NeoZine

Defensive Spirituality creates a small, little world which feels warm and loving, but what a tragic deception it is. It’s a well-ordered world with high fences to shut out confusion and unpredictability from aliens, but it’s a fragile fortress. This is not the power of God at work here. Rather, it’s a primitive lifestyle forming close-knit Tribes with shared views.

It’s a good life for children, because the Tribe provides security and identity. Without the Tribe, the young and vulnerable are unprotected. These simple minds perceive the world in black-and-white terms, and the Tribe is simple enough to understand. Within these confined walls, love works. The customs and quirks of tribal life provide warm and familiar memories of a place where people lived with purpose and belonging, and the Tribe is glorified in songs and dance, stories, festivals and art, so teenagers who once despised their tribal roots grow nostalgic in adulthood and try to reproduce it.

But Tribal love is also primitive and immature. The social contracts are clear, with little argument. Relationships work inside the Tribe because it’s bound together by an authority which can be quite overbearing and stifling. Its harmony and safety trigger deep feelings of love, but it’s a superficial love, not God’s love: choices are minimized, the harmony is actually conformity, and the love is extended with countless conditions attached.

When older Tribal members continue to live and love by these simplistic rules, the Tribe is in tremendous peril. It means nobody in the Tribe can interact confidently with the outside world, and so the Tribe is perpetually vulnerable and naive. Sooner or later outsiders will intrude and upset the equilibrium of the Tribe, throwing relationships into disarray and exposing the weak foundation of the community.

Christian Tribalism

American Christianity is notoriously tribal and exclusive: what Francis Schaeffer labeled a “Christian ghetto” impoverished by cultural ignorance. The latter half of the 20th century witnessed the rise of a theology new to American Evangelicalism called “Personal Peace and Prosperity” or just “Health and Wealth”, and it produced a widespread basis for Tribal love among Christians. Today Christianity is known more for its “family values” like the Mormon church than its concern and love for outsiders. “The centrality of the family to all social and political life” has pushed aside the centrality of the Kingdom of God as taught by Christ.¹

Because Tribal love is so immature and weak, it cannot effectively penetrate the non-Christian world. Is anyone surprised that 90 percent of Evangelicals have never brought a non-Christian to church? This hardly reflects the love practiced in the early Christian church:

For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. – 1 Thessalonians 1:8

Tribal Christians are just too frightened to share their faith because they’re too frightened by aliens and outsiders. Defensive Spirituality produces a flabby, overweight character unfamiliar with suffering and too preoccupied to the point of obsession with the Tribe’s welfare, but it backfires: rather than protecting the Tribe, immature Tribal love exposes the Tribe to real dangers from outsiders.

Tribal Tragedy

The Moho Tribe in Burma is a tragic story of the deceptive security in Tribalism. For generations, a man’s prowess was measured by his ability to master the blowgun, and with its darts he could hunt the plentiful Horn-billed birds and provide food for the family. Men who practiced the art and displayed exceptional hunting skill carried great status in the Tribe. But when a foreigner first introduced guns, suddenly all the Tribal rules collapsed. Now anyone could kill a Hornbill. Blowgun skills became useless, and so did the hunters. Listless men soon began drinking heavily—since foreigners also introduced hard liquor—and soon the Tribe itself began to collapse.

The same pattern is tearing through once-formidable Christian Tribes.

Pressures from the modern world are exposing the spiritual immaturity holding the Christian Tribe together. Despite every attempt to avoid it, the outside world has become more intrusive through technology like movies, television and the Web. At first, Christian Tribes tried desperately to wall off these intrusions by forbidding movies, but the pressures are so great and widespread it’s impossible to keep the Tribe safe anymore. By age 16 teenagers get a drivers’ license and the power to drive far away from the watchful eyes of the Tribe.

The weakness of Tribal Christianity is tragically evident as Christians across the nation are losing their children to the Kosmos—vulnerable and immature children who were unprepared to face the outside world are devoured when they step into it.

The Christian Tribe was under the illusion that God’s power was at work in their midst only because they lived in a small, familiar Christian world.

I was stunned by the aliens I met in Middle School, and coming from Tribal Christianity I was utterly unprepared. My life was saturated with love from my parents and my warm Christian fellowship. Everything worked for me in the Tribe: I was popular, happy, satisfied, convinced, zealous and praised as an example of a “good Christian boy!” Everyone—including myself—could not understand my transformation into a juvenile delinquent. How could I know how naive I was, how immature my spirituality was, and how incapable my Tribe would become as my protection?

