To Be An Exiled Christian

I'm overdue in writing this blog. I have hit my first real snag in this whole reading 52 books in 52 weeks. The snag was going on a little holiday. It wasn't for very many days but it was enough that I had to scramble to get my work obligations finished by mid-week and so did not have time to read. I told myself that I would read while the kids were away, skiing. But then this happened. I started sewing. I'm helping to finish the new banners that will be hung in the sanctuary beginning in Lent. I started the HBO series, "Damages" with Glen Close. It is SO GOOD! And so...reading was not a priority.

The book was rather serious so there was some thinking that needed to happen in between the chapters. This past week's book was Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile written by John Shelby Spong while he was the Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of Newark in New Jersey. I couldn't help but think of Greta Vosper--you might be familiar with the name of the United Church of Canada minister who is at odds with the wider church over her stated atheism. Vosper's book, With or Without God, is in my to-read pile. I am thinking that this book of  Bishop Spong's is a precursor to what Greta will be saying in her book.

The long and short of what Bishop Spong has to say is that once we examine the creeds of our faith and look at our scriptures in light of what we have learned through scientific study, it is very difficult for a rational and critical thinker to believe in a theistic God. In other words, it is not reasonable to believe in a God who intervenes in the world on our behalf. And, once we stop believing in that type of God, our God "must either grow or die". The book goes on to give a sense of how our understanding of God has evolved in the years since the first exile from Jerusalem to Babylon to this day, when many Christians struggle with believing in God but know that same God cannot save them from illness, disaster or tragedy.

Which got me to wondering about prayer. What do we do when we are in exile from the Christianity of our ancient and recent past? Bishop Spong speaks of a post-theistic God--no longer the God that appears in human form, specifically an old white man who sits up in the sky somewhere, waiting to be asked to intervene in the world. In our lifetimes, belief in this God was tested when the fullness of Hitler's insanity was made known. I've said it before and I'll say it again here--if God were to have ever intervened in the world, would it not have been at the gas chambers of the Holocaust?

So, if our God is now recognized as not being a person with the gift of reaching out and changing the course of our lives, why then would we pray? This question relentlessly nagged me as a I recently sat with a dear one in hospital, wondering out loud if they would be healed or if their situation would worsen. In the bedside conversation around how frustrating it was that God couldn't make an exception in this case, it occurred to me that the prayer we were all holding was not for God to reach *His* hand down to and alter what was happening. The prayer was the open up of ourselves to the possibility of hope and change.

We pray to hear--out loud or in the quiet of our hearts--our dreams and our sorrows. Naming the joys of our lives gives celebration to what is good in our lives and to give thanks for those wonderful things that are not in our control but yet are a benefit us. By naming aloud those things that scare or terrify us, light can be shed upon them and hopefully push back some the shadow they cause in our lives. In the naming, we bring light upon what is fearful. As "Game of Thrones" reminds us, the night is dark and full of terror. Prayer allows for a light to be lit in the dark. It might only be a flicker but, as any child can tell you, all it takes is for a little light in the night to make the monsters to go away.

Here is one my favourite quotations from this book:

Underneath the prevailing theistic images of God, we see a divine presence called spirit within us and most spectacularly in Jesus of Nazareth. We find our spirits touched by his spirit, our lives enhanced by his life, our being called to a new level by his being.