Brand Spanking New
March 29, 2008
What’s This, You Ask?
This is going to be the collaborative space for Matt and me (and maybe a few others, at some point). The purpose? To find a purpose for this blog.
My Beef With the Ecumenicals
In response to Matt’s question on why I don’t like the Ecumenical movement:
I don’t like the idea of a unified church, simply because any time there is a large, coordinated, concerted effort of like-minded humans, it leads to tyranny. If Christianity as a religion becomes unified, it means bad times for the world, and particularly for Christians who are anti-religion (such as I). That said, I think Revelations predicts (as a bad thing) the unity of the church with itself and other religions. So in the long run, I don’t think this is avoidable. I could be wrong, of course.
My current persuasion is that the religious, the puritanical, those who find fulfillment in good works and personal righteousness—they have bet on the wrong horse. They are the elder sons in the story of the prodigal son. This is the state of much of fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and nearly every religion on earth. Such religion is empty. It does not answer any questions. It does not provide communication with the God who is there. It causes self-righteousness, pride, and judgmentalism. Religion nullifies the work that God did, the unavoidable humility imposed by the doctrine of grace, the overwhelming act of love that God performed, and the fact that the whole point to life is a relationship with God and through him, right relation with his creation. By setting up human righteousness as a sufficient means to the claim of godhood, they miss the entire point. It has been put this way: “The way to avoid Jesus is to avoid sin”. I believe that is true.
There is another very large camp of people whom I will term the “brotherhood”. The brotherhood sees all life and men as comrades in a common, mystical, spiritual existence. All that promotes harmony and peace is desirable. All that is inharmonious with man is undesirable. There is no right or wrong, only that which is harmonious or inharmonious. I come closer to this camp, since I believe that right-relationship with God will lead to harmonious relationship with his creation. But right relationship with God is required. The brotherhood skips the right-relationship with God, and attempts to set up one of God’s attributes (His harmony) as the chief thing to be desired. It is not. God is. It would be like a great chef devoting his life to synthesizing the fragrant aromas of his kitchen, rather than to producing the food of which the aromas are a wonderful byproduct. The food is the key thing, not the aroma.
I think that soon (though how soon is unclear) the world will become much more unified than it is now. The religions will come together in one harmonious union which promotes unity and harmony as the highest form of good. There will be counter-currents caused by fiercely fundamentalist groups (of various religions) which oppose this unity, spew vitriolic words of discontent, and possibly commit acts of terrorism. If this happens during my lifetime, I hope I have the ability to start (or join) a community which presents the truth in a non-combative but unflinching and unwavering way.
What the world needs is the faithful, loving, and communicative God who is there, not any shallow substitute, no matter how many attributes of God that substitute appears to provide.
