BLOG 10/16/16. THE BOOK OF REVELATION: A REALITY CHECK TO US.

I’ve always been enormously grateful for that final book in the Bible, The Revelation to John, what with all of its enigmatic, confusing often, and apocalyptic figures and metaphors, … for its role as a ‘reality check’ for the people of God, for reminding us of the ongoing, very real battle between the Beast and the Lamb. To those who live in an unreal illusion of the Christian life as a: “Oh, my sins have been forgiven, I can live happily ever-after and go to heaven when I die, tra-la-la …” over-optimism, it is a reality check in its reminder that God has indeed invaded, this age in the Person of His Son, this broken, this dominion of darkness, has destroyed the power of the devil, and is presently engaged in the cosmic warfare to ultimately consummate his New Creation at the end of the age when: “the kingdom of the world has become  the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign  forever and ever.”  (In my career as a teaching pastor I deliberately preached through it several times–it is so rich.)

It reminds us all that the people of God are, with their Lord, engaged in the huge cosmic battle of this age between the beast (Satan) and the Lamb, and that God’s people become the ongoing victims of the malice of that beast, so much so that they cry out: “How long, O Lord?”

To those who are over pessimistic, it reminds them that it is their faithfulness that is producing the fulfillment of God’s New Creation as he calls, through them and their lives and testimony, “a great multitude from every nation,  from all  tribes and and peoples and languages …” to stand before the Lamb, … and that: (from a previous epistle) “He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”

It contains the heartening reminder to those despairing and horribly persecuted saints under the altar, that it is their prayers that ultimately ascend to heaven and determine the course of human history. It is a reminder that they ultimately conquer the beast: “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

We look out at our world of today and we see all of this: poverty, malice, hostility, deception, human despair, famine, principalities and powers, lies, ethnic rivalry, slaughter, … what are we to make of it? The Book of Revelation spells out our Christian understanding of God’s design in human history, of Satan’s death-throes malice in opposing the Lamb, what with all the bloodshed, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the anti-Christian governments and economic powers … but in the midst of it all, the Lamb is working his purpose out in his church globally.

That doesn’t make it any easier for those suffering, and crying out: “How long O Lord?” But the Book of Revelation does come to its conclusion with:

“Then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, … On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.” What follow is our assurance that this is all a part of the ongoing drama of God’s great salvation, that all that is alien and Satan himself shall be destroyed, and there will be consummated a new heaven and a new earth, and the assurance (which we begin to taste even now as his people) that; “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more …”

The Book of Revelation is a beautiful reality check and gives us an interpretation of what we are living with today as his people in every nation. What gift!

http://wipfandstock.com/the-church-and-the-relentless-darkness.html

BLOG 10/12/16. CHURCHES CAN BE ‘HACKED’ TOO!

Confession: I am a techno-klutz, … definitely not a digital native. Thus it was that last week I ran head-on into the implications of these shortcomings when suddenly I could not access my e-mail program, and thus even access to my blogging web-page. Alas! Panic! When all else fails: Pray! So, after searching around I was referred to an agency of IT wizards who were committed to helping guys like me, and I was off and running. It was fascinating. The technicians were both very polite but also obviously very skilled and practiced in dealing with exactly the crisis that I was experiencing. Why does one’s computer become inefficient and refuse to respond to what, previously, had always been available?

Of course I had to give them my password so they could get into my computer. They wanted to know what kind of laptop I had (MacBook Air), and over the phone asked some basic questions, then they got into my computer. They knew precisely what my computer was designed to do and how that design worked. They knew how it was programmed, and what caused such as I was experiencing. Quickly they discerned that I had been ‘hacked’ and that there were all kinds of unauthorized stuff inhabiting my systems.  First off, even though I ostensibly had another security system, and even though I was paying that other agency—they obviously had not done their work. First off, no one had ever turned on the Firewall that prevents unauthorized access to my computer.

