December 23 2020
A THEOLOGY FOR DUMMIES.
So, now that the year 2020 is almost over, it’s been a memorable year for me. For the first time in my life, I had a 4 day stay in the hospital with pneumonia. Also, my wife of 67 years needed more care – she had for years suffered from dementia – and in January she was moved to the new local Long Term Care home, where she died in late October. Fortunately, I was able to visit her almost daily until the very last. So, now at 92 I am a widower, and since I spend a lot of time alone, I started writing a daily meditation based on the bible lectionary – Anglican – on my word processor, 500 words on weekdays, 1,000 on Sundays. A bright spot: in a small church group we had a very productive book discussion on Dr. Douglas John Hall’s book: “What Christianity is NOT”, in which he often quotes Augustine and Bonhoeffer. The book gave me the impetus to verbalize what has long been gestating in my mind on church and the bible.
Augustine, a great thinker, revered by Catholics and Protestants alike, some 1600 years ago, when Latin was the world’s Lingua Franca, said: “Si comprehendis, non est Deus”, which, freely translated, means, “If you think that you understand, it isn’t God you are talking about.” Take creation, the very expression of God’s intentions: Slowly we are discovering that our lifestyle is totally destructive and that the church no longer provides answers, so the young people, not surprisingly, drift away. What this tells me is that we need a new Theology: we need “A Theology for Dummies”. From the way the world and the church are going it is obvious we all are dumb and ignorant.
We need a new perspective.
Augustine also has said, “Many whom the church has, God does not have, and many whom God has, the church does not have.”
I had a good friend, Dr. Harold Goldsman. I met him when I was part of a panel discussion, a longtime ago, and my presentation was so different that, after the meeting he sought me out, and we discovered that we had a lot in common.
After that, I brought him along to my occasional get-together with three Christian Reformed (CRC) leaders, a school principal, an environmentalist, a leading authority on mental health, and me, a lapsed CRC person and attending the Presbyterian Church in Tweed. Here was this psychologist, a former professor at Concordia University in Montreal, a Jew, confronted with four confirmed Christians, and fitting right in. He was, by my description, a “Mensch”, a truly human being, loving, compassionate, considerate, a wise person who would have loved Jesus, and whom Jesus loved. In Belleville he successfully initiated early Childhood education and was the Education’s Board’s last resort for counselling difficult students.
He was not a Christian, yet I expect to meet him in the New Creation. I believe that “Many whom the church has, God does not have, and many whom God has, the church does not have.” That fits Harold. At his memorial I made a word-play on his name: “You may know that the Hebrew word for God is “EL”. Well, when we take ‘the “L” out of Goldsman, when we take God -el – out of his name, we are left with “Godsman” and that he truly was.
Last week I had a different encounter. I was walking – I walk an hour every day – and a fellow stopped his car to have a chat. I knew him to be a devout Catholic, so, I mentioned that I just had bought a book on Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit Priest. He suddenly walked away and shouted, SHOUTED “He is a Heretic!” (Teilhard, a paleontologist with a Sorbonne doctorate, saw evolution at work). That sort of attitude is religion at its worst, the sort that killed Jesus. Yes, many whom the church has, God does not have, and many whom God has, the church does not have.
So, what would I emphasize in the Theology for Dummies?
I sincerely believe that God wants only those in the paradise to come who are truly Mensch. Jesus was the true Mensch. He represented genuine humanity, that’s why in the New Testament Jesus constantly calls himself, “The Son of Man”, humanity personified. I love it when Bonhoeffer writes, “Jesus did not come to bring a new religion: he brought us LIFE, and that to the full.” A true Mensch lives in full symbiosis, in fall awareness of the Living Earth, because upon the resurrection, we will live forever on the earth, which sustains us, which feeds us, which loves us. And which God loved. In other words: we need increased emphasis on THE CREATED WORD, and less, or even little emphasis on THE WRITTEN WORD.
That calls for a new definition of SIN.
Jesus did not start a religion. He taught us how to live, live within the means of creation, live to make the earth better. His great commandment is LOVE. The Bible, subject to manifold interpretations, seems to promote to have ‘dominion’ over the earth – dominion meaning dominating! Jesus came to serve and we must serve creation, the cosmos, representing the best of God.
Of course, it’s sin to steal and kill, but our greatest SIN is stealing from and killing God’s creation. In the Lord’s Prayer, which in its entirety is focused on THE KINGDOM, the line “FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES basically refers to our ‘sins against creation’ (God’s Kingdom, remember!). Since we constantly commit these sins – in our Technological Society switching on a light, causes our carbon-god to kick in – Jesus also tells us to be tolerant and not to be vindictive. Therefore, He specifically asks us to forgive those who TRESPASS AGAINST US, who likewise harm creation, because we all are in the same sinful situation. It bears repeating: The Good News is that Christ died to restore creation.
Basically, this Theology for Dummies has three main points:
God created all there is, giving evolution a free hand.
We uncreated.
Jesus Christ recreated.
The Theology for Dummies must center on Creation, because our cosmos is so imperiled that we fear for the end of life. The young people intuitively sense that and shun the church as irrelevant.
Take the VIRUS, now dominating all human existence. COVID-19 is not a disease; it is a symptom of an exhausted planet. The renewal of a healthy relationship with our source of life, planet Earth, is the cure. That’s what the church must advocate! Lack of a healthy, natural habitat weakens the immune systems of animals and the resulting sicknesses pass rapidly through the birds, prairie dogs, pigs, and bats, and end up in us. With each infection, a chance for a virus to mutate into one that can sicken and kill humans and sometimes affect global livelihoods, becomes more pronounced. As such, a vaccine alone, no matter how effective, will not tip the balance toward health because, I repeat, COVID-19 is not a disease; it is a symptom of an exhausted planet. The renewal of a healthy relationship with God’s beloved Earth, is the cure.
And the church?
The church is there, not simply to teach the Bible, but is there especially, to re-acquaint us with God’s earth and discover how to live in complete symbiosis with everything and everybody created, because The EARTH is God’s PRIMARY and DIRECT WORD, while the Bible is God’s indirect and secondary word. That’s why we must NOW engage in a tentative approach to ‘religion-less Christianity’, a term first broached by Dietrich Bonhoeffer 75 years ago. That time has come!
Remember: Revelation 22 tells us that there is NO ALTAR in the New Earth. That means: no church and no Bible. That’s why today we need a new THEOLOGY, a theology with major emphasis on THE CREATED WORD, and little on THE WRITTEN WORD: a total reversal of today’s practice. A THEOLOGY for DUMMIES is needed desperately, because if ever there was a generation that is ignorant, irresponsive, and dumb, it is ours.
Remember: “The fear of the Lord, living in awe of creation, is the beginning of wisdom.”