When Christian Doctrine Fails Us

The Buddha, the Enlightened One, was once teaching his disciples about his own doctrine. To explain, he gave them a parable of a man with a raft. He said to imagine a man who came to a river too deep to wade and too wide to swim. The man wished to cross the river but, there being no bridge, decided to build a raft in order to cross. He built the raft and exerting himself using his hands and feet crossed to the other side. The Buddha then asked his disciples if the man would be wise to say, "This raft was a good thing. I shall strap it to my back and carry it on my journey so that it may continue to be valuable for me." The disciples heard this and answered, "No, that would be quite foolish."

Then the Buddha asked his disciples to imagine the same man and the same river and the same raft and the same exertion and the same crossing. And upon reaching the opposite shore, this time the man says, "This raft was a good thing. I shall tie it up here and leave it by the shore and continue on my journey." The Buddha asked his disciples if this would be wise, and they answered, "Yes."

The Buddha then gets to the heart of the matter and says, "Like this raft, my doctrine is for crossing over and not for carrying."

Will Assent Save You?

As Christians, what does this mean for us? Can we simply ignore this strange "eastern" teaching as pagan or perhaps even anti-Christian? If it wasn't said by someone from our community, can it still be true?

I worry that Christian doctrine, though by no means untrue, is nevertheless failing our communities when it promises salvation.

The problem isn't that our doctrines are unsound, too few, or too undeveloped. The problem is that we think by assenting to a belief or fact, we will gain salvation. The problem is that we think merely acknowledging doctrine will transform us.

We have entire religious communities - including Evangelical, mainline Protestant, and Catholic - who think that they're going to get to heaven because they have all the correct beliefs and moral purity codes. Belief is not transformation and it's not Christ-likeness. If we're honest, we can admit that most doctrine requires very little of us; someone who goes from disbelieving the Virgin Birth to believing it really doesn't need to undergo any real transformation of the heart and very little of the head.

When we finally die and encounter perfect union with God, S/He isn't going to pull out her/his book and say, "Congratulations! You assented to all 21 of our essential doctrines so come on in!" 

Doctrines are not important for their own sake. We forget that the entire purpose of doctrine is to illuminate, to draw us into deeper layers of the Divine Mystery, which means deeper layers of knowing (and of unknowing). Doctrine is only valuable insofar as it points us toward Truth. It is for crossing over and not for carrying.

That's not to say we can discard doctrine at will. That would be too simplistic. But at some point we should be reminded that though Paul often uses "faith in Christ" as a requisite for salvation, does that merely mean believing in an historical event - that Christ died for the sins of the world, including your own?

Because it is a doctrine. A powerful one that can point you toward a place you should be but not one that will satisfy you if you simply strap it to your back. This is why we have so many Christians who seem eerily reflective of their non-Christian neighbors as if the division were a only a mirror instead of the Divine Love living through them.

Information Instead of Transformation

I worry that the crisis of Christianity isn't a shortage of priests or secularism or issues of sexuality but rather that few of us experience actual transformation. The Church too often informs us (of doctrines) rather than transforms us. And I now believe that the transformation is the much more essential step. The information and the label of "Christian" is still important but secondary in the Kingdom of God.

C. S. Lewis believed this too. How else could he advocate as he did in The Last Battle that those who imitated God's Love but were adherents to the wrong religion were still saved? It seems Lewis took to heart Christ's teaching on the sheep and the goats.

And this emphasis on doctrine leading you to an experience of Truth is all that seems to matter. Perhaps this is why Christ never says, "You must have a personal relationship with me" or "Say the sinner's prayer" but simply, "Follow me." While all of these can belong, a journey with God is much more demanding than signing our names to a statement of belief.

The Buddha knew this too and illustrated it beautifully with the raft. But it's because crossing over is the only way to experience God. Carrying God as a possession isn't enough. 

I wonder if Christ would say to us as the Buddha said to his disciple, 

If you were to follow the Dharma (The Way) purely out of love for me or because you respect me, I would not accept you as disciple. But if you follow the Dharma because you have yourself experienced its truth, because you understand and act accordingly - only under these conditions have you the right to call yourself a disciple of the Exalted One.

If we started emphasizing total transformation as higher than total assent to doctrine, wouldn't we find that we were a people for journeying well instead of a people self-assured with the right answers? Journeying together asks more from us. We should trust that.


