I remember the boxes vividly. A few dozen nondescript cardboard boxes about the size of microwaves placed on the stairs leading up to the stage of Flat Creek Baptist Church. They surrounded the pulpit that my childhood church’s pastor, Brother Bill, would preach from. The boxes fascinated me for no other reason than it was Something New. Being a kid in church who frequently attended meant, plainly, sitting still. Brother Bill was a man of habit: he’d speak for 30 minutes on three to five points that all started with the same letter. (For example: the story of David and Goliath teaches us Courage, Calm, Competence and to Completely Rely on God). In this prolonged system of repetition children were either super bored or actively disobeying.
But not in the boxes service. Brother Bill explained that the packages contained desperately needed supplies for people who existed in a country I only knew about because it held missionaries our church supported. I can’t remember the exact amount, but as I recall each box cost about $35. Brother Bill asked if people would come up and grab a box, therefore committing to pay the $35 to help people in need. And with that, we waited. People rose out of their seats, walked to the front, and grabbed a box. It wasn’t long before they were all gone, and the congregation celebrated.
A little while later, we did it again. This time it looked like over 100 boxes—filling the stage of our medium-sized sanctuary. When Brother Bill announced it was time, the first few boxes went quickly. Then a steady stream of folks came forward who wanted to help but didn’t want to seem like goody-goody’s. But soon things slowed down and stopped altogether, and there were still ~20 boxes left.
It. Was. Awkward.
As a connoisseur of our church leaders’ behavior, I could tell there was a silent conversation happening between Brother Bill and the music minister, Brother Scott, who would signal the end of the service by leading us in a song. No one moved, however. Slowly a few more congregants got up and grabbed one of the remaining packages. We started to applaud when each person stood. Then some dude walked up and got a second one! I can’t tell you how I know that he had already gotten one, but I clearly remember a reaction from the church. The energy in the room rose, and boxes started getting picked off left and right again. When that last package left the stairs the members of Flat Creek rejoiced together in a way I had never experienced.
You might have legitimate questions or concerns with what I’ve described, but I want to isolate the virtue on display those Sunday mornings. People of all different means heard that others required help, and gave from their own pockets to meet that need. Let’s not let our criticisms of the white evangelical church (of which I’ve written many) mar every action of a person in the building. The boxes service was far from the only time members from Flat Creek went out of their way to give. Among other times, I owe an enormous debt to the men and women who supported my mom when my father left her with three young children.
I know Flat Creek was not alone in this tendency. In every church I’ve been a member of since, I experience similar instances of sacrificial giving. At the same time I’ve seen a deep distrust of giving to people or causes that don’t fit neatly in the way we view Christian charity. One example: I attended a church that regularly gave meals to homeless folks in the community. This practice seems to fit squarely in the lane of Christians in a broken world. The pastor announced one Sunday that the program stopped because leadership had noticed that several people weren’t eating their meals but were selling them. Our church decided to instead open a private school for underprivileged children. I won’t use this post to argue the merits of food versus education in the lives of the hungry, but the underlying distrust of people displayed by terminating the free meals still bothers me to this day.
Why are the members of my capital-C Church so giving with our stuff and so stingy with the destination?
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between our stated beliefs and our actions. Christians like myself in churches/denominations that hold a high view of Scripture are regularly warned about the slippery slope of questioning corporate beliefs. Saying that you think the Bible is correct here but incorrect there and it opens up a can of worms that calls into question the entire text, for example. It’s tempting to pick and choose which parts I agree with and which need to be jettisoned, but in the end all I’ve done is create a new religion with myself as the deity.
Beyond Scripture, the primacy of beliefs is present throughout white evangelical Christianity. The only way you can join most evangelical churches is to hold the correct beliefs and be able to articulate them. I can’t be the only person who has asked someone if they “believe in God” as a shorthand to place them in the right bucket in my mind. Folks who do not meet the standard are called “non-believers.” My current church often recites our beliefs during Sunday services as a reminder. It’s made clear everywhere how important beliefs are to us.
I’m not going to try and convince you that beliefs aren’t important, but you might already notice the danger in taking that concept too far. Let’s take the inerrancy of Scripture. While the Bible is clear on certain topics—who is God, who I am in relation to Him, what does He require of me—we often ask questions of the text that it does not intend to answer. Reading Genesis 1 for a logistical understanding of creation is hard (and not advisable) considering the heavy use of metaphor. While Flat Creek’s leadership held a literal seven-day view of creation, the churches I’ve attended since have had varied and nuanced stances. In a world where Christian beliefs are paramount and any alternative interpretation are dangerous, someone could hear the evidence for a world older than 6,000 years and (wrongly) perceive it as heresy.
Here’s where I’m getting to: what if that—what I’m calling “intellectual purity test”—extends even further? You have a church that believes the Bible is true in every aspect (as I do) and preaches that all Christians must affirm the same. However, are we making it clear that that uniformity of belief does not have to extend to all areas of life? Brother Bill preached extensively against the evil of cuss words. Must I, therefore, believe that cussing is a sin? Because it’s really hard to find that rationale in the Bible. Reader it is Jesus, not an intellectual purity test, that saves.
What happens if a generation of people are raised in a church lead by men who held dangerous views on, say, race, but correct views on the Bible? What happens if that church is kept together though an intellectual purity test and dissent generally is treated like sin? I think you get a church that is selectively charitable and generally suspicious.
Institutions like public schools are an easy target here because they force church members in a sort-of community with those who do not hold the same beliefs, sometimes even under the authority of these “non-believers.” As more Americans refuse to be associated with traditional labels of Christianity and the country becomes less white, that suspicion grows. As a result, trust in public schools would naturally plummet in these churches.
I’d like to propose an alternative. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a now-popular parable of a Jewish man who is robbed on a dangerous road. Ignored by two others, a Samaritan traveler risks his own safety to help the man and even pays generously to provide care long after he leaves. The story is shocking to its original audience due to the hatred between Jews and Samaritans who held vastly different views on religion. Jesus concludes the story by asking which of the three men was a neighbor to the one who was robbed.
It’s funny now to imagine Jesus telling Jewish law experts that they should be “Good Samaritans” because it would go over about like telling a group of Southern Baptists that they should be “Good Palestinians.” Jesus purposefully put the audience not in the perspective of the savior, but of the saved. We have been saved by someone who finds our views abhorrent, by someone who we (as sinful people) would wish harm. So what should our response to that salvation be?
-Stephen