| Clergy on the Spot XLIV – May 2008 |
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I know it must be close to some important Christian festival because I have in front of me this week’s edition (Mar 31- Apr 7, 2008) of Macleans magazine with an artist’s impression of Jesus on the cover (white, blue eyed, neatly trimmed pointed beard with equally neatly trimmed moustache, long wavy dark hair). The cover headline reads ‘Jesus has an identity crisis’ The subtitle reads ‘Scholars are casting new doubt on the divinity of Christ – even wondering if the church would be better off without him’ Enclosed in brackets as an attempt, I presume, at some rather puerile humour, is a greeting: ‘Happy Easter’. Each year at this time, with monotonous regularity Macleans (often accompanied by Time) places before its reading public what is purportedly news but is in fact a grab bag of real facts, suppositions and innuendoes gathered from various sources, plus quotes from carefully selected sources all woven together by a staff writer. The result is intentionally sensationalist in nature designed to provoke controversy, thereby boosting circulation, rather than education. What indeed can I, or any other minister do to counter this or similar information, which is the question at issue? As it suggests, theological information (both legitimate and pseudo) of all kinds is today readily and directly available from a variety of sources.
First and most importantly there must be the realisation that no person can tell another what it is that person ‘must’ believe. Belief is personal. Second and directly related to this is the fact that there must be a realisation that no person can ever coerce another into genuine belief.
‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. This, of course, is the foundational dogma of the Christian church by which is meant that un-belief (not no-belief, which is not the same thing at all) in this primary dogma excludes us from the Christian church. This, foundational dogma, I believe, and as a priest in the Church of God, through sermons, discussions and studies, attempt to teach and to convince others not only to accept but also to believe. Naive though it may sound, what is being discussed here is as simple as that and at the same time is as incredibly difficult as that. This foundational dogma, of course, is but the beginning. All else in the Christian faith follows from it but is not the subject at hand.
What the question posed seems to indicate is that in the church today, we are being faced with something new. This is not true. It is true that both source and volume are increasing exponentially but it is not true to suggest that the Christian Faith has not faced scepticism and outright attack prior to the present age. It has faced them since the disciples were first commissioned with the gift of the Holy Spirit, an event which according to St. John took place on the day of resurrection: ‘When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (Jn 20: 19a, 21 -22 N.R.S.V.). According to Luke, however, the event did not take place until fifty days after the resurrection, ‘When the day of Pentecost had come Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit“ (Acts 2:la, 3 – 4a N.R.S.V.)
This is but a classic example of the difficulties we get ourselves into and which sceptics and antagonist love to jump on as we try to make sense out of widely different accounts of a particular occurrence. They can’t both be true, say our antagonists, therefore probably neither is true. They can’t both be true, say our confused parishioners, which one is? So how do we respond?
At Jesus’ trial, Pilate asked what is arguably the second most important question found in all of Holy Writ. “What is truth?” It is notable that Jesus did not respond to this question. Perhaps he saw it as rhetorical which of course it is. Pilate was asking not Jesus but himself and Jesus responded by not responding, which is to say, that through his silence Jesus was saying to Pilate, you have to decide the answer to that question for yourself, because the truth that was under discussion was not the physical truth of ‘this is hard, that is soft,’ ‘this is green, that is black’ kind of truth but rather cosmic truth, spiritual truth, the truth that Jesus told us will set us free.
The reality is that you and I individually must also discover this ‘truth’ for ourselves. So it would appear that we are back where we started. How do we do this?
First and foremost we do so with an open mind. Belief is not an event. Belief is a journey of discovery. Another way of saying this is that Christian faith is a lifelong journey. Certainly belief begins with an event, what those in education call an ‘Ah-ha moment’ when suddenly something clicks and things become clear, but that is not an end, that is but the beginning. From that moment on, belief is always under scrutiny; adding to it our certainties, subtracting our rejections, investigating our doubts. Even in our fledgling faith, if we believe or even think we believe in God’s grace then we must also accept that through God’s grace we will be led ever deeper into our faith and our beliefs. To close our minds, to say to ourselves now I know all there is I need to know is to put ourselves in cosmic danger because articles such as the one quoted at the beginning, plus books, e-mails, blogs, radio and television interviews etc,. etc., will continuously bombard us, continuously chip away until they find even one chink in our armour and the whole edifice collapses.
Of course, we can try to ignore each and every attack and hope it will go away but such attacks haven’t gone away in the two thousand year history of Christianity and there is no reason to suppose that they will now. Ignorance may be bliss but it is also dangerous. If challenged on any particular point and we have absolutely no idea what our challenger is talking about then our chance of a meaningful rebuttal is between zero and nil. To expect any one person to be ‘up’ on all the discoveries, all the controversies, all the scholarship both pro and con that is available is unrealistic. However, the tools that opponents use are the same tools that you and I can use also. You’ve never heard of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures mentioned in the Macleans article? Don’t worry, neither have many others, but if you ‘Google’ it, among the hundreds of references you will find at least one summary. If at all possible don’t depend on a single source (this applies to both pro and con arguments). If you are so inclined you can buy the book The Nag Hammadi Scriptures edited by Marvin Meyer. (Harper Collins/Harper SanFransisco) and what is true of the availability of this ‘new evidence’ is true of each and every book and article that is published. Christian protagonists, indeed Faith protagonists, make time, find time, to seek for evidence supporting their thesis. When faced with direct or indirect challenges or sincere questions from people who are simply seeking some sort of answers, you and I similarly need to find, to make time, to do likewise.
Through our baptismal covenant, those of us, ordained or lay persons who confess their faith in the Christian church, have each been sent. Few of us are theologians, and as suggested by the editor in the question posed for this article, few of us are competent enough to understand all of the nuances, all the intricacies of truly scholarly writing. The good news is that we are not asked to. We are simply asked to be faithful; to do our best. Do our best not to drive, not to insist, not push fellow seekers into ‘our’ truth, ‘our’ belief. If this is our attitude, our mode of operation then we are doomed to failure. Your job and my job is to lead those who seek, to the threshold of faith. There to stand with them in Christian love and support as each one of them, just as did you, as did I, face what in my mind is the most important question in all of Holy writ, with which ironically the Maclean’s article begins but the question that ends this one. Jesus said to them, “but who do you say that I am”?
No one can answer that question for another. Each one of us faces it individually. Each one of us answers for ourselves, not once but perhaps many many times as we are faced with controversies and outright attack. To the best of our efforts, having sought all the evidence that is available and understandable to us on the new issue before us, and based on what we knew or thought we knew and understood prior to this point, we find ourselves once more faced with that question, “Who do you say that I am?” There is no magic formula, there is no magic bullet. Individually, there is just us, there is God and there is the question.