The Secret's Out

Dorsey,

Welcome to faithCommons and thanks for the comment. I agree that Jesus could not have intended us to create the various flavors of institutional monsters that we have. What's the answer, is a good question and one I've thought about myself.

The best that I've come up with so far, is for those of us who know to tell others. There's nothing inherently wrong with our groups and our customs and our various philosophies. But we must stop worshiping the created while claiming to worship the creator.

My greatest concern is that religion is getting more entrenched when it needs to go the other way. Man made religion may well be the demiurge and archons of the gnostics, and the beast of John's Revelation. They are towers they we build to ourselves. And then we defend them to the death.

bill

Bill and all,

I agree completely with the sentiment expressed here. I wrote a blog entry a while back about going back to my old congregation in hopes of recapturing a feeling, a notion, a direction I once had. But after listening to just one half of one sermon I realized that it just isn't going to happen.

What the modern church is selling I am no longer willing to buy. I refuse to accept that the rusted out Pinto they are selling is really a red Porche.

It seems to me that the Bible's greatest contribution to mankind is not found is its grand promises or its tall tales. It is instead the profound suffering and endless internal struggles its heroes endure. Paul's words quoted above have given an untold number of people hope that they too could find forgiveness. It is our identification with the anicient's and their universal human longings that makes the Bible still relevant today.

The bondage of well reasoned theology brings only suffering to most, glib self-deceit and self-assurance to the rest. I spent a good deal of my life trying to do the math, always going over and over in my mind whether I had said the right words or been dunked enough times to make my salvation stick. An ultimately fruitless preoccupation with self-preservation. The complete opposite of what Jesus is said to have stood for.

I have come to the unhappy conclusion that religion has no meaning left for me, thus I have nothing further to say about its future. I wish I could say I had hope, that the dogma would give way to recognition of reality. I don't see that occurring. The so-called "postmodern" churches are nothing more than reformulated non-sense that has been sold before. Like I said before, I ain't buying.

Brian

Brian,
You may have answered Dorsey's question with this paragraph. The abundant life comes only in forgiveness and hope tailored to each of our wretched lives, and from mutual love and encouragement. Unfortunately, we must somehow rediscover what this means because it gets abused and misused with every generation.

I'd like to find confidence in the Emergent movement but, like you, I see it morphing increasingly into the same thing with different clothing styles and body art.

bill

Guy,
As you do, I avoid using “bs terminology.” But sometimes you just gotta use the word that says what you want to say. Avoiding coarse words also makes them all the more powerful when you need them. :)

Like Brian said, your quote from Paul is the right one for this subject.

bill

EXACTLY! More bondage for the masses.

But this raises an interesting issue. I was once waxing eloquent about the state of the church with our youth pastor. He was a great kid, fresh out of A/G Bible College, with a lot of zeal and not much experience. At one point in my soliloqy, I used the phrase "bitch and moan" in a brilliant reference to something or other. I saw his eyes widen a bit, and I kept going. A couple more minutes passed before I realized that he wasn't hearing a word I was saying. I had left him behind, stuck like a VW bus in a snowdrift, trying to come to grips with the fact that I had said "bitch" right there in the Youth Pastor's office.

When I realized this, my immature reaction was, "Hey, that's his problem." Upon reflection however, I came to understand that my "freedom" to use such words had hijacked my ability to communicate. My usage was a stumbling block to him, and it created a subconsious barrier between us. I recalled the conversation to him several years later, and it was as fresh on his mind as if it had happened the day before.

I agree that, sometimes, you have to have just the right word. Sometimes there just isn't any other word that captures the essence of my shock and outrage the way that some words do. However, while sometimes it's fun (even helpful) to shock and awe, I have to balance that with the perspective that my aim is to communicate. I consider my audience more carefully now.

Good blog.

Peace.

Guy and Dorsey,

Well, just to check whether my use of the BS term would help faithCommons' page ranking, I googled the two words "Christianity Bullshit." Google returned 708,000 results. I stopped looking after 10 pages.

We can't claim that this is persecution for our beliefs. Either a bunch of people happen to be talking about these two subjects separately but on a single page or there's a fairly strong word association on the 'net.

bill

Larry,

Thanks for offering a better phrasing.

Embarrassingly, I've not yet read Willard, although I do have The Spirit of Disciplines waiting in my reading queue. Currently I'm strung out between early Christian history and a mad run through modern philosphers.

Still, the more I think and study, the more I'm convinced that Jesus was a pivotal figure—Humanistic and the religiosity counter culture notwithstanding—in faith, religion and philosophy.

Lately I'm convinced that I must unlearn and relearn what “through Christ” means. This is what I see as my connection to Christianity. But for now, I'm trying to absorb what it is that is his essence.

bill

All

I have been out of commission for awhile, was just catching up with some good posts. This string hits the nail on the head for where I am -- which may seem to some to be nowhere. But I am attempting to deal with the here and now with a view to the not yet. Like Brian, I share the "not going back" plight. There simply was nothing there to offer.

reido

The tragedy is that too many people look at the church and never get to see Jesus, so they walk away. It's outrageous, at best. Get out a bible, one of those where Jesus' words are in red. Then just read the red words. That's a good place to start. Be warned, those red letters probably resemble nothing you've seen in a church before.

Screw the "church," but find Jesus, somehow.

My blog has a post related to this, entitled "Rubber Meets Road."

notmywill.blogspot.com

Dorsey,

Great post. That is, your post titled Rubber Meets Road. Community is the reason.

Although I happen to like the place we go now, I've had many years of the experience you described. Nevertheless, I wouldn't go were it not for people connections. No longer do I feel shamed into getting my card punched or my gold star for attendance. What's more, I hope to make some difference by doing or saying things that might cause others to rethink their faith. Of course, doing and saying those sorts of things often get people thrown out.

bill