Have you ever wondered what would happen if a pastor, convinced of the truth of grace, actually tried what Robert Farrar Capon suggested here in The Foolishness of Preaching?
I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills … and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has drugged itself into thinking that proper human behavior is the key to its relationship with God. What preachers need to do is force it to go cold turkey with nothing but the word of the cross—and then be brave enough to stick around while [the congregation] goes through the inevitable withdrawal symptoms.
What exactly is in these religion pills? Fleming Rutledge calls the active ingredient “the Pelagian Default.” In her masterwork, The Crucifixion, she describes it as “the assumption that righteousness is actually within the reach of the human will.” But who is this Pelagius guy anyway? Justin Holcomb, in his helpfully titled field guide Know the Heretics, devotes a whole chapter to the 4th-century theologian and where he went off-roading. Pelagius “thought that God’s commanding a person to do something that he lacked the ability to do would be useless: ‘To call a person to something he considers impossible does him no good.’ If God called humans to live moral lives, Pelagius thought, it should be within their own power to carry out God’s commands.” As Holcomb explains, “Pelagius believed that God commands only according to our abilities. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus commands, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ Pelagius interpreted this to mean that perfection must be within our reach. Since perfection is achievable, it should therefore be obligatory.”
A classic quote from PZ’s Grace in Practice goes into detail explaining just how this potent ingredient of self-reliance works in us:
People become semi-Pelagians the day (after) they become Christians. This is the heart of it. People in the world, including Christians, are Pelagians by nature. They want to do it for themselves. ‘Control’ is the key word and concept. But control fails massively at some specific, vulnerable point of opening. When this happens, people are undone and they open up to grace. The grace of God makes its appearance, usually in the form of compassionate one-way love from another person. But the moment things are patched up a bit, life morphs back toward control, into semi-Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism is the compromise Christians force between the grace that saved them and the Pelagianism inherent in their human nature. It is the Achilles’ heel that besets Christians and all the Christian churches. Semi-Pelagianism, which acknowledges grace but insists upon an effort or response from the pained human side, defeats Christians just as wholly as Pelagianism defeats the world. Semi-Pelagianism dies hard. It is the old ‘control’ theme in a new and sanctified form. It is not grace. This control hates grace.
I think it’s safe to say we have all experienced this particular drug — still potent after 1600 years! — and the withdrawals that go along with it. That being said, it’s much harder to kick the habit if you are in a place were it’s handed out every Sunday morning like Tic Tacs. We keep willingly ingesting it because it makes sense. It makes the Good News merely Okay News, but at least we can get our heads around it. The very idea of unearned, undeserved, One-Way Love simply does not compute. This also makes a pastor, convinced that Jesus was actually telling the truth, seem dangerously unorthodox. We even go so far as to label the non-Pelagian ministers heterodox at best and heretics at worst. The irony is delicious!
A friend of mine, Taylor Christian Mertins, recently started teaching through Capon’s Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, an entire book devoted to the fine art of stealing religion pills. I asked him how the detox has been going at his church:
I’ve only preached on parables since Easter and I think some of my people can’t wait for it to end. In fact, one of my members has been praying for it. It’s not because they don’t enjoy Jesus’ stories but that the bug of grace bit me so hard earlier this year as I was making my way through Capon that I couldn’t shake it. To some degree, I think people got excited to see what kind of crazy way I would spin some of the most beloved parables every week, but the total and unrelenting force of grace felt overwhelming. One of my older members waited for me in the narthex a few weeks ago and rather kindly intoned, “If you keep preaching grace like that, this church is going to die.” Behind his comment was the presumption that, if you tell everyone they’re already scot-free, then they’ll have no incentive to attend or participate in church. I gave him a slight shrug and said something like, “We’ll have to wait and see.” If I were a braver pastor I would have told him the truth: “Dying’s the only thing we can do — that’s what the parables are all about.”
The reason Taylor is so willing to take this risk is because grace freed him, and that experience changes everything. He doesn’t need convincing; any direction other than toward grace seems dangerous. Capon explains that “preachers can’t be that naughty or brave unless they’re free from their own need for the dope of acceptance. And they won’t be free of their need until they can trust the God who has already accepted them, in advance and dead as door-nails, in Jesus. Unless the faith of preachers is in that alone — and not in any other person, ecclesiastical institution, theological system, moral prescription, or master recipe for human loveliness — they will be of very little use in the pulpit.” We give thanks for those useful pastors — you know, the ones that are useful because they are dead as door-nails, and wouldn’t have it any other way!
COMMENTS
15 responses to ““But I Need Those!” What Happens When A Pastor Flushes A Congregation’s Religion Pills”
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Whoa, Josh, this was excellent! Thanks for the read.
Thank you!
The problem with this thesis is that when Christians behave as outlined in the opening paragraph…the powers that be in the church are threatened and often turn their backs. Sadly, most of “the Church” (and by that I mean ordained clergy) are interested in maintaining control of the laity more than in challenging accepted orthodoxy.