Tribal Terror

In a sweltering jungle deep inside Viet Nam, alone in a small hut, dripping with sweat, a solitary figure utters his last words, knowing he will die within moments: “The horror…” the hoarse voice whispers, and again: “the horror…” He saw the yawning cavern of death and its vast darkness ahead. The sad, sagging face of Marlin Brando, his bald, sweat-drenched head and drooping lips fill the screen of Apocalypse Now with that horrible picture of death everyone can sense and imprisons the soul.

Tribal Christians feel this way too.

It’s not a fear of death, but fear of the living, fallen world that haunts Tribal Christians looking at the vast horizon of aliens out there: “The Horror!” I’ve felt it. I watched helplessly as my own children entered Junior High School, knowing their beautiful young lives would soon be scarred by the wickedness of humanity.

It’s fear that fuels the tribal lifestyle and imprisons Christians, despite Christ’s instructions to “Go!” The Christian Tribe is the safest place on earth, or so it seems. Ironically, far from providing safety, Tribal love only delays the inevitable Tribal Tragedy, and the immaturity it breeds only amplifies the fear of outsiders over time.

Tribal love knows only one mode of love: total and complete emotional dependence. This dependence is perfectly natural for a child, but not an adult, and certainly not a Christian adult. Without growing up and growing past these Tribal immaturities, the adult is a naive child imprisoned by fear not only of outsiders, but fear that comes from the experience of giving all love to the Tribe. Any hurt or betrayal is overwhelming because there is no way out. The the tribal experience is so limited, any pain or disaster in the Tribe takes unrealistic proportions. The Tribal Christian can become deeply, emotionally damaged if they are never “perfected in love,” as John says.

It means Tribal fear isn’t limited to outsiders. It spreads within the Tribe as well. Fear is a cancer on love, from God’s view:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. – 1 John 4:18

What Tribe is without its flaws? It’s inevitable to get hurt in the Tribe, no matter how secure it seems. For those who never mature, that Tribal pain can handicap a lifetime.

It seems incomprehensible when someone from a damaged family remains perpetually entangled in the Tribe’s twisted emotional demands. As the Tribe continues to inflict pain, its people grow increasingly dependent and eventually incapable of mustering the emotional strength to break free. The Tribe’s members are beaten down and become hollow personalities emptied by resignation, but you can see the fear in their eyes. Outsiders shake their heads, amazed, but inside the Tribe people have no idea how bad it is and they fear it’s far worse “out there.”

Tribal Guilt

Tribal love is inexperienced love, and it also produces a guilty love.

When tribal love ventures outside, inevitably something terrible happens because it’s a fallen world. How is this possible? What went wrong? This never happened before, back in the Tribe. “Did I do something wrong?” is the obvious question.

Christians set free from guilt by the cross of Christ continue to live guilt-driven lives until they outgrow their inexperienced love. Until then, Tribal guilt can be quite irrational, as this story demonstrates:

“Will you help me get rid of my guilt feelings?”

“Well, what are they about?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you, you’ll just laugh.”

So you spend twenty minutes convincing him you won’t laugh, and then finally:

“Well, it’s like this: last time I was down home, I just can’t forgive myself. There was a thunderstorm, and…and my father’s old hound dog was a-howlin’ ‘cause he was hungry, and I didn’t go out and feed him, and be broke free to get some food and he got struck by lightening and he died, and…I just can’t forgive myself!”

And then you laugh. – Ankenman1974

This anecdote sounds absurd unless you come from the back-hills of Tennessee, and then you know how vital a hound dog is in life. When the guy’s father died, the dog was all that remained of the Tribe. Then the unbelievable happened: through his own neglect the dog died (struck by lightening) and the Tribe was lost forever, leaving this man only his guilt.

A less-tribal person is more experienced about life and its tragedies, and less shattered. When “bad things happen to good people,” it is sad but not incapacitating for those with a broader love experience.

This is what inexperienced love looks like: a naive and narrow view of the world unable to gain perspective on the unexpected tragedies of life. The world shouldn’t work this way because the world never worked this way before, so “it must be something I did wrong…”

Tribal guilt comes so easily:

The person who feels no guilt about anything is a perpetual love-taker. Anyone who feels guilt about something has tried in one way or another to be loving, and has flopped. – Ankenman1974

The Christian Tribe breeds guilt behind its safe walls. Tragedy takes unrealistic proportions in life, and the guilt of failure is amplified.

The Sacrificial Cure

Yes, it is a dangerous, modern world, yet here is where we live. How should we deal with it?

There are two ways for everyone to face the depravity and suffering of this world: when it suddenly smashes the walls of Defensive Spirituality and pierces our hearts, or when we freely choose to enter the fray as warriors. Knowing this, Jesus told his disciples to charge headlong into it: “Go! Make disciples!”

