Thank God A Hospital Doesn't Run Like A Church

As a seminarian, I read a lot. But not only books. Also church websites. Comparing layout and branding stuff, mostly. And when I get to the differing theologies of these various churches, I'm a little disenchanted. One local church website had an information box that read, "Are you looking for a better life? Are you looking for love, help, vision, and purpose? Know Him." Really? Better life by knowing and following Jesus? Better life by following this man who called people to leave behind everything they hold dear, to pick up their cross, and to deny themselves daily? Better life?

And then there's the whole salvation piece. Some churches lay out a basic method for the salvation of one's soul. Here's one example I found: Salvation is the free gift of God's grace and cannot be earned in any way. We receive God's grace by putting faith in Christ — making Him Lord of our lives, repenting of our sin, confessing our faith in Jesus as God, and being baptized, immersed, into Christ (which is a rather long list immediately following the phrase "cannot be earned in any way"). Other church websites put a different twist on it: We believe that there is nothing any person can do or say to "earn" God's favor or their own salvation. Our theology of mission does NOT include "winning believers for Jesus Christ" because salvation, in the Lutheran tradition, comes from God by grace, not from making a decision to accept Jesus.

And while I'm not knocking any one particular theology, I must admit the incongruity between them is discouraging.

Good thing hospitals don't work this way.

Can you imagine a world where at a hospital in Atlanta you might get treated for a common virus with a certain antibiotic (pretty ineffective for 'viruses,' anyway)—and in Charlotte you might receive a completely different medication for the same virus. Or what if a pacemaker implantation involved very specific steps at one hospital, and a completely different method at another. Preposterous as this might sound, it's exactly what churches do (and have done for thousands of years). The heart of the problem is the holy Scriptures from which Christians draw their beliefs and theologies. There are so many varying ways to interpret these Scriptures that no one group can truly claim authority.

And though inconsistent on many matters of faith, perhaps this is how it's meant to be. As author Peter Rollins has put it,

"To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind."

So can we say anything 'true' about God?

I'm not sure we truly can.