No lights in the Church…

Have you ever observed Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night? Like, really observed it. I have seen it a thousand times and yet, only recently, was it pointed out to me that there are no lights on in the church though every home is lit.

The stars are aglow with the divine flame of their Creator. Each home shares the eternal light. The stars in the sky and the people in the homes beam out into the cosmos their praises to their God.

And yet the church building slumbers quietly as the rest of the world dances with the divine.

Many see this as Van Gogh’s critique of the institutional Church that has often traded the furthering of the kingdom of God for their own influence in a community.

Van Gogh has personal experience with the institutional Church as he served as a missionary in Belgium to a community of miners. He saw the bleak poverty of the people he was called to serve and yet recognized his position afforded him comforts those same people could never experience. So, he traded his relative comfort for service, giving away his clothes and his bed and his cleanliness. In short order, the church deemed that what Van Gogh was endorsing was unsightly and they pulled his funding. Yet he would not leave the people he felt called to love, continuing to give of himself to the people until he himself nearly died.

Van Gogh had experienced Christ so deeply that he gave up on the idea of what the church had deemed as “looking like a Christian” so that he could be like Christ.

Christianity today has many of the same trappings, telling others what it looks like to be a Christian. For some, it is the Jesus clothes we wear. Others, the Bible verse in our instagram bio. It is the people we vote for and how loudly we proclaim our stance on political issues. It is the podcast we listen to on the way to work.

We dress ourselves up to look like a tree, but the truth of our Christianity is seen and tasted in our fruits.

Our desire is not to conform to the definition of Christianity as given by culture but to radically give ourselves away to Christ himself, laying our own life down into the baptistery and taking on the life of the cross with Christ in communion.

I am not one to give up on the institutional church. Nor am I someone who affirms someone can be “spiritual but not religious”. I find these parts of Christian life, that is the institution and religiosity, important for formation and fellowship and a pursuit of life with God.

But I do share in Van Gogh’s concern that the church building has taken precedence over the people. That strengthening the institution has overtaken strengthening our neighborhoods. That Sunday morning has become an “experience” where we are entertained rather than a “service” where we worship and glorify Jesus as we sit and wash his feet. That we have come to treat God as a consumer product rather than our Master and Redeemer, and Christianity as a political tool rather than an allegiance to the Transformational kingdom of God instituted by Christ.

But I also believe we are seeing a shift away from this type of pseudo-Christianity.

This current wave of Christianity is reading their Bibles. They are more interested in prayer than in performance. They see through shallow entertainment and seek the heart of God. They desire not concerts but worship. They desire that God change not just their wardrobe but the character of their heart. When they see Christian ethics weaponized they move away from the hypocrites. When popular figures say they are trying to “Save God” they know it is they being saved by God, not the other way round.

Cultural Christianity is going to die out and be replaced by authentic Christlike communities. How do I know this? Because the light of Christ is not in cultural Christianity, but all will be drawn to or exposed by the light shining forth from Christlike people devoted to the heart of God.

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