I like to think that what I do reflects what I believe. Sadly we're all a little irrational but hopefully what I do is mostly shaped by what I believe.
The statement "the rest is religion" refers to that side of life where we go through the motions for the sake of some societal, cultural, or relational pressure. But we don't really believe it. 2017 began with my leaving my church ... a decision a long time coming and for multiple reasons, and partly documented in blog posts leading up to my departure (if anyone is interested). I had been pro-actively engaged for a long time, and after leaving presumed I would find a new church in due course. It is now nearing the end of 2017, and I still have not found a new church home. Leaving a context allows one the privilege of reflecting on it from the outside. More and more I find the institutional church dysfunctional. More and more I find the relational expressions so saccharine and wrapped in "this is how I think a Christian should behave" that real expression is in limited supply. More and more I see a church focused on preserving its internal culture and not equipping the pew-sitters to engage the real world. Of course there are exceptions, but an exception means it is exceptional to some norm! This is a familiar theme. I touch on it repeatedly. But my stepping back from direct involvement in church has opened a space to think more about the issues of people "outside" the church culture - the majority of the world. I make no claim to be a great thinker. Frankly, most "thinking" seems to be a rediscovery of what has been lost. In the prior post I characterized three individuals ... amalgams of the people I meet daily. I posed the challenge of imagining a scenario where one has to fruitfully engage such people. I truly believe that if I was to put that challenge in a church, the response would be dominated by deflection, platitudes, or statements of judgment. So do I have anything to say? Am I just repeating myself? In part I am. In part I am frustrated. Yet in part I am changing. My conditioning over the years has been truthful, yet constraining. God is a mystery, and so my conditioning has bounded my thinking. We're trying to know the unknowable, and to build our societal relations around this. Orthodoxy to known truth is paramount, but we cannot say this is the fullness of truth. There is truth that we've yet to know, it doesn't contradict the orthodoxy, it augments the orthodoxy. I believe: God, Jesus, Spirit ... Trinity directed living. I believe we are all fundamentally damaged goods. I believe it is not for us to judge others, that it is for us to judge truth. I believe grace is in short supply, and that listening hearts are barricaded behind conventions. I believe society is growing a generation of egotists living in bubbles of relativism. I believe that as a result loneliness is the worlds biggest disease. And I believe the church as a whole is by and large clueless on how to engage. So what? Well, it means a healthy redirection of faith, one that shifts from acting to enhance the profile of an institution to a focus on conversations with those who differ from what I believe - in whatever forum, wherever it can happen, virtually, literally, and sustainably. That is extremely difficult to do. But I believe it.
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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