my body is tired from the semester and all the work that went into it. It has decided that being sick is one of the best ways to spend my break. So instead of working on 20 waking hours like i usually do and would like to continue doing, i'm running at about 14 or 16 waking hours. ah, whatever. Its not like my reading another book really is somehow cosmically significant.
So here's a deep concern of mine: Barnes & Noble's religion section. Borders too, for that matter. Now, B&N has an awful religion (excuse me--Christianity) section. It's pretty pathetic. Borders' religion section is much better. But what concerns me is that every time I'm at one of these megabookstores, I find myself face to face with more and more books on the gnostic gospels and the end of Christianity and things like that. Yesterday, I saw one on "The Other Christianities" or something like that. Now, I'm no fundy Bible scholar. It doesn't bother me that people know about certain gospels being kept out of the canon and certain heresies such as Arianism and Marcion's heresy. The gospel of Judas doesn't get a rise out of me. I understand that there were certain historical facts about how the canon came to be that could get some to say that history, even Christian history, is written by the winners. Okay. I can live with that. Communities of people are trying to work out all this Trinity/Son of God business etc., etc. and some get cut out. I know that there were some fairly unChristian things that happened in the midst of all this, too. Its part of any group of people developing.
What worries me is that somehow, it seems to me like the world is eating all this stuff up. It seems like the everyone is loving it. And this on top of a new spate of atheist writings that are working to dismantle God. It makes me feel weird and sad. Weird because I'm beginning to feel as if somehow being a Christian--and especially a pastor--is going to put me in the minority in the world, and very much so. I mean, the way that practicing Jews or Ba'hais are in the minority. There is such a movement out there against Christianity that I wonder if we are going to see a dwindling in my faith as time goes on. Will there even be people left at the end of my life? I mean, I know there will be Christians, but this Hauerwasian "outpost" mentality may become our mentality out of necessity, not just because it really is true. I suppose that Christians losing popular ground is a good thing because it reminds us that to be a follower of Jesus is not some sort of cultural heritage. It really is, as Muslims say, an inner jihad, a journey of self and community to follow Christ in word, thought, and deed. But at the same time, it makes me sad to see that the faith that has nurtured me and brought me life is losing ground and maybe less people will hear about it.
Then again, no serious presidential candidate is claiming to be anything but Christian. Maybe we haven't really moved so far away from being dominated by Christianity. Maybe we've still got quite a ways to go before the outpost mentality really sets in.
2 comments:
this may be a naive and ignorant comment, but i think that the version of the gospel that has the biggest impression on the world is the one that we live out each day. so there's still hope for the world as long as the gospel according to jeff and, even more so, the gospel according to the church is accurate.
i know. i guess i just get mixed up whenever i go home. i start re-questioning everything because the faith of me and my family are on VERY different pages. it's not a naive comment. And to be honest, the true gospel is something that will never die or be forgotten. And when the Gospel is turned into a commodity for the sake of spreading it far and wide, the gospel is lost. you're absolutely right. "the one that we live out each day."
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