I have followed the writing of Simon Barrow for years, he is always in the forefront of the conversation around faith and society. He constantly seeks to erase the artificial boundary the church has constructed between the sacred and the secular...from God and the world that surrounds us. The following are a few bytes from Simon's article, I encourage you to read it all. They are timely words, the church desperately needs to give ear to...
What this means is that the God of whom Christians traditionally speak (the source, transformer and destiny of life) cannot, by definition, be fitted into a gap, a box or a slot. Ironically, many outside the church seem to understand this better than those inside it – even though those in it, especially if they are bishops, are supposed to have learned at least a bit of theology.
Moreover, there is a biblical case for saying that the God of the prophets and of Jesus is supremely uninterested in “religion” as a specialist activity extricated or set against the rest of life. On the contrary, the prophets oppose ritual devoid of ethical commitment and human solidarity. Similarly, Jesus challenges the Temple system and the monopoly of religious leaders over the ordinary people, and Paul says that the important gifts of the Spirit are a new way of living not a spiritual ego-trip.
All of this ought to be relatively uncontroversial to a church that has come to terms with the dynamic of the Gospel that formed it. But instead its mind has been seized by fear, and by “religious” distortions of its message shaped by an alliance with governing powers and ideas – ones that have encouraged an essentially dualistic mindset.
Because the world is continually foisting “religion” (which depends on an idea of a god alien to the world) upon us, an alternative community is needed to sustain a different, non-dualistic understanding. It does this through worship (learning not to mistake anything in the world for God, and not to reduce God to anything in the world) and through prayer (learning to receive life as a gift to be shared not a product to be manipulated to our advantage). Strictly speaking these activities therefore have nothing to do with “religion” as it is conventionally defined these days. In fact they stand in opposition to it.
The upshot of all this is that the Christian Gospel, at least – I don’t seek to speak on behalf of other faith perspectives – cannot and should not depend upon obsessively ring-fencing bits of worldly life for God, as if God needed or asked us to do this.
So if Christians are invited to share their experience, insights and understanding on TV and radio, great; but they should not try to keep others out. Indeed they should welcome conversation and dialogue. Otherwise they are contradicting their message, which is about gift not possession.
And this...
Similarly, the job of the church is most definitely not to give people the entirely false impression that God is only present when they are in power, or that the presence of “secular” persons or ideas means the exclusion of God – as if God were a competitor for space within the world, constantly in danger of being “squeezed out”.
The message of the incarnation, on the contrary, is that – in opposition to what is usually supposed – God, while remaining beyond our grasp, is a life-giver who is not against the flesh, but who comes to us in and through it, affirming and transforming “the earthly” in the direction of a living which is truly unrestricted, unlike a good deal of our rather mean attempts at it.
This means that the job of the church in post-Christendom has nothing to do with defending Christian oases in a spiritual desert, or demanding, as of “right”, the sort of “God slots” which actually end up confirming people’s suspicion that God is a weakling in need of propping up, or a human-crafted consumable alongside others – albeit with a distinctly unfashionable religious label.
Instead, the job of the church is to speak and act in such a way that people can look at life and other people and see – not something less than what is around and in them, but something bigger, something more beautiful, truly liberating and hopeful beyond mere calculation. This is tough, because life is also tragic and difficult. Not denying its underlying goodness takes guts, imagination and self-giving.
And to finish it off...
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer pointed out many years ago, the “religious” god is destined to die, because this is not the unconditioned God who is met – paradoxically – in the tortured body of Christ, in the poor, and in all kinds of “non-religious” people and things which have much more to do with fullness of life (what God gives) than organized religion and metaphysics. God does not need self-appointed political defenders, but those who live life unconditionally.
Read the whole article...here.
