Religious Buffet

Again I'm deviating from the norm by addressing issues relating to Mormonism, but a Mormon friend of mine sent me this quote from a frustrated Protestant, and I thought it would be good to post, along with my response.

For those of you who don't know much about Mormonism, keep in mind one of the main arguments Mormons pose against Protestant Christianity is that we are too fragmented to give a clear and reliable understanding of God.

Here's the quote:

"I don't like all these 'watered down gospels'. It's like a buffet where you can just go and get what you want and walk by the rest. This buffet analogy is a perfect description of the Christian world in general. If you don't like what your church teaches you just walk across the street to a different one and hear what you want to hear. And if you don't want to go on Sunday you can go on Wednesday for an hour. And if you don't want to do that you can just have a fellowship group at your house. And if you don't want to do that you can just read the Bible because the Bible is all you need anyway. And if reading the Bible is still too much for you then you can listen to Christian radio and then just say out loud that you accept Christ and you'll be saved. Isn't it great how easy salvation has gotten over the years?"

My Response:

I sympathize with these comments. I also don't think they're too hard to understand when one considers the nature of contemporary American culture and the nature of Protestantism itself.

The culture at large is defined by consumerism, free market, customer service, fast food, immediate-access entertainment, etc. It's not hard to see how this affects many people's attitudes towards church activity. As the person says, if one doesn't like one thing, then he can go some where else. It's a "market" mentality.

Also, many churches gain attendees by emphasizing the comforting, easy-to-accept aspects of Christianity like the fact that God loves us and has a plan for our lives and has made available our eternal fulfillment in the person of Christ, while obscuring the difficult aspects like our own inherent sinfulness, the call to sacrifice, the division Christ creates in families when some don't follow Him, Jesus' torture and suffering for our sake, and the reality of hell. Probably one of the most prominent examples of a Protestant church (one of the largest in the country) which is all "positive" and rarely, if ever, focuses on the suffering of Christ or the reality of sin, is Lakewood Church in Houston, whose leader/pastor is Joel O'steen. He's also known for writing some best-selling books, Your Best Life Now being one of them. Lakewood is the epitome of a "feel good" church which presents a watered down or fragmented version of the whole Christian message.

Also, this problem is an inherent weakness in Protestantism in general because it is not, like Mormonism and Roman Catholicism (I think this is one of the very few similarities in Mormonism and RC), an authoritarian structure. The problems of the very apparent shallow and uncommitted Christianity referenced in the quote are only possible when people have the freedom to choose how and where they worship. Obviously, if one accepts that the LDS prophet and the priesthood are the authority of God on earth, then one has no choice when that authority says he must go to a certain ward at a certain time, give a certain percentage of his money, etc.

I think the most important thing I can say about those described in the quote you cite is that these are people who aren't really serious to begin with. These are people (I've seen it all my Christian life, and have always been baffled) who go to church for many reasons other than following Christ--because they like the way the music and the atmosphere makes them feel, because they generally believe being in church makes them a good person, or because they think church activity is the best way to instill good morals in their kids. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a German pastor who opposed the Nazis and was killed by them, and quite a Protestant hero) calls this attitude, among other things, "cheap grace."

I think the same problem exists in Mormonism (and likely most religious groups) but is just less visible because of the authoritarian structure. Leslie had a friend in the ward where she attended in college whose dad told her he really didn't know if he believed that Joseph Smith had a vision and so forth, but he was a member of the LDS Church because he thought it provided a good atmosphere to raise his kids. Another example of this is a Mormon student I taught. I asked him if he was going to go on a mission when he turned 19 and his response was, "Of course. My dad will kick me out of the house if I don't."

In the Protestant perspective, this all amounts to deep frustration with people, but not an insecurity about the foundation of what we believe. Protestants understand ultimate authority to lie not in a priesthood, pope or prophet, or in a church structure, but in the living person of Christ and in what God communicates to us through the Bible. None of this is threatened by the reality of so many people "church shopping" or seeking "cheap grace." If every Protestant church in the country closed its doors because of corrupt leadership or shallow commitment of its members, this would be painfully frustrating, but it would not diminish the power, authority and goodness of the person of Christ, on whom genuine Christians center their lives.

MM