Whatever happened to Charity?

Eigenheim Mennonite Church (Rosenort) Sanctuary - 1894

“ . . . suppose I have enough faith to move mountains. If I don’t have love, I am nothing at all.” (1 Corinthians 13: 2b, NIRV).

So your church is in trouble . . . again. Join the club. Conflict and Disunity might be the inherited middle names of the Bride of Christ ever since Paul and Peter quarreled over the status of non-Jews in the fellowship: meet Mary Conflict Disunity Church—bride of Christ.

In order to maintain the inherited reputation of our divisive natures, we’ve had the Spanish Inquisition, the Reformation/Counter Reformation/Radical Reformation, the Crusades. We’ve burned enough heretics at the stake to heat all of Europe for a generation. We’ve hounded people like Galileo into recanting for the audacity of suggesting that the earth spins around the sun. We’ve split ourselves into so many denominations that we’re getting close to the place where there’ll be one for each of us.

The abbreviated story of the last century of church, for instance, might well be, “He arrived in a Model T Ford, but left in a Huff!”

Although “unity,” as they say, “ain’t everything.” It’s like water. Water ain’t everything either but without it, “Ya ain’t got nothin’!” Or am I exaggerating? When does a family that quarrels and pulls in different directions all the time cease being a family?

Here’s one problem as I see it. We have this book we call The Holy Bible, (and here comes a tautology), a teaching/learning tome of great import in the formation of what we call “The Church” (as if there were only one). It was basically written in the years from 600 BC to 100 AD, give or take, and for the last 19 Centuries, no new insights have been allowed entry; it’s tightly bound with a back cover.

The implication is that God started inspiring scribes and sages during the Babylonian Exile . . . and stopped after Jesus’ apostles were all dead.

Now if Galileo was audacious, what does that make us who declare that God no longer inspires new insight? He’s probably turned his back on us in frustration, whiling away eternity in a game of solitaire. “You won’t listen; so I won’t talk.” (Or as philosopher/theologian Frederich Nietzsche is reported to have said, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”)

The above are meant to be understood metaphorically.

Two reminders: One, the worship of objects is idolatry; don’t let’s think of the Bible as an object; it’s a conversation on paper about our evolving understanding of creation that’s, unfortunately, missing a huge portion going on 19 centuries long now. And two, the fact that you or I can peruse and speak every word in the Bible doesn’t mean that we can actually read it. Without the historical context and an understanding of how language was used at the time of writing; without knowledge of the processes of translation; without the willingness to allow tradition and experience to inform us about what is relevant and what’s not, about what’s timely and what’s obsolete; without scholars and teachers, prophets whom we should honour and not denigrate, unity is doomed—we will always bog down in the morass of pooled and prideful ignorance.

Same is true of the writings of Shakespeare, Chaucer, even James Joyce, come to think of it.

Fundamentalist religion, fundamentalist politics, fundamentalist anything: these are the ingredients of the dross on which the world periodically chooses to feed. We’re doing it again. Knowledge, wisdom, discovery, even facts are disdained in a dive off a deductive cliff. Black is white, cold is hot, mud is custard pudding

 . . . and someone will surely catch us before we hit bottom.

As if.

So your church is in trouble . . . again. You may as well get used to it. It’s been with us since the beginning; a new, progressive development on the unity front just isn’t likely, unless . . . 

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” (1 Corinthians 13:13, KJV) Love (charity) is the foundation; faith and hope are structures we build upon charity’s sure footing. Anything else, according to Paul, is a never-fail recipe for division and disillusion.

If the coordination of doctrinal understandings is assumed to be the foundation of our charity and our hope . . . our unity . . . we will have failed again to let history teach us.

Alternately, we could set to work gathering wood for holy bonfires.