Introspection: An Easter Fool

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An Easter Fool

Jesus asked the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?"

Simon Peter answered, "Lord, where would we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that you are God's holy one."

John 6:67-69 (CEB)

I need more than a truth to believe

I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes

From "More Like Falling in Love" by Jason Gray

As you might have noticed, Easter Sunday and April Fools' Day happened to fall on the same day this year.  That morning, Jonathan Tompkins, one of the pastors at my church, wished the congregation a happy "Easter Fools' Day."  He suggested that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is God's "great joke on death, sin, and all their friends."  Throughout the Easter season, Jonathan has asked us in the congregation to consider how we are "Easter Fools," how God has helped us to "get the joke," and how we have been able "to laugh in the face of death, and sin, and all their friends."^{1 2}

Personally, I've been struggling with the question, because I haven't been laughing very much.

In one recent sermon, Pastor Jonathan told the stories of a number of Easter Fools, specifically those early Christians who personally experienced the Risen Christ.  Of all the stories, the one that resonated with me the most this year was that of the Disciples who locked themselves in a room together, afraid of what might happen when people found out that Jesus' body was missing.  Despite the locked door, Jesus suddenly popped into the room and said, "Peace be with you."³  Jonathan suggests that some of us have become Easter Fools by "locking ourselves into the church" even when we fear, doubt, deny, and betray.⁴  I think that, if I'm any kind of Easter Fool, I'm this kind, for I feel that I too have locked myself into the Church, despite all the reasons I might be tempted to leave.

To be brutally honest, sometimes I feel like a fool for having not left Christianity years ago.  For eleven years I attended a school attached to a fundamentalist church, so I've seen some of the worst that the Christian religion has to offer.  The word Gospel supposedly means "good news," but I heard a lot more bad news than good news, and the good news didn't really make up for all the bad news.

I was taught that, if I trust in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, I can be sure that I will go to heaven when I die.  I was also taught that a vast majority of the people in the world, because they do not know Christ, are going to hell when they die, where they will be consciously tormented forever and ever.  I learned not only that non-Christians are going to hell, but also that most of the people who call themselves Christians are condemned as well, because they have not truly put their trust in Christ.  Some people who go so far as to say that God actually intended - or predestined - a vast majority of humanity to go to hell.

This "Gospel" scared the hell out of me - or rather it instilled the fear of hell into me.  It is not, by any means, "the greatest story ever told."  It is an ugly horror story that makes the most gruesome Rob Zombie film look like a Disney cartoon.  The Bible tells us that God is love, but how can there be anything loving about a God who willingly inflicts suffering upon people indefinitely?  If God is truly so cruel, then how can heaven be anything but just another hell?

When I graduated from high school, I was freed from my fundamentalist environment, but, for some reason, I did not leave Christianity behind, as many people in my shoes might have done.  I continued to attend the small Methodist church I had attended my whole life.  At that time, I didn't know very much about the United Methodist Church, but I knew it wasn't fundamentalist.  To be honest, I didn't particularly want to be a Christian, but I didn't really want to go to hell either.  Maybe I was also afraid of disappointing my family.  Still, I remember that, for some reason, I started attending the Sunday evening services at my church, which I had never attended before I graduated.  Perhaps there was something else that compelled me to stay.

I stuck around, and some good things happened as a result.  When I was a junior in college, I found my way to the Wesley Fellowship, the United Methodist group on campus, where I learned more about my Methodist tradition and learned that I actually loved it.  I learned that Methodism is a thinking person's tradition: Methodists are expected to think critically about all things, including matters of faith.  If I read something in the Bible I find troubling, I can wrestle with it without immediately leaping to a conclusion about it, and, if a pastor says something that doesn't make any sense to me, I can question it.

After I graduated from college, I accepted a job in the gambling industry, and, within a year, I regretted my decision.  I turned to God and prayed that God would get me out of my situation.  While I waited, leaning further into my faith and becoming more involved in the Church gave me a sense of purpose I did not find in my job.  Looking back, I can see that the whole experience brought me closer to God.

After all these years, after everything that has happened, I still sometimes feel like a fool for not leaving my religion, for I continue to see the worst that Christianity has to offer.  Mahatma Gandhi once supposedly said that he liked Christ but did not like Christians because they did not act very much like Christ.  Similarly, I want to follow Jesus, but I am so often appalled by the behavior of people who claim to follow Him.  I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, but I am ashamed of the distortions of the Gospel and how these distortions make so many Christians behave.

