Month: March 2011

Lost Mandate

Newt Gingrich is warning us that if we’re not careful, we’re going to end up in an atheist (or) Islamist country by the time his grandchildren (or, to be personal, my children, since they are about the same age) grow up. Now, not to be snarky here (ok, maybe a little), but I’ve never exactly viewed Newt as the Righteous Leader of the Church. But out of charity, I will give him the benefit of the doubt here.

That being said, my question to the Church (not to Newt) is this: what great things has Christendom done for the world which makes an atheist (I will set aside Islamist as that has exactly 0% chance of happening, despite tea party imaginings otherwise) future something to fear?

Is it the fact that we have turned the faith of the one who stated that how we treat the “least of these who are members of my family” reflected our relationship with himself into one solely focused on getting people into heaven and to hell with how they live on earth?

Or perhaps it’s the fact that we have turned the Gospel into a get rich quick scheme. Or a therapeutic treatment to allow us to live our Best Life Now? Or perhaps even that we’ve turned it into just another consumer good to be purchased by its adherents?

And don’t forget the fact that we have allowed his name to be known more for the people we hate and the stridency of our rhetoric than for the love of a God who would live with us and die on the cross to complete his plan for the forgiveness of every last person ever born.

To be perfectly honest, the church in the era of Christendom has lost its mandate to lead. In many ways, I welcome a future run by just about anyone OTHER than us, so that we, as a church, can stop worrying about how we’re going to prevent someone else from screwing things up (in a different way from how we’ve done it), and can focus once again on how we can be a witness to a screwed up world (there’s a better word for that, also featured in a Dead Milkmen song if you want to Google it, but I will refrain from using it out of respect for those who are already offended by my post). A witness of love, justice, compassion, and hope. Not of fear, anger, and uncertainty.

Things I Don’t Believe

Oh, I’m going to step into it now.

It’s a good thing nobody reads this blog.

Okay, here I go.

I don’t believe in the God who condemns people to hell simply because they didn’t choose to say the right words before they died. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe in the God who condemns people to hell. Full stop.

Do I deny the existence of hell? I can’t, without being faithless to the witness of the scriptures. But the more God draws me into his grace, the more I suspect that hell will either be lightly populated, temporarily populated, or perhaps not populated at all when all is said and done. And with Robert Farrar Capon, I wonder if in fact hell won’t be the pity party in the midst of the banquet of grace which goes on for all eternity. A pity party that God will frequently interrupt in order to bring his pitiful guests back to the table of celebration. Until all have finally come back.

I don’t believe in the God of correct doctrine. The God who carefully parses our theology, and kicks those who color outside the lines into the cellar (Google “Dead Milkmen, Methodist Coloring Book” for the reference). The God who wants us to choose sides against our fellow brothers and sisters, branding those on the wrong side heretics.

Do I then deny objective truth? Am I so post-modern that I believe that whatever one believes is equally true as long as it is sincerely felt? No, but I have tasted the poison of my own failure enough in my life to realize that any doctrine is simply an approximation of the truth, colored by our own biases and mental wiring. And so I choose to be generous in my understanding of orthodoxy, and assume that you are my sibling in Christ despite all evidence to the contrary.

I don’t believe in the God who chooses some people to be with him and dumps the rest into the fiery furnace. God may in fact be the great predestinator, but if he is, it’s because he predestined everyone to be forgiven on the cross. I also find it remarkable that our response to his free gift could in any way, shape, or form affect the outcome. We’re not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t believe in a One True Church, unless you are talking about the church catholic, with a small c, which includes the church Catholic, and Orthodox, and liberal Episcopalian, and even Calvinist, among others.

I don’t believe that God’s word, in the form that we have it today (the Bible, for those following along at home), is inerrant. I don’t believe that you need to read the figurative parts of the scripture literally, and the poetic parts of scripture as prose. I do believe that the bible that God has given us is good enough to lead us to him, even if it may have some defects which reflect the cracked vessels he asked to write it.

In the end, I continue to scratch my head that so much of the movement started by the radical, itinerant, rabbi from Nazareth who would hang out with anyone (especially the really bad people) continues to draw lines, choose teams, and pluck specks out of eyes. And sometimes even pluck out entire eyes.

And I continue to be amazed that this very same church, for the most part, misses the fact that the Christ who rose to glory did so by rejecting the very judgement and violence that we so wish he would have meted out instead.