This month has been "Missions Month" at my church. To date, all of the speakers and the workshops that they've led have been excellent. There was this one particular conversation that I had with Adam Benner, missionary to the Hmong that got me thinking.
I forgot where I read this, (Diana's blog? Economist article? Something else she linked over to me?) but a singular line stood out to me which was something to the effect of: "American Revivalist Christianity has always seen life as something to be escaped from, something to be rescued from." Well, I'm pretty sure that was me just talking out of my butt there but the sentiment remains the same.
American Revivalist Christianity
Premise 1: This world sucks.
Premise 2: If you believe in Jesus, this world will still suck but there's heaven after you die.
It's debatable what degree of correctness there are in those statements, but the fact that these premises undergird the majority of American Christianity is undeniable. Even the traditional Western form of evangelism popularized by Billy Graham but used by everyone from Jehovah's Witnesses to the Pentecostal church down the street: "If you were to die tonight, do you know where you'd end up?"
Look at typical informational sessions that short-term missionaries present to the average American church: "We went to such and such a poor, impoverished, dirty people, we gave them the Gospel, 500 people accepted Christ into their hearts and now we're back! Let's go get some tacos."
Now when I was speaking with the missionary this past Sunday he leaned in close and told me:
"Now actually, the tough part is not "people coming to Christ." That's relatively easy. You give them some Western medicine and you tell them about Jesus and *boom* they believe in Jesus. The real trouble is when things get tough again, they go back to sacrificing to the old gods, the idols."
Now from a Western standpoint we may legitimately ask the question: "What just happened?" Depending on your particular theology (I'm a 5-point Calvinist myself) you could say that they lost their salvation when they went back to the idols or that they were never really Christians in the first place or some other way to fit that event into a ready-made worldview.
I think both explanations suck.
The truth of the matter is that the categories are stupid and insufficient for going through this life. American Revivalist Christianity has conditioned us to see salvation as a black and white issue. We may give concessions and say that "Yeah, you could be saved over a period of years...." but by and large that is not what is really believed. ARC works off of the punctiliar moment, the prayer of faith (Dear Jesus, I know I'm a sinner...), the altar call, the laying on of hands, the weeping, the decision card that's been filled out, etc. Even Christian movies (poorly made as most of them are) condition the audience to think this way with the rising leitmotifs, the glow, the change in expression on a person's face, etc.
So if this conception of "salvation" is poor, then where can we go from here?
Maybe that'll be my next entry.
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Yeah, I've heard that this happens with missions, especially in the case of Mormons. They come back thinking they've had all these conversions, when in reality, the people still hold on to their religious practices. This is called "syncretism"-- the belief in many different religions together.
This concept has really made me confused about conversion in other countries and cultures because these people have been inundated by their own religious practices their whole lives, so how can I/anyone ask them to give that up? It's more of a matter of culture or acceptance into the clan than anything else. It's a slippery slope for me.
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