Beware the "Isms"

I began reading a book this afternoon by Charles L. Campbell. It's called "The Word Before The Powers: An Ethic Of Preaching." It's actually required reading for the Doctor of Ministry program I'm in. His primary thesis is that essentially the world is full of principalities and powers that seek to draw us away from God, and that the purpose of all preaching is nonviolent resistance to those principalities and powers. Reading the first chapter of his book this afternoon got me thinking about a problem I've long been aware of - the problem of "isms" in our culture, and the danger of our various "isms" drawing us away from Christ.

What do I mean by "isms"? I think it's fairly self-explanatory. We have "isms" for everything. Capitalism and socialism. Patriotism and globalism and internationalism. Marxism and fascism and liberalism. Environmentalism. Feminism. Existentialism. Consumerism. There's theism and atheism and agnosticism. Monotheism and polytheism. There's Catholicism and Anglicanism and Islamism and Hinduism and Buddhism. I belong to the United Church of Canada. We're a mix of Presbyterianism, Methodism and Congregationalism. There's geocentrism, and scientism and absolutism. "Isms" abound. They're a way we have of identifying ourselves with a point of view, a way of life, a belief system or a cause. Some are obviously evil - there's little to commend Nazism or neo-nazism to most people. In and of themselves, though, they may seem quite benign. What's the objection to environmentalism? Or to activism of any kind for a good cause? The problem is that all our "isms" are ways of dividing ourselves up into different, distinct and often competing and sometimes hostile groups. Even the benign and positive and forward thinking "isms" are set up to be in opposition to those who disagree with them. The problem becomes not so much that we identify with the cause represented by the "ism" but that we ourselves become identified with the "ism." The particular cause becomes who we are and what we're about - and woe to anyone whose own pet cause isn't in lockstep with ours. We begin to view the world and everything in it through the lens of the cause. So we not only believe in environmentalism, we become an environmentalist and everything we encounter is filtered through that perspective. You can substitute any "ism" for environmentalism and it still works. And it strikes me that that's exactly the opposite of what Jesus was trying to promote.

Jesus came that all may be one. That was a part of his prayer in John 17. That all may be one. The "isms" have become one of the principalities and powers that Charles Campbell writes about - things that take over our lives and drain us of our essential humanity by making us servants of a particular cause rather than allowing us to be those who seek to love our God and love our neighbour as ourself. In fact, those two commandments that Jesus identified as the greatest seem to pale in comparison with the "cause" - whatever the cause may be.

I try to commit myself to living outside the "isms." It's not that there are no causes that I believe in. It's because I don't want my essential humanity to be reduced to standing for a single cause or even multiple causes. I want my essential humanity lifted up by being a follower of Jesus, who then leads me to works that will create and enhance community and respect and dignity among all people - to lift up the essential humanity of all those I see around me. That's largely why I don't like "isms." I don't think Jesus was any sort of "ist." He came to set us free from all those things that entangle and imprison us. He set us free to live abundant lives and to offer abundant life to others.