But what really became an eye-opener for me was that when the IT guy got into my computer I was watching on my screen all that he was doing. Wow! A whole new world as I watched his cursor zipping all over my system, deleting, editing, refining, and restoring it to what it was designed to do, and back to its pristine condition. They gave me a customer service telephone number and encouraged me to use it. A couple of days later I did have a couple of questions, and again they got into my computer and I watched them resolve my questions, then they let me know that they would be contacting me periodically to be sure it was functioning as intended. Wow! What a lesson.

Why am I relating all of this to my readers? Well, being the kind of ecclesiastical ‘techie’ that I am, I realized how easily the church also gets hacked so that it functions less and less fruitfully in that calling to which Christ has called to, i.e., what is its purpose? How is it designed to accomplish this? What are its essential inner workings?. One has only to delve into that last book of the Bible which spells out the conflict of the ages between the Lamb and the Beast, to see in chapter three that already (maybe 90 AD) most of those seven churches had been ‘hacked’, had absorbed alien influences from the culture around them, or gotten so satisfied with their own success that they left Christ outside the door—insidious pagan philosophies infecting the pure truth, etc.

But the computer Metaphor became more insistent to me as I realized that nearly every one of the epistles in the New Testament is spoken to counter a virus, or a ‘hacking’ by some alien influence that compromised the purpose of the church, … scriptures tell us precisely what the church is designed to be  and do, and how it functions. When that design is violated, the church is hacked, and does not exhibit the glory of God in its daily existence. Note the perennial assaults on the full deity and humanity of the Son, or loveless-ness within the community, or absorbing the secular thinking of the age, etc. “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Paul writes. The Word of God is to dwell richly among the community. That Word of God is our Firewall which secures the church against viruses and hackers. Read in that light the New Testament writings take on a whole new meaning.

The providence of my computer crisis was a real gift to me. I was, therefore, eager to share it with you. It adds a new dimension to my book on The Church and the Relentless Darkness.

http://wipfandstock.com/the-church-and-the-relentless-darkness.html

BLOG 10/9/16. CHRISTIANS ARE ALWAYS ALIENS AND EXILES, ESPECIALLY IN POLITICS AND IN THE SECULAR POLIS.

For these next several weeks it will be impossible to escape the political scene in these United States, and we probably shouldn’t try. But we should know who we are. Even in the second century, a Roman scribe wrote a letter to Diognetus about the strange new sect of Christians, and noted: ^“They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land.” So with every generation over the centuries. There has always been the proclivity for the dominant order, or for the ‘principalities and powers’ to co-opt the church, or for the Christian community to think that they can ever establish a Christian government, … but this is not to say that we can be indifferent to our leavening influence, or our responsibility to be salt and light in the political process. We are always aliens and exiles, but at the same time we are the people of God’s in-breaking New Creation who seek in every domain to incarnate that reality.

Politics can be (as we are beholding in this election in the United States) a dismaying mix of the despicable and sordid … along with those of commendable public influence. But the illusion of a Christian nation, or of a Christian political party, is just that: an illusion. The teachings of Jesus are given in the context of a political reality in which Caesar was held to be divine, and to challenge that was considered a crime worthy of death. Top that, if you will! Jesus also clued us in: that mammon rules, i.e., that the power of wealth is a huge power. We are observing that also at this point. Somehow we have to make peace with our dual role, on the one hand as Christian anarchists in which we refuse to give absolute loyalty to any national or political entity, and at the same time are totally committed to obedience to another rule, that of God’s New Creation/Kingdom.

This was probably most beautifully illustrated those several decades back when Martin Luther King, Jr. was challenged that he was violating the laws of the land on segregation by his influence and speeches, to which he replied: “Yes, but I appeal to a Higher Law!” His leadership in the realm of racial and social justice was deeply rooted in his anarchic Christian priority.

We can, and should, work diligently for social, economic, and racial justice, knowing full well that it may never be fully or even satisfactorily achieved. But we can exercise the influence of our ‘salt and light’ presence in engaging in a discerning vote for those persons who most nearly advocate the welfare of all of our citizens in those realms of social, economic, and racial justice—even justice in those often controversial areas of sexual identity.

