Part XV- Matthew: Understanding the Sermon on the Mount: Conclusion

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 27 February 2014 1 Comments
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Question

I consider myself to be a supportive follower of Progressive Christianity (PC), whose own spiritual beliefs closely parallel what is being espoused by leaders such as you in the movement to interpret the Bible in a way that is rational, scientific, contemporary, and not given to so much blind-sighted literalism. My exposure to PC includes having read all of your Question and Answer weeklies since you started them some years ago, frequently reading the contents of the Progressive Christianity.org web site and having started to read some of your welcomed books.

You have made reference to many church congregations today not being exposed by their seminary-educated pastors to current and recent (the past 100 years or more) biblical knowledge that is based on scholarly agreement or consensus. I have heard and read of you mentioning a child-like, Sunday school level of understanding of the Bible on the part of many adult churchgoers who often do not see underneath or beyond the literal word. To borrow a now somewhat dated set of words, I assert that you are “right on.”

I had a brother-in-law who was an ELCA seminary graduate and pastor and I know that seminaries could be placed on a continuum or range scale from conservative to liberal or some other defining set of words. It troubles me that certain conservative/fundamental/evangelical seminaries continue to promote belief and thinking going back to the third or fourth century CE. Does the problem of withholding more revealing scholarship to congregants lie primarily with the seminaries, the graduates of the seminaries, or both?

 

Answer

Dear Randall,

The issue is, I believe, more complex than you suggest. It has to do with our human security needs, with economic realities, with the audience to which the seminaries are responsible and with the quality of the candidates for ordination themselves.

First, let me suggest that rethinking ancient religious symbols, scriptures and creeds in the light of contemporary knowledge raises human anxiety levels significantly. Most people wrap their security needs inside their religious convictions. When the truth that is claimed in our religious convictions is questioned, the anxiety that was born in the moment of our achieving human self-consciousness takes over. It is also the fact of self-consciousness that forces us human beings to raise questions of meaning and mortality that no other living creature has ever had to face. No dog or cat lives with the knowledge of its own death, but human beings do. No dog or cat raises questions about whether life has meaning, but human beings do. To face the possibility of mortality and meaninglessness throws us into the trauma that always accompanies self-consciousness. One of the driving forces behind the creation of human religion was the need to speak to this anxiety. That is why there is a desire in all religious systems to claim certainty for its religious convictions. Religious uncertainty does not alleviate anxiety so religious systems always have to postulate that what its followers believe is “changeless truth.” That is why the Catholic Church has declared its pope to be infallible. That is why for fundamentalistic Protestant Christians the Bible has to be “inerrant.” That is why every church seems bound to claim that it is the “one true church,” or that no one could possibly achieve salvation in a faith system other than “my own.” Part of religion’s power is found in the claim that it can and must provide the “answer.”

In the history of Christianity, when new thought challenges religious convictions, one sees the religious organizations respond to destroy or deny that thought. Galileo was put on trial for heresy and barely escaped being burned at the stake. “Inquisitions” were formed by religious hierarchies to counter doubt. To this day in the Bible Belt of the South in the United States politicians still run against Darwin when they seek public office. In times of change, religion always moves to the right, becoming both loud and negative.

No one escapes these unconscious religious motivators. So we discover that church executives do not want seminaries raising questions that might later disturb the security of the faithful. Congregations use the threat of withholding their financial support to keep “questioning clergy” in line. Reformations are always destructive to the religious status quo. The fact that the world always changes and that knowledge is always growing exponentially inevitably means that what religious people like to refer to as “eternal truth” is in fact always under challenge from new insights. That is the reality with which churches must always be dealing. The way to deal with this deep-seated human fear is to help people to grow up to a new level of maturity, but normally religious institutions and religious hierarchical people tend to respond by trying to suppress truth that is religiously “uncomfortable” or “inconvenient.” The quest for security is ultimately not an emotional way of life that allows growth to take place. Religion in general and Christianity in many of its forms seems designed to keep people child-like, docile and trusting.

My conviction, however, is that real Christianity was born not to make us secure, but to enable us to live with insecurity; its goal was to enable us to achieve not childlike faith, but human maturity. I believe this is what Paul meant when he wrote that we are to grow into the full stature of Christ Jesus that is within us.

Christianity points to God, to truth, to meaning, but it does not capture these entities. We learn as Christians to walk by faith, not by certainty. That kind of Christianity, however, will always be a minority movement for, far from giving people either the security they need or the “promised land” for which they yearn, it offers them only a journey into the ultimate mystery and wonder of God, which is beyond all forms and all known truths. Perhaps that is why Jesus is portrayed biblically as using only minority images to describe his movement. The gospels record Jesus as saying to his followers that they are to be the “leaven in the dough,” the “salt in the soup” and the “light in the darkness.” This sense of being a minority presence in the midst of life is not enough for most religious institutions or leaders who crave certainty. It is, however, enough for me, and perhaps it can be enough for you and even for that minority that wants to combine the search for God and meaning with the search for truth. No one can possess ultimate truth; all any of us can do is to walk toward it.

Christianity is thus a journey that never ends. For Christianity it is the walk that is the reality. Do it then with integrity.

John Shelby Spong

 

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