Missionaries for the Sake of It

There is an extremely important matter to be found among some of the topics we have discussed, particularly among the topics of personal agency and of specific religious beliefs.  As regards specific religious beliefs, they come into play when Jesus says that salvation comes from the Jews, or that he was only sent to the Jews, or that his apostles should heed the following guidance when he sends them out:

"Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 10:5-6, KJV).

And as regards personal agency, there is the question of persons being required to embrace certain religious beliefs in order to be saved.  Of course, the requirement of persons "to embrace certain religious beliefs in order to be saved" might as well be a stand-in for the whole of church history--two thousand years of horror have heaved up over such questions.

I say that these two matters coalesce into one--the extremely important matter to which I first referred-- and they are fused in something Jesus tells the Samaritan woman:

"Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.  Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.  But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him" (John 4:21-23).

But what is there that would drive us to such worship?  As regards personal agency, there is the age-old and never-resolved question: How can a person make himself or herself believe in something--at least, without sacrificing integrity.  To say, "I believe some heretical thing--no, wait!--to save my soul I will say I believe something else--no wait!--that statement of mine is by definition a lie!--no, wait! . . . ."  The whole business is ridiculous, and has deserved all the ridicule it has gotten.  Ultimately the question of what we believe goes back into childhood, back beyond any age of responsibility.  And yet, does Jesus really require the adoption of a doctrine or theology?  As he continues to the Samaritan woman:

"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (4:24).

Now we are zeroing in on The Extremely Important Matter, and it bears on the paramount saying of Jesus just quoted--"God is a Spirit."  Needless, to say, we are approaching the daunting realm of consideration of The Unforgivable Sin, that teaching of Jesus that stands in such contrast to his statement that blasphemy can be forgiven.  The divine--such as it can be comprehended--can be understood as God or the Son of God, and inescapably we end up in our quivering thought processes reducing those concepts to poorly-framed or poorly-conceptualized "gods"--fodder for our musings and occasional outbursts and hopefully less occasional blasphemies.  God as a Spirit, on the other hand, folds back on our pre-conceptual embracing of existence; both the religionist and the atheist can decided if the existence of which we may be cognizant is malign.  (Attempting to say that God and everything he made is malign will not cut it; we would still in that moment be crediting that sense of justice that equates to him, though in our emotion we seek to separate justice from our conceptualization of him.)

All of us in our moods can blaspheme God; that fact--though regrettable in itself--does not bear on why we might make such utterances.  If we are angry at God for being unjust (as we see it) we are still crediting the existence of that Justice, abroad and above the universe, that speaks more to the character of God than any conceptualization we might have of him.

In other words, to contradict the evangelicals most distinctly, it is not important to know who Jesus is.  It is not important to know who God is.  It is, however, important to know what God is.

"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24).

We have touched on the "spirit" part, but what about the "truth" part?  Earlier I referred to the episode when Jesus sent his apostles "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."  Correctly viewed, this commission is described by Jesus in an extended passage, so dire in its content that many have--without clear textual warrant--assumed that its latter verses are meant to be about the "End Times."  Jesus says, "And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.  But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak" (Matthew 10: 18-19).

If it were for the furtherance of the cause of God, surely we would be willing that anything be given to us to speak, perhaps even if it were an utterance that we might not want to own.  Perhaps our sincerity will be made plain in our halting, agitated speech.  Or perhaps (thinking of the erroneous minutiae of Stephen's speech) we might be mistaken--at least we can be sincere.  At least we can worship God in truth.

So now I would like to try to state The Extremely Important Matter to which I at first referred.  As I said, there is an extremely important matter to be found among some of the topics we have discussed, particularly among the topics of personal agency and of specific religious beliefs.  The matter is this: all that matters is the truth.  I did not capitalize Truth; that is rubbish.  We all know what the truth is: the honest attempt to relate what honesty requires.

As regarding specific religious beliefs: Who cares?  A Hindu who trembles before a universal divinity that encompasses all virtues and demands all virtues is as much a Christian as anybody else.

As regarding personal agency: What business is it of ours?  We can scarcely say why we ourselves do what we do; it is a horror for us to imagine a mission for ourselves in which we would convert others to our beliefs--or imagine the recalcitrant among those others to be damned.

I hope to have more to say about the way Jesus sends believers into the world.  For now I will conclude with quoting Jesus from Matthew:

"And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men" (4:19).  This was Jesus' first recorded encounter with Peter and Andrew.  He did not first and foremost promise to teach them what to say; he did not first and foremost promise that anyone would listen to them.  As foreshadowed above, and as we shall see, these observations do not stand alone--Jesus sends people on missions so they can be people on missions.  It is we who decide that it matters if those missions are successful, or that it matters if those missions succeed in planting whatever phantasms we scatter over our listeners' birthright of the inborn--and inescapable--knowledge of God's attributes.