In the last few years, I have been troubled by Christianity's relationship with partisan politics in my nation.  A few years ago, Sean Palmer observed, "At present, the church's unholy alliances in politics have made us a tool of the Right, an enemy of the Left, and prophetic to neither."⁵  This observation has never seemed more true than it seems right now.

Church leaders ought to be the most trustworthy people in the world, yet so many have proven themselves to be anything but trustworthy.  Again and again, we have heard allegations that high-profile church leaders have preyed sexually on their own parishioners, especially now that more and more people are telling their stories in the midst of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements.

In many churches, certain segments of the population continue to be marginalized or even ostracized.  Churches claim that "all are welcome," yet not all are accepted.

I was particularly disgusted with comments made by some of my fellow Christians when physicist Stephen Hawking, an atheist, passed away last month.  The comments, which were judgmental and sanctimonious, bordered on gloating.  For example, someone posted on social media, "Stephen Hawking is no longer an atheist.  May God have mercy on his soul."  At the risk of also sounding judgmental, I'm not totally convinced that whoever made this comment is really hoping that God has mercy on Hawking's soul.  Again, we claim that God is love, but apparently many of us find being right far more important than being compassionate.

Even now, in my early thirties, I'm still working through the damage caused to me years ago by rampant judgmentalism, purity culture, and god-awful hellfire-and-brimstone theology.  I still have trouble opening up to people because I'm crippled by shame, and sometimes I still have trouble believing that God really loves me and accepts me.

Of course, my screed against Christianity would not be complete if I did not mention how disappointed I am with the pathetic excuse of a Christian I see in the mirror every day, who also does not look very much like Jesus.  I'm quick to point out the flaws of other Christians, but I cannot say that I am any better than they are.  Whenever I point my finger at someone else, three fingers point back at me.

Sometimes I feel like a fool for not leaving behind such a broken religion, yet, for some reason, I stay.  Maybe I'm hoping that there is something redeemable amid the rubbish.  Maybe I'm hoping that the Church really is on the verge of another reformation, as some Church historians speculate.  Maybe I just have nowhere else to go.  Maybe I just need to keep reminding myself that the loudest of Christians don't necessarily represent the majority of Christians.  I've tried to swim in the currents that will guide me to where I need to go.  I've chosen to attend a church that I believe is different from most of the others - a church that is more interested in building bridges than building walls.

One reason I started preaching, teaching, and writing is that I wanted to tell a better story than the one I was told.  I delivered my latest sermon last week, on the third Sunday of Eastertide.  I love Easter because the Resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us so many reasons to be hopeful.  The Resurrection shows us that Christ triumphed over sin and death.  It shows us that, as Adam Hamilton likes to say, "the worst thing is never the last thing."  It shows us that God makes all things, even the worst of things, to work out for good.  I said such things when I delivered my sermon last week, but I could not help but notice the great chasm between what I say I believe and how I actually live my life.  I don't laugh in the face of adversity - I crumple.

I'm a fool for not leaving Christianity, and I want to become even more foolish.  I don't want to be someone who merely says what he is supposed to say.  I want to be a true believer - a true Easter Fool.  I want to believe that the Resurrection of Christ really makes all the difference.  I want to live with the courage and hope of an Easter person.  I want to trust that God truly loves us and accepts us, so that I become more loving and accepting of others.  I want to believe in a God who really is working out all things for good.  I want to live my life, trusting that it all works out in the end, even if it hurts like hell in the present.


Notes:

1. Jonathan Tompkins.  "Easter Fools' Day."  Travelers Rest United Methodist Church, 04/01/2018.
2. Like my pastor, I too tried to find an intersection between Easter Sunday and April Fools' Day, but I didn't do quite so well.
3. John 20:19
4. Jonathan Tompkins.  "Easter Fools: The Disciples Then."  Travelers Rest United Methodist Church, 04/08/2018.
5. Sean Palmer.  "Keeping Your Birthright in an Election Year."  The Palmer Perspective, 04/23/2015.

The photograph featured above was taken by me in May 2016, in the driveway of my grandmother's house.