A CHURCH OF COMFORT AND CONFRONTATION

In his book One Taste Ken Wilber suggests that religion performs two important but separate functions.

Religion “acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self.” It struggles to help us endure and make sense of the difficulties we inevitably experience in life. Religion seeks to give consolation and strength by promising God’s favour in the present or in an ultimate eternal reward. This is comfort religion.

But religion also serves “the function of radical transformation and liberation.” It “does not fortify the separate self, but utterly shatters it.” Religion serves to destabilize the superficial self by which we attempt to navigate so much of life. It challenges us to open to a deeper more real dimension of our being where we discover the presence of God and our lives begin to be transformed. This is confrontation religion.

Jesus practiced both comfort and confrontation religion, sometimes voicing both in the same breath. Jesus said, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” That is comfort religion. Then he went on to say, “and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.” (Matthew 23:37,38) That is confrontation.

In the first statement Jesus portrays himself offering protection, safety and nurture for those who would accept his offer. Jesus then denounces those who refuse to heed his call and suggests that their lives are going to unravel. If we refuse God’s gift of comfort, turmoil and chaos in some form will inevitably follow.

Jesus’ teaching tends more towards confrontation than comfort. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 19:23) “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.” (Mark 10:21) “You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?” (Matthew 23:33) “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

Jesus understood the terrible cost of our attachments. He knew that we spend a great deal of our lives trapped by our defended, grasping, demanding, needy little self. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:39-41) He believed that until we let this little self die, it always gets in the way of our true destiny as beings created to bear the image of God. “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who loves their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:35)

Jesus confronted, often harshly, the empty, dead-end ways we live because he knew the price we pay for following the self-centered demands of the ego instead of taking up our cross and following him. “What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:36) Jesus confronted the small human ego-self because Jesus knew that the deep purpose of religion was to bring about transformation. He knew that we are destined as human beings to be the light of the world. “You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14)

In my experience, the church works harder at comfort religion than we do at confrontation religion. But comfort without confrontation slips into sentimentalism and never leads to transformation. While confrontation without comfort is harsh and legalistic, replacing moralism and judgment for grace and mercy.

How can the church practice comfort religion, while at the same time confronting the small programs of self-protection to which we all fall prey? What would it look like for the church to call us to a life of deep transforming union with God through Jesus Christ?

If church leaves us simply with the comfort that we’re all ok and everything will work out in the end, the church has failed. Jesus intended us to live radically new lives in this world. He instructed his followers to discover an entirely new way of living. He called those who would be his followers to “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” and to trust that when we get the kingdom first, every other aspect of our lives will find its proper place. (Matthew 6:33)

Paul understood the radical implications of following Jesus and said that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (II Corinthians 5:17) The church exists to offer us the comfort of God’s love and peace and then to challenge us to live as “a new creation.”

Too often our vision of the Christian life has been too small. We have viewed the Christian message as final comfort in heaven for those who trust in Christ and persevere in the constant struggle to be moral and do good deeds before they die. Paul understood that God’s vision for our lives goes far beyond this limited picture. For Paul the journey of our lives is a process of radical transformation into the likeness of the God in whose image we were created. “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (II Corinthians 3:18)

I wonder if we expect the church to call us to lives of radical transformation. Do we anticipate that our involvement in the community of those who call themselves followers of Christ will confront us with the deep challenge to forsake all our attachments and embrace the liberty that Jesus promised when he said, “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed”? (John 8:36) Do we look to the church for both comfort and confrontation?

When we experience both comfort and confrontation, we will find within ourselves an expanding security. We will know that our lives are grounded in Christ, that our identity is fixed in God and that we depend upon nothing other than God’s presence to support our identity or give us a sense of well-being. We will be more gentle, more open, more kind, and more gracious.

A community that practices a balance of comfort and confrontation will be characterized by non-violence and an absence of abuse, manipulation and rigidity. It will be an expansive community, open to people wherever they may be in their lives and in their spiritual journey. It will be a flexible community whose only centre is the presence of God in Christ Jesus and whose only motivation is to faithfully follow the leading of God’s unpredictable Holy Spirit. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) So we will trust that those around us, desire as much as we to allow God’s Spirit to be fully and deeply at work in their lives.

To maintain a balance of comfort and confrontation we must know that our true identity lies in the deep common life we share in Christ. In order to find this true identity we must be people of deep prayer and worship. We must open ourselves daily to the presence of God’s Spirit at work in our lives. We must hold firmly to the depths of faith revealed in our sacred texts and known to us by God’s Spirit. And, at the same time, we must be willing to sit lightly to our own agendas, needs, demands, and pet-projects.

Our identity does not reside in being right. We will always be willing to say, “I may be wrong.” This is not a lack of conviction but a humility that resides in the realistic assessment of the profound limitations of the human ability to know. Our understanding is boundaried on every side by our cultural background, our personal upbringing, ongoing life-experience, and the unique nature of our own personality. This is why we always need to be able, within the context of comfort, to remain open to confrontation. Healthy communities will embrace a diversity of opinion even on important issues. We need to be able to extend comfort to those with whom we may disagree. We need to accept and celebrate the inevitable confrontation that comes from living close to those whose perception of truth may differ from ours.

On the surface, a church that practices both comfort and confrontation may appear to be a confusing and unsettling place. Things will not always be predictable. Life may look untidy, even at times chaotic. But when comfort and confrontation are held in balance there will be a deep core of confidence that resides in the heart of every community member. Each person will know that every other person desires simply to rest and trust in the presence and work of Christ in their lives. We will honour each other’s journey, protecting the right and duty of each person to hear God and to contribute to the conversation of our community according to their perception of God’s word.

Security in such a community does not lie in conformity or even agreement. It resides in a deeper place in which we know that we are bound together by invisible ties of love and truth. We find a deep comfort in our common identity in Christ and therefore can afford to allow all our idols to be challenged and deconstructed within a community whose bonds lie deeper than a masquerade of common life founded on uniformity of opinion.

The only way any group of people can become such an expansive faith community is for each member of that community to be deeply committed to the vision of an open, trusting, life lived in faith and trust in God. There is no program for creating such a community. It can only emerge out of the shared faith of its members. It will only happen when we each assume adult responsibility for our own convictions and are willing to share the truth as we understand it and to respect the truth shared by every other person. As we walk with integrity our journey on in the Spirit, we will walk together as a light to the world and a witness to the comforting and transforming power of love we find in Christ and experience in one another.



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