5. “The Bible, says it, I believe it, that settles it.”
Well, gee. That’s very humble of you.
The problem with this one is, which interpretation? I recently had someone tell me the Bible is “clear” on matters of doctrine. No, actually, that’s why it’s doctrine. If it were so clear, there would only be one branch of Christianity and no denominations. And the whole time we’re congratulating ourselves on having the “correct” interpretation of Scripture, so is someone else…with an entirely different view.
4. “The Bible is God’s little instruction book.”
I don’t know where to start on this one. I was listening to a sermon online in which the speaker said that the Bible offers guidance for every aspect of our lives. That reminded me of the old Saturday Night Live sketch with Sally Field playing a woman who consulted God for everything, literally. The idea that the Bible has something personal for us in every verse is a really self-centered perspective. (And kind of stupid, too: “Of Zattu, 945.” -Ezra 2:8.) Not only that, it reduces the Bible from the story of God’s love for humanity to nothing more than something we’d keep in the car in case that funny little light appears on the dashboard. What a depressing way to interact with Scripture.
3. “Lost people.”
Yeah, I hate this phrase. When I think of my family and friends who are not Christians, I don’t think of them as “lost people.” If I must think of them collectively, they are non-Christians. Individually, they are atheists, agnostic, Jewish, Buddhists, Unitarians, and so on. I know how frustrating it is as a Christian to have people assume things about me because of my faith. I wouldn’t appreciate it if my friends and family privately referred to me as “one of those super-religious idiots.” I also remember well enough what it was like to be a non-Christian. If I’d found out back then that people were calling me “lost,” I would never have wanted to set foot in that church again. Whether or not a Christian believes that someone is “lost” without faith in Jesus is not a reason to call them that. I think the phrase is intended to communicate the urgency of evangelism. Instead, it communicates that we like to categorize people and are more concerned with converting them than with actually knowing them.
2. “Radically inclusive.”
This one’s touchy, because in theory, I agree with the concept. However, I think it’s often misused and misapplied. Jesus practiced radical inclusion. He touched the sick, he interacted with Samaritans, he gathered tax collectors and sinners and called them friends. It doesn’t count in the same category when we exclude people because there is something we don’t like or because we’ve interpreted Scripture to enable us to leave some people out.
1. “It’s all part of God’s plan.”
Oh, dear. Well, when we think of the Bible as an instruction manual and we claim that it’s clear on doctrine, it’s not hard to understand this one. It’s very easy to believe that the ordinary annoyances and difficulties of life are part of God’s plan to make us better people. But this is far to simple an answer to the grief of parents who have lost their infant to birth defects or their child to cancer. It’s hard to swallow when that drunk driver hits your car. It doesn’t make sense when you watch your neighbor’s house go up in flames because of faulty wiring. It certainly doesn’t seem clear when we live in a country where most of us have enough food and clean water, but whole communities in other places have neither. Putting it down to “God’s plan” is a way to distance ourselves from having to do anything. After all, if God orchestrated it, who am I to get involved? Surely God will take care of it? Please listen to me: Those are not words of comfort. If you know someone who is going through something, let that be the absolute last thing that comes out of your mouth in response.
What Christianese have you heard at church that you’d like to chuck out the window?
I’ll admit it, #2 was a mantra for me at one time. What was I thinking???
Oh, I hear you; me too. It’s taken me years to see it differently. I still sometimes catch myself trying to find some hidden meaning in something.
I love this Amy! So true! I was raised Baptist (and still am Baptist) and the expression “lost people” only started to bother me when I started attending seminary. It really irks me now, too. Great post.
Thanks! I went from a Presbyterian church to a non-denom, and it was only then that I heard this expression (typically non-Christians were referred to as “unsaved,” which has its own baggage). I had never actually heard it put that way before. A similar one is “people far from God.” If God loves us, regardless of where we are in our faith journey, then how can anyone be “far” from God?
The variant on #1 that I find particularly cringe-inducing is “God never gives you more than you can handle.” If that’s true, then, to paraphrase one of my fictional heroes, God expected way too much of Justin Aaberg.
To say such a thing is to take a cheap shortcut past real grace, to be unwilling to engage with the terrifying question of theodicy, and to reduce four or five millenia of Judeo-Christian theology and philosophy to a motivational poster, not to mention sending the message that if you’re feeling overwhelmed by life, it’s probably your own fault. It’s crap.
My own spin on many of the items on your list is that they come from a difficulty distinguishing a secret from a mystery. Let me explain. (No, there is too much. Let me sum up.)
A secret is akin to a puzzle with a solution. It’s a hidden piece of information that you can learn. Masonic rites are a secret. The contents of the Vatican’s vaults are a secret. The knowledge may be kept from the uninitiated, but a person can have access to it under the right circumstances.
A mystery, on the other hand, is something the human mind cannot hope to encompass. A mystery can be contemplated, but never entirely resolved or understood given human limitations. Theodicy is a mystery. The Trinity is a mystery. I suspect that “I bring not peace, but a sword” is as well. So is “All beings are Buddha beings.” Even in my own humanist-centered tradition, we have “the inherent worth and dignity of every human being,” which is a mystery I suspect I will struggle with for all my days.
Folks who see the Bible as an instruction book, or who think its text is plain and unambiguous on just about anything it addresses, are taking a work of profound and complex mysteries and treating it as if it were simply a book of secrets. I would submit that a holy book worth anything at all deserves to be treated better than a Secret Decoder Ring. It may in fact reveal to you a missing key to your life, but you think the door it opens gives you any easy or straightforward answers, you may have arrived at the wrong place.
Oh my goodness, yes. “Secret decoder ring,” exactly. It often seems to me that Biblical literalists want to open up their box of religious Cracker Jack and find the equivalent of the ring or the mini-comic: something that’s going to give them a truism they can take with them to explain all the unexplainable that happens around us every day. I’ve given up on that method of Bible reading, because I just don’t find that it leads me to greater service to my fellow humans, nor does it bring me personally any closer to the Divine.
And yeah, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” is pretty bad too. I may have to write a second post of stupid crap spouted in the name of Jesus.