Pie in the Sky: A Big Reason People Reject Institutionalized Christianity

You've heard the old American idiom "pie in the sky," haven't you?  Maybe you've even formed a sentence with the phrase.  We tend to use it when we're referring to a promise of something that has low likelihood of happening right now.  "Good luck with that," we'll say similarly. Origins of "Pie in the Sky"

Do you know where the phrase originated?  The idiom "pie in the sky" was first coined way back in 1911 in America by a Swedish-born itinerant worker named Joe Hill.  Joe belonged to one of the labor unions of that day, The Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, and wrote songs for them.  One of his tunes grew in popularity.  Titled The Preacher and the Slave, it was composed as a criticism of The Salvation Army's theology and philosophy, specifically their concentration on the salvation of souls rather than the feeding of the hungry.  The song parodied the Army's heavy use of the hymn "The Sweet By and By" which Christians still enjoy singing today.  Here's the opening verse and chorus:

"Long-haired preachers come out every night, Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right; But when asked how 'bout something to eat They will answer with voices so sweet:

Chorus: You will eat, bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die."

"Good Luck ... We're Praying for You"

Pie in the Sky.  In other words, "Sorry, folks.  We know you don't have much to eat right now, but just hang in there.  When Jesus returns, it will all be different--you'll get your pie in the sky.  In the mean time, we're praying for you."

"It's All Going to Hell Anyway"

This attitude and philosophy gets expanded to, "Since Jesus is coming back soon and the earth will be destroyed, with the righteous being saved to Heaven, we really shouldn't spend too much time and energy trying to fix this world.  We should invest our energies into saving people's souls before it's too late."  Pie in the Sky.

I've heard many Christians say these very words to me in conversation.  And I have to be honest--every time I hear this I cringe.  I'm angered.  Not because I don't believe in paying attention to people's souls.  Not because I don't think people should be concerned about Heaven.  But because it communicates such a narrow, limited, destructive view of life right now.  When people are suffering and dying from starvation, poverty, AIDS, other diseases, natural disasters, economic injustice, torture and killing, slavery, environmental destruction, hatred and greed ... in the midst of theses painful realities, the best the Church can do is offer "pie in the sky"--after all, it's all going to be destroyed in the end, anyway?

Why People Reject Christianity

It is this Christian belief that is one of the big reasons I hear all the time as to why people reject Christianity as a viable spiritual belief and practice system.  In fact, the fastest growing religious demographic in America these days is the Nones, those who are intentionally choosing not to be affiliated or attached to religious organizations.  They're the famous "wanting spiritual but not religious."  More than one in five are in this category.  And it has a lot to do with this limited belief that church people often portray in word and deed. A Pie in the Sky theology.

So people respond, "Why would I want to be a part of a religion whose followers are more concerned about the next life than the quality of this life for the whole world?  Why would I want to join a group that cares more about the after life and getting there rather than helping fix what's wrong right now by bringing compassion and service to the suffering everywhere?"

The sad irony is that the Founder of Christians at the beginning--Jesus--had more to say about how people are to live right now than about getting ready for a coming kingdom.  In fact, Jesus' primary emphasis was about the Kingdom of God being here right now, in the present, and learning how to live out the values of God's kingdom now in the face of a pseudo-righteous church institution and an unjust empire.  His emphasis was so dangerous to the status quo that he was executed.

Jesus' Lord's Prayer Establishes Our Priority

When he taught his disciples to pray--what we call The Lord's Prayer--the opening request is "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  This isn't an expression of longing and hope for the Second Coming.  It is an ardent, passionate desire and surrender to cooperating with God so God's will would be done on earth right now.  That's a powerful introduction to a prayer, isn't it?

It's like Jesus is saying, "Look, don't even think about making any other requests to God until you surrender to the task of bringing God's will to bear on all of life in the present.  When you've aligned with that Will, then bring your own needs to God.  'Give us our daily bread.  And forgive us as we forgive our debtors.'"

Not "Pie in the sky in the sweet by and by."  But "pie on earth in the sweet and sometimes sour now."

An Echo of the Old Testament Prophets

By introducing that part of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus was intentionally echoing the vision of the prophets of old which descriptively and passionately pictured "a world where all people are treated equally, cared for, respected, fed and nurtured for the wonderful creations of God that they are; a world where all people regardless of color, sex, race, religion, political party, nationality or sexual orientation have a voice and a place; a world where people and nations, as the Prophet Isaiah put it, 'beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; where nation no longer takes up sword against nation; where war is no longer learned' (Isaiah 2:1-5)."  (Dr. Steve McSwain)

This is the world Jesus came to establish and build.  Not a Pie in the Sky in the Sweet By and By kind of exclusively future hope, but a dig in, get your hands dirty, working tirelessly to press God's compassion to every corner of the broken world kind of lifestyle.  People need the pie right now, after all!  "For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the whole world" (Mark 10:45).  "I have come that you will have life, an abundant life" (John 10), not a pie in the sky in the sweet by and by, but right now, in this life and in all the ages to come.

Everyone Deserves A Piece of the Pie Now

I wonder how people would feel about a Church that chose to pray seriously this first part of the Lord's Prayer--prayed so seriously that they actually went about intentionally and courageously and compassionately bringing God's powerful will of compassion and care to the enormous and painful needs of this world?

It's time to give everyone a piece of the pie right now.  And some day, in the sweet by and by, we'll all together enjoy more pie!

