'Build your own theology': A look at what happens when a church drifts away from God's love

WORLD ^ | 10/11/03 | Andree Seu

[rhema]

IN THE FLIGHT SCENE TOWARD THE END OF THE Sound of Music, Captain von Trapp and the 17-year-old Rolf find themselves alone together in a convent cemetery, the younger man in his German uniform, nervously pointing a gun and trying to look every inch a killer. Von Trapp, risking all on a hunch about the young Nazi wannabe, invites Rolf to come along to freedom, and says tersely, "You'll never be one of them."

There is nothing more pathetic than a Christian trying to be something he is not. Or churches looking for love in all the wrong places.

You see it everywhere: once-faithful churches tripping over themselves to be au courant with cultural fashions—trying to out-gay homosexuals with their embrace of the movement.

But it was ever so. Ancient Israel had king-envy: Rebuffing Samuel's impassioned pleas, the people cried, "No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations. " (1 Samuel 8:19-20). Whence this craven need for inclusion and belonging, this sycophancy and fear of being left out? The Lord takes it personally: "They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them" (v.7).

'Tis the "mystery of lawlessness" (2 Thessalonians 2:7); there is no making sense of this rationally. In the most counterintuitive of the laws of nature, men left to themselves will over time drift away from the love of God, not toward it. For this reason Israel was to keep her daughters from the sons of the Canaanites. Rather than producing godly jealousy in the bankrupt nations, God's people would end up hankering for the nations' tawdriness: "How lovesick is your heart, declares the Lord.... on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore.... Yet you were not like a prostitute.... You gave payment, while no payment was given to you" (Jeremiah 2:20; Ezekiel 16:30-34).

I betook myself to see the end of the road of the Christian church's trolling for love. I circled three Unitarian Universalist churches in the phone book and drove to one on a Sunday. Unitarian churches once purported to preach Christ, but with a scruple about the trinitarian formulation of God; if there were no Christ, there would be no Unitarian churches. The architecture of the building I now pulled up in front of bespoke an older, fustier doctrine, reminding me of the saying that when liberal winds blew through the parishes of New England 200 years ago, "the Congregationalists kept the faith, but the Unitarians kept the buildings."

The sign said "Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration," but it is unclear what tradition was being "restored." The preacher was a young lesbian, the sermon an enthusiastic report on the feminist "Omega conference" she'd attended. Its highlights seemed to be the invoking of the Nigerian goddess Oya and a wave across the room from Jane Fonda. Buddha and Alice Walker were given an appreciative nod, but the name "Jesus" (I was paying attention) was absent. Indeed, it is no mean feat, to my reckoning, that in the entire Unitarian hymnbook, Singing the Living Tradition, any hint of Him is airbrushed out. On the bulletin was an advert for a "Build your own theology" seminar.

Only a Christian can fall this far, methinks. The other big religions had no height to fall from; they were never about love to begin with, never about covenant relationship. If a Muslim falls away from Islam, or a Buddhist from Buddhism, or a Communist from Communism, they have made a break with an aloof deity, or a system, or a set of philosophical ideals. But renegade Christianity is on the run from a Father, from One who waits at the window by lamplight, straining to see His prodigal child coming up the road. Go figure: The nations hold fast to their faiths, though they are wretched—"Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are not gods?" (Jeremiah 2:11). But of the people of the living God it is written, "Where have you not been ravished?" (Jeremiah 3:2).

Yet not even this is the end of the road. The lighting of the "candle in the chalice," the unprayers sent up to no one in particular, the whole enveloped in the wafting New Age strains, are like to be more the midpoint of a spiral whose final state recalls Hieronymus Bosch's Last Judgment triptych—the "hell" panel. Blessed is the church that God holds back from its most dissolute pantings for the love of the world, the Christian to whom He says, "What is in your mind shall never happen—the thought, 'Let us be like the nations.' ... As I live, declares the Lord God, ... I will be king over you" (Ezekiel 20:32-33).