Great piece! I need to read this every day.
Gosh, thank you!
So true! Thank you for this piece.
“If you keep preaching grace like that, this church is going to die.” I grieve this reality. So sad! We were once told “Grace is a narrow view of Scriptures.” This is such a heartbreaking reality in Christendom. People really don’t believe Grace alone; the gospel alone will rescue and keep them. They don’t believe that the message alone will create faith and raise the dead, (the Word does what is says) and the continual preaching of this Word of Christ that raises the deadness in all of us, will keep us alive and produce fruit as an ‘unintended’ consequence of it; because that’s what God’s given faith in the finished work of Christ does. That is too “simple” they reason. Our human hearts have a hard time believing that the Christian life is not about producing fruit, but about believing in, walking on, depending on the fruits/work of Another for us and that changes people in ways nothing else can. But this brings our egos way down and it takes control out of our hands and that is too scary and offensive.
I recently told my husband that unless preachers are really gripped by the finished work of Christ themselves; unless they see/believe and desperately depend on the “for you-ness” of the gospel for them personally, that unless they find that “for you” indispensable to them; they won’t preach it as if they believe it or as if their lives depends on it. And then I read this here: “Unless the faith of preachers is in that alone — and not in any other person, ecclesiastical institution, theological system, moral prescription, or master recipe for human loveliness — they will be of very little use in the pulpit.” Exactly! May the Lord have mercy on us all. Thank God all of this rides on the shoulders of Jesus. He got us! Thank God! I just can’t wait for the restoration of all things. Come soon Lord Jesus, please!
Wendy (and Josh!!!), How beautifully and powerfully said! My wife and I are currently suffering under just this type of preaching…we are mourning the loss of confidence in grace alone in a church that was once a bastion of risky gospel preaching. Now it’s the standard evangelical half-gospel message: “Accept Jesus as your LORD and savior and COMMIT TO FOLLOWING HIM”, which is really no gospel at all.
Josh, confused by your most recent comment. I thought your article referred specifically to preaching.
In saying that you [we all] are semi-Pelagian and sometimes full-on Pelagian, are you saying that you don’t believe it’s possible to preach without one’s Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism bent coming through?
Because our church once had a preacher who did exactly that, week after week.
The “they” referred to by Steve is, I believe, first the listeners in the pew hearing semi-Pelagian preaching, and then “they”, the preachers espousing it.
Sorry for the confusion, and terrific comments! Absolutely, it is possible to preach without the Pelagian bent coming through! The confession about myself being Pelagian, semi or otherwise, is just a reminder of my own low anthropology, and helps my curb tendency to “other.”
Agreed.
The only way that law can have any sway is when it follows grace.
And the only “law” we can (or should) follow in terms of behavior, is that with which CHRIST HIMSELF convicts our hearts. Not a preacher in the pulpit, nor a Sunday school teacher, nor a small group leader.
This convicting use of the law will look completely different from one Christian to another.
Specific behaviors cannot be preached to the congregation, as if we are all cookie-cutter people. I would even go so far as to say that it is heretical to preach things such as “clean up your social media” or “deal with your addiction in such and such a way” or “stop being promiscuous.” WE KNOW THIS. We are not in church to be told what to do. The world does that plenty to us.
We are in church to hear HOW DEEP THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR US, HOW VAST BEYOND ALL MEASURE… we are in church to hear the promises of Christ for our particular situation, WITHOUT THAT SITUATION BEING NAMED, we need to hear about grace, REAL unadulterated grace, without caveat, and ONLY THEN can we learn and understand and care about, in gods own perfect time, the demands of the law in our specific and particular life.
Thank you for this wonderful article.
Josh, Wendy & Michael,
I completely agree w/ you. The problem w/ semi-Pelagianism is that it more or less, forcibly excludes those seeking answers, struggling with doubt, or suffering in obvious or worse hidden ways. So depending on their psychological condition they fall into anger or despair. What a terrible thing it is when the church falls into heresy & has no help for those in need.
We should also pray for those misguided evangelical preachers who in their internalized inadequacy, think that they must “do something”. And that something is preaching behavior. It all is just a cycle that leads to heartbreak.
The thing of it is, I am Semi-Pelagian. Some days, full on Pelagian. There is no “them.”
So true Josh, but you are a Pelagian who knows the difference between your human pelagianism that we all share and the pure gift of God’s grace. That understanding is itself a gift, and it is rare, especially in preacher types.
This post is fantastic. Thank you! For my wife and I, this kind of preaching created a shallow ethos at our church that ended with us feeling like pariahs. We are still there and I am still in leadership, but it has been difficult. The tricky thing about Semi-P is that it’s our go-to place. Churches need strong leaders to surround the pastor. Those leaders need to remind themselves and each other daily of the truth of the gospel, warts and all. This is why I love MBird though. You guys remind me I’m not crazy.
Thanks again Josh.