How should we then live? Part 11
Is the demise of Christianity a good thing?
Christianity has deep Jewish roots. In Jewry the Sabbath was diligently kept from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, infants were circumcised on the 8th day and the strict Mosaic diet prescribed in the books of Moses was faithfully adhered to.
That all ended when Jesus died on the cross. At that moment the curtain of the Jerusalem temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Mat. 27: 51), signifying that a new phase in worship had begun: suddenly temple worship, the Old Testament laws, the Jewish religion based on the books of Moses, became outdated.
Drastic ceremonial changes took place after Pentecost with the visible appearance of the Holy Spirit: instead of worshiping on the Sabbath, the last day of the week, the new converts made Sunday, the first day of the week their focus of celebration, in memory of Jesus Christ rising from the grave on the first day of the week. The act of circumcision was abolished and replaced with the symbolic act of baptism, signifying the cleansing of sin, and temple worship was abandoned to be replaced by the simple and more inclusive act of prayer and community gatherings in peoples’ houses.
For the Jesus’ followers this change from the Hebrew religion, with the temple at its centre, with priests and high priests, with the sacrifice of animals, with the obligatory temple tax, with the stated religious festivals, was total.
It took a while to enact these new measures. Conservative Peter was a reluctant convert: it required a special intervention by the Lord to convince him. And that is OK. Traditions are important, and drastic changes take time. When one of our daughters lived in Beverly Hills, my wife and I once went to a service in a Messianic synagogue there, where all the old-time Jewish rituals were observed, including the required yarmulke, but where the sermon was on Corinthians: quite impressive, actually.
The most decisive phase yet.
Now we are at another phase: the final phase in my opinion, even more radical. Jesus himself hinted at that, I believe. We usually portray Jesus as the kind shepherd figure, a person to whom children flocked and women were attracted. There also is much more controversial side to him: he was accused of being a glutton and drunkard, was scorned for being homeless, celibate, disdainful of kinsfolk, a friend of outcasts, without fear for his own safety, careless of Jewish purity regulations, critical of authority, a scourge of the rich and powerful. Based on that expect the unusual from him.
So when – as recorded in John 4: 15 – Jesus in his typical unconventional manner, talked to a promiscuous woman in Samaria of all places, a city out of bounds for Jews, he told her that eventually worship would no longer take place in Jerusalem, or on her holy mountain, or anywhere else, whether that is your church or synagogue or temple of mosque, whether in Mecca or Rome or Amritsar. Jesus again: “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” That to me suggests the eventual end of formal religion of whatever stripe. At least that’s how I read this.
There are other hints. Stanley Hauerwas – whom Time Magazine called the most influential theologian in North America – in Approaching the End (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids) writes that “We may be nearing the end of Christendom,” which he calls “a good thing,” because it will restore the “recovery of the eschatological character of the gospel”. He says that “the first task of the church is not to make the world just but to make the world the world, which is rightly understood only in the light of these eschatological convictions.” (Eschatological refers to the end of all things.) In other words, the church’s preoccupation with heaven is totally misdirected: its focus should be on the earth and its ultimate renewal.
In this he completely echoes Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, in his introduction to his book Creation and Fall, writes that “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.” In my long-time church exposure I have never heard a sermon emphasizing this, and, I believe, this will not happen either, because the church is too set in her ways. Perhaps Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount, as recorded in Matthew 5, provides a clue as well: if any part of the body causes sin, or fails to live up to its task, cut it out. In that same vein, if allegiance to the church is stronger than advancing the vision of the New Creation, it is better to relegate it to a lesser place.
My personal experience is that neither society at large not the church in general is eager to embrace that ‘end’ concept: it simply is too uncomfortable. When the 2012 Olympics were held in London a six-minute segment of the opening ceremony was omitted by NBC in its U.S.A. television coverage, because the editors felt that the hymn “Abide with Me”, a song of lament, was not suitable for the American audience. They reasoned that the US public had to be protected from death and from a sung message expressing the end of Life. The exact same thing happened with me. When I wrote my regular column on this episode for a Christian paper, it was refused. Here are some excerpts of that article:
Was that “The Global Swan Song?”
I don’t like mega churches, but I loved it when 400 million people world-wide heard an old-fashioned sermon at the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics. It happened at the end of the show recalling the sinking of the Titanic, a name now synonymous with disaster. The ‘lesson’ was delivered by a regal-looking Emeli Sandé who sang all five verses of Abide with me, the hymn supposedly played while that brand-new ship slowly sank into the icy seas. She projected into the planet such biblical truths as: “Change and decay in all around I see,” but also beamed across the globe the glorious gospel of “I need your presence every passing hour. What but your grace can foil the tempter’s power?”
The Titanic reference couldn’t have been more up-to-date. In 2012, one hundred years after its sinking the entire world is in a Titanic mode: drowning in an ocean of debt. The phrase fast falls the eventide reminded me of Oswald Spengler`s famous book Der Untergang des Abendlandes, the Demise of the Evening Empire. In our Western world, perhaps a few, if any, of the 400 million viewers realized that then and there they may have witnessed “the global swan song”, when she intoned Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day, earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away. It may seem farfetched, but to me it meant that Brazil’s preparations, already underway for the 2016 Olympics may well come to nothing, because the London Olympics could well have been the final one.
Here’s what could very well happen. Today a four year term is like a century, that’s how fast events are happening. Just look at the speed of Climate Change. The most e-mailed article in a recent New York Times issue was: “Hundred – Year Forecast: Drought.” Imagine no rain year after year! (Now true for California and many other regions.)
