This page was created on December 1, 2003
This page was last updated on January 4, 2005

I want to thank Regina for reminding us of the inner beauty of Christ's bride. Christ is indeed married to His bride the church, and subsequently, those calling themselves Christians are married to the groom, Jesus Christ. A commitment to Christ involves a commitment to His bride, the church, because a Christian without a church is like a fish without water. The church is the proper element for a believer. Simply speaking, unless you are part of Christ's bride, you have no part of the groom.

I also am in full agreement that even though His wife may look ugly at times -- even though we may have humanly failed to embody the groom's values of sacrifice, humility and relationship through the ethic of faith, hope and love -- the church has an inner beauty that perhaps only those on the inside can observe.

The question that nags me, though -- and a question outsiders may rightly ask -- is: how many wives does Christ have? Or rather, which one of the women who claims to be His "true" bride is telling the truth? Is His bride the Catholic Church? Would that be pre-Constantinople or post? Or maybe His preferred female would be more protestant, charismatic or Pentecostal? It wouldn't be hard to conclude that Christ's bride didn't take His own command -- "Whatever God has joined together, let no man separate" -- too seriously.

The church is a strange phenomenon, built by Christ, and splintered by man. Is it a physical reality or a mystical body? There have been so many questions, contradictions and blood spilt because of this "Bride of Christ!" Like it or not, the church is a bit of a mystery, and much of what has been called the church have been nothing more than imitators striving for power. And yet Christ's bride shelters many hurting individuals in various stages of healing. Would the world have been better without her?

Many have asked that question, and concluded that religion must go. But that judgment has been passed by exercising the very liberty which the Church herself has bestowed -- through the ideals which Christ revealed to a barbaric world. What is today considered "common sense" has been made common by that imperialistic mother of an institution known as the church.

Consider: Christ entered a world of tyranny and tribal powers, marred with slavery, the treatment of women and children as chattel, human sacrifice and pagan ritual. Christ left His church -- mysterious, bizarre and, yes, sinful -- endowed with the DNA to free men and women from this hell. It is the bride of Christ (as informed by God's word) who should be credited with helping eradicate slavery in all of its forms (see sidebar: The Sins of the Church), building better environments for women and children -- as well as hospitals, hospices, schools and relief centers all around the world -- while other religions and the culturally wise have tended to remain aloof, worshipping their rituals and cultural norms. Christ's Bride stands alone as a witness of His liberating, soul-freeing act of justification, a beacon of love for Her fellow man.

And so we find that slavish devotion to liberty -- the secular drive to be free of the shackles of the church, to finally and irrevocably divorce Christ -- is merely one facet of a culture of liberty, a culture itself shaped by 2000 years of Christianity. Do we wish to bite the hand the feeds us? Are we blind to the light which surrounds us? Can the pot say to the potter, "Unmake me?"

The church has certainly been wrong to be seduced by temporal imperialism; but we can agree that heinous practices like sati (the burning of living widows in the flames of their dead husbands), sexual slavery, female circumcision, human sacrifice and cannibalism are better off eradicated from any culture. We can be inspired that it took Mother Theresa, a Christian, to build a hospice for the elderly and sick so they could be taken care of and die in dignity -- in the middle of the largest Hindu temple in the world (Pashaputinath in Kathmandu, Nepal) while Hindu gurus merely stood by and watched.

Skeptics may well vilify me and Regina for our "closed-mindedness," reminding us of all the evil the bride of Christ has caused -- and for our own inability to agree on the nature of the bride, herself. Though I, like Regina, am a churchman, she is a Roman Catholic and I am a rogue churchman: a member of that adulterating protestant movement -- but still a churchman, saddled with the responsibility and past of her evil deeds.

But in reality, we are all a bit rogue. It is easy for those on the outside to judge, but it's not as easy to see our own selves reflected in the things we despise.

Is it diversity that we desire as we castigate the church? Biblically speaking, the bride is not an institution, but the gathering (ecclesia) of those who call Him Lord, staying informed and reformed by the word of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit. And in reality, this bride is diverse, found in Catholic, protestant, Pentecostal, Baptist, liberal and fundamentalist institutions. The church is diversity, and it is liberty. But it does not exist to sate our appetite for diversity and liberty; whether a blessing or a curse, whether deserving of praise or in need of reform, she is always a remnant of those who Christ continues to woo for His own glory.

