“The Church is a place of great beauty and healing. It can also be a place that traumatizes, excludes, and abuses.”[1]
From
the very beginning—the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian New Testament—the church
has been divided. In chapter 15 Peter and Paul, the leading voices of the
nascent church, locked horns over whether Gentiles should become Jews (read: be
circumcised) before being accepted into the church.
The
church in Corinth was divided over almost everything: which spiritual gifts
were more important, whose baptism counted, which preacher they should follow…
Even the Lord’s Supper was a point of contention.
Heresies
abounded in that first generation of the church: Gnosticism, Docetism,
Arianism, etc. The overarching question was “Who’s right?” How can we make sure
we get it right, so we won’t go to hell when we die? (More about hell in the
next blog!)
That
issue of who’s right and who’s wrong never has been resolved within the historic
church. I saw a headline today (I didn’t read the article. The headline was
upsetting enough.); it read, “All Baptisms Performed by Phoenix Priest Invalid
Because He Changed One Word.” Good grief!
Some
of the apostles seemed to catch momentary glimpses of what was right; but they
were inconsistent in their proclamation of it. Some of the early church fathers—I’m
thinking specifically of Origen of Alexandria (c. 184 – c. 253)—seemed to get
it right, at least part of the time. Of course, even this paragraph represents
my own conviction that I’m right. (One difference is that I accept the human
limitations described by the title of my blogsite: “Flawed Glass,” based on I
Corinthians 13:12. I accept the possibility that I may be wrong.)
The
purpose and objective of spiritual discipline—both individually and in
community—is not to attain that divine love, but to experience what already is
and always has been.[2]
But
there’s that first mutation thing. From primordial wondering about things
unseen, we humans have wanted to get it right. We have a need to be loved and
accepted. We have a need to make sure we’re loved and accepted. We don’t
want that faith and trust stuff, we want a solid guarantee! So we develop a
binary “right/wrong” system by which we can be sure. Oral Roberts often said, “I
know that I know that I know.”
So
that first mutation is the move from trust to certitude. It’s not a new thing;
it’s a throwback to a prehistoric human need to control the unknown. It is a
rejection of faith and trust.
The
truth is: nobody ever gets it right! That’s why we need grace. It’s not
about being right. It never was. It’s about being loved and accepted by the
source of all love. John got it right (I John 4:8): God is love!
Red,
brown, yellow, black, white: you are loved! LGBTQ/Straight: you are loved! Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Socialist/Communist:
you are loved!
And
here’s the thing: when we are experiencing love and acceptance, we are free
from all that worry and anxiety about whether we’re “right.” The reason we
wanted to be “right” in the first place was just to be loved and accepted. When
we experience love we are free to love, without concern for ourselves and
without concern about whether the recipient of our love is worthy, or whether our
love will be returned. We already are loved!
The
natural response to experienced love is to love in return. We worship the
God who is Love with praise, adoration and thanksgiving, and we serve the God
who is Love by loving the people God loves, which excludes nobody! Thanks be to
God!
That’s
the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.
Together in the Walk,
Jim
[1] Bruce Epperly,
endorsing Mark Gregory Karris, Religious Refugees (Orange, California:
Quoir, Kindle Edition, 2020) p. 4.
[2] I’m grateful for
this insight discovered in David Artman, Grace Saves All: The Necessity of
Christian Universalism (Wipf and Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock
Publishers. Kindle Edition 2020) p. 105.
No comments:
Post a Comment