We Christian folk live in our awareness of the already-but-not-yet invasion of this present world by God’s world to come in the person of Jesus.  God’s New Creation has been inaugurated in Jesus, is now present in his church, and will be consummated at the end of the age. Meanwhile here we are to live out our lives as the sweet aroma of Christ, which is the Christians’ and church’s role if they are to be faithful.

An easily by-passed, but most dramatic text is found that expresses this in colorful and dramatic language: “For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness (there follows a dramatic description of Mt. Sinai where Israel was called and commissioned as God’s holy nation, which commission they failed, which is to say you have not come to a merely human temporal power structure) … But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels, and to …” (Hebrews 12: 18: ff) an awesome new reality inhabited by God right here and now. “You have come” to … with all the political realities of the day. Citizens and anarchists—which assures us that life will not be dull.

BLOG 10/5/16. A CERTAIN NAIVETE REGARDING EVIL/SATAN

In a few weeks many Christian folks will be celebrating Reformation Sunday (which most of the present younger generation never even heard of!). They will robustly sing Martin Luther’s stirring hymn: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God with its line: “… and though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear …” The problem is that they will probably do this with an absolute naïveté and only the fuzziest notion of any cosmic warfare between “our ancient foe, who sees to work us woe” … and the realities of their present, ordinary, day-to-day lives. Let’s just call it for what it is: a certain mindlessness. These are the same people (most of us) who likewise pray the Lord’s Prayer which concludes with the petition that our Father in Heaven will “deliver us from the evil one.”

Why is this? How can we be so confronted with the huge energy of evil in the world today and remain oblivious to the reality that behind it there has got to be some malignant personality energizing it? Since the time of the dawn that intellectual movement called the Enlightenment, and its disdain for anything that could not be accounted for scientifically, or by human reason, it has been considered only the quaint remnant of a more primitive world view to acknowledge miracles, or stuff such as Satan and a cosmic spiritual warfare that is very real. The denial has prevailed over all of these centuries, and only in recent generations have there arisen some significant theological-philosophical voices countering it, and insisting that our present historical realities are not to be understood without coming to grips with this Satanic reality.

This is the more demanding since the apostle John summarizes the whole event of Jesus Christ with this: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3:10). Other apostolic writings tell us to be sober and vigilant since the devil goes about like a roaring lion, whom we are to resist steadfast. We are told that “the whole world lies in the evil one.” When the Risen Christ called Saul of Tarsus to become his missionary apostle, he gave him the commission: “I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.” Or Paul’s thanksgiving to the Father, “who has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption …”

Ah! but all too much of the ostensible church of Jesus Christ is still in captivity to the Enlightenment mentality that denies even the relevance, if not even the possibility of such a dominion of darkness. Late in my own career I was asked to engage in a mentoring ministry to our Presbyterian students and faculty in a number of theological institutions. When I would introduce this huge Biblical thesis, especially, I was met with polite condescension at such a primitive notion. I asked one professor of evangelism if he had ever used Paul’s missionary commission (above) to explain what was their role in reaching the young adults of this present post-Christian generation with that which would set them free. Again, a smiling affirmation that was an interesting thought—end of conversation.

One of the church’s earliest hymns, which is still in many hymnbooks, is: Christian, dost thou see them on the holy ground, how the hosts of darkness rage thy steps around. Or, much later: Christian, seek not yet repose, thou art in the midst of foes.

The humorous irony is, that while all this is taking place, there emerged a couple of blockbuster literary pieces: The Lord of the Rings, with its Sauron the sorcerer, and the Harry Potter stories, with Voldemort, and the omnipresence of that evil influence. At least the fiction writers point to an explanation, even when the church is too often content to naively dismiss the subject. I commend my own more detailed grappling with this theme.

http://wipfandstock.com/the-church-and-the-relentless-darkness.html

BLOG 10/2/16. WIT, HUMOR, LAUGHTER … AND GOD?

