SEPTEMBER 4 2016
WHERE DO YOU FIT IN THESE SIX RELIGIOUS OPTIONS?
In church last Sunday – a building that can seat some 300 people – my thoughts before the service went to the days when the structure was built in 1890, and people then filled the church with services that lasted a couple of hours and that twice on a Sunday. Since 1890 Canada’s population has grown from less than 5 million to about 35 million, yet, on a typical Sunday no more than 35 people come to our church, mostly older ones, with the service completed within the hour.
My question: have people no longer a need for Christian reflection? Is religion out of fashion? No, it has taken another form.
What is religion anyway?
Years ago, when required to fill in the Long Form of the Canadian Census I was asked to answer a question on RELIGION, which then had several subsections, such as Anglican, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Pentecostal. Then Islam was not yet in the running.
What irked me in that questionnaire was that the designer of the census form confused RELIGION with denominational adherence. Religion is not directly tied to a certain church: there is not such a thing as an ANGLICAN or PRESBYTERIAN religion: religion is either Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Capitalism to name the most prominent.
Yet, we all are ‘religious’ persons: we all believe in something, but people rarely mean the same thing when mentioning “religion”. For early Jews and Muslims now, religion is law. DIN means law in Hebrew and religion in Arabic. For early Jews, religion was also tribal; for most Muslims it is universal. For the ancient Romans, religion was social events, rituals, and festivals –the word RELIGIO was the opposite of SUPERSTITIO.
Early Christianity, thanks to the Apostle Paul, stayed away from the law, emphasizing faith instead. Jesus did not start a “religion”. That God exists and that we can only know him in Jesus is an act of faith, that’s why faith is something essentially different from religion. Having faith in The New Creation which Christ will bring in due time, is a statement of FAITH, and is at the core of the Christian Religion.
Yes, there is an AMERICAN RELIGION which, according to Dr. Harold Bloom, the foremost literary critic in America, has ceased to be Christian. The merciless analysis of this agnostic Jew – his own words – finds that almost all of the North American denominations have succumbed to Gnosticism, an offshoot of pagan Greek philosophy. That is not very encouraging for our teetertottering preachers who, as a rule, dare not to be different, afraid to upset the faithful few with radical language. So the Christian churches slowly sink into oblivion without hardly ever touching upon the core of its faith, which centers on Jesus’ teaching of THE KINGDOM.
A view from the Netherlands.
This past week I translated an essay by a retired professor of Anthropology at the (Christian?) Free University in Amsterdam. My younger brother Drewes in the Netherlands sent this to me. Dr. Hans Feddema concluded his analysis this way:
“The current situation in most churches (most certainly, it seems, in the Dutch Protestant Church) is typified by a dualistic ideology, by an unrealistic image of the world, and an unwillingness to let go of antiquated doctrines, even though there are numerous church leaders who no longer believe in them. This causes irreparable damage to the soul.
“The Christian West, generally speaking, recognizes five God – or world views. They are:
1. THE ANCIENT, CLASSICAL VERSION
This version we can partly trace back to the Bible and to a lesser extent to Jesus who placed greater emphasis on his one-ness both with us humans and with God. In this ancient, more classical version of Christianity heaven is separated from the earth, but the events mirror each other in such a way that whatever happens ‘up there’ has repercussions ‘down here’.
2. THE MANICHEAN
In this model the divine spark or soul is too much a prisoner of matter, of body and its desires. Goodness is reserved for the soul and the earth is rather a vale of tears. This train of thought has guided the church, sorry to say, to combat its own body, and spawned the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and celibacy.
(I might add this world-view mainly applies to the Roman Catholic Church)
3. THE MATERIAL MODEL
In this third world view there is no God, no soul, and no spiritual world, completely excluding the possibility that God is concerned about us or subtly guides us, as is the case in the fifth model. Only what we can discern with our own senses is real. This concept centers especially on the anti-god idea that emerged some centuries ago, glorifying the material. Neither the earth nor the body is inspired.
(I might add that here Capitalism is the leading religion.)
4. THE THEOLOGICAL
In this theological theme, mostly originating from Albertus Magnus and Thomas of Aquino, heaven and earth are separated. The celestial scene is regarded as supernatural, where science cannot pronounce an opinion, only theologians can. This split view of reality resembles earlier times when we reserved the Sunday for a ‘supernatural sphere’ and during the week participated in ‘earthly matters’. God sits on his throne high above the earth, judges and decides from heaven on high. He is “the Lord Beyond”.
