A non-traditional worshipper is not alienated from traditional faith-based societies

The continued use of alternative faith-based social networks does not require me to estrange myself from traditional religion. Like many other committed adherents, I engage Christianity actively, but years ago I stopped attending a “traditional” religious organization.

Instead, I’ve discovered church in alternative environments. Small home gatherings. Coffee shops. Everyday life. These unorthodox religious settings offer the advantages of autonomy and satisfaction. And, they come without the awkward dogmatic pressures and rituals which are prevalent in many conventional churches.

For 30 years I was a member of a Christian church. For almost 20 of those years I held positions and served at church religiously. When I altered my church habits, I was not a college student. I was not lost. I was not having a mid-life crisis. The shift to using nontraditional church more resembled the spirit of Abram when he said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company” (Genesis 13:8, NIV).

For those of us who relate to God, we do take measures to participate in cultivating spiritual faith, power, and understanding. The obvious participants are observed at church facilities, temples, and synagogues. However, I’ve discovered a high number of participants who are not so conspicuous but yet are fine-tuning their faith through alternative networks.

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Vote for my political party. Support the following politicians. Change these laws. Do not change those laws. Put this person in charge. Then the economy will be better, our families will be protected, and people will behave as they should. We can straighten out this country if we work together.

In ancient Israel, Samuel the prophet, who had led God’s people most of his life, grew old. The nation wanted a king to rule over them, a king like the other nations had, a king to lead them into battle. Samuel was displeased, but God told Samuel that the people were not rejecting Samuel, but God. They were asking for an earthly king and kingdom, and in doing so were rejecting their true king, God.

God told Samuel to give them a king, and he did. He anointed Saul, the Lord’s chosen, to be their king. Saul, rather than God, became their king.

As Samuel warned Israel, Saul not only led them, but also introduced a system of government that included conscription, land confiscation, and taxes. Yet, the people chose that system rather than a system with no earthly king.

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It seems odd that throughout the Christian world the common practice of training people to be shepherds of God’s people is to remove them from the very setting where that service takes place and ship them off to a foreign land where very little of what they do for the next 2-4 years resembles life in the real world.

I speak, of course, of the seminary experience.

Granted, I don’t have any seminary experience myself of which to speak, only three years in a small Bible college. On top of that, the time I spent there was mostly beneficial to my spiritual life.

And yet.

Just because the Lord is able to make use of our generally limited apprehension of His will, and to work in and through all situations, institutions, programs, ect., this does not mean that “the way things are” necessarily reflect His ideal.

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Those of us Christians who live in the USA often pride ourselves in our “Christian” form of government, and believe that our Constitution and indeed many of our laws are based on Christian principles. Some of us believe that our laws should reflect the teachings of the Bible, or what we suppose the teachings of the Bible to be.

Therefore we conclude that our “Christian” duty includes voting for politicians who will enact such laws, and when given the opportunity, we must support and vote for those laws.

Over two thousand two hundred years ago the philosopher Epicurus proposed that the gods, if they actually exist, do not concern themselves with humans and what they do. As N. T. Wright suggests in his most recent book, How God Became King, “…As a result, the world we know grows, changes, and develops under its own steam, as it were from within… Apply this to political science and you get democracy: society ordering itself according to its own internal wishes and whims, fears and fancies” (p. 35).

Is America a Christian Nation?

The foremost question before us therefore is this: Is our society indeed “a Christian nation,” based on the principles of Scripture, or a society that has ordered itself according to its own wishes, which only gives a passing nod to Scripture and to God? Are we one nation under God?

Who is our king? Is it God, or our system — a system which functions according to our wishes and whims?

When we support or oppose certain candidates and issues, do we do it because we suppose we are supporting “God’s agenda” (as we may be told by political parties, politicians and even religious leaders), or are we actually supporting one political agenda over another? Do our politicians attempt to bring about a “Christian society” through their actions and the laws they enact, or do they only pretend to do so to get the votes and support of the “Christian” segment of the population?

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My first house was immaculate. I was so methodical it’s a wonder it didn’t make me sick. No dust bunnies. Clean and pressed clothes. Bills paid. Car oil changed. I could eat off the bathroom floor. I was a purist.

This devotion to purity carried over into my religious thinking and behavior as well. I read and recited the same pure religious words every day. I believed that these words were the approved words of God for speaking, reading, and praying.

But eventually I began to wonder about this entire concept. Are there really special words and special languages which makes a person more acceptable to God? Is there such a thing as a pure textual tradition which can be aspired to or returned to? When people claim this is the case, how do we know that they are capable of making decisions of which is pure and which is not?

Loving Others in the Dirt

My tendency for physical and spiritual purity was challenged the most when I volunteered at an orphanage in Thailand. While there, I used squat toilets. There was no toilet paper. There was no hot water. There often was no place to wash your hands. One quickly learns that certain standards of purity are not as necessary as we might think.

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