Bad Bible Blunders, Spufford & DFW--Where do we find hope?

David Foster Wallace ("DFW") wrote that irony was killing American art.  Irony, which was designed to reveal the tyranny of conventionalism and sentimentalism, instead has become tyrannical.  If an artist portrays hope, redemption, or faith in his or her work, he or she is deemed a sentimentalist or, worse yet, a non-realist--someone who sticks their head in the sand.  This has led to a loss of faith, increased cynicism, and a marked increase in suicide in America.

Does the church have an answer?  Most don't.  Many, if not most, American churches propagate Bad Bible Blunders.  (I love this term--it comes from Aaron Zimmerman.  However, the ideas expressed in this post are not Aaron's.  So, don't blame him.  Instead, go to the St Albans Waco website and listen to his wonderful sermon by this name.)  In American churches, we usually see one of two theological paths--vapid sentimentalism or legalism/moralism.  Neither of these paths embraces the reality of Christianity.

Christianity is not sentimental--it is realistic.  Its leader met people directly in the midst of their sorrows and sins.  He didn't shy away from leprosy, blindness, or even death.  He ate and mingled with sinners.  In Jesus' day, if you ate with a sinner, you were accused of condoning their sin.  Jesus ate and/or mingled with criminals, tax collectors, adulteresses, the poor, the half-breeds, the no-breeds, and all manner of social outcasts.  Jesus confronted the "church" leaders of his day--revealing their hypocrisy--their abject failure to love the sinners, the outcasts, the poor.  This got Him killed.  Christianity is anything but sentimental.

The other path reflecting Bad Bible Blunders is moralism/legalism.  In Unapologetic, Frances Spufford clearly distinguishes Christianity from its two related religions--Judaism and Islam.  In Spufford's words, Judaism and Islam are like "wearable coats"--if you devote time and energy to keeping their tenets, you can be a reasonably good person.  This is the hallmark of moralism--you can be a "good" person.  In contrast, Christianity "makes frankly impossible demands.  Instead of asking for specific actions, it offers general but lunatic principles.  It thinks you should give your possessions away, refuse to defend yourself, love strangers as much as your family, behave as if there is no tomorrow."  But there's a further distinction--"You could pauperise yourself, get slapped silly without fighting back, care for lepers all day, laugh in the face of futures markets, and it still wouldn't count, if  you did it for the wrong reasons."  Wow, how often do preachers and we believers "water down" the Christian message so that it is a "wearable coat" instead of "lunatic principles."

If the church is to respond to the cynicism and loss of faith in America, if the church is to be a source of hope, it must confront the reality of living in a fallen world and respond with the hope found in an impossible, lunatic love ethic--that of Jesus Christ.  No more sentimentalism.  No more moralism.  Just the pure love of Jesus for all of us who hurt, worry, are sick, dying, lost, and down-heartened.  DFW committed suicide.  Let's pray that the American church corrects its Bad Bible Blunders.  Only that correction will provide the answer to DFW's prophetic writing.