Tag: Theology and Spiritual Reflections

If the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different outcome, much of the Christian church can be classified as insane. We can explain our behaviour away by saying that we’re being true to our calling, but is that really the case?

Here in the Synod and Presbytery of WA we use the language of change, of being missional and contextual, but don’t have to scratch the surface much to see that we’re still doing the same things that we did 20, 30, 50 years ago. Alternatively we try to cover the church’s decline* with a layer of hope, but we don’t change anything.

And yet, if we think about what things were like back then, even only 20 years ago, it is obvious that while our lives, and the life of our communities have changed dramatically, church culture and practices have not. As a consequence, the relevance gap between the average person and the Christian church is growing increasingly wider. As Graham Horsley states, the church has not coped well with these massive changes happening around us. Too much of our restructuring hasn’t challenged our basic assumptions about church, ministry and mission. Changing policies doesn’t change our culture – and that’s what we need.

Walker Percy once wrote, “you can get all straight A’s and still flunk life.”

Somehow we fail at life if we are unable to discover its, and our own, meaning. Deep in our hearts most of us want to find and fulfil a purpose bigger than ourselves. Kierkegaard, a Christian philosopher, put it this way: “the thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do.”

We live in a time when we have too much to live with and too little to live for. Having lots of possessions and people in our lives still leaves a gap; a longing for something more, a sense of purpose and a sense of call.

There are plenty of people who are willing to write off the Christian church, believing that we have no future; that we are without hope. In a recent   article, one journalist argued that with the worldwide spread of education, technology and science, the need for religion would evaporate. Our world would become at last religion-less, a bit like John Lennon’s song, Imagine – the dream of a world free of religion.

Rather than ask, ‘has the church a future?’ I first want to ask, ‘has the human race a future?’

Ideas of the future exercise a great hold over us. Indeed, we need some idea of the future if we are to achieve anything in the present. The trainee soldier, athlete, politician and student are often motivated by a sense of what may lie ahead. In our diverse society, different hopes about the future are emerging.

The humanist looks for a society where human reason and mutual consideration will flourish. The environmentalist hopes for a sustainable world  where pollution is minimised and the earth flourishes again. Many dream of higher standards of living, full employment, a fairer distribution of wealth, an end to poverty, injustice, violence and greater prosperity. Christians, while sharing these hopes, have a distinctive contribution to make   when thinking about the future.

Some feminist Christians have apparently abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity, in which God is known as ‘father, son and holy spirit’. Others still use these words, knowing that all human  language is symbolic and inadequate for naming God and that gendered words do not make God male.

However, the political and pastoral uses of an implied maleness in naming God have always affirmed and empowered men, in preference to women, in the church. How should that be weighed against the danger for the church in abandoning the doctrine?

Alternatives that name three functions instead of relations, for example ‘creator, Christ and companion’, can only be accessories, not central in doctrine or liturgy. Alternatives such as naming God  ‘mother’ and suggesting the spirit is female do not seem to find wide acceptance in ordinary congregational life. Perhaps they only create the same problem differently. Perhaps they founder  on the facts that Jesus was a man and that his naming God ‘father’ was very distinctive.

But the use that Jesus made of claiming God as his ‘father’ is equally distinctive, if less discussed. It had radical implications for him and his political and pastoral relations with others… which  were not good news for patriarchy.

According to Mark’s Gospel, unclean spirits recognised that Jesus was the son of God, but two important groups of people did not. Religious leaders accused him of sorcery, and Jesus’ own family  accused him of insanity. Jesus’ mother and brothers and sisters attempted to restrain him (3:19b-22). And yes, this does mean real brothers and sisters; Mary’s other children. But where was  Joseph, who, we imagine, begat these other children? Surely it would take a father, the real authority in a first-century Palestinian household, to restrain a first-born son like Jesus, not younger brothers, or sisters or a mother?