Some years ago, dear friends gave me a framed picture of “The Laughing Jesus” which hangs now over my desk and I have to look at it daily. I love it because it raises for me an interesting question of: how we image God? The classical definitions of God as “infinite, eternal, and unchangeable” etc. tend to provoke an image of an awesome foreboding out-of-reach deity, who though he may be good is hardly to be connected with anyone humorous, or witty. Holiness is a word that is near impossible to define.

And yet … the scriptures are replete with references to things such as worshiping the Lord with mirth and gladness, or of God blessing his people with joy and gladness, and upon whose heads he will bestow gladness and joy, or whose ultimate blessing will be to fill their mouths with laughter. How to reconcile such seemingly contradictory images of God?

In my own private written prayer notes I have one submission that I know will never make it within the company of formal, orthodox theologians, … but which helps me. It is my posting of a prayer note about: God as Fun. God as fun? Yes. I do it with the same sense of a kid who speaks of a much loved adult figure, whom he / she trusts, and feels completely safe, and with whom he / she looks forward to spending time, and in whom they delight in that adult’s company. That adult is one who is both challenging, introducing them to new experiences, but also who has a robust sense of humor—may even be a tease, but whose company is always an enriching experience. Those children refer to such an adult as a fun person. That person is not one that they take lightly or upon whose good will they take liberties. At the same time, they know that the adult loves them and is patient with their immaturity. That adult is described as fun.

In my own experience I spent a special year of study to work especially under a renowned, brilliant, controversial philosophical theologian in the field of apologetics (the defense of the faith). His reputation could have made him and his classes intimidating … except that Dr. Van Til had a mischievous sense of humor that was so marvelous that it defused any fear of his classes. I looked forward to them eagerly. He could provoke you into arguments, trap you in your own contradictions, throw a piece of chalk at you while with his impish sense of humor he untangled you and walked you into a whole new liberty of thought. He was dialogical, and he was ultimately evangelistic, … but his classes were a delight because of the combination of awesome substance and the freeing sense of humor. That points me into some appreciation that the holy God is, on one hand: God, but is not a God devoid of a sense of the place of the need joy and humor and laughter in the human (my) experience.

With such a perspective one can read scriptures with new eyes. Think of the outrageous humor of God messengers going to Abraham when he was a hundred years old and his wife was ninety years old, and promising that he would have a son? Get real. Abraham would have long since ceased to be sexually active and by that time had all the evidences of sexual dysfunction we hear of so often today. And his wife would have been a half century beyond menopause – and they were going to have a kid? No wonder they named him Isaac, which means laughter. And what kind of twinkle would have been in the eye of God. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination. Yet in all of the records of scripture, feeding in God’s humor gives them a lot more humanity.

Ultimately, the very advent of Jesus brought infinite joy into the world. The God laughter entered the very rebellious dominion of darkness with a promise of joy—mirth and gladness.

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion … then our mouth was filled with laughter.”

_________________________

http://wipfandstock/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html

BLOG 9/28/16. POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT: WE’RE NOT THE FIRST

In the midst of today’s news. I appreciate more than ever the words of the poet-musician Michael Kelly Blanchard:

“In these days of confused situations, In this night of a restless remorse, When the heart and the soul of a nation, Lay wounded and cold as a corpse, …”

We’re not at all the first Christian folk to have to cope with political realities that have so often been confusing and non-congenial. In my own Reformed and British heritage there was the episode in the 17^th century when the British monarch, was a wretch and was engaged in many harsh assaults on the growing populace of Reformation Christians, to the point where it seemed so unbearable to them that they organized an army under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, captured he king and relieved him of his head. Then they established Cromwell as Lord Protector and began the process of creating something of a more representative government, ultimately of a constitutional monarchy, with elected Parliament and all that followed. After a few years the monarchy was restored though chastened and restricted—Winston Churchill made the point that the monarchy was never the same again, and never again able to engage in such royal excesses.

