Worldviews Thrown Out

In my last post I described something of “the pathology of worldviews”:

“Not content to seize upon values and follow them where they might lead (or follow them until we might realize they must be discarded), we contrive to place values on scales of moral theory and to imagine that our moral theories can extend to the bounds of our existences.”

Worldviews are bad things, and all too often they give us permission to do bad things.  Worldviews purport to bring order to our lives, and yet it is often in that which is disorderly and confusing that the truest lessons are to be learned.  I will present a couple of examples from the Gospels.  Luke and Matthew each have Jesus describing a great feast, meant to be a parable for the kingdom of heaven.  In Luke (14:15-24}, we are presented with “a great supper,” to which a “certain man . . . bade many”:

“And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.  And they all with one consent began to make excuse . . . . Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes . . . . Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.  For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.”

It might be unnecessary to say that the element of compulsion related in the passage above would seem to fit nicely with the “unmerited election” (or some such) that characterizes in part the worldview of the “faith alone” camp, although Jesus explodes that in the very next section:

“And there were great multitudes with him”—this is not some cryptic or esoteric teaching—“and he turned, and said unto them”:

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.  And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”

There could not, of course, be a plainer instance of “works” being described as necessary for salvation (nor indeed a more harrowing description of the kind of “works” required), unless it might be said that such self-sacrifice is only “truly” made by the elect, and arises not from the elect themselves but by divine bidding.  Yes, one might say that—but only within a realm of discourse in which warrantless assertions could be made with boundless license.  One might as well venture that Adam ate what Eve offered simply because he did not want to seem to slight his divine host’s choice of guests.

Or, in a more sober vein, there is Jesus’ conclusion to the “great supper” lesson, saying, “whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”  There would be a prudent sobriety also, in asking just how this is all supposed to contribute to a “worldview.”  Are not Jesus’ statements intended continually to shake the believer to the very core?  Is not the believer asked continually to discover what he or she values, resolving meanwhile to pursue untrodden and un-envisioned paths in pursuit of those values?  Who would not cast aside each and every permutation of burgeoning worldview, as being potentially a trap or a hindrance along the continually-discovered path?

Yet we assign worth to worldviews because we want to have worldviews—they are comfortable and comforting.  They also become threadbare, and the wearer becomes ridiculous.  A perfect example of this is the miniaturized and portable universe inhabited often by street-level evangelism.  An appalling amount of energy is expended by sincere “witnesses” intent on convincing “the world” (or rather, the “unsaved” of the world) of sinfulness.  In a world, supposedly, of continual affirmation of the individual’s self-esteem (or whatever is thought by evangelicals to be the current manifestation of the devil’s age-old lies), the witness resolutely tells “the world” that it is fallen and sinful.

However, apart from a slender cohort of Hollywood eccentrics, New Age philosophers, and liberal educators (routinely ridiculed in Christian circles for the ease with which their veneer of “non-judgmentalism” can be scratched), it would be difficult indeed to find persons who did not subscribe in substance to man’s “sin nature,” now or ever.  The Judaism of Jesus’ day, the remnants of the Herodian power structure, the Roman Empire, the pagan religions rife with purifications and sacrifices—all were chin-deep in the notion that people can transgress (and with awesome variety and persistence.)

Jesus admonished his followers not to lord it over each other in such oppressive manner as did the leaders of the Gentiles over their subjects.  There was no lack of notions of lawlessness and sinfulness—and punishments—among the nations.  The Jews needed look no farther than the stories of Daniel in the palaces of Babylon.  Yet no amount of old or new evidences of sin-recognition in the population at large will disturb the evangelical worldview that hovers over the notion that the cause of Christ is served by doling out a simple diagnosis of humanity’s ills—sinfulness—addressed by some simple prescription of salvation.

As though salvation from sin was ever meant to be simple.  A person’s struggle with sin can be as convoluted as the devil can devise (now at last we have him in his element), and a person’s resolve—attended by as much unmerited, untestable, and unquantifiable grace as a person might hope for—to resist sin and persist to the end must go wherever the end might lead.  This, then, would seem to be the lesson of Matthew’s version (22:1-14) of a great feast:

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.”

Matthew’s version descends even to murder and vengeance (though scarcely more exacting than Jesus’ demands—"whosoever doth not bear his cross”—in Luke) and leads to the king’s decree:

“Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.  So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.”

But the narrative is not yet finished: “And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?  And he was speechless.  Then the king said to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  For many are called, but few are chosen.”

It is not so much the clash between “faith” and “works” that concerns us here (though “works” seems to get the better of it).  What is of importance is the careening, unsettling nature of the parable.  I don’t know exactly what is meant by the man without a wedding garment, and neither does anyone else.  The matters described therein are not supposed to be easy or simple, and the last thing any of us needs in connection to such matters is this or that “worldview.”  Jesus tells us what to value (and what not to value) and we are challenged continually to consider whether his demands for self-sacrifice do not amount to the most prudent and humane means by which we might confront each moment.  As I wrote in the last post:

“We are told by our Savior to put our hands to the tasks around us, and to not worry about tomorrow.  Our worldviews, on the other hand, tell us that each and every task makes sense only in an all-encompassing context, and all are parts of some great plan to which we imagine ourselves privy.”