 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Previous
article
| Next
article
Today I listened to two university colleagues having a vigorous discussion about ecotheology. They were worried that it represented limp thinking, and lamented the general lack of theological understanding abroad in the church. Both are considerable scholars, well trained in the classic traditions of the church.
On the way back to the office, the topic of conversation changed to the shortcomings of a fellow lecturer. In a few deft and cutting sentences, they committed the verbal equivalent of grievous bodily harm. I was stunned by the casual violence of it. As they went into their rooms wearing satisfied smiles, I marvelled anew at the disjunction between conviction and deed that mars the face of Christianity.
I'm not trying to claim the moral high ground: I recognised all too clearly in their interchange my own willingness to sacrifice victims on the altar of smug intellect. But it caused me to wonder at the sins against love which pervade the Christian community. Self-righteousness seems to be an endemic condition among those who claim to follow Jesus.
It may be inevitable that our strengths blind us to our weaknesses. Some sections of the church lay claim to superior theological insights, some to deeper encounters with the Spirit, some to richer experiences of the sacraments. I suspect that none of these quite compensates for a lack of love, which (I am reliably informed) covers a multitude of sins.
I meet very few people who are hungry for pristine theology or who crave an orthodox rite. And experiences can be had for the going price. But love, genuine love — that is nectar for the soul, a gift that we all desire. The truly surprising fact is that it is no more common in the church than outside it— and it may well be less so.
Some, of course, will argue that this is only to be expected, that membership of the church does not magically excise the darker strands of human character. While I am tempted to concede this, I am not so sure that we can escape the deeper intuition of our public: that those who proclaim love should in some measure demonstrate it.
Christian love may well constitute much more than human decency, but it must at least include it. It distresses me greatly that qualities such as respect, dignity, acceptance, humility and friendship are as rare in the Church as someone with a box of matches to light your cigarette. If all of our worship and preaching and home groups cannot produce people who love, should we not call the whole enterprise a failure?
We are constrained by our passion for the truth. We seem reluctant to accept people whose lifestyles are different from ours for fear that this might be regarded as approval. We do not listen properly to the stories of those we meet, because we are waiting for the opportunity to set them straight. We attack our fellow believers viciously, out of a need to preserve the pure faith in all its doctrinal splendour.
Is this the sort of truth that Jesus had in mind when he promised that it would set us free? Or is the postmodern insight apt, that this kind of `truth claim' is a covert ruse to establish control over people? Like many others, I am not yet ready to give up on truth; but neither am I convinced that it is superior to, or makes much of a substitute for, love. I prefer the warm embrace of a sinner to the reserved handshake of a puritan.
I know I should not be setting love against truth as if they were enemies. But I fear that this is precisely what we as the church have done. It interests me that many Christians, when reading the story of the woman taken in adultery, are quick to emphasise Jesus' parting words to her, as if they restore his temporary loss of moral authority. Surely, it is the Pharisees who want to subsume love under truth, and Jesus who refuses to?
In the contest between law and love, Jesus becomes the sacrificial lamb. Have we now made of the Gospel a new law, to crucify him afresh? Scott Peck, the Christian psychoanalyst, suggests that genuine love only surfaces after attempts to heal or to convert have been relinquished. What can this possibly mean for evangelicals?
Some of my questioning is driven by my own distress at my failure to make much progress in loving over 25 years of faith. But some of it relates to the changed world that the Church in the West faces. Christendom has gone and will not return. We are stranded — a sect-like minority in an uninterested society — and all the supporting beliefs that made our claims plausible have been swept away.
On the threshold of the third millennium, we are facing the same problem as the early Church: how to be heard from the margins. One of the achievements of our spiritual forebears was to embody love. The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate complained that the reason people were becoming Christians was that, while the Jews took care of their own and the pagans took care of nobody, the Christians took care of everyone. Some even nursed plague victims, in disregard of their own safety.
Love like that is very disarming. It speaks more loudly than many volumes of theology. The Church could do worse than actively to learn how to love again. If ever there is a type of fundamentalism that has the power to achieve more than just self-satisfaction, it is the return to love. Perhaps this is all that God has ever really required of us.
My academic colleagues were quite correct, of course. Eco-theology is very woolly, and could do with having its trousers straightened, if not a damned good scriptural spanking. All this concern with Brazilian rainforests. Small wonder its promoters can't see the wood for the trees: they all have sawdust in their eyes …
Previous
article
| Next
article
|
|
|
|
|
Last modified: 25th November 2005