I Thought About Your Question - Here's My Answer
RE: What do you find good about the Good News?
Dear T,
When you asked me what I found to be good about the so-called good news, I fumbled through an answer about how God loves me and then admitted I don't know if that matters if God isn't real and self-love is sufficient.
It occurs to me in retrospect that old Baylor, the one who was an evangelical pastor, would be disappointed in how present Baylor answered. As you well know, a "non-believer" asking an evangelical the reason for their faith is like an evangelical’s Super Bowl. After all, aren't I supposed supposed to "always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks [me] about the hope [I] have" (1 Peter 3:15) and to "know how to answer every" person who asks (Colossians 4:5)?
But you know these verses, you know apologetics — especially the creationist ones, bless your Baptist-raised heart — but most importantly, as you stated, you know me. Which means you know that present Baylor is wary of certainty and performance. And you know, I hope, that you are more to me than someone to be won over. So I fumbled through an honest, mostly incoherent answer with you because I could, because that's the kind of space that real friends, not conversion projects, create for one another.
I confess I had nearly forgotten our conversation when the answer came to me yesterday. I wasn't out looking for it in desperation or insecurity, which is admittedly where many of my answers have come from in the past. No, it simply came to me in a moment of joy and hope. It's not all that complicated either. Here is what I remembered is so good to me about the good news:
Life, light, and love win.
Death, darkness, and disdain lose.
These things come about because of what we liturgical Christians call the great mystery of faith:
Christ has died
Christ is risen
Christ will come again
The reason I stated — God’s love — is wrapped up in that great mystery, but that formulation, that central sequence of events, is the heart of what has drawn me to the Gospel and kept me around even through major theological shifts.
Of course, the first event — Christ’s death — isn’t so controversial, but the second and, maybe most of all, the third, certainly are. Regarding the second, I believe in the actual, bodily resurrection on my best days and on my worst days regard it as a sort of central myth which espouses humanity’s most radical virtues and principles.
It’s true that there are other religions and philosophies that offer similar ideas. Buddhism’s middle path toward liberation from suffering, paganism’s attentiveness to death and rebirth in the seasons, and liberalism’s promotion of equality, pluralism, and collective human flourishing1 are all decent contenders, but none hit quite like resurrection and new life for me.
Have you heard Marshall McLuhan’s phrase that the “medium is the message?” In the case of the Gospel, it means that Jesus is not only the messenger, but the message, which he, of course, alluded to when he said he was the Way and the Truth. Some related phrases I’ve heard and used are “what you’re saved by is what you’re saved into” and “the way in is the way on.”2 Personally, I’m delighted to be saved and invited into Jesus’ life.
You know, in my last year and a half of hanging with you and the community, I’ve noticed something. Most people are cool with Jesus — like him even. They have problems with the Bible and its usage. They have problems with the church that has abused, controlled, and demonized them. But Jesus? Like you have yourself, most of them could easily say along with the song Jesus and John Wayne, “I liked the teachings of Jesus so much that I followed him right out the door.”3
It heartens me that you all see him as clearly as that. If I had to guess — and I’d be curious to ask everyone — I imagine folks’ reason for liking him might be that he valued those on the margins and granted dignity where the religious and state elites heaped shame and oppression. In fact, the corrupt power structures were threatened by the way he critiqued their hypocrisy and preformed surprising actions like disrupting the instruments of commerce. He promoted peace, nonviolence, and empathy — even for one’s enemies.
I don’t think these building blocks of the so-called Social Gospel are separate from the broader, more religious statement I made earlier about life, light, and love winning. It’s clear to me that Jesus understood the transformation of society doesn’t come about apart from the transformation of the individual. So without further abstracting things, I find this to be the primary good in the good news: Christ is making all things new, starting with us (whether we believe the animating force behind it to be a personal and spiritual force or simply the cultivation of love born out of the wisdom from this ancient man).
What inside me is to be transformed? Traditional Catholics might call it increasing in virtues and decreasing in vices. Spiritual formation folks call it growing in the Fruit of the Spirit. Mystic Christians like Cynthia Bourgeault call it a transcending the Egoic Operating System.4 Obviously I’m skirting around the question of (original) sin, but you can see how there’s a way through those thorns that doesn’t require the pitfall of despising humanity and harboring self-hatred.
What I do know: you are helping me do all these things. You’re part of the Good News to me. You are proof, in Rusty’s words from True Detective, that “the light’s winning.”5
I don’t think any Christian has ever asked me the question you did (or at least as frankly as you did), so thank you. It has been helpful to consider
Your friend,
Baylor
I would also argue that Liberalism, especially as I defined it, doesn’t come into existence without Christianity.
I don’t know where the first comes from — and I’m fairly sure I’ve somehow altered it — but Google tells me the second one comes from John Wimber
Jesus and John Wayne by googly eyes, Joy Oladokun, and Allison Ponthier
She uses this term in her book The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind
Season 1, Episode 8
