Tuesday, December 18, 2012

What's the Biggest Myth?

So what's the biggest myth in American Christianity?  What is the biggest myth, lie, story, line of whatever, that American Christianity as a whole (and to some extent Lutheranism) has swallowed?  Is it that Christians will be wealth?  Is it that the Church will always grow, if only we do things rightly?  Is it that if I am raising a stink I must be doing the work of God?

I will toss mine out, and I'd invite yours.  Mine is the myth of the orderly life.  I think the underlying myth that we tend to buy into is the idea that if we are Christian that our lives will be... more orderly.  We might not necessarily be so crass as to think that we will be rich (because mammon is bad...), but there's that expectation that things will be... orderly.   That the problems that confront people in the world will be kept at arm's length and away from us.

I'm a Christian - weird stuff shouldn't happen to me -- and it certainly shouldn't stick around in my life.

And it's an utter myth.  You're in the sinful world - and a sinner in the sinful world to boot.  Know what that means?  WEIRD STUFF ALWAYS.

The Christian faith doesn't prevent the weirdness, but it gives perspective.  Endurance.  Things like that.

So - any other myths?

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