Elegance

A friend took me trout fishing yesterday. I had a great time and we caught a few fish but it was hard not to notice the sophistication. If I were a lesser man—which would be hard to imagine—I could probably write a pretty funny blog about all the sophistication that goes into fly fishing. But instead, I thought I’d write about how little sophistication goes into so much of religion these days.

I mean, of course, there’s a point at which you begin to fall over the edge. I am not exactly sure how much the average fly fisherman spends on his/her passion but it is clearly more than say the average worm fisherman. You’ve got the rod, the flies, the extra license and the exotic location… And these are the absolutes. But very quickly you need to be thinking about vests and waders and hats and shirts and sunglasses. You should probably be thinking about a guide and digital camera and maybe a surgeon to safely remove the hook should you happen to actually catch one of these precious things. That would be unlikely though. What is the average SAT score for a trout anyway? It’s gotta be higher than most NCAA athletes.

As off-putting as all the regalia might be for some people, I’m a little drawn to it. It's kinda nice to be reminded that the whole world is not made out of particle board and cheeseburgers. Of course, I don’t have the time nor means to fund a fly fishing addiction at this point in my life but I do like the fact that those who do seem to genuinely respect their pursuit. They take the fish, the process and themselves pretty darn seriously… O.K., maybe a little too seriously.

There was a day when Christianity was more like this. The buildings were gargantuan structures of mystery and wonder. The priests wore the finest linens. In some places, even the service was offered in an exotic language that only a few people even understood. So when someone came into the sanctuary, they would quickly understand that there was a grace about the place. Worshipers and adherents were reverent and respectful because that was the nature of the world that they had now entered. The process might be elaborate and the learning curve a little extensive but this too was part of the value.

Contrast this with the consumer-driven examples out there today. There is no longer any danger of asking too much of the worshippers and adherents, at least in these most modern expressions of Christianity. If anything, the Church has fallen over backward in its effort to strip-out anything that might come across as exotic or exclusive. For many Christian bodies, mystery has become more an enemy than an attraction. Whereas worshippers and adherents were once humbled to come before the presence of God, it would now seem that God has been humbled before the appetites of consumers. I think of Kurt Cobain’s timely assessment, “Here we are now, entertain us!”

Of course, we are never going back to the days when the service took place in a foreign language and the priest was the only person who understood what was going on--and for good reason… But at the same time, I hope that the Western Christianity can recover some of the elegance and respect that it has traded away in the name of reaching people.