[rhema]

BTTT

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[thegreatbeast]

Homer Simpson said something pretty close to this:" The Unitarians? If they're the One True Religion, I'll eat my hat!"

[ALOHA RONNIE]

Praise GOD that...

LOVE is the Only Reality and that...

GOD is LOVE.

[ibtheman]

Here is a good starting point to find a church that teaches the gospel of Jesus Christ. What bible are they preaching from? Do they teach about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit? Do they the church, teach the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost the trinity? Does the church have a fervor for missionaries, and does the church do short term missions in other countries? Most importantly pray to our lord and Savior, ask jesus to lead you to his church. There is power in prayer, and the if you truely are seeking our redemmer, he will find you, as one of his sheep. But you must pray, You have notr because you ask not! So start asking ! I pray that everyone that reads this text will seek our Savior, will ask him to come into there body, mind, and soul! That they will read God's word, the Holy Bible, our life manual ! Amen.

[Loyalist]

PING.

See the logical end of AmChurch up close and personal at your local Unitarian Universalist Church.

[50sDad]

Ever seen Bart playing vidgames with Rod and Todd Flanders...

Rod: "Let's play 'Conversion Blaster!' Get the pagan in the crosshairs!"
Bart: "I got him!"
Todd: "No! You only winged him! He's a Unitarian!"

or...

Q: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness and a Unitarian?
A: Someone who knocks on your door and has nothing to say!

[AVNative]

Re: ". . .but it was unclear which tradition was being restored."

Which brings to mind the saying "the unexamined life is not worth living."

How sad that we have this sin nature that draws us away from the love and nurture of the Father. A reminder to keep watch over our lives and claim promises such as Philippians 1:6 - and cry out for our full completion in Christ be done.

It's like Rick Warren wrote: life is a test. And there's lots of tests, given over and over, moment by moment. I've had a few today myself. Have I passed them all perfectly? To be honest, no. Is there forgiveness available to me? Yes. Hold me closer, dear Lord. . .

[TradicalRC]

Ah yes, the UU church. I attended it in college and for a time after as well. The novelty oftheir progressivism is what "did it" for me. Eventually, as I found out about UU history and considered my own as well, two worlds collided.

They prided themselves on their "open-mindedness" but I still believed in the Trinity. When I asked someone in the church about this, they just smiled and shrugged. They did have good coffee, though, after the service.

When I moved to Nashua,NH I went to that UU church and the minister gave a sermon on how the topic of God was passe or maybe it was the topic of belief in God or maybe it was about whether or not He exists.

At any rate, that was the last time I attended the UU church. Now I am in the Roman Catholic Church, the church of my Fathers. And the glitter of progressivism has lost its attractiveness. Now, you just can't get Traditional enough to suit my tastes.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well expressed. Thank You .
Americans wander along like the children of Hamlin hypnotized by the Piper. Our nation seems to be clamoring to point a hasty finger at "immoral" politicians and celebrities. Yet this "SO CALLED CHRISTIAN" Nation actually has no understanding of the faith in the LORD Jesus carried by the founders our Republic. Americans have allowed hundreds of thousands of unborn childeren to be murdered/aborted "legally" yet they think God cares more about a granite rock moved out of a Federal building in Alabama!
We will continue to blindly aknowledge the "Emperor's New Clothes" because speaking TRUTH is far too costly. And what ever you do...don't interupt my Football Game!

[NeoCaveman]

Did you hear the one about the hate crime against the Unitarians, someone burned a question mark in front of their church.

[Ferret Fawcet]

btt

[VOA]

...in the entire Unitarian hymnbook, Singing the Living Tradition, any hint of Him is airbrushed out

"That's not a church, that's just a club!"
--evaluation of the Unitarians after my "seeker" brother visited a Unitarian
congregation during his college years
And this was 20 years ago and in Bible Belt Oklahoma!

[findingtruth]

You better watch out. Get those Unitarians mad at you, and they'll come out to your house at night and burn a giant question mark on your lawn.