Bishop Bill Atwood, General Secretary, Ekklesia
GlobalView
1. Everything is fine.
Hard as it is to believe, there are still people who are clinging to this fantasy. It is utterly false, but surprisingly widely held. It’s sort of like people on the Titanic complimenting the band.
2. Closely linked with #1 is myth #2: It is the responsibility of The Episcopal Church to fix things in the US. One of the “moderate” primates said this to me recently. I asked him, “Given that the General Convention, the House of Bishops, the Presiding Bishop, and the House of Bishops have all indicated that they have no intention of changing course, why on earth would you hold out hope that the Episcopal Church is really going to change course and come in line with Biblical faith?” He replied, “Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
Now entering “Unthinkable.”
3. Tradition can be appealed to at will and ignored at will, depending on expedience.
E. Stanley Jones wrote a book called “Unshakable Kingdom, Unchangeable Person.” He predicted the fall of Communism in the 1960’s pointing out that anything that is not born of the Spirit of God cannot last. It is even worse than that. A Pentecostal preacher once told me, “I am past the point where I want to do anything in the flesh. I just don’t have the energy to maintain those things in my own strength.” The Canadian House of Bishops (and Primate) are appealing to the tradition of the church in complaining about refuge being given to conservative Christians by the Southern Cone. That is sort of like the old story of the boy who killed his parents asking the judge for leniency because he was an orphan.
4. This crisis is easy to fix.
Well, it’s not easy to fix. It is simple to fix, but it’s costly. Part of our interior life needs to be preparing to pay the price necessary to faithfully represent the Lord and the Gospel. We have passed the time when it is chic to see our vocational path as being a trial. In Viet Nam, the pastors say, “In the West, you have three years of development you call seminary. In Vietnam, we have prison. Most pastors expect to spend three to five years in prison. Anytime you hear someone say, “All that needs to happen is…” you can be pretty sure that it isn’t all that needs to happen. We are embroiled in a cultural war and a huge postmodern paradigm shift away from Biblical values. I believe that the season has passed when being identified as a Christian opens doors. It will come again, but for now, it is probably going to harder and more costly to be a faithful Christian.
5. Things never change.
A recent poll showed that only 16% of young people in the US under 18 view Christianity as a positive force in the world. Never mind that 90% of the universities and most of the hospitals and social service agencies were started by evangelical Christians. Hint: It wasn’t the Baptists that killed all those people in Egypt and Iraq.
6. The communion is almost equally divided concerning issues of Biblical authority and sexuality. Overwhelmingly, the Communion is conservative, evangelical, and charismatic. Some parts are also Anglo- catholic, but even those tend to be evangelical/charismatic. The truth is that The Episcopal Church has gone on a financial charm offensive to recruit support with an open check book. Some of the provinces that support the TEC agenda have ample financial reason to do so. Only here, we’re not talking chicken dinners, but millions of dollars. Keep in mind that some of the “provinces” that support the TEC liberal agenda are tiny and anemic. I know of a cathedral youth group that has more people than one of the liberal provinces.
7. There is gloom and doom in our future.
That’s only true for those who face the future without a relationship with Jesus. In Him, all things are possible.
___
No comments:
Post a Comment