Thursday morning when I went out to pick up the newspaper I noticed this little envelope stuffed under my front door:  Will This World Survive?  I assumed my neighbors also got one. I hope I wasn’t the only one. The photos and text inside produced a familiar scenario:  “There have been many wars and rumors of war, earthquakes, famines, lawlessness—these and many other signs were foretold in the Bible and are now being fulfilled, which means that the end of the world is near. But you, dear friend, can survive and enjoy the blessings of God’s new world.”

The tract didn’t say how I could survive.  That part was left out.  But if I wanted “more information” I could write the Jehovah Witnesses at any one of a dozen locations ranging from Australia to Barbados to 25 Columbia Heights Brooklyn, New York.  I thought Barbados or Australia might be nice, but Brooklyn!

Ever gotten one of these?  I can’t say I was offended.  What do the Jehovah Witnesses know about me?  They’re just doing their thing—passing out tracts, hoping to scare up a little business.  I didn’t find that offensive. I didn’t take it personally. If they want to believe the world is ending, have at it. Now if they come to my door and I’m in the right mood, I might mess with them. You know, play along to see what they have to say. But usually I’m not in the mood, so I politely shut the door.  I don’t take offense. They’d really have to get in my face before I’d take offense.  My attitude is usually, “My good fellow, dear madam, please move on.  I already have a faith. Thank you so very. I’m doing quite fine.  Please take your wares and Have a Nice Day.”

I am not interested in debating with Jehovah Witnesses.  They don’t offend me.  I could say the same about most TV preachers.  I don’t care for TV preachers, but they don’t offend me.  Paula’s gotten to where she won’t let me watch TV preachers. She doesn’t want to hear it—not so much them, but me, “Can you believe this guy?  Why do people watch this #&*!  This is awful.  This is terrible. They’re giving Christian faith a bad name.”  

 

“Does this offend you?”

What does it take for your religious sensibilities to be offended? John says disciples were complaining.  Grumbling.  “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  Jesus asks his followers, “Does this offend you?”  We’re not talking tracts here, pleas for money, angels dancing on pinheads. Disciples were offended. Their world was rocked, which I find surprising. You see, I tend to think that back in Bible Times people just believed in God.  You know they just took things on faith. They accepted the miracles, healings, angels, demons, God speaking out of burning bushes, walking on water, raising the dead.  Why would they be offended? What could Jesus possibly say to upset them? 

Faith, in those days, faith before the dawn of scientific thought, faith prior to the Age of Reason, faith prior to the Enlightenment, well, wasn’t it a snap?  You know, the uneducated masses, simple fisherfolk, salt of the earth types, well, weren’t they  pre-disposed to belief, unencumbered by the obstacles we moderns face?

Indeed, thoughtful people define our age as A Secular Age, one unfriendly, hostile even to faith.  People in Bible Times didn’t live in A Secular Age.  They lived in The Age of Faith.  Everybody believed in God. 

“This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” 

In The Age of Faith, where did this objection come from?  Why the offense?  Surely our pre-modern brothers and sisters would not have found anything Jesus taught unacceptable.  They were so uninformed, so ill-informed.  Why grumble? Why complain?  Why didn’t they just go along with Jesus? After all, they were unthinking, unsuspecting, uncorrupted fisherfolk who wanted to believe in God, who needed to believe in God, so why the heartburn?  What’s not to accept?

“Does this [teaching] offend you?” 

The word in the original is elsewhere translated as scandalized. It means stumbling block.  “Does this teaching shake up your faith?  Does it pain you, offend you, shock you?”

John doesn’t tell us exactly how Jesus knew about the disciples’ offense and their grumbling. He doesn’t describe a scene such as this: “The disciples were walking through the district of Galilee and Matthew said to Thomas, ‘Can you believe what Jesus said?’  And Thomas said, ‘Yeah, what a load.’”  That doesn’t happen. John’s more subtle. The word he uses is “aware.”  Jesus is aware that the disciples are grumbling. He is aware that they have taken offense. Like God, Jesus hears things. He knows things.  Jesus sees as God sees—not outwardly, but the imagination of the heart. “Being aware that his disciples were complaining, [Jesus] said to them, ‘Does this offend you?’”

Well, what was the cause of their offense? What did Jesus teach that they found so unsettling?  Just this:  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” 

“Does this offend you?”  Apparently it did.

