I like to browse the “spirituality” section of the major bookstore chains to get an update on the current dialogue (or rock-throwing contest) between established religion and pagan culture. The very choice of books selected for promotion is often revealing. This time my eye went to Churched: One Kid’s Journey toward God despite a Holy Mess by Matthew Paul Turner (Waterbrook Press). Since I also grew up “churched”, and often feel like an outsider among the converts and critics that populate the book stalls, I was eager to gain some additional insight. Besides, on the front cover A.J. Jacobs said this was a book “at once funny and full of humanity”.
Unfortunately, my copy must be missing a chapter. Most of the book is dedicated to funny anecdotes revealing the foibles and hypocrisies of the institutional church (particularly the “fundamentalist” kind). This is coupled with touching stories of coaching by clearly loving parents, who resist critical thinking in favor of compassionate but obedient faith. Somewhere or other in the story, the author is supposed to reveal how and why he found God, started to love Jesus, and returned to church. But I missed it. Exactly when, how, and why did that happen? On page 154 (3/4 of the way through the book), the young teenager realizes that “it wasn’t so much that I was weird, but that fundamentalism was weird.” OK. I got that about 125 pages ago, and although I have been chuckling through the book, I’ve not learned anything new.
By the time I got to page 211 (there are only 13 pages left), it is clear that growing teenager increasingly ambiguous about faith and doubts the pastor’s credibility. The final pages skim a life that has since endured countless church services (not quite sure why), dabbled in Calvinism, played with independent mega-churches, and found some solace in the loving and non-judgmental relationships of a nameless “small country church in Maryland”. (It’s the one name I want to know, and don’t get). The tale ends with a skeptical young adult attending another independent church in downtown Nashville. The worship feels like “the aurora borealis on steroids and a timer”, but at least it’s “not hurting anybody”. High praise?
So exactly where is the turning point? Where does the churched kid find God? In the very last three pages it is revealed that he establishes a personal friendship with a pastor who seems (maybe) authentic, and finally accepts communion without being afraid. It seems to me that the reason why he was afraid, and the story of his journey to fearless faith, is the real story we long to hear. But it hasn’t happened. I now understand that the book was chosen by the marketers of the book chains because of what it said against religion, rather than for what it said in its favor. Secular therapists are cheering. God, contemporary readers now understand, is the absence of fear, a vague feeling of acceptance, a form of self-actualization, or a kind of heightened appreciation of friendship.
Most of all, I am disappointed in A.J. Jacobs. I respect his writing very much, and he said the book was “funny and full of humanity”. It is funny, but it isn’t really full of humanity. It is full of ecclesiology, and the rejection of ecclesiology; and full of psychological abuse, and an unguided therapeutic journey to wholeness. One suspects that there are profound existential questions buried between the paragraphs about incarnation, divine purpose, the human condition, and ultimate hope, which is what “being human” is actually about. But these never surface. They are buried under the jibes and jokes, sarcasm and satire that make this book an enjoyable one-time read that will be soon forgotten.
That’s OK, of course. It’s good to laugh. Yet there is a larger, deeper, more urgent conversation between Christian faith and pagan culture that is in serious jeopardy today. Culture really wants to write off faith as a psychological boondoggle or a quirky sociological phenomenon. Faith wants to write off culture as a complicated obstacle course on the way to salvation or one vast demonic deception. Autobiography has historically been one of the most effective strategies to do this. But will these deeper biographical sketches find there way into popular bookstores?
Tom Bandy
www.ThrivingChurch.com
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