A city grey and dreary, mean and unending
Several weeks ago a cultural milestone occurred. 40 yrs. ago, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. The Beatles were a phenom, as they say in the biz, no doubt. The songs they wrote and sang both influenced and reflected a generation, a culture, in flux. John Lennon’s boast that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus,” albeit short lived, short sited, ill informed and all together wrong- doesn’t belay the fact that they were in fact a big deal culturally. And then along came Yoko... and we can only imagine what might have been.
Speaking of Imagine, I was reminded of the lyrics of Lennon’s song when surfing Shuck and Jive. This blog is a one stop shop for all things progressive. The author is a winsome and articulate progressive voice in the PC(USA), who revels in and celebrates pretty much everything except biblical Christianity. I suspect the author is a fine conversationalist with a quick and curious mind. I suspect, again, he is a very likeable guy.
However, the progressive theology espoused in the blog leaves me despondent and depressed for him, for his flock and ultimately for the denomination that credentials him. The pluralism lifted up, ultimately flattens out all that is unique and particular about each faith, granting authentic dignity to none. In a very modern attempt to abstract out that which is ‘true’ - getting rid of all the annoying particularities of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism- not too mention Christianity, those who espouse Progressive Christianity create a religious Pablum, that seems pretty thin gruel indeed, unfit to nourish God shaped souls. Hardly worth selling one’s birthright for. There just doesn’t seem to be any there, there. Synthesis when dealing with revealed religion, is too clever by half- at the end of the day.
Ultimately this is where Christianity and Progressive Christianity are most clearly seen as the different animals they are. One understands itself as being received from outside of ourselves accomplished in toto by a personal God who can be known, who’s will can be known, and who calls His creatures to Himself. And the other assumes we’ve got to figure this stuff out for ourselves- just like Moses, the Israelites and Jesus did for themselves, we should too. Scripture is the record of their experiences of their idea of God, of Jesus. For an unreconstructed progressive, believing in Scripture’s divine inspiration is not adiaphora- something indifferent-- this belief in a God breathed text is pernicious- actually harmful.
A professor of mine once ruminated, that he thought Homo Sapiens could just as easily have been called ‘Homo Faber’ -- this is part of our image bearing capacity, in our role as sub-creators. However, when things went off the rails, and everything got bent we continued to make things- but in the wrong direction. Idols, even- or particularly intellectual ones. Or in the word’s of scripture- we consistently hew for ourselves broken cisterns, forsaking streams of living water given to us through a personal relationship with the Father through the Son in the Spirt.
CS Lewis talks about this deadening habit of ours as our being not passionate enough. We’re too easily pleased by food, drink, sex, faddish thoughts-- not pushing through these things for that which will give lasting joy and satisfaction. We’re like a child content with making mud pies in a slum, who refuse to risk leaving for holiday on the beach just a few blocks away, This is the condition human beings find themselves in, consistently, if not for someone from outside ourselves showing us otherwise.
The end result of buying into the religion embraced at Shuck-and-Jive (and elsewhere) reminds me of another passage from Lewis (I’m in a Lewis rut these days...), this time the last paragraph of the first chapter in The Great Divorce. The picture is of leaving Purgatory, a vast city, grey and dreary, mean and unending, block after block of houses and shops all running into each other. A place where religion is much discussed ad nauseam, where nothing is decided, and new fads are constantly embraced and then discarded at fashion’s dictate.
God can do better... and He has. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. And that abundant life is that we might know the Father, and Jesus Christ, the one he has sent. When compared with our triune God of grace, Progressive Christianity is just so much porridge.
I commend to you, Mark Paterson’s salient essay, Nein!, in the most recent edition of Theology Matters (the website isn’t much to write home about, but the content is top shelf stuff).
blog 137
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
