The days of summer must be offering meagre substance for professional Op-Ed journalists who have found themselves reduced to filling their columns with announcements of the death of what they label “the liberal churches” of North America.
To read this post go to: http://blogs.timescolonist.com/2012/07/30/predicting-the-death-of-liberal-churches/
In A Spacious Place 
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July 30, 2012 at 9:44 am
John
Hi Christopher,
I also read the Wente piece and commented on it on The Globe and Mail website a few days ago. In my view, Wente is not a professional journalist, but rather a professional provocateur. This has been her role at the Globe for many years. Her work is not designed to inform. Rather, it’s purpose is normally two-fold: first, to sell copy (or, in our day and age, website hits) by stirring up controversy where none normally is justified; second, to give a boost to under-performing right-wing causes by ensuring they get prominent newspaper coverage when they otherwise wouldn’t get or deserve such attention.
July 30, 2012 at 2:47 pm
Steve
Recently, I attended the funeral of my father-in-law. The service was held in a small quaint Episcopal church in Sanford Florida. I walked into that church with a few arrogant assumptions, namely that this was a dead church within a dead denomination. My assumptions may or may not be true but they were just that, my assumptions. Since my father-in-law had not attended there for over ten years, the rector did not know him so after he said what he could he preceded to t-bone me and my assumptions with his homily. He took the opportunity to give the most elegant statement of the message of Jesus I have ever heard to all of the two full pews of attendees. I sat there and chuckled to myself thinking this must be God’s sense of humor as He once again reminded me about the danger of putting limits on Him.
All this talk about whether it is the liberal church or the conservative church that is dying faster is like two dead bodies talking to each other asking who is more dead than the other. In a previous blog, the hymn “Once to every man and nation” was mentioned. My comments then flow naturally to today’s topic. I think it speaks loudly to this issue and has a lesson to teach us. The hymn was criticized for creating a overly simplistic dualism but I think that is to misunderstand the hymn and the very nature of good and evil. With humility I suggest good is how God created the earth, and that good stands on it own. Evil like a parasite, depends on good to exist, it cannot exist on its own. So I agree, to neatly classify everything as either good or evil is a false and overly simplistic approach. It is better to say there is only good and evil is simply a perversion of good. Nothing is evil in and of itself.
For what I consider a much better perspective on the matter I recommend reading or listening to a recent address to the National Prayer Breakfast by Eric Metaxas. It was entitled “Jesus Hates Dead Religion: Bonhoeffer, Wilberforce, and Power of Living Faith”. http://youtu.be/dEsJ8aw9BzM In it Metaxas uses the lives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Wilberforce to illustrate the difference between a phony religiosity and real faith in God. With respect for the sovereignty of God and eyes to see the truth; they were the brave men who chose while the cowards stood aside. Theirs were not mere beliefs; they were convictions upon which they felt a responsibility to act.
If like the rector of the small Florida church we taught the message of Jesus, if we began to understand what real faith in the living Jesus is, if we begin to truly love our enemies, to practice reconciliation people would notice. We have to start in our own house, if we cannot be reconciled to each other, how can any attempt on our part to spread the message of reconciliation be taken seriously? It is our ability to love our enemies that separates religiosity from real faith and if we can’t do it we need to “get off the bus”.
Metaxas stood bravely before the President and Vice President of the United States and an impressive array of senior senators and representatives of the media and suggested we are at a “Bonhoeffer moment” in history. Like the evils of slavery and the evils of Nazi Germany we face another “moment to decide” that comes once to every man and to every nation, to “sway the future”. We do have criteria to discern real truth, otherwise enslaving and trafficking other humans would be the norm, the Hitler’s of the world would be having their way without resistance, and black people would still be going to segregated schools.
So it is as simple and as hard as getting back to basics. Jesus left us just a few basic commands, do this He says and all the rest will take care of itself. Love God, love neighbor, spread the message of reconciliation. The rector started his homily by saying “It’s a good deal, really…” It is a good deal and that is why it is called the Good News and it will stand up to intellectual scrutiny. Jesus said He is the way; He is the Sheppard who will lead us. He said let the dead bury their dead. We all have it within our sphere of influence to make a difference; are we sheep or are we goats?
July 31, 2012 at 5:58 am
jaqueline
if evil is “the deprivation of good “( Augustine )
or put another way ” the perversion of good” ( steve)
then to battle it is like battling cancer…you are fighting with yourself…and isn’t that the cause of the problem in the first place…as isn’t cancer the body destroying itself?
God’s desire to redeem and forgive and heal makes much more sense than our solution of cutting away at and destroying evil…
July 31, 2012 at 6:22 am
jaqueline
(I do hope it is understood that my analogy does not extend to being an opinion about our actual strategies for treating cancer)
July 31, 2012 at 11:59 am
Steve
The error with your analogy is in assuming evil (cancer) is a thing. I suggest a better analogy. It is well accepted that many diseases are Psychosomatic in nature. I suggest it is the mindset or spirit that causes our immune system to become compromised that is the evil, not the cancer itself. Therefore the cancer is the product of evil and not the thing itself. To surgically remove it is not a cure. The cure is the redeeming grace of God. Perhaps the cancer could have been prevented, or perhaps not. God’s creation was corrupted as well as human nature at the fall. The only way sin or evil can be removed is to eliminate free will. (Augustine).
August 2, 2012 at 6:50 am
jaqueline
I see you have missed my point entirely.