Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Overcome

Rain is falling hard, a dark, loud thunderstorm is rolling over. A good time to catch up.

At Locust and Honey yesterday there was a story about an episcopal priest of 20+ years who has decided that she is also a Muslim. She believes she can remain a Christian pastor while also claiming to be a practicing, believing follower of Mohamed. (Read "Taking Interfaith Relations Way Too Far" here) This kind of theological position from an ordained Christian leader seems to surprise those who read and comment at L&H, I am not sure why. It seems to me that the current theology of some, if not many of the mainstream pastors I have encountered in the last 20 years reflects similar beliefs.

The way these folks think is rather agnostic in that they believe that God cannot be fully known in this life. They seem to believe that all the various spiritual activities recorded by humanity are efforts by God to commune with humanity. This notion is consistent with the idea I have often heard from preachers that God reveals himself to humans at the level we are able to understand him, exemplified in the nation of Israel's Old Testament history. It is not a far step from that sort of thinking to believing that any sort of spirituality, whether revelatory or not, is as valid as any other. It is thinking that each such spiritual system is an attempt by God to commune with the various isolated cultures around the globe, and "meeting them where they are". That is certainly supported by the teaching that the creation story and other supernatural events recorded in religious history are myths or Jungian archetypes humanity has used to interpret otherwise difficult life events. It is a rather appealing way of maintaining a sense of intellectualism and avoiding any responsibility to any one religious teaching over another. It also allows those pastors to believe that new revelations are coming from God as we are increasingly evolving in our ability to understand what they call god. From that sort of thinking; sin is not what it once was, if it ever really was at all, Jesus was Christ only sort of in that we needed that gospel lesson to move us down the road in understanding of God and his love, and any sort of belief about God is as valid as another. There are reasons to be skeptical of preachers, and measure their words and against the Bible.

2 comments:

Old Neocon said...

Your analysis is absolutely spot-on. You've got it.

Best,
Gerry

John said...

You point out something that has always bothered me about C.S. Lewis' 'good dreams' hypothesis, and similar notions that images of the true God can be found in other religions. Such thinking has lead to this inevitable result.