For reasons largely unforeseen, I have spent the last two and a bit weeks immersed in a conventional, low key and fairly tolerant expression of Church. This experience brought my own contradictions to the fore in a BIG way.
See, I usually stay the hell out of conventional churches, which I see as lukewarm Laodiceas. I’m worried about Cheap Grace. I’m worried that these churches just reproduce mediocrity, or worse, that they provide spiritual capital and social reinforcement to people who already possess quite a lot of forms of capital. I stay out because I think I would like it, I could go with the flow. I could end up making my home in the general consensus, and I’m scared of that.
At the same time, I profess to love the Marie-Antoinettes of the world: the shallow westerners who are deep into their own problems and have never been exposed to anything better church-wise. Also, I have published quite a number of posts in here, in which I praise the “barely churched” who baptise their kids and make it to church about once in five years.
Yet I know. I know about people who have to sell their own organs to the black market so that their family can survive for another couple of months. I know about trafficked prostitution. I sort of grasp the horror of the Aids epidemic. I can guess the anger of God when nobody cares. For the people involved are first and foremost His Children. One day He will assuredly call them, by their name, out from the tomb. And woe to us if we never knew their name, and never cared.
So were does that leave us? I still don’t know. Sometimes the despair is so great that I wish a huge rock would fall on me and crush my head under its weight. I hate us westerners and at the same time I love us. It’s weird. That combination of passionate Love with passionate Anger may well be the “Gospel bug”.
Still I’m realising that, in terms of loving the mainstream, I’d never put my actions were my words were, I just avoided most forms of engagement. So I say there’s hope in the mainstream? Does it look like I have ever believed this? Hope in the mainstream?
See, I usually stay the hell out of conventional churches, which I see as lukewarm Laodiceas. I’m worried about Cheap Grace. I’m worried that these churches just reproduce mediocrity, or worse, that they provide spiritual capital and social reinforcement to people who already possess quite a lot of forms of capital. I stay out because I think I would like it, I could go with the flow. I could end up making my home in the general consensus, and I’m scared of that.
At the same time, I profess to love the Marie-Antoinettes of the world: the shallow westerners who are deep into their own problems and have never been exposed to anything better church-wise. Also, I have published quite a number of posts in here, in which I praise the “barely churched” who baptise their kids and make it to church about once in five years.
Yet I know. I know about people who have to sell their own organs to the black market so that their family can survive for another couple of months. I know about trafficked prostitution. I sort of grasp the horror of the Aids epidemic. I can guess the anger of God when nobody cares. For the people involved are first and foremost His Children. One day He will assuredly call them, by their name, out from the tomb. And woe to us if we never knew their name, and never cared.
So were does that leave us? I still don’t know. Sometimes the despair is so great that I wish a huge rock would fall on me and crush my head under its weight. I hate us westerners and at the same time I love us. It’s weird. That combination of passionate Love with passionate Anger may well be the “Gospel bug”.
Still I’m realising that, in terms of loving the mainstream, I’d never put my actions were my words were, I just avoided most forms of engagement. So I say there’s hope in the mainstream? Does it look like I have ever believed this? Hope in the mainstream?
1 comment:
I recognize your frustrations with organized religion and our role as westerners in the world....personally found a lot of answers in the Baha'i philosophy....familiar with it? If not, check it out...a good start is at www.bahai.org.
Peace!
Post a Comment