THE CHURCH: A HISTORIC ABERRATION?

I am not a theologian, nor a church historian of any sort. I confess to be a Christian, and I believe that Christ is the Son of God, fully human, fully divine, who died on the cross, rose from the grave and, as the Apostle Creed formulated it, will return to judge the living and the dead.
I also believe in the Holy Spirit, a holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, which, I believe will be in the New Creation, because we have screwed up the old one beyond repair.

But I do have my doubts.

Where I have my doubts – which will likely label me a heretic – is with the historic development of the church. I continue to believe in “The Holy Catholic Church”, further explained as, “The communion of saints”, but I no longer believe in the ‘man-made’ church, even though I still attend it.

I am now convinced that this entire ecclesiastical concept is not only based on an incorrect premise, but also that the worship takes place in the wrong premises. Yes, I see the entire instituted church as a historic aberration, of which Climate Change is the direct result.

Climate Change caused by the church? Yes, the general belief that Creation can be exploited at will, as we go to heaven anyway, has, starting 1700 years ago, led to our current atmospheric agony.

And the church?

Its root is Greek: KURIAKOS, derived from KURIOS=Lord. That word has also been the base of Kirche in German, Kirk in Scotland, Kerk in Dutch. My Greek dictionary defines KURIAKOS as ‘Belonging to God.’

Does the church, visited by fewer and fewer people each Sunday, belong to God? No. Psalm 24 tells me that, “The Earth is the Lord’s and fulness thereof, the world and all that dwells in it”. Church, no matter how you slice it, goes hand in hand with religion, and religion killed Jesus! Jesus did not bring ‘religion’: he taught us how to live in his creation!

Should I mention the sexual crimes of the clerics, the enforced celibacy, and the church’s protective response, or the exclusion of women for the clergy, or its lackluster concern for the young people, who have abandoned the church in droves, or its lack of vision at a time of global climatic changes, and political disarray everywhere?

I am particularly galled by the church’s modus operandi, placing the sermon at the centre of its witness, a means of communication that leaves the pew-sitters with the impression that this constitutes the essence of Christianity. I see them as a holdover of the pre-television and radio ages, more than 150 years ago when many could not afford books, when instruction was done via biblical lectures, called sermons or homilies.

My additional doubts increased when I read in the last chapter of the Bible, that in the New Creation ‘there is no altar there!’, telling me that, since the law of the Lord will be written on our hearts, we no longer need either the church or the bible. Based on that revelation, it should be the task of the church to prepare people for that kind of independence.

Is House churches the answer?

Acts 20:20 tells me that Paul, the apostle, “Taught publicly and from house to house.” That was the original and vibrant church for some 250 years. Will it work today?

We must keep in mind that, when Jesus died, the divider that separated the common area in the Jerusalem Temple from the exclusive domain of the high priest was thrown open, signaling the very end of temple and church-based religion. The early Christians understood that, and, most successfully engaged in neighborhood evangelism, with homes as the focal points.

However, with official sanction of Emperor Constantin, and public recognition, the church restored that divide, heralding a new era of the sort of religion that today has perpetuated the aberration.

It’s not too late.

It is never too late. Now is the time to change course, and admit that the church is not God’s possession: the earth is. That’s why John 3: 16 is today the most important text in the Bible: “God so loved the ‘cosmos’, the house where he dwells. He gave it to us to improve it, and we did the opposite: That’s why he sacrificed his beloved Son to buy it back.

Unfortunately, we have gone beyond the ‘house church’ stage, but we can adapt this to the current situation through using the pew-filled auditorium for public prayer and singing, including choir, followed by small group discussions, and an orderly free for all, based on a specific biblical or societal topic. In other words, a house-church format, of no more than groups of 10 – 20 people,

What today is desperately needed is a forum where people can air their doubts, their beliefs, their prayers and hopes and fears, laughs and especially ‘tears’, since all signs today point to a speedy arrival of the Parousia, the Second Coming of the Christ, bringing with him the New Creation.

Walter Brueggemann, in his The Prophetic Imagination, foresaw this situation. He writes: “I believe that grief and mourning, that crying in pathos, is the ultimate form of criticism, for it announces the sure end of the whole royal – ruling and ecclesiastical – arrangement.”

For us it is fitting to mourn for the church that has misappropriated the term KYRIATOS, which has led to an irrelevant, building centered religion, and many different bible views.

For us it is also fitting to mourn for creation, now threatening our very physical existence, and imperiling God’s beloved cosmos.

Brueggemann quotes Jeremiah who “knew long before the others that the end was coming and that God had enough of indifferent affluence, cynical oppression and presumptuous religion….. that death was at the door and would not pass over”. He quotes Jeremiah,

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void

And to the heavens, and they had no light.

I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,

And all the hills moved to and fro.

I looked, and lo, there was no man,

And all the birds of the air had fled.