APRIL 17 2016
THE LORD’S PRAYER (4). CONCLUSION
The Bible starts with these words: IN THE BEGINNING. Genesis 1 relates how that beginning consisted of CHAOS, a formless, empty world, shrouded in universal darkness.
When God saw this god-forsaken mess he spoke and the COSMOS came into being. We now are in the centre of the world’s greatest super cycle ever: from CHAOS – as in the beginning – TO COSMOS – God’s creation – back TO CHAOS – human induced – TO COSMOS – the new earth.
Let me elaborate a bit. In the beginning there was Chaos out of which God created Cosmos, a well-ordered, harmonious, and a perfectly patterned and functioning world. In his goodness and trust, he gave it to the human race to develop, which worked for a while. Then, somehow we – our ancestors – were tempted and succumbed to hubris, wanting to be like God, and he let us, “seeing what our end would be” (Deuteronomy 31: 17).
The all-wise God knew, of course, the outcome: from chaos to cosmos, and now again to chaos with the renewed cosmos to come.
All this means that THE END OF OUR WORLD IS LIKE THE BEGINNING, a depleted globe, full with people and their stuff, but empty of all that really matters: trees, clean water, pure air, healthy soil. CHAOS everywhere.
Chaos everywhere? It’s not only the physical world with the oceans depleted of fish and replaced with plastic particles, and the soil and the air slowly being poisoned: that too, of course. It’s not only the coral reefs, where high heat and bright sunshine has caused them to disappear out of control: that too, of course. It’s not only the money world, with trillions of dollars in bonds earning negative interests, or politics, where in the USA all bets are off who will be the next president: that too, of course. It’s not only China that has gone berserk, building highways to nowhere, entire cities where nobody lives, all to ensure that the millions of restless workers can earn a paycheck somehow, even as the entire world of work is under the threat of robots. It’s not only the millions on the move to escape war and drought: it’s everything: chaos everywhere.
What all this really means is that “The Gospel of the Earth” has disappeared, making true the words of Amos (8: 11): “we now experience a famine of hearing the (created) words of the Lord.”
Here is an item that is, perhaps, the most worrisome matter of all: With the tilting of the earth’s axle, caused by the melting of billions of tons of ice on both poles, will the delicate fault lines everywhere suddenly shift and cause world-wide earthquakes all at once thanks to us heating up the Climate? The Bible in numerous passages (Revelation 16: 18 for instance) says that the End of the world as we know it will start with an enormous earthquake: “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since we humans have been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts and the cities of the nations collapsed.”
Somehow this makes me think of the so-called KUHN CYCLE.
The KUHN CYCLE points to a simple cycle of progress. Thomas Kuhn, in 1962 in his ground-breaking work THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, challenged the world’s conception of science based on a steady progression of the accumulation of new ideas. According to Kuhn, intellectual progress is not steady and gradual, but is marked by sudden paradigm shifts. There’s a period of normal science when everybody embraces a paradigm that seems to be working. Then there’s a period of model drift. As years go by, anomalies accumulate and the model begins to seem creaky and flawed.
There’s where we are today. Current economic theories no longer work. Democracy is also at cross roads. The church too is in crisis. Attempts to patch up the models fail. Everybody is in anguish, but nobody knows what to do. Matters move today at neck-breaking speed. Established firms suddenly collapse –KODAK comes to mind. Coal is out of fashion and Billion dollar coal companies become worthless overnight. Newspapers vanish, and, yes, churches close in droves.
Yes, the Church too is in a model crisis.
For hundreds of years – prior to 1500 – the Roman Catholic Church was the world’s dominant religion until irregularities accumulated and the model became outdated and unworkable. Martin Luther in 1517 started a new movement and Christians got a shot in the arm. Today, in spite of Pope Francis’ frantic attempts, no revival is in the works, because no fundamental changes are offered. Now all Christian religions are stagnating and at their wits end.
It is at this point where organized Christian religion will enter what Kuhn called the revolution phase. During these moments you get a proliferation of competing approaches, a willingness to try anything. People ask different questions, speak a different language, allow gays and women to come in (or not), and church people are trying to discover a new paradigm that is totally different from the last, different from the church-inspired homogenized version of The LORD’S PRAYER for instance.
Of course religion will not disappear. The question is “what form will it take.” The question is not whether I should join the Roman Catholic Church or become Pentecostal. Today basically all face the same predicaments because all have gone Gnostic, a paganized version of Christianity.
I was in a large Roman Catholic Church this past week for a concert. Thirty meters up, painted on the glorious ceiling were 12 angels. Of course, that’s what the church is all about: a replica of heaven. The church wants us to leave this earth and escape to heaven. The very structures of offices and edifices have this built-in arrangement, with the Pope or the preachers like God and the cardinals and bishops like the upper priests. All so obviously opposite to what Christ taught and lived.
The real question is “How do I prepare now for this new church era?” If, as Dr. Evan Runner has said many decades ago, “All of life is Religion” is there still a place for the church?
