March 11 2023
WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?
We know about the Church today: fragile, divided, aging, pious perhaps. We also have Jesus’ words that the Church will endure until the end. And then there is Augustine proclaiming, “Many whom God has, the Church does not have; and many whom the Church has, God does not have.”
What does all this entail?
When Jesus made his remarks about the Church, he did not have today’s structured organization in mind. His manifesto emphasized ‘doing’, rather than ‘listening’, in perfect line with Jesus’ mission, ‘how to live as human beings in God’s Holy Creation’.
Jesus appealed to the whole person, more in line with secular humanity, those engaged in green policies. It was Dr. Barry Commoner, a biologist who formulated the ‘Four Laws of Ecology’:
(1) Everything is connected to everything else;
(2) Nature knows best;
(3) Nothing comes free;
(4) Nothing disappears.
We now face the consequences of disregarding these rules. Here Augustine returns: I believe that ‘religiously’ abiding by these ecological rules, points to being on God’s list of those chosen to live in the new creation, even though they never attend church.
Romans 1: 20 comes to mind and the Belgic Confession asking: “How do we know God?” It says:
“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.”
Of course, the Bible plays an important role, as well.
Yes, there is a hidden church.
The hidden church became visible when a depressed Elijah saw very little evidence of ‘godliness’. In 1 Kings 19:18 God says: Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”
Today the hidden church is among those who see God’s Creation as Holy.
The church today.
The Western church is thoroughly Middle Class, which is both good and bad. Good, in that it is well positioned to share its wealth; bad, because her very comfort makes it complacent, and, perhaps smug, mostly self-centered.
As the needs in society increase, and as governments, on all levels cannot cope with the increasing demands for assistance, churches will have to re-orient from being self-centered to living for others, letting go of the paid help – the clergy, expensive and mostly ineffective – providing for the truly needy in society, offering meals, coffee hours, companionship and emotional support.
In our aging society loneliness abounds, as deadly as alcoholism and tobacco use. Jesus did not call us to a new religion, but to LIFE, and that to the full. That the church today gathers for a pious moment on Sunday, reminds me of my parents and grandparents. They had a room, the best room, that had nothing to do with life. Only on special occasions was this room opened. That’s how religion has become: sugar-coated faith for Sunday services. Writes Bonhoeffer, “The religion of Jesus Christ is not the desert that comes after the meal but it is rather the bread itself, nothing else.”
Away with religion.
The fact is that Christ has become an affair of the church alone, nothing to do with LIFE. Christ has been banned completely from daily activities, and confined to the temple and the church. We have to abandon that sort of religion, and must integrate Christ in all our doings, steeped in his creation: there is where our future lies!
WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?
The first Christians, wanting to eradicate all traces of the Roman idols, demolished their temples, because they believed that God lived not in a building, but in their hearts. Then they constructed churches and cathedrals, rooting them forever in Sunday religion! Did pagan influences infiltrate early Christianity through seeing edifices as sacred, as ‘God’s House’? Look at the Notre Dame de Paris: to restore it, after the fire, immediately attracted a Billion Dollar in donations, while hunger relief always lacks funds.
The last Bible book, Revelation, tells us that everything becomes what it is. Revelation 21: 22 notes that ‘there is no temple in the city!”. That indicates the end of the church, and the end of religion, now happening!
In a religion-less world people can become aware of themselves, and realize Christ’s reality – “I have come to bring LIFE and that to the full” (John 10:10). That, writes Bonhoeffer, can have a greater impact on a world come of age than a world wearing the disguise of religion.