Elevator Christians

According to former pastor and author Brian D. McLaren in his 2016 book The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be Christian: “As my friend and colleague Diana Butler Bass puts it, we have been an elevator religion focused on getting people up, up, and away from this troubled earth to heaven, where God and the angels sit in cloudy bliss, having left behind the problems of earth.  By keeping us looking up and away, elevator Christianity has kept us from noticing or taking seriously what is happening around us – growing economic inequality, deteriorating environmental quality, expanding militarization and weaponization. If we do notice, elevator Christianity teaches us to chalk up our troubles to the God of Supremacy’s preordained “last days” scenario.  After all, our belief system tells us, God loves immaterial souls, not matter, and if all this material stuff is destroyed, well…good riddance.  In short, belief-system Christianity keeps us arguing about our beliefs and singing songs about evacuating to heaven while the earth burns.  Greedy and exploitive politicians and their corporate allies could not ask for a better partner in crime."

McLaren’s view may seem a bit harsh.  Nevertheless, it is held by many Christians.  Still, he concluded: “Theologically, believers are increasingly rejecting the image of God as a violent Supreme Being and embracing the image of God as the renewing Spirit at work in our world for the common good.” This is the belief we need to embrace in the interest of our elusive pursuit of the common good.

Deacon David Pierce