When the Homily is about Immunology

Who's the Boss?

Continuing to read Spencer Burke's book "Heretic's Guide to Eternity."

Spencer writes: ...the time of traditional religion has passed. I've felt it in my own heart and I see evidence of it in the broader culture as well.

Emphasis mine, of course...but consider the authorities that Mr. Burke is citing here as being worthy of making such an important claim - especially when essentially the coming new age of "religionless Christianity" is left as a sort of copious, undefined mass of universalism. Again, I beg and plead to know and be convinced of how my heart (so easily deceived as I know it to be) along with the culture at large (insane as I know it to be) are to be trusted to determine/interpret what Jesus Christ taught and furthermore to REALLY know what "works for me." I can tell you, everyday people come to my work and undergo something that they would likely say doesn't feel good, but if it kills the Cancer then it "works for them" - though they didn't enjoy it much. Christianity is even moreso the same way...it isn't there to "work for you" it is there to make you better, to heal your disease.

By the way, I don't know if Mr. Burke is going to advocate outright universalism, though he does seem to be leaning in that direction. It has always seemed to me that universalism shares the same oxymoronic label that the statement "There are no absolutes" must own up to.

Burke says: "In today's context, it seems that fundamentalists are intent on hanging on to a particular view of the divine that sacrifices the beauty of God's spirit and grace in exchange for control and authority."

I have written at length about authority and how it was given by Christ Himself to his apostles - authority far beyond what I expect most PME'ers could stomach seeing any man or "institution" given (e.g. forgiving sins), but the irony is blatant that he thinks somehow the beauty of God's spirit and grace is maintained when we give control and authority to our hearts and to the broader culture? I'm not buying it. Obey your own heart, obey your culture...but never obey the Living and Timeless Community of Saints who have developed, maintained, and passed on Holy Tradition.

The fundamentalism of Orthodoxy is beautiful beyond anything I have ever seen or heard - yet it is born in the context of COMMUNITY (not individual hearts) and yet it has all the apparent trappings of "institution" and "religion"...sadly Mr. Burke is obviously writing to a crowd who presupposes that these terms are really bad bad words.

"the church has a tendency to interpret individual's relationships with God for them. Rather than responding to the call of God on their life directly, individuals often find themselves responding to the call of the church."

And the problem here is what exactly? Because it sounds pretty good to me, as I expect it will to others as well who have experienced the unbalanced insanity of people "responding to the call of God" as INDIVIDUALS. Someone ought to count the number of times the world "individual" is used in this text and indeed in all PME related literature. Can we not see how this is a direct descendent - the logical conclusion - of the much despised and "out of touch" enlightenment era modernism?

We are part of a community - you know, the whole "Body of Christ" analogy? We believe as community, we respond as a community, we worship as community. And this community is FAR FAR FAR more than the so called "broader culture"...no she extends backward and forward in time...in fact she herself is timeless, as surely as her truths are timeless. Now, who am I to stand here and say, as an individual, that the timeless teachings and practices just "isn't working" for me anymore? Or what is this "broader culture" that it can stand in the face of timeless truths and say "the time of tradition has passed"? If the teachings and practices which we as a community have consercrated over the ages seems to conflict with my "needs", maybe I ought to reevaluate my "needs"? Read that sentence again.

I was always under the impression that Jesus told us we'd be hated and persecuted by the Broader culture? So, why on earth when the borader culture is in apparent disagreement with the traditional Christian faith are we opting to agree with the former? Is it enlightened? Is it Holy? Is it wise and has it shown itself to be anything more than a mad chaser of bright and shiny things? (oops, did I just quote Bono?)

Later Mr. Burke begins to lay his foundation for some sort of universalism. And he begins it by explaining that the exclusivity claims to truth by religions might have been acceptable when cultures were more isolated, but that today we cannot hope to maintain such "splendid isolation." He even references new technologies like the internet and satellites which exposes us even further to different religions. And, since we have so much more contact with other cultures and religions, surely we must see that claims of religious exclusivity (e.g. "No man comes to the Father but through Me") just "don't work" anymore.

He explains the Great Commission by saying that at the time of the 1st century, the "world" into which they were commanded to go into would not have included the Western hemisphere etc. A bit more than a little stretch I would say. Furthermore, it is not as if the Roman Empire was a monolith of a single culutre and religion...not at all. It was at LEAST as much of a "cacophony of [religious] voices all vying for our allegiance" as it is today. I think his point here betrays a major historical oversight with regard to the cultural/religious state of the Roman Empire at the time...it really was not all that different than today in this regard and thus the exclusivist and universal claims of Christ and His followers are no less applicable today - EVEN if you allow those teachings to be trumpted by the whims of culture. In fact the exclusivity claims of Judaism and later Christianity came as a bit of a shock to many of the religious people of the Roman, who were much more universalist as polytheists are apt to be. So, with that point in mind, Christianity entered into a world of universalism, rejected it, and was persecuted for doing so.

Looks like history may indeed repeat itself.

More later...