Part of their initiative, in those several years under Cromwell, was to assemble a select group of the best Protestant minds together in Westminster Abbey (they weren’t too cool with Roman Catholics, admittedly) to draw up a unified statement of faith and practice of the nation. If one has ever been in a company of bright theological minds trying to cooperate on such a project, it is to realize that it was something of a miracle that it ever was completed. The fruit of that assembly was the venerable Westminster Confession of Faith, which has been something of a standard for Reformed Christians of the U.K. strand (from which I take my heritage). The Westminster Confession is held in high esteem these centuries later, but seldom read or referred to, … but at an early moment in my own church leadership during the emergence of civil rights protests and school integration, there were those segregationists within my own Christian congregation who challenged the government’s right to impose such policies. I think it is the only time I ever have had to refer the congregation to that vow to be guided by the church’s confessions, and its authority over our behavior.

There is a marvelous chapter in that confession in which the Westminster theologians dealt with their own existential crisis, like: by what authority are we to be guided? What is the role of the government? What is the function of the civil magistrate? The chapter: Of Civil Magistrate (chapter XXV) is a jewel. It states that the role of the civil magistrate / government is the glory of God and the common good. It is for the encouragement of those who are good and the punishment of evildoers. This Westminster view of government played something of a subtle but influential role as it came into the American constitutional convention, especially through the larger-than-life role of Princeton College and the influence of that theological stripe (John Witherspoon, etc.).

Such simple guidelines as: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” or “Peace, order, and justice” flow out of that Westminster influence (and, admittedly also out of deist John Locke). But it is the role of government, and those who make up such government, to always be seeking the common good, to be engaging in those humanitarian policies that do not ignore injustices, or oppression, or suffering, … and likewise does not allow those of wealth and power to use that to make life more miserable for those who are voiceless, weak, homeless and struggling. Who, of those seeking leadership, manifests this God-given sense of the common good? We’re not the first to be engaged in such a quest “in these days of confused situation.” But this is our day!

http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html

BLOG 9/25/16. RACIAL UNDERSTANDING: HOSPITALITY AND FRIENDSHIP

Some months back, my dear African-American friend John Perkins (that remarkable Christian community development, and civil rights leader)—with whom I have had many wonderful and helpful conversations on racial issues—called and asked me how I became so racially progressive, growing up as I did in a very segregated South. That set me thinking. In some ways I am the product of my times. I was ordained as Presbyterian pastor the summer after the Brown-vs-the Board of Education decision, and was denominational campus worker at North Carolina State University, which was all white at that time. But it was some more qiet and subtle influences, that I think back on now, which got me more inside the world of my African-American acquaintances and has made many wonderful friendships so beautiful.

By the early 1960s I had been called to a small working-class congregation in the very racist textile-tobacco town of Durham, North Carolina. Those were the years of lunch-counter demonstrations, civil rights marches, and the expressions of racial animosity on too many fronts. My wife and I lived, there, on the denomination’s minimum salary, and we had four lively children. We were ‘church-mouse poor.’ But my wife desperately needed some assistance in household chores, and so we ‘bit the bullet’ and asked around, and were led to Odessa Flake. If there was ever an elegant, modest, and gentle Christian woman, it was Odessa. She came, and we discussed her availability to work for us a half-day a week. It was when we began to discuss what we would need to pay her that my lights began to go on. She told us what our neighbors were paying her—and it was only half the national minimum wage. Betty and I were astounded (and offended). Our neighbors were ostensibly solid Christian citizens. But Odessa was somewhat helpless since she needed the employment and so suffered the injustice. So we employed her at the legal minimum wage (which didn’t endear us to our neighbors). She was like a member of our family for all of our remaining years in Durham.

But then, when Odessa came on Saturday mornings, we also invited her to have lunch with us at our table. This was simply not done in our segregated society, and initially Odessa was reluctant, but we insisted. In the quiet conversations that took place over the following years, we learned of her life, of the difficulties, of the things she could only pray about, and about small pieces of her segregated life which I would never have known apart from the conversations and her participation in the hospitality of our home. She also adopted us as her friends.

