from John Shelby Spong... THE CHRISTIAN STORY IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE! We can’t get there from here! The Reformation I am proposing may well kill Christianity. We are post-Darwinian men and women. As Post- Darwinians, we are in possession of a very different image of the origins of human life and it is quite obvious that the Darwinian view, and not the traditional Christian myth, has prevailed in the life of our civilization. The Darwinian view says there never was a perfect and completed creation. The universe is not yet finished. It is still evolving and is still expanding. New galaxies continue to be formed. The primary doctrines of the Christian faith were built to address a human condition that is simply not true. In our post-Darwinian world, however, there is no original perfection. There is, rather, an ongoing and ever-evolving process carried out over billions of years from single cell life to the complex self-conscious creatures that we are today. If there was no original perfection, there could never have been a fall from perfection, so “original sin” is also nonsensical. If there was no fall into “original sin” then the idea of a divine rescue from a fall that never happened loses all of its meaning. There was never a good creation that was followed by a fall. There was never a perfect man or a perfect woman who fell into sin in an act of disobedience. That account is not true either historically or metaphorically. Human beings are emerging creatures; human beings are a work in progress. Neither perfect nor fallen, they are simply INCOMPLETE. Human beings do not need to be rescued by a human sacrifice or saved rom a fall that never happened, even a mythological one. Human beings cannot be restored to something they have never been. Human beings do not need to be saved. Human beings need, rather, to be empowered to enter into and grasp the fullness of their humanity. They need the means to journey beyond their traditional limits. Our humanity was shaped not by a mythical fall but by a very real battle for survival. Since the diagnosis (sinful human nature) was wrong, the prescribed cure (atonement) cannot be right. When this fact is grasped, the entire sacramental and ecclesiastical superstructure, which was based upon a false diagnosis, begins to collapse. The discontinuity between the traditional Christian message and the world in which that message is proclaimed is widely recognized today. The hysteria by Fundamentalists to become louder and louder and more shrill in attacking all those “secular humanists”, reveals their subconscious recognition that the values they espouse are no longer holding. When the shouting by Fundamentalists has died down, the fundamentalist ship will also sink into the vast waters of postmodernity. GOD, JESUS AND THE CHRISTIAN STORY Pre-modern symbols do not work in a postmodern world. We need to a new way, a totally different way to tell the Christian story. The Christian Church stands in the early years of either extinction or a radically new beginning. This requires that those of us who are postmodern Christians, place the dying interpretation of God, Christ, and human life into the dustbins of our history as the first step towards a RADICAL REFORMATION. We need to start be dismissing the traditional understandings of incarnation and atonement as broken theistic vessels that are no longer capable of interpreting the original experience. We need to reject the virgin birth as an ENTRANCE that made an external deity to enter into human history. Advances in our knowledge of reproduction have obliterated the biological literalism of the miraculous narrative that explained how an external theistic God entered into human history. The virgin birth story lies in shambles as a valid explanation of the experience of having met God in the person of Jesus Christ. The virgin birth of Jesus must be dismissed as literal biology and thus as inappropriate to Theology. Not to do so, will mean that God did a deed that broke all the boundaries of our knowledge of how the universe functions reproductively. The EXIT story to explain the theistic departure has not fared well either. Heaven, in the mind of first century people, was located just beyond the sky. It was a sky into which no one in that era had flown and out of which people believed that stars literally could fall. To get to heaven, where God was believed to dwell, one simply had to rise into the sky, as Jesus did in the ascension story. When 15th century scientists, Copernicus and Galileo, challenged the accuracy of this three-tiered universe, they rendered this possibility null and void. Today, our knowledge tells us that the ascension of Jesus, understood literally, is not possible! We know today, that if one goes up into the sky far enough, one achieves orbit rather than a heavenly destination. We, today, know that if one escapes the gravitational pull, one sinks into incredible depths of a universe so vast that its magnitude cannot be embraced. THE THEISTIC FRAMEWORK OF OUR CHRISTIAN STORY – THE DOCTRINE OF INCARNATION ON BOTH SIDES – THE DIVINE ENTRY AND TRHE DIVINE EXIT – HAS BECOME INOPERTATIVE! LET US MOVE BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL STORY OF JESUS! We are RIGHT HERE - RIGHT NOW; to re-tell the story of Jesus! I see a new portrait of Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth is my doorway to the divine. The call of Jesus is for me to BE everything that I can possibly BE! I see Jesus calling the Church into new possibilities of walking beyond the boundaries that always prohibit, block, or deny our access to a deeper humanity. Jesus invites us to put our tribal and xenophobic fears aside and to step across all human boundaries. A new humanity lives on the other side of our fears. The more prejudiced we are, the less human we are. Jesus challenges us to see humanity first, and then to watch all differences, such as male and female, gay and straight, white and black, become only categories into which humanity is divided. Our hope for Reformation and a new life lies in us being fully human. Jesus empowers us to be fully human beings. GOD is the Source of Life who is worshipped when we live fully. God is the Source of Love who is worshipped when we love wastefully. God is the Ground of Being who is worshipped when we have the courage TO BE ALL THAT WE CAN BE! IN GOD WE LIVE, MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING! ~ ~ ~Bishop John Shelby Spong (A New Christianity for A New Millennium)
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:07:28 +0000
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