Christians and orthodoxy

 “In such a time as this, we orthodox Christians feel the need for a refuge: a fortress” This echoes Psalm 91 and God will help us to stomp the Lion and the Adder. There was a wonderful Plow and Sword segment in a church newsletter that read that included the words in quotation marks above.  This pastor also wrote “The alcoholic who can’t hold down a job. The man who can’t hold together his marriage. The self-righteous saint who can’t see her folly. The hypocrite. The backstabber. The impostor. You. Me. This is us. And the church-of-the-righteous model won’t work, because the church is made up of us. As we used to confess in the old Lutheran liturgy, we baptized saints are still ‘poor sinners’ and will remain so till we die”  Indeed this is Lutheran ecclesiological language and Lutheran theology and anthropology and rings true of Lutheran orthodox tradition.   Another example of dyed in the wool Lutheran doctrine is found in the writer’s words “What if sacraments are neither quaint rituals nor memory-jogging signs but saving mysteries and rich food and the best of wines, without which we’d soon shrivel up and die?“ Largely though the writer seems to be lamenting the loses the church has sustained over the modern postmodern period. These days though people are looking for an unstained, genuine, and non-hypocritical religious body (good luck with that one) that represents the church redeemed.  Let’s face it they are looking at Buddhism because of its candor about the nature of human suffering without putting an emphasis on human nature but rather an emphasis on what is an accurate depiction of existence as consistent empty.  An-atman no self, sunyata emptiness, dukkha suffering by clinging (which indicates peace as non-clinging) and more.  Perhaps though they find sincerity in Islam where the focus is on purity and vindication for injustices. The mess in the Middle East has brought to popularity the Muslim faith and it is streaking across our cultural radar and across college campuses.  Orthodox and evangelical Christianity (rebranded or not) is disdainful to people in the world today.  So, as we say, back to the drawing board? Back when process theology handled theodicy and liberation theology dealt with injustices there seemed to be a fervor among some Christians toward the world and a reception of such fervor among those outside Christianity. Now there is a search for truth in a truthless world and people are finding outside the truth-proclaiming faith known as Christianity. How can the message of the Gospel take root in the hearts and souls of Christians?  It will not happen by the direction of the church whose efforts have been pitiful in this modern and pos-truth age. The church has fumbled the ball and if it looks, even with spiritual eyes, for the truth in the pristine luxurious offices of the church buildings, in the church BOX, then it is sure to fail.  The truth can only be demonstrated and found through supernatural means at this time. As the book of John shows many miracles and signs of Jesus, so too the world is waiting for the miraculous from Christianity.  Would the God of the universe please stand-up? You are not going to find that God in the usual church BOX. The comfy couches and office furniture will one day be found to be wood, hay, or stubble.  Perhaps we should reboot, redo, rebrand, reform, restructure, reborn, reset, but rather follow the call of the Holy Spirit as the slaves who trusted in Jesus did. One day it looks like we will become slaves (quite literally now though, slaves to the screen), and calling on the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, the ruach behind the making and creating of everything, the very breath of God that , may be all we are left to do, indeed, come Holy Spirit, Come. 

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