We are to be warriors in Christ and get out there and fight the spiritual battles in the muck.

The process of maturity means gaining understanding and victory over the sin in this world. The beauty of Christ’s call to arms is the liberation it brings from the Tribe with all its fear, inexperience and guilt. Maturity means trusting in God’s leadership, not in the Tribe’s simplistic conformity. Spiritual warfare helps us understand God’s will in relationship to things that happen, and Tribal naivety is effectively checked by the deep insight that can only come from following in Christ’s footsteps.

I distinctly remember how life shattered all my dreams and hopes in my own youth. Most kids are idealistic, but I was exceptionally dreamy. As I moved from a cozy Christian home into the cold, fallen world I discovered that most of my assumptions were wrong, and I was crushed. I lost hope.

Jesus Christ was not so blinded by naive, Tribal love:

But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man. – John 2:24–25

It means we need to love the unloving. There’s no way to escape the unloving nature of mankind, and the Tribe is not a hiding place: it’s full of the unloving. But the unloving nature of the Tribe is camaflauged by its convenience and appealing support. Loving inside the Tribe is a conditional transaction, similar to the rest of human society. Is Tribal love really so much different than a profitable business deal?

We need to love the unloving based on something different: not as a beneficial transaction, but because it’s right, it’s good, it’s God’s way, it reflects His character, and it’s mature love. Learning how to love the unloving deserves its own section, but it is the solution to keep in mind for now, and the clear, godly direction to begin moving in our lives.

Breaking the Dividing Walls

Here’s the irony of Jesus Christ: he knew how evil the heart is, but he still loved them anyway:

Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. – John 13:1

He still loved them knowing they would desert him and fail him. He “loved His own,” which included Judas, and Jesus also knew what lurked in the heart of Judas. In fact, he “loved his own,” which includes everyone, even those nailing him to the cross when he said, “Father, forgive them!” God’s love is anything but Tribal:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. – John 3:16

At the heart of the victory of the cross is the smashing of the Tribal prisons humans hide within. It was God’s unique purpose for the church on earth, and a source of the warmth and awe in first century Body Life. It embodied the Great Commission, and it set the Body of Christ apart from all other human societies like a light blazing on a hill. It was the Great Mystery of Christ — God’s love for all mankind smashed social barriers to reach all peoples and all nations everywhere!

…the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men…to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.–vs—Ephesians 3:4–6

This is why Christianity was so radical:

For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. – Eph. 2:13–14

The love of Christ is so different from tribal love. It cuts across tightly-controlled barriers, bringing Jew and Gentiles together. His love resounded across the empire, it incited a backlash of persecutions, it filled the Collusium with martyrs, it stirred confusion, but still the dividing walls kept crumbling. God’s love is victorious, while tribal love is fearful and guilt-oriented.

Christians must de-mystify the romantic notions of the human Tribe. It is not glorious. It is held together by countless unseen conditions and rules, many of which are unhealthy. It’s the breeding-ground of deep, emotional pain and damage. It is not heaven on earth. It is not God’s will to find our identity or security there.

Those Christian communities and families that survive are those determined to follow Christ’s leadership to break the dividing walls and penetrate this present darkness through Victorious Love Output, while those fading away are primitive Tribes living outside of God’s will, walled-off in Defensive Spirituality.

The Pressure is ON

Not all these modern pressures are bad for Christians. They reveal the cracks and fissures already present in Tribal Christianity, and bring a renewed pressure to grow up. Immature spirituality quickly becomes dysfunctional spirituality when it hits the modern world.

Tribal Christianity is not only a doomed strategy, it’s contrary to God’s clear will for mature Christians. It’s God’s clear will for Christians to reach beyond the Tribe with His concern and love for all humanity for all nations. “For God so loved the world” is God’s perspective, and Jesus lived a life reaching out to the poor, the disenfranchised, the Samaratans and aliens. God calls us to live this same life not because He under-values families or Christian communities. Quite the opposite: the way to save Christian families and communities is to rise above tribal love. It’s the difference between mature and immature spirituality, and between life or death in a dangerous, modern world.

Paul’s adjurations take on new urgency in today’s world: “may your love may abound!” and the “labor of love!” are God’s call-to-arms for His people.

God’s Love Ethic is not a nice touch in the Christian life, and it isn’t optional. Either Christians grow up and live a Love Ethic that works in the changing, modern world, or the Christian Tribe continues to fragment and lose its youth, marriages, and families.

Related posts:

1. The Tragedy and Beauty of Love
2. Rebel, Conform or Love
3. Spiritual Immaturity
4. The Power of Love
5. The New Life in Love Ethics