GENUINELY CHRISTIAN YET PRACTICALLY AGNOSTIC

GENUINELY CHRISTIAN YET PRACTICALLY AGNOSTIC (1)

Within the context of Christian faith in an omni-everything God, one should assume that the two terms 'christian' and 'agnostic' cannot describe the same person. Yet here I am advancing the opinion that some people of faith are practicing Christians yet practical agnostics. In daily life they are not acting in faith. My own guestimate is that this is true of a large percentage of authentic Christians.    

I am not suggesting that a person can be both Christian and agnostic. I am saying that a Christian who believes in the person of God and the deity of Christ and the redemption available through trust in the substitutionary death of Christ for sinners, may be living each day without meaningful contact with God, communication with God, or reliance upon God. This person sincerely believes what the Bible teaches, accepts mainstream theological tenets, yet when real life could benefit from the intervention of God, this person's faith does not translate into dependence upon God.

 This person may pray in public with other believers; may be sincere as the words are expressed. I am speaking about personal life, private practice, where the evidence of dependent faith or lack of it is on display to the God in whom the Christian professes faith. This person may teach scripture to others and earnestly intend each truth. At home the only prayer that is uttered is the grace before a meal. An inertia takes over when it comes to intercession for oneself, for spouse, or children, or grandchildren or neighbours. This is an agnostic uncertainty not in God himself but rather that God will act. It's practical agnosticism.

(I will pursue this subject in a few posts in the days ahead)

THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA AND ONE ATHEIST PASTOR

Colin Perkel/The Canadian Press

She is one of their own. They don't want her anymore. She is Rev. Gretta Vosper. The United Church ordained Rev. Vosper in 1993. We assume that she was approved because in good faith she agreed with the tenets of faith of the United Church which includes a faith in God, which is stated with astonishing theological liberality. Among the belief statements of the United Church of Canada, is the following statement entitled 'Multi-faith Relations', with its deliberate non-discrimination that submits Christianity as merely one of the many ways by which humans find their way to God.

"The United Church of Canada views the religious practice of all people of goodwill with respect and gratitude. We believe the Spirit of God is at work in many different faith communities.For Christians, Jesus is the way we know God. Our understanding is nonetheless limited by human imagination. God is greater still and works in our world by a mysterious Spirit that knows no distinction at the doorway of a Christian chapel; Buddhist, Hindu, or Sikh temple; Aboriginal sweat lodge, Muslim mosque, or Jewish synagogue.
We work together with other Christian churches whenever possible, and among people of other religions in Canada and throughout the world on matters of justice, peace, and human dignity.
Today, difference is everywhere around us and, we believe, a great cause for celebration.”

The United Church's doctrinal broad-mindedness afforded Ms. Vosper a vast expanse of theological possibilities that unpredictably brought her to the conclusion that she no longer believes in God and she went public with this in 2001. This incongruence has been quiet but unresolved for over a decade but now the United Church of Canada Executive is questioning her fitness to serve as a minister. Colin Perkel's article in the Globe and Mail quotes Ms. Vosper saying, “I don’t believe in...the god called God….Using the word gets in the way of sharing what I want to share…. Is the Bible really the word of God? Was Jesus a person?... It’s mythology. We build a faith tradition upon it which shifted to find belief more important than how we lived.”

This United Church statement acknowledges God as an entity who is accessible by way of Jesus, but not exclusively so, since God's Spirit works to make God known to Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, First Nations, Muslims and Jews. In our obsessively politically and religiously correct culture this is a commendably acceptable. But is it acceptable to God? Doesn't the concept of Jesus as eternal God, incarnated briefly for the purpose of dying a substitutionary, atoning death for sinners, define God to the exclusion of every other religious alternative? Well you can hear where I am coming from. Yet, Rev. Vosper insists that she should not be bound by a belief in God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even though that was basic to her ordination vows. Vosper believes that her movement to humanism should be embraced by her church as she explores new ways to express spirituality and values. An ecclesiastical court will decide this autumn 2015 whether she has gone too far.

DUBIOUS ABOUT MIRACLES

We are so comfortable with the mundane, that we do not anticipate anything supernatural. We are theoreticians, academics. We state a belief in the phenomenal God for whom nothing is impossible, but we expect nothing beyond the routine as the consequence of our prayers. We believe He can, but we don't believe he will. Ours is a virtual reality. It's a pretense to trust. We ask for so little. We petition using banalities, truisms and clichés because we lack confidence in God, to ask boldly. "We" means all whose faith identity is Christian, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox branches, whether denominational, undenominational, non denominational. We are a jaded bunch of professors, who make excuses for God. We are doctrinally dogmatic and practically agnostic.