If this matter is judged by church attendance, with people voting with their feet, and ‘religious’ influence waning, then, no, there does not seem a place for the church anymore, except a ceremonial one, for such events as funerals and coronations, and concerts, of course.
Oh dear: what am I saying?
I am saying that the church has run stuck.
BUILDING A RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT BASED ON THE BIBLE ALONE IS NO LONGER WORKING. A broader base is needed, and the chaotic conditions everywhere with END OF THE WORLD predictions rife, scream for alternatives.
The first step clearly is to de-homogenize the church, induce a theological purging, cast aside a lot of prevailing notions such the HEAVEN HERESY something not found in the Bible at all – not to mention RAPTURE and THE LEFT BEHIND theories – and cleanse our mind of non-essential ecclesiastical doctrines such as predestination and biblical infallibility. Also time for pandering to the lowest denominator is over.
The church must see FAITH with fresh eyes and open ears, listen to the cries of creation, and accept that only a few matters are basic: God created, we uncreated, God is holy and so is his creation, we are unholy, Jesus is perfect God and perfect human, who, by his death and resurrection makes CHAOS INTO COSMOS again.
I am starting to believe that by loving creation we love the creator whose works are holy. Nobody has yet successfully explained evolution, so why not give God the honor of being the creator and, in the process love Him?
We have to become honest with ourselves, and stop pretending. Let’s face it: we have screwed it up, irreparably. There’s no way that we, by ourselves, or via governments, or through the United Nations, will undo the damage we have done to creation. Every day we read more dire projections, and more ominous predictions. Our way of life is rotten to the core: the rich don’t give a hoot and the poor can’t do a thing. Government leaders are no longer trusted, institutions are innately corrupt. The Middle East mess is a threat to the entire world, while globalization has poisoned the poor and deprived the Western world of its Middle Class: nothing works anymore. Popular culture has degenerated into sensual insanity, where everything is acceptable. Politics, as evident in the USA and Europe, has become less and less democratic and more and more plutocratic: money rules. When money rules, evil greed follows. Always.
With families falling apart, with the earthly foundations faltering, with churches holding on to their failing operation model, a renewed re-interpretation of THE LORD’S PRAYER is needed. Not the stereotype model, voiced without any understanding, but with the real intent of the prayer in mind: PREPARATION FOR THE NEW COSMOS, proceeding from CHAOS TO COSMOS, because the END IS IN THE BEGINNING.
The cosmos started quite simply with a tree in a garden. It will end with a tree, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
So where does the LORD’S PRAYER fit into all this? A rehash is needed, so here are a few pointers.
(1) God created, and this makes the world we live in HOLY, something the church so far has not acknowledged.
(2) The purpose of life is THE COMING KINGDOM, the New Creation which Christ made possible.
(3) Our aim in life is to do God’s Will in the same way that angels in heaven do God’s bidding.
(4) The word EPIOUSIOS has been misapplied by the church. In essence it means that same thing all over again: our life and our living habits are to relate to THE KINGDOM TO COME.
(5) We daily must pray for forgiveness for our constant sins against creation. We have shaped a world where nobody, not a single person on earth, can live without doing harm to God’s Holy creation, because we have created a society based on temptation, based on infinite consumption in a finite world.
And here I come to the most difficult part: what to do about the church and the Bible. Is there still a place for them?
When I looked ahead to what REVELATION, the last Bible book, tells us about THE NEW EARTH then I don’t see a church there and neither a Bible: God’s law has become part and parcel of our make-up.
Today I see a trend, even a PARADIGM SHIFT to stay with KUHN. When I work my garden, trying to grow organic food for the two of us, and share it with others, I see that as a religious act. When I heat our house with wood, gathered sustainably, then I see that as a religious act. When I use my laptop composing sentences such as the one, then I see that as a religious act. ALL OF LIFE IS RELIGION.
I have nothing against sermons, but they create the impression that a few words, based on the Bible, and an hour in church, is sufficient to ‘earn’ salvation. Sermons in their present form should be abolished, not that they are bad, but they give a false sense of security. I also believe that ‘seminaries’, religious training schools, are one-sided learning centers that do more harm than good. God’s creation is so rich, so varied, so complicated that no single school can even approach to teach God’s greatness: we need eternity and even that is not long enough to fathom the infinite wealth and treasures of God’s magnificence.
Sunday morning services should occasionally be outings into the outdoors, led by knowledgeable people to teach us about the bees and the birds, the flowers and the forests. After all it’s exactly there where we will spend eternity.
That would be a welcome change, a real PARADIGM SHIFT.
Of course choirs ought to be maintained: but why only cultivate music? Art, writing, reading, film, acting: life is full of challenges. The mid-week Bible sessions could be devoted to communal exploration. That’s much better than a 15 minute bible lecture.
As I see it, the church, just as the world, is beyond reforming, and yet there is the ultimate paradox: Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Savus: no salvation outside the religious community. Figure that one out. Somehow we have to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2: 12).
And the church? It is there to keep us humble.