About 18 years ago I enrolled in a tae kwon do class as a Phys. Ed. credit in college. I loved the class and stuck with it and today I am a 5th Dan, Master Instructor in traditional tae kwon do. In my early days I competed in a number of different tournaments with a variety of results. Sometimes I earned 1st place, other times I was quickly defeated. I loved sparring in tournaments. It was always a fun time, always a learning experience, and occasionally I walked away really pleased with my performance. But it didn’t take me long to recognize the limitations of tournament sparring when it comes to real self-defense. Sure you could use many of the same techniques on the street as you do in the ring, but the situation would be quite different. Tournament sparring has rules, boundaries, illegal techniques and referees. There is explicit agreement on the terms of the fight in a tournament. And there is often implicit agreement on the nature of the fight, such as that we fight as friends and fellow students of an art.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of competition lately, and specifically the ways that competition is alive in the church. This is something I’ve thought about for a while, and it has recently been brought to the forefront of my mind through the book I’m reading: Heavenly Participation by Hans Boersma. Chapters 3 and 4 of that book chronicle some of the factors that led the church away from the medieval’s sacramental worldview, one in which nature and all creation was known (and felt) to be pointing beyond itself to the One who made it. What struck me as I read through these chapters is how many of the factors he names were rooted in conflicts, fights, or debates. What seems to have happened is that when the church took up a theological debate over say the Eucharist (communion), or the authority of Scripture the terms of that debate tended to be dictated by some new philosophical assumption that the debaters weren’t always aware of.

One of the more obvious examples of this took place around the Reformation. Part of the fight between the Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc.) was over where proper spiritual authority resided. The Reformers, and their predecessors, held that ultimate spiritual authority comes only from the Bible, sola scriptura. The Catholic church reacted against this by asserting that authority resided in the church, and its long tradition of interpreting Scripture. To this day, that same fight rages on, both sides holding to their own view of authority. What Boersma points out though is the faulty presupposition that this fight rests upon. As he writes, “To a [medieval] mindset, the supernatural presence of God, both in Scripture and in the church, was obvious. Therefore, medieval Christians would never have dreamed of opposing the one to the other” (pg. 61). Rather than clarifying a question, the fight over authority introduced a new factor into the game, under the radar. And by engaging the fight on the terms it was presented, both sides implicitly agreed to this new factor: Scripture and Tradition are distinct forms of authority.

I bring all this up because I think we are wise to be aware of such a dynamic. Intuitively I’m inclined to say that we become what we fight against. But that isn’t quite the whole story. Rather, in order to fight, we have to agree on certain rules, boundaries and presuppositions. And all too often, our desire to fight blinds us to the assumptions we’ve agreed to as we engage.

I see this at play in the church’s relationship with science, or even our society’s relationship with science. It is common these days to believe that science and faith are intrinsically at odds with each other, which is nonsense by the way. The Church’s fight against the world over science has had a slew of unintended consequences, because the fight takes place on a common foundation with agreed upon rules. We debate what science is true, or how much of science is true, but in doing so the Church has largely agreed with the world on what science is and how it should be used. (Check out Ronald Osborn’s Death Before the Fall, for a thorough examination of the shared ground on which this battle is fought.) The real tragedy in this isn’t that some Christians now believe in evolution, or that evolution is taught in our schools. The real tragedy is how the Church has lost the sacramental view of creation that was held by the Great Tradition of the Church for centuries. We’ve largely adopted the materialistic, reductionistic assumptions about nature that modern science holds. And we’ve adopted these views, not because they are theologically faithful, but because they are the presuppositions required to engage the fight. Our desire to fight, to compete with the world, blinds us to the ways that we’ve accepted the world’s terms of engagement.

Once you get this paradigm in your head it isn’t hard to see how it plays out in other areas of our world. For example, as a pastor the last few months have been filled with conversations about masks, about safety, and about public opinion. These are the main topics of discussion that I have seen active among my clergy friends and my congregants. But is that really all the wisdom that the church has to offer the world in this time? In the conversations I’ve had, the articles I’ve read, the podcasts I’ve listened to, two things I’ve never heard discussed are 1. How do we define healthy human life? or 2. How does the inevitability of death factor into our response to a pandemic?

Our answers to these questions are foundational to how we think through so many difficult issues during these pandemic times. How we answer these questions informs how we make policies and decisions. The good news is these are questions that Scripture and the Church’s Great Tradition can speak to. We would find deep wisdom for our time in these resources. But instead we are simply moving on as if these questions have been answered for us. We’ve accepted the world’s nebulous definitions. Even if we can’t articulate them, they are part of our shared presuppositions.

Is it any wonder then, that the church doesn’t seem to be able to offer anything compelling to the world? When our fundamental posture toward the world is one of conflict, then we can’t help but meet the world on its field of play. The world’s field of play is full of experts, authorities, politicians, and philosophers that will help us fight the fight, and maybe even win a battle here and there. But there are no saints on that field who can show us a more faithful path. There are no theologians who can help us think more clearly through hard situations. And there are no artists that can teach us to see the beauty of our Creator from within creation.

The church has more to offer this world. But we must first let go of our idol of competition and our desire for battle and we must allow Scripture and Tradition to guide us toward Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.