Less to miss. . .

I recently read an article about how those most orthodox in their Christian faith are the least likely to depart the Church and those least orthodox in their Christian faith are the most likely to leave.  Some probably hailed this as a great insight.  It is to be expected.  Those who do not hold to the creedal and doctrinal formulations of the faith and, in particular, to the truthfulness and factual character of the Scriptures, have less to leave and therefore less to miss.

If you already have doubts about or rejected Scripture as God's Word and infallible in what it says (not only in matters of salvation), there is less to miss by jettisoning the Scriptures and the Church called into being by that Word.  If you already have rejected the voice of God speaking through His Word ordering all things into being and keeping them, there is less to miss by taking the off ramp from religion and its theocentric shape of all things.  If you have already departed from the morality flowing from God's Word and His creative and redemptive work, you have also pretty much given up on the idea of sin and evil in favor of some vacillating standard and so there is less to miss.  If you have already supplemented with or given the primary nod to culture and popular opinion as a standard for truth against God's revelation, there is less to miss by giving it all up in favor of what feels good in the moment.  If you have already come to the conclusion that your life is mostly accident and primarily about what you do or do not do in the present, it is easier to give up on God's will and purpose and any thoughts about eternity and therefore there is less to miss by leaving it all behind.  I could go on and on and on but I think you get the drift.

Of course those least catechized and those whose faith is less in accord with the creedal and doctrinal formulations of Christian orthodoxy are more likely to leave.  They hold to less and it is easier for them to give up that as well.  For all the talk about the nones and the declining numbers of Christians, the painful and yet honest truth is that the orthodox Christians (no matter the tradition) are always the least likely to depart the pew and the most likely to stay.  It is the obvious truth which we do not seem to want to admit.  Christians who hold to the faith once delivered to the saints and who practice that faith with regular (dare I say weekly?) attendance are hardly likely to depart.  The ones we lose are always the ones whom we do not quite have now and the future merely reveals how little we had them in the beginning.

Let me dispel a myth, however.  We will always have the cultural Christians who come on Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals and such.  They may be distant from the actual believing part of it all (though whom I to judge) but at least they recognize the value of holding on to the dream.  I suspect there is more hope of these becoming more orthodox and devout than there is any real hope of those who have to swallow hard when they hear the Christian faith as it has always been confessed.  They have no dream left to hold onto and their anchor within the pale is always in danger of slipping.  It will not take much for them to slip out the back or even perhaps to throw a public fit about the narrowness of the orthodox faith in the face of a wider world of opinion and truth.  They hold to less and have less to miss.