Are You Hard or Soft?

A man was driving up a steep, narrow mountain road. A woman was driving down the same road. As they passed each other, the woman leaned out of the window and yelled “Pig!”

The man immediately leaned out of his window and replied, “Witch!” or a word that rhymes with “witch.”

They each continued on their way, and as the man rounded the next corner, he crashed into a pig that was standing in the middle of the road.

Ah, if men would only listen.

Columnist Dave Barry writes that “Without males, there would be no such sport as professional lawn mower racing. Also, there would be a 100 percent decline in the annual number of deaths related to efforts to shoot beer cans off of heads.”

Someone else has noted that “Men are from Sears; women are from Nordstrom’s.”

Differences between the sexes abound, and in fact, it is the task of the social anthropologists to discover those differences and comment about them.

Thus, a book by Michael Barone, Hard America, Soft America, which identifies the differences, not between men and women, but between an America that competes, and an America that coddles. There is a division in our country between those who are Hard and those who are Soft. Barone believes that Hard America is marked by competition and accountability, while Soft America is defined by government regulation and social safety nets.

An example of Soft America? Our public school system. It’s filled with progressive values, including a desire to promote the self-esteem of its students. Playground games that seem to be too competitive and cruel, such as dodge ball, aka bombardment, are now banned in Soft America.

Hard America, on the other hand, is not afraid of competition. Private companies fire people when profits plunge, and the military puts its people through intense physical training along with exercises using live fire. There’s nothing warm and fuzzy about Hard America, and very little coddling – unless you happen to be a CEO with a golden parachute, like recently fired Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who was given a $62 million benefit package as severance.

Hard vs. Soft. Competition vs. coddling. It’s one way to view a divided and polarized America.

It could also describe the church in Corinth when Paul went to visit it, and later wrote his first letter to it.

The early Christian church certainly had its share of divisions, nowhere more clearly than in Corinth, where the apostle Paul had to plead with the Christians to settle their differences. “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters,” he wrote in his first letter, “by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

The Corinthian church was a shattered Greek urn, lying in pieces on a cold stone floor. Some of the members were swayed by brilliant rhetoric, others were influenced by knowledge, others were impressed by spiritual gifts, and still others attached importance to prosperity and social status.

In the face of these fractures, Paul calls for the Corinthian Christians to be “united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1:10).

Unity was a problem then, and it’s a problem now. There’s a huge division between the Hard Faith-ers and the Soft Faith-ers.

The Hard Faith people place an emphasis on the obligations of religious life, and they appreciate moral clarity – their scriptural foundation is a covenant with God, an agreement defined by righteous living. If your faith is hard, you’re focused on knowing God’s truth, keeping the Ten Commandments, and living a disciplined life in a community of faith.

The Soft Faith people see religion as a liberation movement. They tend to stress God’s love for the oppressed of the earth, and they trace their spiritual roots to the exodus, when God brought the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt. If your faith is soft, you’re focused on experiencing God’s grace, keeping the commandments of Jesus to love God and neighbor, and living a life that is open and receptive to new understandings.

Hard Faith is all about obligation, clarity, covenant, truth and discipline. Soft Faith is committed to liberation, charity, exodus, grace and openness.

I’m not talking right or wrong here, good or bad, because both sides are important to the church, both have deep roots in our Scripture and tradition, and both are necessary for a fully formed faith.

But Hard and Soft perspectives create a very tricky tension – they exert a kind of magnetic pull as they draw people of faith in opposite directions.

The apostle Paul had a similar problem in Corinth, where the Christians of that community felt drawn to different leaders in the early church. Some felt they belonged to Paul, others to Apollos, others to Cephas, and still others to Christ (v. 12). Some of these leaders were eloquent, some were not. Some were Hard, and some were Soft.

But Paul rejected these distinctions by asking the Corinthians point blank, “Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (v. 13).

For Paul, the unifying reality for us is always going to be Jesus Christ, whether we are Hard or Soft, competitive or coddling, obligated or liberated.

The amazing thing about Jesus is that he is simultaneously Hard Jesus and Soft Jesus. The Hard Jesus lays out the obligations of discipleship, and is clear about the Christian way of life. He calls us into a New Covenant, one that is sealed in his very own blood. He is devoted to the truth – in fact, he himself is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) – and he asks his disciples to be so disciplined that they actually deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him. You simply cannot get any Harder than that.

At the same time, Jesus is the Soft Jesus. He liberates us from captivity to sin and death, and challenges us to show Christian charity to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and the imprisoned. He leads us on a new exodus, one that passes through death to everlasting life. And he shows amazing grace to all who follow him in faith, receiving with open arms the outcasts, the sinners, the brokenhearted, and the sick. He is a Soft, Soft Savior – no doubt about it.

The apostle Paul knows this, which is why he calls for unity in the midst of the Christian community’s diversity. He doesn’t expect the Corinthians to have identical views and perspectives on all things, nor does he expect them to live out their Christian faith in exactly the same way. But he does expect them to be united in their determination to follow Jesus, and equally dependent on the power of the “cross of Christ” (v. 17).

The cross is what unites us, according to Paul. It is the perfect symbol of Hard Truth and Soft Grace.

So, what does this mean to us today? What unites us is always going to be more powerful and all-embracing than what pulls us apart. The way for us to be “united in the same mind and the same purpose” (v. 10) is to remember the message.

The message is the message of the cross (1:18) and that message is “the power of God.”

That’s what we’re about. If we stay on message, we’ll stay together. The trick is to remember that it’s about the message. It’s not about us.

Dan Wakefield, writing in The Christian Century, tells of meeting one of his heroes of the faith, theologian Henri Nouwen.

Flustered by his proximity to his idol, Wakefield stuttered a question: “Father Nouwen, I’ve read your Prayers from the Genesee. What bothers me is that if someone as advanced as you has doubts and difficulties with prayer, what hope is there for someone like me who’s just starting out?”

Nouwen looked at him sternly and said, rather sharply, “Mr. Wakefield, Christianity is not for ‘getting your life together.’”

No, it’s not. It’s not about Paul, Apollos, Cephas or Chloe. Or you. Or me.

It’s about the message. So stay on message.

Hard Faith and Soft Faith. Both are required if we are going to follow a Hard-Soft Savior. And remember – Jesus’ love can soften the hardest heart. Share that message.