The Charleston Murders: The Final Battle in the Civil War?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 16 July 2015 7 Comments
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Question

I have followed with great interest your series of articles on the Gospel according to Matthew, in which you set out your understanding and interpretation of the metaphors and biblical references within this gospel. I find your arguments entirely convincing.

As I understand what you are saying, your understanding is that this story was originally written to be read by people who were familiar with the Jewish Bible, and who could as a consequence understand Matthew’s references and his symbols. Our later “traditional” and “literalized” interpretations of the gospels have, in contrast, provided us with a very simple, story, but one that is no longer literally believable. Matthew’s narrative, however, sets out a clear objective within a simple story line. It was therefore, easy to respond to a non-believer’s question with a clear answer in a few brief sentences.

In contrast, the new way of reading the gospels appears to demand that the reader bring much thoughtfulness and insight to the task. There does not seem any longer to be an explanation which can be summed up with any brevity or which lends itself to such powerful images as the traditional story.

My question then is this: Is it still possible to tell this new story with the simplicity and boldness of the traditional gospel reading or should we approach this task differently and, if so, how might this be? Or am I missing some point?

Answer

Dear Michael,

You are not missing any point. You have stated the problem facing 21st century Christians very clearly. What we must do today, however, cannot be done by a simple re-telling of the “old, old story.” Let me state it specifically.

We Christians are facing the world of the 21st century armed with a Bible written between 1000 BCE and 140 CE, with creeds fashioned in the dualistic, Greek-thinking world of the 4th century CE and with worship forms constructed primarily in the 13th century.

The Bible makes assumptions that we cannot make. Among these assumptions are:

1) God is a supernatural being, dwelling above the sky and invading the world from time to time to accomplish the divine will or to answer our prayers.

2) Whatever we do not understand must be attributed to miraculous divine intervention.

3) Human life was created perfect only to fall into original sin from which we must be rescued.

4) Sickness and natural disasters are sent as a divine punishment for our misdeeds.

5) Mental sickness and epilepsy must be understood as demon possession.

The 4th century creeds assume that there is a gap between the human and the divine and that the human cannot go to the divine, but the divine can come to the human. Salvation depends on the divine doing exactly that. Jesus thus becomes a “person from outer space.”

Our 13th century worship forms portray God as either a punishing parent or a hanging judge who confronts us with our sinfulness, making it inescapable. This all-seeing God keeps a record of every misdeed, every evil thought and every carnal desire. It suggests that we are to relate to this God as a slave relates to a master, as a beggar relates to the source of his or her next meal or as a serf relates to the Lord of the Manor. We are to be on our knees and constantly in the mode of confessing, of facing our own shortcomings and therefore of begging for mercy.

Unless we break out of these patterns of the past, I am convinced that there will be no Christian future. The church does not have the answers that it once professed to have. The certainties of yesterday are not viable today. Christianity is a journey into the future, the unknown, a journey beyond our familiar security patterns. So we relativize yesterday’s truth and walk into tomorrow’s world. We cannot read the Bible the way we once did, we cannot say the creeds the way we once did and we cannot worship the way we once did.

We have to move and when we move, we will inevitably break open the ecclesiastical forms of yesterday, but we still seek the truth to which those forms once pointed so inadequately. There is after all only one truth, but none of us possesses it.

Any church that does not confront the reality of this new world is not a church that will survive. To pretend that nothing has changed is a stance of disaster, but that is the stance in which most church life is lived today. It is not easy to be a Christian in the 21st century. It demands hard work, difficult thinking, the embracing of radical insecurity and the possession of a faith deep enough to know that God is real and to journey into the unknown in search of that reality.

Our task is to develop these things. It is a task only for the brave of heart and for the heroes of faith. When I look at the church today, I no longer see primarily a community willing to take up this challenge, what I see is an entrenched attempt to preserve the past and to return to the good old days of yesteryear when faith was simple and when answers were easy. I do see increasingly in many churches, however, a small cell or core made up of people, hopefully including the priest, pastor or congregational leader, who recognize the problem. These people are then willing to engage it despite the risk of failing and of being misunderstood by “the faithful.” It will be from that within these “cells,” I now believe, that the future of Christianity will be secured.

Thanks for your letter.

John Shelby Spong

 

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