 

This summer I read a book by Charles Taylor titled A Secular Age. It’s a great big, thick book running over 800 pages.  Reviewers called it Taylor’s life’s work.  Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University. He won the Templeton Prize in 2007.  He’s a very smart man, a very careful scholar.  The thesis he set out to prove is this:  five hundred years ago it was impossible not to believe in God.  Today faith is “one human possibility among others.  Belief in God is no longer axiomatic.  There are alternatives.”  In short, ours is a secular age.

Taylor uses the term secular in three senses.  The first has to do with God in public spaces.  We no longer connect God or expect God to guarantee political entities.  Five hundred years ago this was not the case.  Kings ruled by divine right. Today, secular societies fully function without reference to God. Except for presidential benedictions and prayer breakfasts, we keep religion and politics separate.

Walking through Westminster Abby this summer, I thanked God for Thomas Jefferson and the church and state separation he helped inspire.  I like Mayor Jones and Governor Riley, but I don’t want them speaking for or to the church. And I surely don’t want Government Street to become their personal tomb, their shrine.

Taylor uses the word secular in a second sense with reference to declining religious practice, chiefly evidenced by reduced membership and worship attendance.  For most Western societies, Sunday is not a day for worship, church going or spiritual discipline, but rather is my day to do what I want.  Church attendance in Europe is around 10%. In the US, it hovers between 27 and 40 percent depending on whose telling the truth and doing the counting.

The primary way Taylor defines the term secular and the notion he returns to again and again is the idea of disenchantment.  We no longer live in a God-haunted world. The world is flat; flat, not in Thomas Friedman’s use of that term, but flat in the sense that we fully account for the origin and destiny of human life without reference to God.  Taylor calls this condition of modern life exclusive humanism by which he means that there are “no final goals beyond human flourishing, or any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing.”  We no longer live to “glorify God.” We live to glorify human flourishing.

I liked Taylor’s book and I think he has some powerful things to say about our times. But I don’t think the problem of unbelief is exclusive humanism.  Secularism certainly characterizes our age but it is not the chief obstacle to faith. Something more fundamental than a world come of age is at the root of unbelief. 

Here’s my take—I don’t think we have a problem believing in a far off distant God, a General Contractor who creates everything. Exclusive humanism is not really bothered by this God.  Nor is secularism troubled by God sitting enthroned in Heaven.  That’s a God we can believe in, a distant God, a nameless, faceless deity, a far-father who stays out of our way, a God who is handy in emergencies but is otherwise of little use. Secularism supports an un-intrusive God, an absentee father—good for gift-giving at Christmas but hardly someone you want to spend a morning with.  It’s not the far-father who gives us trouble, but the God who comes down out of heaven, the one who claims to be the Bread of Life. That God is another story.

I’m right there with the disciples—the one who comes down out of heaven is the one I find difficult. He’s the one I find offensive.  Why do I need someone to save me from my sins?  I’m generally a pretty-ok-nice-guy. Like everyone else, I’ve got my faults, but do I really need somebody to give “their flesh” for my life?  Do I really need a Savior to save me from my sins? 

This teaching is difficult. It offends.  I’d prefer to get on about my life managing as best as I can.  Why involve a Redeemer?  Is my condition so curved in upon itself that I need a Savior?  Can’t I make amends on my own? Isn’t it sufficient simply to say, “I’m sorry? Please excuse me. I didn’t mean to.  I made a mistake?”  Must I have a Savior who dies, one who sheds flesh and blood to pull me from my humanity curved in upon itself?  Is it not sufficient simply to be a good person, to treat others fairly, kindly? 

Here’s the catch, here’s the offense: when I acknowledge my need for a Savior, I am also compelled to acknowledge my lack, my deficiency, my need, my hunger, my sin.  This teaching is difficult. It offends.

 

“Because of this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”

That’s one option—turn away. Walk away.  Be content with God in heaven. It’s, well, it’s so much simpler, so uncomplicated, convenient.  “O God; yes, I believe in God. He’s up in heaven, watching over us all, but Jesus dying for my sins and the sins of the world, is that really necessary? This is a difficult teaching. It offends.” 

“So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

That’s the other option, the complicated one, the choice that requires a different posture—not going away, but going toward the Savior. Going toward the Savior means we acknowledge our need, our emptiness, our lack, our hunger.  It’s a difficult teaching. It brings offense: “Who me? I don’t need any help. I’m okay. Everything’s just fine. I’m full.”  Going toward the Savior is difficult, offensive even, but it also brings life, it brings health, salvation.

“Lord, to whom can we go?”

Indeed, to whom shall you go? Where will you find bread for the hunger you feel but are offended to acknowledge?  “Lord you have the words of eternal life.” Amen.