Running From a Terrifying God

We have a lot in common with Cheetahs. They can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in three seconds, achieving a top speed of 75 miles per hour. Okay, maybe not that part, but there are a number of other similarities, like the fact that they suffer from emotional issues and high levels of anxiety, which I find oddly endearing. In captivity, they are often raised with emotional support dogs, for pretty much all the same reasons as we have them. At the turn of the 19th century, there were about 100,000 cheetahs in the world, today the number is estimated to be fewer than 8,000, so I’d be pretty anxious, too.

The species has survived at least two major near extinction events in the last 100,000 years, which has left some permanent marks which can be seen today. These two events led to extreme genetic bottlenecks when the population was reduced to barely viable numbers. The high degree of genetic similarity leads to any number of issues that aren’t exactly helpful for its survival. It does produce a rather bizarre party trick, though. If you were to take a skin sample from one cheetah in a particular population and, er, install it onto another unrelated individual, it is accepted as if it is its own. That only happens, for comparison, in humans who are super-identical twins. Almost like a low anthropology, but for Cheetahs. Keep your finger there for a moment, but wash first, what with the skin grafts and all …

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Ages ago, I found myself in a situation where a clergy person asked me a question, and it was memorable because it was a theological question. In this particular context, there were no categories for someone like me who wasn’t clergy and yet wrote publicly about Christianity and the church. This often caused my mere presence to serve as a test of the relative tensile strength of pastoral egos. When the rating was “wet bathroom tissue” it was unpleasant for everybody involved. But despite the barriers, the question was asked, and I completely locked up. It took me a minute to figure out what was causing the problem. There was a language barrier; I didn’t speak Semi-pelagian. I should have prayed for the gift of tongues!

If you don’t know what a Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian is, Mockingbird’s helpful book, Law & Gospel, gives a great little summation: 

The Gospel is for sinners and remains for sinners, as long as we’re on the earth. The idea that salvation and moral progress thereafter are up to us is called ‘Pelagianism,’ and the Church condemned it long ago. The idea that salvation is partly up to us, and God does the sanctifying work, is called ‘Semi-pelagianism,’ and it was also condemned. The idea that God saves us and then the work of moral progress is up to us doesn’t really have a name, but it could be classified as a misguided Semi-pelagianism. It is all up to God.

There seems to be a recent trend to rehabilitate Pelagius. Old Pelagius didn’t invent the error he is associated with, he just codified it, as it predates him right back to the start of the faith. Also, my name is Josh and I am a recovering Pelagian. I’m thinking I should give it up for Lent, but with less than two weeks to go, why bother? Pelagianism is a nearly ubiquitous tendency, and not something I associate as a positive. Fleming Rutledge says in The Crucifixion that Pelagius’s view:

has persisted ever since as most Christians’ default position. The more serious one is about spiritual and ethical development, the more “Pelagian” one tends to become, so great is the temptation to think that one is making moral and spiritual progress.

The language barrier I had experienced was more widespread than I thought, and it wasn’t coming from a particular denomination. It was more like I was in a Pelagian pocket of Christianity. In the bosom of the evangelicalism of my youth, I should have felt more at home, but I didn’t. When you quote Luther to Protestants — in that pocket — and they look at you like you are a wild and crazy antinomian, you start to feel like a foreigner.

It wasn’t until I started talking to folks deconstructing and deconverting from Christianity that I was surprised to realize I had something in common with them. We both ran, as fast as cheetahs, from a version of God whose roar would frighten anyone away.

The huge evangelical movements back in the 80s, 90s, and beyond left behind some law-heavy fundamentalism that seemed to linger (The Cranberries-like) in some areas. Think the movie Saved! Parents raising kids during this time may have matured in their views since then, but their children’s view of God coalesced into something a bit different than they probably intended. For the children of that time, it sometimes came out like this: Jesus came to save sinners, yes, but it was from an angry sky-god who really really wanted to send you to hell. Jesus paid the price to keep you out, but He still seems rather ticked about it. You probably won’t go to hell, but don’t draw down your grace account, just in case. Cue some brilliance from Nate Bargatze:

There is no relief, no real good news in the Semi-Pelagian message imbibed by the kids of the 80s and 90s. Sister Wendy Beckett puts it even more plainly, shockingly so.

Sometimes I blush for those who think themselves Christian, and yet the God they worship is cruel, suspicious, punitive and watchful. Who could love such a God? If that is your idea of God, you are obliged by all the rules of morality and common sense to become an atheist. I have the greatest admiration for atheists, because by definition they have rejected a false “God.” They looked at this hideous image and said that if it was true, they refused to believe. Too few move on to the next stage and wonder if, in fact, their image of God is not true, or to the stage beyond when they realize that, in actuality, it is not true.

The rejection of Christianity so often happens because Jesus comes to represent the exact opposite of what he stood for, so any invocation of Christ’s name is just more of the same. A narrow slice of Christianity becomes the entirety of Christianity. In law-heavy churches, questions are not usually encouraged and expressions of doubt are often unhelpfully feared, so the wider Christian tradition is virtually unknown. What was intended to protect and reinforce Christianity, didn’t. More law is more law, and the law kills. 

The similarity between deconversion and rejecting Pelagianism is that the relief is palpable. They both are a relief away from an impossible to please God; one away from God (sometimes altogether), the other, the relief of being able to run toward the God who already loves us, with nothing left in the way. Our common problem – so common, the DNA matches – sin and death, was fixed on the cross. We continue to look to Christ and his finished work because he said it is finished. Nothing to run away from, no angry sky-god or ticked off Jesus. 

For folks who have people in their lives deconstructing and deconverting, remember, “Salvation is of the Lord,” to quote Jonah, that famous cheetah-like runner (in the wrong direction) of Bible fame. Since this is the case then, “My hope is in You,” as David sings in his Psalms. Jonah didn’t save himself, David didn’t either. Quite the opposite. They both spoke from experience, and from relief. I do, too. Because while us cheetahs can run faster than the wind, we end up face to face with the God we needed all along.