Friday, 25 April 2008

• Making Peace with the Church

  Any serious believer has to come to a point in his/her life of making peace with the church.  Many young believers are "at war" with the church.  Of course this is all understandable.  Perhaps nobody has described this phenomenon better than Richard John Neuhaus, the Lutheran turned Roman Catholic who edits a culture and religion journal called "First Things" (no pictures, small type, you gotta be a real intellectual to read it - I don't).

  Here are some excerpts from his old book "Freedom for Ministry", written largely for pastors but applicable for any serious believer struggling with the church. 

  The tension between the theological or spiritual defiinition of Church and the sociological fact of Church is acutely embarrassing....In talking about Church and ministry we should show a healthy respect for the way things are, holding our visions of the way things ought to be in tightest tension with existing reality.  Only in this way can the existing Church be prodded, urged, seduced, and loved into approximating a bit more closely the Church that ought to be....Although most of us have, no doubt, eminently sound plans for re-forming the churches in greater conformity with his intention, we are responsible for these mutilated, separated, pedestrian churches that comprise his Church.  That is, we are responsible for the millions of people in these churches who are the object of his reckless and redeeming love.

  To be sure, we all deplore the superficiality, the cheap grace, the caricature of Christian discipleship that mark some of the most successful peddling of the gospel in our time.  The hustling that dominates "the electronic church" of religious broadcasting, the mile-long cathedrals of glass made possible by the avoidance of controversy, the multimillion dollar commerce in books that reinforce every prejudice and stereotype - all this is repugnant on many scores.  And yet, and yet: through all this, millions of people are receiving a more adequate and truthful view of the world than they might otherwise have...No matter how bastardized we may think the form of the gospel is, they are at least brought within the circle of Christian discourse where the understanding of the gospel can be deepened and fulfilled in Christian discipleship.

  Thinking about the Church today is plagued by a mood of anti-institutionalism that pervades our culture.  We too facilely posit form against reality, the institutional against the authentic.  Institution is simply another word for social endurance.  Even the most spontaneous and prophetic of movements cannot last unless they find institutional form...I have never understood what people mean when they talk about "the institutional Church".  There is no other church of historical or social significance....The "real" Church of Jesus Christ is not to be posited against, is not an alternative to, this Church of empirical experience.  The true Church is the Church truly seen.

  Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Whom you would change you must first love"....Too often movements for change fail not for lack of analysis, nor for lack of commitment, but for lack of love.

  Enough for now, but I think Neuhaus is wise in what he says here.  As I said before, the church is what it is.  We can dream and work for what we think it should be, but the reality is messy.  We can't change it without touching it.  We can't affect it by avoiding it.  Most of us would rather talk about the mess than get our hands dirty.  More to come. 

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