What I Read On Vacation

Every once in a while, I read a book that stretches my traditional Christian thinking and that was the case with a book I read over my vacation. Several years ago, I was told by a church member I shouldn’t be reading such books and certainly not sharing them with others. I have to say my faith has grown much more from reading books that challenge my faith than from reading books that just confirm what I already believe. I hope, by sharing with you what challenges me, you grow in faith as well.

The book is entitled An American Gospel by Eric Reese. I decided to read it after I heard the author interviewed on the radio. Reese is the son and grandson of fundamentalist Baptist ministers and is presently a writer in residence at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. There is a lot going on in this book: Reese’s attempt to capture what he calls “the American Gospel,” which grew out of a response to the restrictive puritan beginnings of religion in America; sharing his love of American literature and its writers and finding spiritual direction in them; working through his father’s suicide and trying to make some spiritual sense of it; and a little touch of environmentalist tree hugging at the end of the book. But the reason I decided to read the book was that Reese, in the radio interview, said he no longer went to church. If the Christian church is declining, as the surveys increasingly tell us, we better find out the reasons our friends and neighbors are choosing spiritual pathways other than the church. Eric Reese’s story and faith journey did not disappoint.

In the introduction to the book, Reese begins with Leo Tolstoy and the inspiration Tolstoy received from the free spirits of American writers Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. Reese writes, “In The Kingdom of God is Within You, Tolstoy argued that one cannot believe in both the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed… In this sermon (following the Beatitudes), Jesus goes on to charge his crowd to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, give to those who beg, and avoid hypocritical judgments. By contrast, the Nicene Creed is solely an assertion of the divinity of Jesus…Tolstoy argued that either one accepts the Sermon’s rigorous demands for how we must act in this world, how we must treat others, or one chooses the Creed as a way of escaping from this world into another.”

Reese goes on to quote Tolstoy as writing, “The man who believes in salvation through faith in the redemption or sacraments cannot devote all his powers to realizing Christ’s moral teaching in his life.” What Reese says in his book is we have emphasized the divinity of Christ to the exclusion of the humanity of Jesus. We have placed personal salvation over our responsibility to love God and our neighbor – the greatest commandment as Jesus would say. We have concentrated our faith more on entering the Kingdom of God in heaven than we have building the Kingdom of God on earth.

First let me say, I don’t believe we must put such a strict dividing line between the divinity of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus – our salvation and the works of faith. As the Book of James reminds us, through our salvation (our oneness with God through Christ) flows the works of faith. One does not have to throw out the divinity of Jesus to follow the teachings of Jesus or visa versa. But Reese’s point is clear and important – as a person seeking spirituality outside of the church Reese is telling us, until I see the people of the church changing the world through the works demanded by Jesus, I will not believe of your salvation (oneness with Him) in His name. Jesus warned us of being like the hypocritical Pharisee praying in the marketplace. (Luke 18:9-14) He encouraged us to show God’s love through our lives more than anyone else. (Matthew 5:43-48) Jesus knew that was the way into the hearts of those seeking something more in their lives.

We must listen to the Eric Reeses of the world. They are telling us why they have not found the church to be a legitimate pathway to the spirit of God. They are telling us there is an incongruity in what we say and what we do and they don’t want any part of it. John reminds us of that incongruity, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (I John 4:20). So put your acts of faith where your religious mouth is. Never ask someone if they are saved before you show them your oneness with God in the way you live.