Reading Greg Garrett's The Other Jesus: Rejecting a Religion of Fear for the God of Love back-to-back with Josh Harris's Dug Down Deep: Building Your Life on Truths That Last (my review here) made for an interesting contrast. Harris falls broadly into the conservative Evangelical camp; Garrett has Evangelical roots, but has morphed into a more ecumenical Episcopal Christian. Both books cover major topics of systematic theology in a personal, lay-oriented way. I have to say my personal theology lines up closer to Harris's than Garrett, but Garrett does have some good contributions.
I have never met Greg Garrett, but have been aware of his career for some time, as he is a popular English professor at Baylor, my alma mater. I knew I'd find some common ground with Garrett, but from that common ground we have taken divergent paths.
Garrett writes in the tradition of Christians who have found their denominational roots too limiting, legalistic, exclusive, close-minded, and/or stifling. The problem with Garrett and other writers of his ilk is that they over-generalize the "other" Christians, creating a straw man church, and they oversimplify their own theological expressions, resulting in a nebulous, rootless theology.
He starts off by offending me and all but a few hundred Christians in Waco, by saying that in Waco "you might indeed set foot in a dozen extremely conservative Southern Baptist churches before finding a Baptist church that imagines people on a quest to work alongside God in the healing of creation," then goes on to name three churches that pass muster for him, churches where "you could begin a spiritual journey that would be meaningful and lifelong and not revolve purely around your answering an altar call to claim your salvation once and for all."
This sets the tone for the book: most Christians and most churches, especially those of more conservative persuasions, are myopic and insular. Most American Christians exemplify "a shortsighted focus on individual salvation, a disengagement from the world, a fear or hatred of those who differ from them." I know there are plenty of Christians out there who obsess over end-times, and who think that praying the sinner's prayer is all there is to the Christian life, but in my experience, including my experiences in a number of terrific Waco churches, that is not the norm.
Garrett rightly calls Christians to be more engaged with the world and more open to learning from traditions other than their own, even non-Christian traditions. But I think he goes too far in his criticisms and in his rejection of theologically conservative Christianity. One major point, related to his subtitle about "a religion of fear," is the exclusivity of the Christian faith. Garrett explicitly states that he is not a universalist, one who believes all will be saved. Yet he seems to embrace an "all roads lead to God" theology. Yes, we can learn from the teachings and practices of other faiths, but, other world religions to the contrary, Christianity teaches that Jesus is the only way to God. That may be expressed in a variety of ways, but Garrett moves toward rejecting that basic theological truth.
Garrett has a problem with Christians who do believe with absolute certainty that Jesus is the only way to God. "Absolute certainty leads people to fly planes into buildings, . . . to launch wars, [and is] a sign that religion has become evil." Obviously, there are historical examples of this, even among Christians. But my experience has been that for the most part Christian groups who do believe in the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus Christ respond not with demonization and a desire for extermination, but with compassion and evangelization. Again, there are plenty of historical examples to the contrary, but they are notable because they are outside the norm, not because they are the norm.
I did enjoy The Other Jesus. I appreciate a challenge to think more deeply about my faith, to stretch my ideas about the Christian life, and, most of all, to have a humility about my faith. One of the joys life in heaven will be laughing with other believers about how wrong I was about them, perhaps how wrong they were about me, and how little we really knew what we thought we knew.
I wish Garrett had better experiences in his early years as a Christian, and am happy that he has found renewed faith in his current role. But I wish he could see more value in the churches of his youth. Maybe they are not as contemplative as they should be, maybe they are too emotionally driven, maybe they are too easily led, maybe they have a hard time with a global perspective. These may be valid criticisms, but they seem to be more tied to style, education, and intellectual elitism, not to genuine questions of faith.
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