The Spirituality of Stress: Gender and Sexual Orientation Inequality

Dr. Robert Sapolsky is considered one of America's leading scientists doing work on the psychosocial and physiological effects of stress on human life.  He began his ground breaking research back in 1978 by studying baboon troops in Kenya.  One of the things he noticed was how a baboon's status in the troop impacted it's physiological condition.  He noticed, for instance, that the males at the bottom of the hierarchy were thinner and more nervous in general. “They just didn’t look very healthy,” he said. “That’s when I began thinking about how damn stressful it must be to have no status. You never know when you’re going to get beat up. You never get laid. You have to work a lot harder for food.” So he would shoot these baboons with anesthetic darts and then, while they were plunged into sleep, quickly measure their immune system function and the levels of stress hormones and cholesterol in their blood.  What he discovered was stunning.  These lower status baboons were living in a state of chronic stress - they had to fight for everything and continually "bow" to those males at the top of the totem pole.  And this chronic stress, measured by Sapolsky via their blood samples, revealed that it was a profound chemistry problem that he and other specialists have shown to be true over and over again since that discovery.

Here's how a recent article in Wired magazine described it:  When there's stress like this, "a tiny circuit in the base of the brain triggers the release of glucocorticoids, a family of stress hormones that puts the body in a heightened state of alert. The molecules are named after their ability to rapidly increase levels of glucose in the blood, thus providing muscles with a burst of energy. They also shut down all nonessential bodily processes, such as digestion and the immune response. 'This is just the body being efficient,' Sapolsky says. 'When you’re being chased by a lion, you don’t want to waste resources on the small intestine. You’ll ovulate some other time. You need every ounce of energy just to get away.'

"But glucocorticoids have a nasty side effect: When they linger in the bloodstream, as they might due to chronic stress related to low rank, damage accumulates. It’s the physiological version of a government devoting too many resources to its defense department, Sapolsky says. The body is so worried about war that it doesn’t fix the roads or invest in schools. Interestingly, the effects of stress appear particularly toxic to the brain."

One of the profound impacts of Dr. Sapolsky's research was to show how even one's status in a social group led to a state of chronic stress with the related physiological symptoms being able to be clearly measured and repeated.  The long term impact was hugely negative:  increased heart rate and blood pressure, a rise in arterial plaque even when fed a low-fat diet, and more than twice as likely to suffer from heart disease and a correspondingly premature death.

Numerous studies among humans since those early primate studies have reconfirmed the powerful negative effects of stress caused by subordination in position and status.  When people have a sense of control and power over their lives, stress decreases and health increases.  When they don't, stress with all the negative effects, especially when it's chronic, impacts the entire system - and the system ultimately dies.

Here's the way Wired put it:  "The moral is that the most dangerous kinds of stress don’t feel that stressful. It’s not the late night at the office that’s going to kill us; it’s the feeling that nothing can be done. The person most at risk for heart disease isn’t the high-powered executive anxious about their endless to-do list — it’s the frustrated janitor stuck with existential despair."

Or, it's the person who because of gender or sexual orientation feels consigned to a "lower status" in society - who feels a sense of powerless because the policies or practices of an organization and laws of the land conspire against their ability and opportunity to rise to higher levels of position and acceptance in their environment.  The tragic result of creating this state of imposed potential helplessness and powerlessness is that we as a society, whether intentionally or not, are reproducing experiences of chronic stress and sentencing such people to the risks associated with major health problems.  Inequality and prejudice do impact stress levels.

In my opinion, this makes our contemporary religious and social issues of women's ordination and same gender marriage hugely spiritual issues.  The fact that in our religious and political organizations we've developed a hierarchy of acceptance and status, denying equality in position and power and therefore rights and opportunities based upon gender and sexual orientation, means that we are also denying a quality of life with its proven and profound health benefits and longevity to some and not others.  We are ironically mirroring the baboon troops that live purely instinctual survival existences.

Isn't this in distinct contrast to the model of life Jesus described himself coming to bring to all?  "I have come that people will have life, the abundant life!"  (John 10:10)  Jesus was about lifting people up, increasing their quality of life, empowering and building up people in an atmosphere of equality and acceptance.  As opposed to the thief, he pointed out, whose sole purpose is to steal, to kill, to diminish and destroy life for others.

When we develop pyramidal hierarchies where there's an "upper" and a "lower" based upon gender or sexual orientation, and then we develop practices and policies that ensure that the value of that "status" is chronic (and then we top it off by using religious / spiritual language to justify our pyramidal laws and values), we are no better than thieves, stealing from them the abundant, free, and high quality life Jesus came to give them.

Research has also shown another tragic outcome of the state of chronic stress.  The stress response can get hardwired into our system especially when it happens at an early stage in life, making people more vulnerable to stress-related diseases and conditions.  Here's how it works:  "The physiology underlying this response has been elegantly revealed in the laboratory. When lab rats are stressed repeatedly, the amygdala — an almond-shaped nub in the center of the brain — enlarges dramatically. (This swelling comes at the expense of the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and memory and shrinks under severe stress.) The main job of the amygdala is to perceive danger and help generate the stress response; it’s the brain area turned on by dark alleys and Hitchcock movies. Unfortunately, a swollen amygdala means that we’re more likely to notice potential threats in the first place, which means we spend more time in a state of anxiety. (This helps explain why a more active amygdala is closely correlated with atherosclerosis.) The end result is that we become more vulnerable to the very thing that’s killing us."

Meaningful and effective spirituality is about empowering ourselves and others to experience the highest quality life possible.  It's being faithful to the kind of life Jesus said he came to give freely to people - the abundant life - a life where people can become the very best they can be at every stage of life.  And genuine spirituality involves facing the structures, policies, practices, and beliefs that people put into place that are diminishing and destroying life for others - facing them and changing them.  Equality and justice are spiritual issues that impact the quality of life for all people!  To fail to address them is to diminish our own souls, our bodies, and our whole lives - for when even one person in this world is diminished we are all.  And when one person is lifted up, we all are lifted up, we all are enhanced.

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