Edition: 6/19/2000
by SCRVPVLVS, revised 6/19/2000
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.
Isa. 1:18
According to his book, Bishop Spong wrote Why Christianity Must Change
or Die out of fear. He is afraid God is dying or dead. His studies
have forced him to doubt the Church's traditional statements of faith. Now
he tries to shield himself against the resulting shock of his own mortality
and meaninglessness and against an overwhelming sense of the loss of
God
. Unable to dismiss God, he struggles to preserve the Jesus
experience
by radical
deconstruction of
scripture. (He has become in the process a controversial figure in contemporary
religious debate and a self-described spiritual exile
).
According to his book, Bishop Spong wrote Why Christianity Must Change
or Die out of hope. He is hopeful of a revival of worship. Emulating
Jesus, he gives to others his experience of God, his knowledge of scripture,
and his personal, often painful, journey of faith, and calls others to their
own capacity to do the same. He teaches to live deeply and authentically,
to love wastefully, to give ones' self to others, and to seek the truth
come whence it may, cost what it will
, because acting with ignorance
leads to the diminishment of others. (Like Jesus, this has gotten him labeled
a heretic by religious authorities and threatened with death by zealots).
This book exposes two great errors. First, humanity has described God. Second, orthodox Christianity has made preservation of the ecclesiastical order more important than clarification of the truth of God. These errors are responsible for harm that ranges from feelings of despair to enslavement and murder of entire nations of people.
There is a traditional majority view which describes God as an individual (or individuals), having familiar human qualities writ large. But Spong holds the equally traditional minority view that any concrete description of God is inadequate. It substitutes myth for truth.
More to come in a future issue.
Copyright © 2000 SCRVPVLVS. All rights reserved.