Subsequently, when a couple of black university students (who were out of the projects of Newark, New Jersey, and whom I had met at a Bible conference in upstate New York) came South for education and joined our church (to the dismay of our racist members), they also were occasional guests for Sunday dinner—which was a new experience for them—and one of them would ultimately spend weekends with us. It was in those contexts of hospitality, love and friendship—that to answer John Perkins’ question—that I began to tune-in to the corroding effects of racism, and to use my small influence to engender racial understanding, especially among the local African-American university students. I sought to be a reconciler. I was set free, and so our African-American friends were set free to understand each other and to work together. It was the context of hospitality and friendship, love, and honest conversation.

Later John Perkins and his family stayed in our home in Atlanta, and he has told me it was the first time he was ever invited to stay in a white home. Then, later, Betty and I would enjoy the hospitality and friendship of his (and wife Vera’s) home in Jackson, Mississippi.

My point in this blog is simply that reconciling the racial tensions will not ultimately come from theory or legislation, but by (especially Christian folk) engaging in hospitality, friendship, mutuality, and conversation. It is part of our counter-cultural calling as God’s New Humanity. It will not always make us popular among those who espouse racism, … but it is our calling. I commend it heartily. Pass the word along.

BLOG 9/21/16. CHESTERTON’ S PRAYER ON THE POLITICAL PROCESS

It’s amusing to realize that saying the things that I say in these Blogs, and saying them to those who are my subscribers, … is like ‘preaching to the choir.’ So be it. But there is a poem / hymn by G. K. Chesterton that I really must relate here. Chesterton was a giant thinker, philosopher, lay theologian, and writer of mysteries  a century ago … who was never superficial, and not easily ignored. He wrote a poem/hymn that is, perhaps, a bit too counter-cultural in its essence to be published in popular hymnbooks. So let me lay it before you:

O God of earth and altar,
bow down and hear our cry,
our earthly rulers falter,
our people drift and die;
the walls of gold entomb us,
the swords of scorn divide,
take not thy thunder from us,
but take away our pride.

Tie in a living tether
the prince and priest and thrall,
bind all our lives together,
smite us and save us all;
in ire and exultation
aflame with faith, and free,
lift up a living nation,
a single sword to thee.

Every one of those of us who profess to be the followers / disciples of Jesus Christ, of whatever ethnic identification, are by the very virtue of our calling to Him called into a political witness—even if we seek escape or passivity we are making a political witness. We are called to be salt and light in the polis, the communal setting where we are to be the Body of Christ. This is seldom uncomplicated, but it involves making those choices, taking those actions, discerning those platforms and policies and personalities involved, … and we measure them by the teachings of Jesus, the Biblical prophets, and Christ’s apostles. This frequently brings us into conflict with the dominant social ane political order, especially in controversial times. I commend Chesterton’s hymn to you that it may be as helpful to you as it has been to me. Lord have mercy upon us as a nation.

[If these Blogs have been provocative to you, recommend them to your friends.]

BLOG 9/18/16. POLITICS … AND THE PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS

The readers of my regular Blogs know that I consider the church, in its authentic sense, to be made up of the communities of God’s New Humanity, i.e., those who have embraced Jesus Christ for all that he came to be and do, and so to have their lives formed by him and his teachings. That would mean—take note—that in this weird political season, one’s political convictions and choices would have the character of that New Humanity. That has interesting implications, what with so many making the vacuous claims of being ‘evangelical Christian’ whose whole demeanor, and political demands are anything but those that that mirror Jesus Christ.

