Part III Matthew: The Shadow of Moses Continues

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 26 September 2013 2 Comments
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Question

Do I get my child baptized into a church with which I profoundly disagree? Should I stand up and commit her to the ridiculous concept of original sin? To the human interpretation of evil and the devil? I have spent a year discussing this with my minister and I really want to proclaim no! I want to commit my child's life to a God of love, of forgiveness that is already waiting to be claimed, a God who is not dependent on repentance. I was nine years old when I understood that if God loves, then there can be no "hell," no final judgment. Just our own inability to comprehend that we are already forgiven for everything is enough. Then there is no scale from a little misdemeanor to irredeemable evil, just a degree of separation from God's perfection that we can only close through love.

Answer

Dear Jane,

I would never ask you to act against what you believe. I would urge you to be a catalyst for what you believe and raise the issues publicly in your church. If your minister cannot embrace your insights and insists that you violate your own convictions and your honesty if your child is to be baptized, then I suggest you walk away from that church, but do it very publicly so the issues that you raise will be both indelible and consciousness-raising for the entire community. I assure you that there are numerous voices in academic Christianity that react to the concept of original sin’s absurdity just as strongly as you do and there are thus numbers of churches that are moving away from the idea that baptism is required to wash away the stain of original sin. I have unbaptized grandchildren because their parents could not and would not say the words required in the baptismal liturgies of their prospective churches.

Original sin died in the writings of Charles Darwin. Maybe that is why traditional churches have been so threatened and so frightened by Darwin. Original sin implies an original perfection, from which we have fallen. Darwin makes us aware that there was no original perfection but an evolution of life from single cells to self-conscious complexity. The traditional way of telling the Christ story falls apart with that insight. No original perfection means no fall into sin. No fall into sin means that there is no need to be rescued or saved. No need to be saved means that the idea that Jesus “died for my sins” or brought about my salvation through his pain and suffering is little more than a guilt-producing control technique. Once that medieval world view has been dispatched, perhaps we can begin to see God as life, love and being and Jesus as the human experience of that divine presence. On that basis, a new Christianity for a new world will be created.

In 1979, when my church revised its prayer book, it changed the baptismal liturgy dramatically, not enough, I fear, but it was clearly a step in the right direction. No longer in this revised service is one asked to renounce the “world,” but rather to renounce “the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” We no longer in that revised service renounce “the Flesh,” but rather we renounce “the sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.” We no longer renounce the devil, but we renounce “all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.” Suddenly being a Christian is no longer related to being a monk or a nun!

In the baptismal prayers for the child or person to be baptized, the new baptismal liturgy has moved in very positive and different directions. We pray that this child’s “heart may be open to God’s grace and truth,” that this child will be filled with God’s “holy and life-giving Spirit,” that this child will be kept “in the faith and communion” of God’s church, that he or she will be taught “to love others in the power of the Spirit” and finally that this child or person may be brought to the “fullness” of God’s “peace and glory.”

That represents a fairly dramatic turn from the baptismal theology of the past and the theology to which you are being exposed and against which you are so rightly reacting.

I hope you can find a community of faith that will build your child up rather than tear your child down. They are out there, but the old stuff is still present and it is still reaping its harvest of human depravity.

John Shelby Spong

 

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