THE VISIBLE CHURCH: ITS DECLINE AND DEMISE.
When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)
Asking the question is answering it.
Of our five children, four are church members, while one belongs to a Sikh group. We have 11 adult grandchildren: maybe one belongs to a church. The two minor ones go with their parents.
Last week, in a casual conversation with a friend, she mentioned that her sister, an ordained minister, had resigned because the members of her church, settled in their historic situation, seeing the church mainly as a social institution, showed no interest in hearing about Jesus and his work of salvation.
Professor Dr. Harold Bloom, in his THE AMERICAN RELIGION, categorially states that, especially North America’s Baptist and Pentecostal churches have ceased to be Christian, instead they have completely adopted Gnosticism, the basically paganistic doctrine that all material matter is evil – earth – and only spiritual thinking is good – heaven – spawning the ecological crisis.
And here I start to become controversial: “Generally speaking, the Bible has become a liability, open to many different explanations, the church, as institute, by its structure, is becoming an obstacle to salvation and the ministers, unwilling to offend, hardly ever mention “the coming of the Kingdom.”
That calls for an elaboration. First: “Faith what is that?”
Hebrew 11: 1 offers a simple definition: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”.
The letter to the Hebrews was sent to the early Christians, who all lived in the immediate hope of Christ’ return. Today that hope basically is missing, even though signs everywhere point to a collapsing ecosystem. Last week in the Toronto Globe and Mail I read this line: “Smoke from forest fires combined with the pandemic, it did feel like end times.”
Of course, Faith thrives. Economists tout Economic Growth, showing absolute faith in an impossibility. It’s all around us. President Trump has a lot of faith, faith that the VIRUS will suddenly disappear, faith that the vaccine will do away with Covid-19, faith that he will be re-elected.
However, the author of the letter to the Hebrew Christians goes deeper, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible”. In other words, Faith and Creation go hand in hand.
The Bible is there to connect us to creation: Psalm 119: 105 tells us that “God’s Word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path”. It’s like a miner’s lamp shining ahead on the earth, God’s Kingdom. The task of the church is to preach “The Coming of the New Creation, God’s Kingdom”. Jesus’ explicit command in Matthew 6: 33 is, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”.
That relies on FAITH. His Kingdom is the creation in which we have been allowed to live. When we live responsively in Creation, loving it, then God will provide! It basically means that our goal in life is to enhance creation, his kingdom! That is our explicit task: when we do so, our needs – food, shelter, clothing, will be met.
The Belgic Confession, one of the mainstays of Reformed faith has this to say: “
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.
Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly
by his holy and divine Word,
as much as we need in this life.
This crucial statement of faith spells the end of Christianity as we practice it, because nowhere do I see the church treat creation as holy, as God’s Primary Word.
Just as prior to Jesus’ mission, the LAW ruled ancient Israel – as it still does today in Jewry – and resulted in his death on the cross, today the Bible has become a liability, subject to many different interpretations, a talisman and crutch: the church has been reduced to Pious Secularism, to quote Bonhoeffer, failing to “preach the Kingdom”, failing to prepare for Christ’s return. That’s why Jesus wondered about ‘finding faith’ upon his return.
Don’t get me wrong: I read the Bible every day. I start the day with it. Just as “we were not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for us”, to quote Jesus, so too we were not made for the Bible, but the Bible was made for us, to prepare us for eternal LIFE on earth. Upon Christ’ return both the Bible and the Church will disappear. We have to get ready for this event.
All this reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche, who in So spoke Zarathustra wrote:
“I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of super-earthly hopes!
They are poisoners, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dread-fullest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!”
Nietzsche condemned the heaven believers in no uncertain terms. He was trained to become a preacher, in line with his father and both grandfathers, but the ‘heaven heresy’ was for him a stumbling blog. He became a full professor in classical languages at the age of 23.
I think we have come to the stage described in Jeremiah 51: 9, “We would have healed Babylon (The current world), but she cannot be healed……….her judgement reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the clouds.”
That brings me back to the question: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Jesus knew the future. When Jesus died the heavy curtain shielding the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple ripped from top to bottom, signifying the end of the Old Testament Church, and warning his followers to refrain from establishing a formal religion. Ripping that curtain was Jesus’ very last act on earth: it signaled the death of all institutional religion!
The early church expanded rapidly through house-churches, through neighbors inviting neighbors. Rod Dreher in the Benedict Option (2017) recommends the same. That lack of formal church organization conquered the world in 300 years. Then Emperor Constantin became a Christian and the church – as it is now – officiated in public functions and started building. No longer was creation seen as holy: now elaborate buildings with spires pointing to heaven, became sanctuaries. Then the hierarchy was instituted, fashioned on the imperial structure: Emperor-Pope; Generals-Cardinals; Colonels-Bishops; Officers-Priests; Soldiers-Laity. There’s where the church started to decline.
Jesus loathed religion: it killed him! Instead he taught us how to live a full human life, totally relying on God the Father and not on the human institution of church. That experiment is now over.
Remember Nietzsche: Remain true to the earth! Those who advocate heaven are ‘poisoners’ and ‘despisers of LIFE’.
Learn how to live eternally, because that’s what we will do when Jesus returns.
P.S.
The Tweed Horticultural Society (of which I am a member) has more active members than my church, and plays a larger role in the municipality. A speaker from Queen’s University at one of its meetings inspired members from our church to grow flowers and vegetables on the church grounds: a basic witness, providing the food bank with produce each week and beautifying the main street.