British scientist, Richard Dawkins, and I have always felt that “it was so thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happened to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.” It’s how Jesus turned out to be Jewish, and that’s how I ended up being a Presbyterian in the middle of Mississippi nearly eight decades ago.
For good or ill, we have inherited our faith from our families over generations simply by circumstance of our birth. If you were able to climb up each limb of the family tree, you would discover how that faith has been promoted and promulgated over the years. You might also find that over the centuries that your faith has become cluttered with more stuff than might be necessary for the living of these days.
As a former member of the clergy with cluttered religious closets, I would like to come out and confess that I was born again. Not with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior…whatever that might mean. But as a convert of the Marie Kondo method of tidying up all the stuff in my life. Beginning with my unused clothing and dirty – dusty –books, I was alive to the spirit of this feisty little woman from Japan.
During this intentional home stay hiatus imposed by the corona virus and using the KonMari Method of “tidying up”, let’s take this stuff out of our spiritual closets and drawers and book shelves – even the stuff under our beds and lay it all out on the floor. The test will be to see what still fits, what brings you joy, and what serves the common good. Let’s look at what might be only religiosity full of filigree and fluff. Let’s see if we can clear the clichés and explore our limited vocabulary to discover what is honestly faithful to the gospel truth within us.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” Remember those wonderful words from St. Paul in one of his letters to the Corinthians. When he became a real man, he claimed that he could see a whole lot more clearly because he put away his childish worldview.
When I was a child, in a somewhat similar fashion, my family and household of faith – the Church – started indoctrinating me by imprinting doctrines and dogmas so that I would “grow up and not depart from it.” By six, I had memorized the catechism, knew all the books of the bible and knew – by heart – the Lord’s prayer with debts and debtors as well as the 23rd Psalm.
They also subtly taught me how lucky I had been not to have been born a Roman Catholic. Or an Episcopalian. Or a Baptist. I learned more about what we did not have in common with those “other” people, than what we were actually supposed to believe. Presbyterians were the best brand of Christians ever conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of John Calvin’s virgin wife in Geneva. It was almost immaculate in how it happened.
Even without my tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, you can see we have our work cut out for us: What in our faith still fits us? What brings joy to us and to the world? What serves the common good?