The Insincere Christian

Evangelical Christianity has failed, and has failed for want of sincerity.

In order to explain, here is a paragraph from "Hugh Kenner's "A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers" (pp 203-4):

One thing very engaging about the first half of the book [I.A. Richards' Practical Criticism] is Richards's genial aplomb as he sorts out the comments, never soliciting the knowing snicker. It's clear how his auditors could feel they were helping with a scientific inquiry, not being trapped into acts of self-exposure. And it's exhilarating still to watch the co-author of The Meaning of Meaning make a useful word out of such a rubber stiletto as "insincerity." This Richards defines as "the flaw that insinuates itself when a writer cannot distinguish his own genuine promptings from those he would merely like to have, or those which he hopes will make a good poem. Such failures on his part to achieve complete imaginative integrity may show themselves in exaggeration, in strained expression, in false simplicity, or perhaps in the manner of his indebtedness to other poetry." That is scrupulous and definitive and helpful in coming to terms with a Rupert Brooke, who mayn't have really quite known what he felt at all. 

The "auditors" were students in his class, Cambridge I believe, where Richards would hand out various unsigned poems for critique by the students. Richards, and later his students Empson and F.R. Leavis--even Eliot for one class-- attempted a close reading of literature, to teach reading, to show the method behind the madness of creation.

Insincerity.

Within the evangelical community are many who have failed to "achieve complete imaginative integrity," or even to think that this was something they needed to possess. They do, at least if they are to be taken seriously, to be taken as sincere.

What they have substituted is the great flaw of dogma: unquestioning devotion with a lack of curiosity and a great deal of mental laziness. Curiosity and a devotion to truth--not dogma--leads to imaginative integrity. There is no meaning to the meaning of evangelicals any more, if ever there was.

We see this especially in the doctrine of inerrancy to the Bible, which truly is mere bibliolatry. Instead of examination of the hundreds of inconsistencies found therein, the question is begged and begged and begged: the supposition is that the Bible is inerrant, thus any perceived errors must be merely perceived as such and not in reality errors. The imagination is never piqued; the curious cat sleeps a very long nap.

An insincere person sees the Risen Christ not as a question to be answered--answered literally or perhaps literately?--but an answer so that no one may question. That is the very essence of a theological insincerity. A sincere person might ask Did this happen or might'n it have happened in some other fashion? Is this a story, a narrative meant to give us humans hope? Is this some very deep well of mythic meaning? These and other questions are all worth asking, asking by a sincere person; but an insincere person does not ask them, does not dare to take that leap of faith!

But we live in the times of questioning. We question our government, our corporate betters, and yes, we question our religious leaders. As we should.

We should question anyone who shoves the spade of dogma toward our throats. We should question any who portray the answer as greater than the question, who ignore possibilities in place of pictured certainties. 

I used to be in the habit of thinking truth was some mental destination in the manner of scientific inquiry (though a destination that was never going to be ultimately visited). I believed, until recently, that one’s life, if dedicated to truth, might bring you closer and closer to that promised land, but it was to be as that mathematical puzzle with the frog: The frog might jump half the distance to the shore, lily pad to lily pad; as it does so it gets closer, closer, closer but it never gets to pad on dry land. Never.

But of late I view truth not as a destination but as a quality, as sincerity, a quality that Greeks of old might have labeled arete, the living of one’s life to full potential. Living sincerely would entail living fully, living by moral example, by living rationally and imaginatively. It isn’t knowledge--though it does contain knowledge; it isn’t morality--thought it does contain that also. It is the full measure of a human being. Maybe this is what Pirsig was talking about. I do think this is what Jesus and Buddha were talking about.

The evangelical community are stoppered by the doctrines allotted them. They are not free to imaginatively explore options unavailable within Bible colleges. What might Jesus have meant by “Son of Man”? Did he call himself Son of Man? You may not ask those questions within the community of believers; you could only assume the answer. That is not living a sincere life.

And if you cannot live a sincere life within the religious community, you should not be in the religious community. Better to start all over.