We are in a real quandary: we have based our society on continuous growth, allowing large pensions, expensive medical and educational structures, libraries and museums, but in a shrinking world all these will become millstones around our necks, sinking the economy as sure as the Titanic. Put the blame on money and its lenders. No wonder Dante in his Inferno consigned usurers to the lowest pit of the seventh circle of Hell.
July 27 2012 was a memorable day: then, it seemed to me, the Global Swan Song echoed through the cosmos. Multitudes of many millions heard the message: Abide with me, fast falls the eventide, the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide. Change and decay in all around I see.” But also “Who like yourself my guide and strength can be? In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”
That message was judged too controversial for a Christian audience.
Total Renewal
I sincerely believe that we live in earth’s final days. In the Lord’s Prayer we ask for “Thy Kingdom Come.” Augustine has said: “We can’t do anything without God, and God won’t do anything without us.” That means that we must ready ourselves for the Coming of the Kingdom, with God’s help.
When the Old Testament rituals were replaced by the Christian counterparts, many changes took place. Now we need to go even further than the Christians did in the early church. Metanoia is the new buzz word: total renewal. That concept signifies not a partial life-change but something far more. Renewal is a factual dying and being born again as a “new creature,” a transition from one particular world to another, from one causing death and pollution to one of permanence and durability. The only place in the first three Gospels where the world renewal appears, points to the end-time and thus contains a clearly eschatological directive. Matthew 19:28 speaks of “the” renewal of all things.” Through “renewal” we are directed toward the end-time, to the new age, the new time-period in which Christ will be Lord. To be human means to stand between Primeval Time and End-Time, between the Ultimate Beginning and the Terrible End. The road between these two extremes of many, many millennia is a road of an untold number of wars, of cruelty and injustice, of sorrow and tears, yet also of always hoping and always trying. Primeval Time and End-Time are at the same time very close together: they meet in Jesus Christ. His coming in the world ushers in the end-time, the new age, the new world. He gathers all things together again into the meaningful whole of God’s eternal kingdom, the New Earth to come. Then will be fulfilled what he said: “The old is gone: see, everything has been made new.”
The old is gone. That also means that ‘all formal religion’ is gone. That is not only a good thing, but also necessary. Bonhoeffer refers to that when he mentioned ‘religion-less Christianity’. In his opinion, this can only happen in a world that is no longer religious. That condition makes it possible for the world and for us who live in it to become aware of ourselves and our eternal place in God’s beloved world. Only then can the reality of Christ have a greater impact on “a world come of age” than when the world wears disguises of religion.
Let’s face it: the world has already gotten rid of God. It’s only when we acknowledge that, says Bonhoeffer, that “Jesus Christ takes possession of the world become of age.” It is Bonhoeffer’s wish that, when ‘religion’ has disappeared, there will be a ‘reformation’ of glad tidings so that they permeate the whole of human life and not merely the religious dimension of human existence. He writes that “it is God’s will that we know him in life and not finally when we die; in health and strength, and not finally when we suffer; in our actions and not finally when we sin.” (His emphasis)
With The End approaching we now must try to live the life of THE KINGDOM, the life of Eternity, a concept much wider than the church.
Here’s what J.H. Bavinck says in the forthcoming Between Beginning and End: A Radical Kingdom Vision (Eerdmans Grand Rapids).
“It is impossible to visualize the immense difference between the majestic, harmonious unity of creation as it emerged from God’s hand, and the frantic, demon?dominated planet in which we, the cursed humanity, dwell after the fall into sin. The Kingdom is in shatters. That is the profound tragedy confronting the life of the world. This goes far beyond the fact that we have torn up its cohesion: it actually means that God has surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers, whose only purpose is to abuse it and destroy it. The Kingdom, after all, comprises all things, all plants, all animals, all people, all angels. The Kingdom includes the sea and the land, the mountains and the valleys, all that was and is and is to come; and all of it is incorporated in a great and mighty whole. The Kingdom is the place where all things are in their rightful place and where everything can fulfill its function and deploy its potential in complete harmony with all that surrounds it. The Kingdom is synonymous with light, peace, joy, service to God, in harmonious veneration. Where the Kingdom is being destroyed, where this structure comes apart at the seams, there is decomposition, brokenness, fragmentation, enmity, contradiction, meaninglessness, darkness, death. The Kingdom is the smile of God’s good pleasure: “See, it was very good.” With the breaking of the Kingdom God hides his face. Psalm 104:29 reads: “When you hide your face, they are terrified.” The glow fades away; something akin to the pall of death covers the world.”
For us to live the way of The Coming Kingdom entails a total metanoia, a complete new vision of what life is all about. The church can be a help in this matter, but only when it serves as an example of this kingdom living.
Seeking affiliation with Greenpeace and with The Suzuki Foundation is one effective way to evangelize. These devoted people already have the welfare of creation in mind, something Kingdom-seekers also must strive for. The modern martyrs are those who obstruct “Growth at all Costs”, who try, imperfectly, to become completely creation friendly, who with every action wonder whether this will harm creation, because ‘creation is holy’. Hauerwas, in his recent book Approaching the End (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids) is the first theologian I know who called Creation ‘Holy’.
The church, by exclusively centering her fallible focus on the Bible – God’s written Word – and by her inability to integrate her message with God’s Holy Creation-Word, runs the danger of losing the all-encompassing totality of The Word and thus the basic message of the Kingdom. That’s why the church could become or already is an obstacle to salvation.
“Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life (LIFE in the New Creation!), and only a few find it”. (Matthew 7: 14.) Jesus’ very words!
P.S. I base the above on John 3:16: God so loved the cosmos, the world we live in, so much that he offered his son as sacrifice to restore it. If God’s love for creation is so immense, isn’t ‘loving creation’ the least we can do?
Next week: the final instalment of How Should We then Live?