Ok, so my Peter Rollins man crush continues…
In addition to The Fidelity of Betrayal, i am also reading The Orthodox Heretic his collection of short stories or parables — which i passionately recommend to anyone at all willing to have their faith challenged.
My favorite short story so far is called Finding Faith. What happens is that a preacher finds out that he has the unique “gift” for being able to pray people into losing their faith. Being a Christian minister he can’t figure out what this “gift” is good for until he meets a business man on a bus. This business man leads a life (Monday to Saturday) that is dis-congruous with the life of Christ but goes to church and reads his Bible and does all the other things that a “good christian” is supposed to do. Until our minister prays away his faith.
After the business man’s faith is gone and he stops going to church and doing all these “Christian” things, he realizes the depravity of the rest of his life, and makes radical changes to his daily life. Later he finds the minister again and thanks him for helping him “find his faith”.
The point is that sometimes our “Christianity” serve as a sort of a release-valve to let us live otherwise worldly lives — an “opiate for the masses” as Karl Marx would say.
The question then, for me, is how do we shape our communal lives of faith not to serve this function, but rather to give each other the strength to change our lives Monday – Saturday? Is it something that the community (and its leadership) has any influence over? or is it completely in the hands of each individual member and what they bring to the community?