wasn't the inviting, lovey-dovey (for lack of a better word) institution it is now. The focus seems to have been on God's wrath and unshakable justice, on obligation and guilt, on difficult doctrines like Hell and hard predestination, and, well, on the general awfulness of this life and the probable awfulness of the next. Catholics and protestants alike practiced that way. We have cliche images of the stern Catholic and the grim Calvinist, and there seems to have been some basis for that cliche– I don't see much talk of God's love or mercy when reading about Christianity over the centuries.
The model for Christianity up until very recently seems to be fire-and-brimstone preaching. If you've never read Jonathan Edwards's 18th-Century sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," seek it out. It's a masterpiece of rhetoric, and it's my mental model of what Christianity used to be like. If you weren't a believer, if you thought the Bible were a fiction, you'd think of that sermon as a superb horror story. In Edwards's central image, God holds you like a loathsome spider over the pit of Hell, abhors you, and might drop you in at any moment. It's only towards the end of the sermon, after he's really drilled that image into our heads, that he gets to the business of how you might avoid the pit. Before he finishes, he addresses children– directly and explicitly– with threats of hellfire.
Which is very different from the Christianity around me now. I see a focus on God's love and mercy, on inclusiveness and positivity, on everyone and anyone's hope for salvation. I see an attempt to adapt Christianity to varying lifestyles and make it accommodate diversity. No longer an unquestionable authority or an inescapable cloud, Christianity is a hand on your shoulder, a word of kind advice, a place to go if you're lost, a friend, a family, a big smiley face. It's social, good with kids (I'm sure some of you have been to a church camp of some variety), and cheerful. I went to a Christian university, and chapel was usually a bit too sweet. The notion that my soul is in permanent mortal peril at every second, that its default state is corruption and damnation, that I don't deserve God's love, is something I picked up from musty old books, not living Christians.
That's what I see, anyway. But I'm not from a Christian family. I haven't spent much time in church, and I don't know what it was like to grow up with the religion in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Never seen an episode of Veggie Tales, either. So I can't know for sure. Has Christianity developed from Edwards's sermon into something more cuddly?
And, perhaps more importantly, do you approve? Is modern Christianity's relative kindness (if it exists) a better way to practice the religion than in older days?
The model for Christianity up until very recently seems to be fire-and-brimstone preaching. If you've never read Jonathan Edwards's 18th-Century sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," seek it out. It's a masterpiece of rhetoric, and it's my mental model of what Christianity used to be like. If you weren't a believer, if you thought the Bible were a fiction, you'd think of that sermon as a superb horror story. In Edwards's central image, God holds you like a loathsome spider over the pit of Hell, abhors you, and might drop you in at any moment. It's only towards the end of the sermon, after he's really drilled that image into our heads, that he gets to the business of how you might avoid the pit. Before he finishes, he addresses children– directly and explicitly– with threats of hellfire.
Which is very different from the Christianity around me now. I see a focus on God's love and mercy, on inclusiveness and positivity, on everyone and anyone's hope for salvation. I see an attempt to adapt Christianity to varying lifestyles and make it accommodate diversity. No longer an unquestionable authority or an inescapable cloud, Christianity is a hand on your shoulder, a word of kind advice, a place to go if you're lost, a friend, a family, a big smiley face. It's social, good with kids (I'm sure some of you have been to a church camp of some variety), and cheerful. I went to a Christian university, and chapel was usually a bit too sweet. The notion that my soul is in permanent mortal peril at every second, that its default state is corruption and damnation, that I don't deserve God's love, is something I picked up from musty old books, not living Christians.
That's what I see, anyway. But I'm not from a Christian family. I haven't spent much time in church, and I don't know what it was like to grow up with the religion in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Never seen an episode of Veggie Tales, either. So I can't know for sure. Has Christianity developed from Edwards's sermon into something more cuddly?
And, perhaps more importantly, do you approve? Is modern Christianity's relative kindness (if it exists) a better way to practice the religion than in older days?
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