From Australia:
Bryan Patterson
February 04, 2007 12:00am
Article from: Sunday Herald Sun
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BRYAN Patterson writes: ONE of the great modern delusions is there's no such thing as spiritual reality. It is all subjective.
The theory is that we can all make up our minds about God, the universe and the whole damn thing. And that will be "our truth", as valid as anyone else's.
So in an age where subjective emotion overrides fact and reason, gullibility stalks the planet.
The best-educated generation of all time is fascinated by horoscopes, magic spells, psychics, spirit guides, feng shui, New Age quacks, channelling, healing crystals and religious fundamentalists.
We are buried up to our necks in charlatans, pseudoscientists, scam artists and the self-deluded.
New Age is really just an old fraud, lining the pockets of those clever enough to market pseudo spirituality while leaving the spiritually hungry as unsated as ever.
And some of the crude Right-wing Christian groups, especially in the US, seem fuelled by emotional hysteria and cultural paranoia.
Perhaps what we need are more nonsense debunkers.
The problem is that many of the current sceptics aim their guns at all religious thinking. Recent books, such as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, attack religion in all its forms.
So the baby Jesus gets thrown out with the dirty dishwater.
In the line of fire with the charlatans are idealists who believe there is an ultimate truth and are open to experiences beyond their five senses.
There are Christians, for example, who believe science is not necessarily in conflict with religious belief, while at the same time accepting that mystery is a core reality of our lives.
And there are Christians who do not divide the world into good and bad.
There are those who see faith as a powerful motivation to seek justice and peace. And to love both neighbours and enemies.
When the communists took power in Russia in 1917, Lenin did not ban the church. But he cleverly made it useless by forbidding it to perform good works such as feeding the poor and caring for the orphans and the sick.
The new kinds of Christians, in Russia and elsewhere, are now gaining adherents who want to follow the gospel of Jesus, rather than dry theology.
The perception that religion -- Christianity in particular -- is dead ignores the major demographic trends in Africa and Latin America where Christianity is booming.
Martin Luther King spoke of the power of the early church.
"It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society."
Philosopher Francis Schaeffer described the Christian as a real radical "for he stands against the monolithic, modern concept of truth as relative".
"If it is true that evil is evil, that God hates it to the point of the cross and that there is a moral law fixed in what God is in Himself, then Christians should be the first into the field against what is wrong."
In his book The Future of Jesus, Dr Peter Jensen, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, wondered whether a new understanding of Christianity would take hold in Australia.
"Will Jesus survive? What is his future?" he asked. "Well I can see his kingdom making great progress in some parts of the world. But here? Not very well, in a culture which values individualism so highly. Even the revival of spirituality is shaped by individualism. Not in a culture of powerful materialism.
"But there are signs of change, signs of dissatisfaction. Signs that we want to restore the primacy of love and words which mean what they say.
"Then perhaps we will begin to value once more free associations of free men and women, who meet to encourage faith, hope and love, meaning, purpose and belonging; who join together to make this a better world because that is what God wants and has given us a pattern of what a better world may be like."
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