Related Posts:
The Spirit of the Law
God in Evolution
When the Church Fails Homosexuals

The Spirit of the Law

The prophetic voices in the Old Testament are really what speak to me. Without them Israel's religion becomes stale, condemnatory, and legalistic. The Prophets are the critical voice that sees not just the words that God uses to communicate to us but His Spirit propelling those words. They see that God is not in the storm, He's in the whisper of the wind.

God chose to be present in history. God exists outside of human history but He chooses to work inside of it. God appears as a (God-)man in a specific space and at a specific point in time. Since Christ flaunts his society’s convention and is constantly upsetting the social order to the point of being executed for it, we know that He is not afraid of acting in accordance with Truth, which is timeless. He is never limited by His being a 1st century Palestinian Jew. But He also exists within a certain time and culture. God chooses to exist not above us but with us, and He revealed Himself slowly throughout time. This is why we see Jacob's family keeping household idols despite being in communication with the Living God. This is why Israel had such a difficult time embracing monotheism despite constant nudges toward that truth. The same way you have to learn the basic rules of grammar before you can understand poetry, God had to reveal himself slowly and with care so that we could understand the complexity that is Him. Finally this process came to completion in the person of Jesus Christ.

But when God speaks to us through human vocabulary (as He must) we are tempted to dominate His words. If I can only memorize these words! If we can only interpret these commandments into practical laws! If we can only find all the answers we can forget about the questions! I know in my spiritual life I always seize upon an answer. It feels much surer, more secure than having to walk the path of spirituality, which as Richard Rohr says is about asking the right questions and not about finding the right answers.

This need to control God, to have the answers, to seize upon God’s words is the tendency found in the Old Testament. It’s legalism. The prophets speak against it. They're always telling Israel to stop worrying about punching their spiritual timecard and start caring with the heart of God, to stop interpreting the Law and to live it, to stop rending their garments in penance and start rending their hearts.

The legalism of Israel’s faith, to me, seems to come to culmination with the 1st century Pharisees. Isn’t it funny that that’s when the incarnation occurs and Christ appears? The culmination of the Letter of the Law and the culmination of the Spirit of the Law appear in history at the same time.

Yet Christ has come and Christians - of every branch - are still legalistic. That’s exactly the type of Christian I tend to be, though at least now I'm fairly conscious of it. But it’s just so attractive! It’s nice to have all the answers, to know the rules. It makes existence and the spiritual life seem ordered and understandable and far less mysterious, at least to me. A black and white worldview is so seductive. Who has time to wrestle with the gray?

Photo by Rick Holliday - rickholliday.wordpress.com

I became Catholic and joined a tradition that understands that it’s not about legalism yet has spent its whole existence developing answers. But I realize even our rules and knowledge today aren't the end-all. It’s not enough to observe Lenten fasting or abstinence. It’s not enough to do penance. It’s about how you are meeting God, how you are growing in consciousness of the Divine Reality, and how you are being transformed. It's not about the Letter of the Law; it's about the Spirit of it.

All Christians struggle with legalism but Catholics do especially. We have to hold only lightly our rules, our dogma, our standards for what constitutes right or wrong belief or action. And we have to do this not because the rules are wrong (Christ was clear about never rewriting the Law) but because they are tools. They are signposts pointing toward paradise and not paradise itself. There's a natural attachment of the ego with the Law, and it's something we have to break.

I always think of a wonderful story from the Buddhist tradition that my philosophy adviser once related to me:

Two Buddhist monks were walking alongside a road. As they reached a bend in the road they came upon a poor, crippled woman crawling on the ground and trying to reach the other side. Buddhist monks, of course, are strictly forbidden from having any physical contact with women. But upon seeing the woman, the first monk picked her up, gingerly carried her across the road, and set her down on the other side. The two monks continued on their way and it wasn't long before the second monk said, with no small amount of exasperation, “What have you done?! Don’t you know we’re not allowed to have contact with women?” The first monk stopped, turned to the second with a curious look on his face, and said in reply, “I left that woman back there by the side of the road. Are you still carrying her?”

Hearing this story made me realize which monk I was at the time and which one we're all called to be. The Letter of the Law is binding. The Spirit is always freeing.

I'd love a comment, especially offering your own perspective.