Illustration Courtesy of Morgan Guyton
Klingon Christians
"Star Trek's" Klingons are always ready for a fight to defend their honor, much like some Christians, according to the Rev. Morgan Guyton.
In a recent post, Peter Enns writes about a certain type of Christian who doesn’t feel right unless they are “contending for the gospel.” Though Enns was talking specifically about the neo-reformed movement and the Gospel Coalition in particular, I think there is a type of Christian found throughout different theological traditions whose zeal for doctrinal correctness is their most defining attribute. Since it’s not just the Calvinists who are like this, I wanted to propose Klingon Christian as a new, more all-encompassing term for this type of Christian.Enns writes the following about the theological underpinnings of Klingon Christians:
Christians who can’t seem to walk away from a fight–who seem uncomfortable in a peace vacuum, who feel the gospel is at stake with nearly every perceived errant thought or difference of opinion, and who feel they need to group together and found organizations to protect the truth against all ungodly attacks–are showing us what their God is like.
If you are a fighter, chances are the God you imagine is: fundamentally hacked off, retributive, touchy, demanding of theological precision, uncompromising, takes-no-prisoners-and-gives-no-quarter, whose wrath needs to be appeased so watch your step. If that’s your God, you have full permission–in fact, you are commanded– to fight a lot, especially with other Christians–a modern day Phinehas weeding out the covenant breakers among us (Numbers 25), God’s instrument of retribution.
When Enns refers to Phinehas, he’s talking about an important standard-bearer for holiness in the Old Testament. Numbers 25 says that when the Israelites were partaking in idolatry because of intermingling with Moabite women, Phinehas, a priest and grandson of Aaron, the brother of Moses, saw an Israelite man take a Moabite woman back to his tent, so he followed them with a spear and drove it through both of them as a holy act of murder.
God not only approves this holy murder, but it becomes the basis for a priesthood covenant with Phinehas’ descendents: “Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites. Since he was as zealous for my honor among them as I am, I did not put an end to them in my zeal. Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.” (Numbers 25:11-13).
Many evangelicals today understand holiness according to the same terms as Phinehas: as zeal for God’s honor. They show how fiercely they love God by how ferociously they drive their spears into others who seem to disrespect God’s honor. To use a Star Trek reference, these could be called Klingon Christians. They live for honor. In this zeal, there is a competition to show how “hard-core” you are in your commitment to Bible verses that are too much for Christian lightweights.
The most extreme of today’s Klingon Christians would be recently deceased Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church whose zeal for God’s honor is so radical that they picket military funerals, ensuring that no other Christian could possibly say they were going more against the grain of popular opinion. Phelps famously said, “If I had nobody mad at me, what right would I have to claim that I was preaching the gospel?” While most Klingon Christians would condemn Phelps’ extremism, this quote does capture the basic litmus test by which they seem to evaluate the legitimacy of gospels being preached. If it’s not offensive enough, it’s not the gospel (which means the more offensive it is, the more pure gospel it is).
I’ve recently been introduced to a Klingon Christian named Paul Washer. He’s very popular among those who like to beat their chests with zeal for God’s honor. What makes Washer popular is that he preaches sermons about how most Christians in America aren’t really saved. He definitely has some good points. I agree with him that the last fifty years of packaging salvation as a consumeristic “decision” for Christ that can be made in a sidewalk conversation with a stranger has been a disaster and has resulted in a lot of people claiming the mantle of Christ who don’t exhibit any of the fruits of the spirit, which by the way are soft, very un-Klingon-ish qualities like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).
The problem I have is that Washer talks a whole lot more about what God hates than God’s love (a word which I have yet to hear him use in his preaching, though I’m sure he does somewhere). I’m just not convinced that Washer and I believe in the same God. Because my God is the one whom Jesus was describing when he said, “Which of you fathers, if your son asks fora fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:11-13).
I don’t think that God ignores our prayers and burns in hatred against us when we have bad doctrine or sinful habits. I think that God meets people and works with them from where they are, fulfilling the promise that he makes through Jesus when he says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). The bad doctrine and sinful habits don’t drive God away; they make us blind and deaf to God’s constant entreaties of love. That’s such a hugely important distinction to make.
One basic theological difference between me and Washer and perhaps other Klingon Christians like him is my belief in the Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace: that God is constantly strategizing about ways to reach us with his love before we know him rather than stewing in wrath with his arms folded hating everything about us. I presume that God is always working on the hearts of the people around me, using whatever openings they give him, even if they’re more lukewarmish in their faith than they ought to be. My understanding of prevenient grace makes me think I should be more focused on affirming and encouraging the truths that I hear God already speaking in other peoples’ lives rather than relishing every opportunity to cut them down to size with some adrenalin-inducing spear lunges into their errors and hypocrisy.
The reason I will never be a Klingon Christian is because I don’t think that God is screaming at me to throw spears into all of my fellow partial heretics who are struggling pitifully to harmonize with the beautiful song of God’s orthodoxy and sounding like the worst middle school band in the history of the world. What I believe is that God has the patience of a middle school band director and the gentleness to help the most sour-sounding preteen trombonists among us make gradual progress towards something that resembles a melody.
I’ll admit that I do throw spears at people whom I perceive to be throwing spears at others, so that’s something God has been addressing with me. I’m very stubborn about this issue. I’ve got my proof-texts, like Jesus’ humiliation of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7 and his tirade against the Pharisees in Matthew 23. If I don’t throw spears at the spear-throwers, then who will protect the prostitutes and Samaritans from being shredded to pieces by those self-righteous Klingons? But what if instead of throwing spears at other people, my witness of the gospel is to let myself be crucified by their spears without hating them?
On our confirmation retreat last weekend, we looked at the verse in 1 Peter 4:8 that says “love covers a multitude of sins.” I’m sure there’s a Klingon Christian reading this about to throw a spear at me for even quoting that verse. RAWR!! How dare you try to cover up sin?!!! Actually, the way the Holy Spirit has been interpreting this verse to me recently is to say that it’s not about covering up sin, but about my responsibility to smother other peoples’ sin with my love. Love covers sin by absorbing the impact of it without responding in kind. That’s what holiness looks like: a cross, not a spear.
So if I stumble into a Klingon Christian spear-fest online, I am responsible for not allowing myself to get sucked into the “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language” and instead clothing myself with “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:8-12), no matter how many spears they cut me with. If I just turn into a “progressive” Klingon with my own “orthodoxy” raging against the other Klingon “orthodoxies,” then I’ve completely failed to “pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14:19) and I have betrayed the one whose holiness is manifested not in the spears that he throws at others but the nails that he lets others drive into him.
The Rev. Morgan Guyton, currently associate pastor at Burke (Va.) United Methodist Church, will become United Methodist campus minister at Tulane University in the fall. He blogs at Mercy Not Sacrifice.