Crazy for God, Part I

My title comes from Frank Schaeffer's tell-all book about his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Now Frank is frank and that's a fact, and it is clear to all that he has had his "issues" through the years (Haven't we all?). The idolizers of the Schaeffers and L'Abri have been scandalized and the hagiographers have been burning up their keyboards trying to set the record straight. What is missed, it seems to me, is that Frank was there and, whatever his issues, he does have considerable inside information about these things.

I, like so many, owe a great debt to the Schaeffers. It was their written work that saved me from fundamentalism and gave me the beginnings of a Christian world-view. I love their memory and thank God for their legacy (at least most of it). But, "the best of men are men at best," and all idols, even evangelical ones, have feet of clay.

Frank's frank assessment that his parents were "crazy, crazy for God" rings true because I have myself been victim to this condition and have spent most of my life in the company of people who were susceptible to religious mania of one kind or the other. I am not being cute. It has only been during the past few years, when my life has thrown me into the company of non-religious people, that I have come to see how pervasive and pernicious this condition is.

So, I want to venture into this dangerous ground and talk about the marks of being "crazy for God." I do so, not to hurt people. To the contrary, this kind of mania hurts people. It does great harm to the individuals possessed by it. It does great harm to their families. And, it does great harm to the people we are trying to give Christian witness to- the non-religious. It is with the wish to help, rather than hurt, that I write.

I think it is this kind of religious extremism that we are warned against in Ecclesiastes 7:15-18. "Be not righteous over much...be not wicked over much." The writer is warning us against an extremism that eschews moderation and temperance.

The "crazy for God" (hereafter CFG) condition is marked by monomania, that is, an obsessive and inordinate attention to and zeal for one idea or a few ideas clustered around one idea. In our case "God" is the one idea and the cluster may be salvation, death, hell, heaven, the good life, etc., all emanating from "God." This is the God-obsessed soul or the God-intoxicated soul. In either case, whether "obsessed" or "intoxicated," these are not generally considered to be healthy states of mind. And the CFG person is generally not a healthy soul.

It is little wonder that the CFG person would be obsessive even if God were not the obsession. Hence we see personalities like Gary Busey's. He is obsessive about drugs, sex, and alcohol. He experiences a conversion. He becomes CFG. The temperament is already there, the occasion/ideology presents itself, and, Voila!, we have a new soldier of the cross. The same thing happens with this personality type who converts to Islam, to Veganism, or to Amway.

Such people become obsessed, or, perhaps, better: possessed. Their every thought is focused on God-things. Their speech becomes laden with God-talk... They have to be so careful here: There must be no talk of being lucky, or being proud, or being happy. It is not luck, but Providence. It is not pride, but thankfulness. It is not happiness, but joy. The English language itself becomes a mine-field where one must be very careful as to where one puts one's foot. And within the community of the CFG folks, a misstep means correction or rebuke. I once was corrected for announcing a "pot-luck dinner" at church by a CFG lady of some years who primly reminded me that the proper jargon was "pot-Providence." And the "possession" goes to every other aspect of life. Every motive, every thought, every action, every word, every omission, and every ambition is scrutinized with surgical exactness to make sure it is "godly." No wonder people on the outside have little interest in and downright aversion to such a life!

The CFG personality is also driven by the baser passions of the human psyche, such as fear, guilt, shame, triumphalism, and pride. How many people are in professional religious vocations, not because they love God and love what they are doing, but because of these dark little critters hidden under the rocks of their minds. So much of what I have described in the earlier paragraphs of this piece is too often driven by these dark things.

Now, it is a fact that people who are motivated by such darkness often soar off into the darkness of darker things. I have at other times described such people as those who have screwed the lid down so tightly on their darkness that they have broken off the bottle neck and all the dark stuff comes flying out- uncontrollably. Hence the scandals among the faithful, the sex, power, money stuff that comes to the forefront in the lives of people like Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, and the Hiker of the Appalachian Trail. These are all CFG people.

There is another factor in this and it is difficult to discuss because of the subtleties involved in it. Christianity is a evangelical faith, it is one of the world's converting faiths. That is to say, it is concerned, in obedience to its Lord's commission, to "make disciples." The problem arises when the darker triumphalist tendencies of the heart to conquer, to overcome, to dominate replace a living and sharing of the Good News that rests upon the sovereign grace of God to gently and sweetly persuade minds and hearts toward himself. CFG people do not appreciate this distinction. As such it is not surprising that they are in spirit much like the New Atheists in their passion to be right and to make converts. There is little contrast between the spirit of a Pat Robertson and a Christopher Hitchens. Perhaps the one is CFG and the other, CFA (Crazy for Atheism).

Over all, the most glaring trait of the CFG folks is their complete incapacity to enjoy life. The festive, partying, eating, drinking, dancing, laughing, singing, shouting life of the Bible is seldom if ever present among these folks. The boisterous, loud, over-the-top living that affirms life, sex, birth, work, fun, money, possessions, the sun and the moon, the sea and the dry land, and even affliction and death, and on and on and on... This is not possible for the CFG person. He is miserable because-and this is the tragic irony of it all- he is not obsessed with God but with yet another projection of his sad self that he visualizes as God (which itself is a form of idolatry).

I close with a little poem that I cannot find the source of. It has meant the world to me for over thirty years. It is the antidote to the CFG mania and admirably capsulizes the truth of Ecclesiates 7:15-18 (and the rest of the book). Here's how it goes:

Man,
Feare God
And bee merrye
And give not for this worlde
A cherrye.