So let me propose that one might measure his/her political filter by one of the most famous and perceptive prayers that resides in the Christian treasury:

______

God’s New Humanity folk, his church, are never called to be unpleasant negativists—though they have often fallen into this destructive trap, … (consider the anniversary this past week of the Battle of Antietam Bridge in the Civil War with over 24,000 deaths in one day, and the ostensible Christian passions involved in the pursuit of that war). The Prayer of St. Francis is a good measure by which to evaluate platforms and politicians. I readily acknowledge that the field of politics is hugely complex and fraught with issues that are ambiguous and complex, … sometimes sordid. In this election season there are cultural, religious, social, and global issues that demand wisdom, prescience, self-control, and character … none of which are perfected in any candidate ever, but from among which imperfect human beings and platforms we must choose. And St. Francis’ prayer calling us to love, to pardon, to faith, to hope, to be lights, to joy, to be consolers,  to understand others, and then back to love … to seek the welfare of all the community and in all conditions … I commend as a great means of evaluation.

For God’s New Humanity folk (i.e., those who are serious in their Christian calling) this is not a Democratic or Republican (or other) choice, but for us a choice of which person and which platform bodes to serve the total community, God’s design in making all things new, … by these measurements. Lord give us wisdom

BLOG 9/14/16. DENOMINATIONS: ENIGMAS AND DISTRACTIONS

I would not be surprised but what denominations are one of the components of the whole ‘Christendom Era’ that is fading into obscurity. The emerging generation, which has little contact with the church in any form, is even more indifferent to whatever ‘denominations’ are all about. Of course any study of the church’s history is replete with embarrassing episodes of all kinds of strife, of bloodshed, and bitterness over what would appear to be minor points of doctrine, or ecclesiastical authority.

I also think that one has to factor-in, at the outset, what has been classically described as the already-but-not-yet understanding of the in-breaking Kingdom of God / New Creation, i.e., that Jesus did, in fact, come to inaugurate God’s eschatological “I will make all things new” Kingdom, but that it is not yet consummated, and is at present dynamically present in this very already-but-not-yet … ‘in process’ state of realization–this church. This means that we, who are its participants, are also in a state of already-but-not-yet realization, and often get ourselves into tangles as we insist on some state of perfection in understanding, or behavior, or practice that we don’t fully grasp.

It didn’t take any time at all before the infant church found itself with differences over its understanding of Jesus and the apostles, and in claims of authority, or in dealing with pathological personalities … and frequently coming to partially unsatisfying conclusions. In the post-apostolic period, in addition to some power-claims by the leaders of the church in larger centers, there were some very critical and necessary debates of the human-divine nature of Jesus Christ, … or of the church’s teaching on the Holy Trinity: God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There were determinative and helpful clarifications on the true humanity of Jesus, as well as his true divinity (these, alas, continue in different forms to this day!).

And while our written history focuses on such centers of Christian thought as Jerusalem, or Alexandria, or Rome, the church was spreading “like leaven” all along the boundaries of civilization, by men and women who had embraced the teachings of Jesus Christ and his saving role, and were contagious with it, and communicated it in life and conversation which flowed out of their having Christ living in them (mystery that such indwelling was, and is).

What we have in written records is that the church more and more was focused in the center of the Roman Empire, so that the church of Rome became pretty much the authority, which authority it secured with more and more ecclesiastical rules and  consequences, … so much so, that when (especially) in the middle ages some factors began to assert teachings, and questions, and practices that did not conform, the Church of Rome sought to suppress them. But once the ‘protesting reformation’ got loose, and the authority of Rome was renounced by many, there emerged coalitions, or denominations around some teaching or some influential/charismatic leader. So in post-Reformation Christendom, Pandora’s Box was opened all kinds of Christian denominations emerged, sometimes missionally and doctrinally constructive, … and sometimes not.

Now that era is fading fast. Denominations are a fading (and archaic) phenomenon, and Christian folk are much more embracing of each other. The reality is that God never calls us to be Roman Catholic, or Greek Orthodox, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Pentecostal—no! God calls us to Himself through Jesus Christ, to be part of His New Humanity, and those of us who respond to that call belong to each other in the family of God, and are accountable to each other in that family relationship. What forms and disciplines the church in tomorrow’s world will take? —we’ll have to wait and see, but it will be focused on the life and teachings and mission of Jesus, i.e., it will be apostolic, and it will embrace all of those in every ethnic and cultural setting who are part of that, and in that sense it will be catholic.

http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html