Skeptics must take an honest look at the good that Christ's somewhat confused and factious bride has wrought in this world: the voice she has been for charity, humanitarian aid, and the fight for freedom and individual rights. Do we honestly believe that it is the non-religious humanist who is bringing us out of our hellhole, steering man toward a morally better place? Can we live in a world without the church?

I confess (to use a religious term) that the arguments presented here are clear and for the most part well-put. However, not being a "religious" person, I can't say that I find any of them particularly persuasive -- or particularly relevant, for that matter. Both Regina and Mike do a fine job of enumerating the burdens and shortcomings of the church -- of which I am well aware -- without describing any of the ostensible benefits of church attendance. When it comes down to it, forced spiritual structure may be necessary for some people -- in the same way that people who aren't disciplined enough to save money may benefit from the "forced" structure of buying a house. Does that mean buying a house is right or necessary for every soul on the planet? No. Is a rigid prescription for an admittedly burdensome church attendance the best means of growth for every person? Likewise, no.

We can discuss the nature of the Church as the Bride of Christ until the sacred cows come home -- meanwhile debating who is the real bride, what a marital relationship looks like, what the gender polarities mean (if anything), and any number of rabbit trails. But for those of us aware of the burden yet unconvinced of the benefit, there is little to commend merely going through the motions of darkening the church door on a regular basis. Is it possible that God might even prefer that I apply my beliefs in a practical manner on a Sunday morning (by, say, helping someone in need), rather than safely secluding myself with people who think just like me, so I don't have to worry about those outside the decorous doors?

In 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul speaks of Christianity as "the ministry of reconciliation."⁵ By this, he means that the central story of the faith is the reconciliation of Man to God through the blood of His Son, Jesus. Christianity, then, is the ministry of reconciliation because all who claim the name of Christ are ministers -- literally, servants in the Greek -- of God's specific conciliatory purpose.

But Christianity is not only the ministry of reconciliation -- it is the ministry of all things godly. One of the other theological terms applied to the act of Jesus' death on the cross is redemption. In conceiving Hollywood Jesus, David Bruce understood that Christianity is also the ministry of redemption -- and in particular, it is the redemptive hope for our culture: not through legislation, stone-throwing or critical negativity, but through showing us the godly things already embedded in our culture. For God reveals Himself through all that He has created, even the things that we may not particularly like.

After Eden is dedicated to this redemptive vision. We believe, as G.K. Chesteron put it, that "humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea."⁶ That's not a reality we endorse. We'd like to help salvage the gold from the gutter, and rescue the diamonds from the sea.

Mike Gunn is a pastor at Harambee Church in Tukwila, Washington, and was cofounder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

Regina Doman is a writer, the author of the young adult novel The Shadow of the Bear and other modern stories based on fairy tales; she was also an editor for the late journal Caelum et Terra.

Editor Greg Wright is a writer and ordained minister of the dramatic arts. He is a contributing editor for Hollywood Jesus, and is author of Tolkien in Perspective: Sifting the Gold from the Glitter.

Editor Jenn Wright is a writer with degrees in literature and theology. She will be co-writing the Narnia coverage for Hollywood Jesus, which will be debuting the summer of 2004 in anticipation of the first movie's 2005 release.

The Devil's Advocate is a composite personality of our consultants and editorial staff. He may look like someone you know -- and probably thinks like a lot of them.

Chesterton
On Tradition

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes-our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.¹

Tarkington
On Tradition

The love of oldness isn't what has been too smartly called, an "escape into the past"; we bring old enrichments into the present.²

John Selden
On Choice

A glorious Church is like a magnificent feast; there is all the variety that may be, but every one chooses out a dish or two that he likes, and lets the rest alone: how glorious soever the Church is, every one chooses out of it his own religion, by which he governs himself, and lets the rest alone.³

John M. Allin
On Church Leadership

Being head of the Church is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle while riding on a roller coaster.⁴

The Sins of the Church

It is a fact that the "Church" also promoted slavery, and did many evils, but it was always self-reformation brought on by the Holy Spirit which re-righted the situation. A good example is the Salem witch burnings, usually cited as a case of the Church gone bad; but if we are going to be intellectually honest, we must at least admit that the "rational" correction didn't come from humanistic skeptics, but other Puritan ministers, namely the Mathers brothers.

Chesterton
On Perception

It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men... have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.⁷