He has deconstructed: was Christian as a youth and now denies any deeper purpose to life. "Christianity is this and does that and teaches these things ..." says my conversation partner.
Ugh. He's not wrong. Not totally wrong, that is. It's as if I'm on a team with lots of other players wearing the same jersey, and sometimes it's unpleasant when I observe others in my jersey doing and teaching some pretty cringey stuff.
This conversation has got me thinking about what you can (and can't) see from the outside looking in at the Christian experience. More particularly, what it looks like if you've been on the inside and then deconstructed so now you're trying to make sense of the cacophony of messages coming from Christians and the Church.
I'm sure it's a weird spectacle to watch. They're attending their gatherings and going to confession, crusading to retake Jerusalem, condemning outsiders and sinners and talking in great detail about the Afterlife. They talk about being free from guilt and shame, but they pay a lot of attention to sin that makes them feel guilty and shameful.
Liken it to a line-dancing convention in a huge-the-size-of-Iowa convention center. Every ballroom you pass has a leader/pastor/priest on the stage and music on the PA system, and the crowd is dancing and learning the moves. Some of the ballrooms look boring, others look fashionable, others don't let you pass by without being asked repeatedly if you wouldn't want to come in and learn. Knowing how to do the dance makes you an Insider, which is its own payout. There are kids dancing, too, and learning to do the dance as a kid makes it so you can muscle-memory the moves even when you don't fully integrate any deeper purpose.
At the same time, the craziness of the spectacle of the churches all dancing to the music of their own ballrooms* -- the hubbub of all the corporate dancing is loudly covering over a quiet, internal dance.
Each individual Christian claims to be privately dancing a Couples dance with the Lord. You never see this when you poke your head in their ballroom; the collective church spectacle is so overwhelming. But while they're dancing as a big group, they each are privately, tenderly, learning to follow His lead as he indwells them and teaches them his rhythms.
And that's a previous blog thought: https://sgfbend.blogspot.com/2024/05/follow.html
* (and there's more to that convention center metaphor--take, for example, the interactions they're having in the exhibit hall as they try to convince others to follow their form of dancing or denying the legitimacy of this or that dancing, selling books and videos about dancing -- maybe the metaphor doesn't ever stop!?)