This theological concept has been the indirect cause that humanity is seen as not being part of nature and that both our bodies and this world are bad and sinful. Connected to this image is that Christians for many centuries have lived with God, seeing him (1) as a human figure and in that capacity often (2) as a sort of father figure. As such both are understandable notions as we are eager to regard God as a person in human form and understandable too, seeing our need as adults for a father figure, something psychologists say is the case.
(I believe this has led to what I call “The Heaven Heresy”.)
5. THE INTEGRAL AND/OR MODERN-SPIRITUAL GOD –OR WORLD VIEW
Finally, in this fifth model, a new God’s view is emerging, the split between God and the world is suspended, be it so that everything has an outward and an interior dimension. The heaven aspect is then the interior side of reality. Angels, demons and souls of the dead no longer float somewhere in the air but are part and parcel of the spirit that pervades the entire universe. The universal expanse is saturated with the divine. It is ‘God within’. That also means that God is in every human being, even though many do not realize this nor do they understand that God sustains us all, united as we all are just as the sea and waves are one. Everything is in God and God is in everything. He/she shapes the heart from the exterior and guides us far more than we imagine. We, humans can experience and observe him mystically via internal guidance such as an inner voice, an intuitive knowledge, synchronicity, such as encounters and deliverances that look accidental but are not. Paul, in Galatians 2: 20, writes from a mystical intuition that: “I no longer count my own ego as important, because it is Christ who lives in me.”
(In other words): The sacred is in the world and inspires us.
All five world-views have more or less influenced contemporary thinking. But the ‘up there and down here’ is much less influential than the ‘then in, then out’, associated with that integrated spiritual world view. Scientists such as the quantum physicists can find some common ground here as well. They are of the opinion that spirit was and is the original ingredient for the material and that in essence everything is energy and/or consciousness.
Church people take their cue from aspects of all five world views, sometimes a mixture of them. The church leaders cling mostly to the fourth view, the theological view of God without questioning whether this view has perhaps not become outdated and/or too intellectual. This is a factor in the growing alienation from the church. Today, in a time of increasing consciousness where also a large switch in people’s way of thinking is occurring, the church is challenged to engage in an exercise of profound introspection.
My (Dr. Feddema continues) real loyalty is to the fifth world view….where there is for me no separation between God and the world, between God and us humans, neither between the material and the spirit, between the conscious and the unconscious. God is and reveals himself in the doings of everyday life. He the united force of whatever is and what is not. God carries all and empowers it. Holiness, in short, is in the world and we are inspired by it.
My concern centers especially on its ideology, the church’s dogmatic stance that causes alienation. If the church fails to pursue a spirituality that empowers the soul and consciously promotes unity, an approach to the God that recognizes that Our Father and we are One, then the church’s future looks grim.”
Here endeth the concluding part of what I have translated.
MY REMARKS
So here is a learned man who has given considerable thought to the matter of church. He still attends church, unlike Harold Bloom.
I too like the FIFTH option the best, but I like to expand it to be more explicit. I see God’s creation as God’s Primary Word, his Direct Revelation, and the Scriptures God’s Secondary Word, or his Indirect Revelation.
Feddema, in the first part mentions the importance of the KINGDOM, without expanding on it. I will fill that gap by citing J. H. Bavinck who in his book BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION says:
“The concept of the Kingdom contains a number of elements that are of the highest significance for our inquiry.
In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.
This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dis¬so¬nant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality. This applies both to each individual specimen but equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation. The celestial bodies follow their orderly trajectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice. And so the stars in their courses sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water-saturated earth, their proud summits piercing the clouds; yet even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power. On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation resides only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.”
I especially emphasize that last sentence: SCRIPTURE AND CREATION FORM A UNITY, REINFORCING EACH OTHER.
That’s why I prefer a sixth possibility, call it THE KINGDOM OPTION.
I maintain that Christians must see life as a preparation for this Kingdom to come, where heaven and earth are united and God, in the person of Jesus is all and in all. That entails a new lifestyle 100 percent in accord with creation, now virtually impossible because of our energy-intensive existence, a way of living that is assuring the death of the planet.
Looking at these six different church models, it is easy to see that ever since the church started 2,000 years ago, ecclesiastical enterprises have not really kept pace with societal changes in living and thinking.
In these last days, a new model is needed that anticipates THE KINGDOM TO COME. Dr. Evan Runner’s words come to mind: ALL OF LIFE IS RELIGION.