Inconvenient Religon

The religious tradition from which I come is noted for having many rules and regulations relating even to the minutest details of life; rules about how people dress; how they spend their time, even how their cut (or don't cut) their hair. And I realize that many people, even under the general umbrella of Christianity, find this either silly or psychotic. Even those who believe in God do not necessarily approve of this method of following God. I heard someone the other day talking about one of these standards, and they commented: “God doesn't care about that. It's not as if you're out there raping or murdering.” It is an open question as to how anyone can be so certain as an a priori assumption about what God does or does not care about, but that is not the point I want to make.

The point I want to make is this. The religious standards of the Holiness Movement (and in general the more 'conservative' side of 'evangelicalism'--using both terms advisedly) are decidedly inconvenient. They certainly get in the way of people who are trying to live a normal life in this world. I sympathize with the people (both inside and outside our movement) who feel that things which would be much simpler, much tidier, and certainly much more convenient if we left all these standards in the dumpster or at least in a museum. And yet, I believe this attitude is fundamentally wrong.

I do not and I cannot believe in a convenient religion. Do not misunderstand me. There is no value in inconvenience or difficulty for their own sake. Certainly, there have been some religious people who took an unholy delight in causing problems for others. There have been some who have taken sadistic pleasure in the commission “to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down” (which was the exact opposite of Jeremiah's feeling on the matter).  But none of this changes the fact.

And the fact is that a convenient religion is a pointless religion. A god who never commands you to do something you don't want to do; a revelation which only forbids those extreme sins you never dreamed of committing in the first place; a religion which never inconveniences you--none of these things are worth having around at all. George Bernard Shaw was known for his contrary nature and people complained that he always said what you didn't expect him to say. G. K. Chesterton responded that anytime you go out to listen to someone speak you expect them to say what you don't expect. “If we do not expect the unexpected, why do we go there at all? If we expect the expected, why do we not sit at home and expect it by ourselves?” (Heretics, Chapter 16) In the same way, if your God only tells you the things you already knew; if your religion only teaches you to do the things you were going to do anyway; then why bother having a religion at all?

I believe in inconvenient religion. I believe in a God who makes unexpected and even unpleasant demands. I am not saying that all the interpretations embraced by my particular religious tradition are right--that would be a matter too long to be discussed here. And I am not saying that there is anything meritorious about finding difficulties and problems. But I am saying that a religion which never inconveniences you; a religion which makes no demands on you, is not true religion. A God who never gets in your way is not much of a god. The voice which offers condolences and never commands is not the voice of God. “Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality... Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knees... [A] safe god, a tame god, soon proclaims himself to any sound mind as a fantasy.” (Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 76)

If you awake one morning and everything is clean and white; and no matter where you go there is nothing hard or sharp; where everything is soft and gentle--then you are either in Heaven or a Padded Cell. Most likely the latter. As long as we live in this world, we live in a world of danger and pain and for that reason, we live in a world of inconvenience. If we do not bang up against the fence, we will bang up against the ground at the bottom of the cliff. We are not inconvenienced by the warning sign, we will be inconvenienced by the thing it warns off. If we do not face up to the law of God, we will, in the end, face up to the wrath of God. The attempt to escape all inconvenience leads inevitably to the destruction of the mind or the soul. God is not convenient. God is not safe. But God is good; and whatever inconveniences He puts in our way are “for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.” (Hebrews 12:10)