Admittedly, I am overstating my case, painting this portrait with a broad brush. The subject is a Bride, whom I could paint precisely like DaVinci painted Mona Lisa, but my work here looks like an abnormally featured Picasso. We determine not to be identified with wing-nuts who charm snakes, and fake healings so we treat the miraculous as unscientific and irrational. Trying to insure that we are perceived as sane, we have placed ourselves in straight-jackets. Of course we should acknowledge our doubts or inability to understand everything about God, but surely we do not have to be cynical, contemptuous, disparaging, and suspicious of a God who can do very much more than all that we ask or even imagine.

CHANGING THE GOSPEL MODEL TO REACH NEWER GENERATIONS

People who are stanch advocates of the veracity of the Christian Gospel will find it difficult to entertain the notion that a modified gospel may be necessary to reach different generations. After all, the celebrated good news is only ‘good’ because it remedies something so horribly ‘bad.’ Allow me to describe first the conventional understanding of the Gospel, and then suggest a conversation point.

Here is an abbreviated gospel summary. God is holy and created the first human creatures with the capacity to obey or defy God’s command. Although the consequence of disobedience was unambiguous, the insubordination of early humans infected all humanity subjecting it to God’s wrath and the punishment of death and hell after physical death. The good news comes because God’s mercy provided His divine Son Jesus Christ as a stand-in to experience God’s punishment and all who with simple trust in Christ as God’s Son and personal Saviour are exempted from this punishment because they are adjudicated as righteous now.

That’s the model with which the Christian Church has developed. What if the newest generations, like the iGens do not identify with the presenting issues that compel people to respond to God’s grace? What if iGens do not possess a sense of morality, which is a robust sense of right and wrong? That is the premise of Alan Mann’s book, Atonement for a Sinless Society. If you are going to stake you eternal hope of Jesus based on a sense that without him we are wrong and sinful and condemned, Mann argues that the iGen doesn’t feel that need. He believes that iGens do not feel guilt for sin as much as they feel ashamed when they don’t achieve something they should accomplish.

So the notion then develops that a different model of the gospel and of evangelism is required to reach these generations. Instead of heaping on the guilt, inundate them with the life of Jesus. Teach the life of Jesus, live out the life of Jesus and ultimately make him real. This is Jesus as seen in the lives of people genuinely filled with compassion rather than Jesus as revealed by institutional religion. They will like Jesus but perhaps not the church. The church may be too political, judgmental, organized, fundamentalist and chauvinistic whereas Jesus is obvious and real in the lives of believers who listen, help, serve, and heal.

Alan Mann, Atonement for a Sinless Society
Dan Kimball, They Like Jesus But Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations. Kimball on Youtube
Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet
Images of Jesus personality profile designed by North England Institute for Christian Education

Read Scot McKnight’s article The Gospel for iGens in the summer issue of Leadership Journal at LeadershipJournal.net

What are the real lessons here? I am pretty sure I don't have to answer this for you. I have to pull up my socks.

QUIT ARGUING & START LIVING

Although I have written the past few posts with a view to distinguishing the plausibility of faith and the implausibility of atheism, I have another thought today.

I think that Christians in North America assume that all non-believers are convinced atheists or at least agnostics, so the assumed approach to them is refutation and defense and argumentation. In fact, we live in such an irreligious time that the majority of people of no faith, have simply never considered faith claims. They have little or no experience with the Bible, with Christians, or with church. They pay no attention to these. They simply live life. They may not require arguments to belief but rather winsome examples of life being lived by people who are thriving as they make sense of life by trusting God and finding his involvement at so many levels.

THE ATHEIST’S DILEMMA

Not wanting to believe in God, the atheist must face the interpretation of honest science, which acknowledges that the universe did have a beginning. If the universe had a beginning, it cannot be eternal. That the universe had a beginning, compels the presumption of cause. That cause cannot be nothing, but must be something and the only conceivable eternal something is God. The human creature resembles its cause, and that cause certainly cannot be an amoral universe. Rather, only divine causation can account for created beings who have personality and are occupied with purpose, meaning, and moral values. It is unthinkable that random ‘nothing’ produces finely-tuned everything. It’s improbably that non-life produces life. It’s unimaginable that unconsciousness produces reason. Those are greater leaps of faith than is required to believe in God. Belief in God is affirmative not speculative.

THE POSTMODERN MIND AND THE CHRISTIAN

A large percentage of people today have a naturalistic worldview and a relativistic morality. For them truth is perceptual and subjective rather than objective and absolute. Experience and observation determine whether something is true or false, and that renders a variable reality, which differs from person to person and culture to culture.

SPECTRUM OF BELIEF

Yes, No, Maybe are words reflective of viewpoints on the spectrum of belief and unbelief. If the spectrum is pictured as a linear indicator, then 'Yes' is dogmatic faith at one end, with 'Maybe' representative of uncertainty or doubt in the middle and at the extreme other end stands 'No' which conveys firm nonbelief.

The range is from Absolute Belief to Absolute Non Belief with Lack of Belief somewhere in between the two poles.