The world, the flesh and the bishop

VirtueOnline-News ^ | 11/07/2006 | Bill Murchison

[sionnsar]

In Mrs. Jefferts Schori’s vision of tomorrow — which is a nice vision, if you knock the government regulation out of it — we find the California dreamin’ of three-plus decades ago distilled into theology. Mosquito nets undergird it. Clean water laves it. The human family affirms it.

There is just one problem: in theological terms, the demonstrated capacity of the human family, living on its own human resources, to foul up everything in sight. The churches used to call it sin, back when they were bold enough to reproach well-heeled sinners, back when they called life in a sinful world a holding action. (But hold on anyway, because Jesus is coming back!)

The non-religious vision — this spinning globe made spic-and-span by human methods — and the Christian vision — the same globe offering to God humble obedience — constantly collide in history. Barely does the second vision gain wide recognition before scene and sets change, and Man himself becomes a god, issuing orders, drawing up blueprints … as when the snake whispered sibilantly to Eve.

In the 1960s, which began as the future Mrs. Jefferts Schori turned 7, the West and, with it, the churches of the West, turned from the vision of human dependence on God to that of human exhilaration with human means and ends. The traditional Christian vision, for all its fervent encouragement of good works, encourages infinitely more deference to divine direction than Mrs. Jefferts Schori’s installation sermon allowed for.

So she wants to make the world over? Now’s her chance, there being only one problem: The more Christianity resembles the United Nations, the less nearly it resembles the spiritual realm it exists to depict and lead us toward.

Who needs Katharine Jefferts Schori when you’ve got Bono and George Clooney?

Read the whole piece.

[sionnsar]

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[Tax-chick]

The non-religious vision — this spinning globe made spic-and-span by human methods — and the Christian vision — the same globe offering to God humble obedience — constantly collide in history. Barely does the second vision gain wide recognition before scene and sets change, and Man himself becomes a god, issuing orders, drawing up blueprints … as when the snake whispered sibilantly to Eve.

Good viewpoint. It really does all come down to "Who is God?"