Who the hell needs Jesus?

[Pixabay]

No really, that wasn't just an eye-catcher title to get you to scan further down. It's a genuine question.

Having run across something online earlier, I spontaneously thought of Christian evangelism and how the approach a Christian uses in sharing their "good news" sums up what they think of God and their faith.

That took half a second, so then in the other half the idea popped into my head of comparing approaches to evangelism in a society that is filled with so many people who are tired of the implications of over-used methods for proselytizing and the responses those methods can elicit. A few seconds into this line of thinking I came up with an idea that I've never heard expressed before.

Now maybe this idea was common in the first decades of the Christian faith, or maybe some theologian wrote such an idea down in a book I haven't read, so I can't claim it is one hundred percent original. I'll work out how I got to the idea and what it could mean for the image of Christianity below, but here it is:

Not everyone is called to be a Christian and that doesn't mean that they are going to hell or that they will face some kind of annihilation after their physical death.

Before I write anything else, understand that I am not writing this out of concern over whether anyone is or isn't a Christian or whether anyone becomes one. I am not promoting Christianity or validating any of its claims by discussing its basic concepts and ideas. Also, the reason I tossed in the "no hell/annihilation" part is because Christians are usually all about what happens after physical death even if they don't emphasize it. If I just said "not all are called to be Christians" people might think I had simply re-discovered generic predestination theology.

So if that is enough for you to chew on, go ahead. But if you are considering a response such as a share or comment, read a little further for additional context and clarification.

Where is God? Christians tired of being "misrepresented" need to work harder to show what they believe

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Where you locate God affects how you relate to social justice. One location allows you to keep your religion separate from social change and political discourse, the other insists these cannot be viewed separately.

If you have or choose to read previous essays and speculations published here, you will come to recognize that my views on religion and spirituality are nuanced and fluid. For example, I find the declaring belief or lack of belief in God to be an impediment rather than a useful clarification (at least for myself). And while I rarely use the word much in my personal life, I often use "God" when writing about religion and spirituality as a shorthand for the deeper, grander mysteries of life and existence that transcend a human capacity for (full) comprehension or control.

I eschew adjectives such as "personal" and "impersonal" when it comes to discussions of divinity, with the use of the word "God" revealing an orientation toward understanding and experiencing existence. Neither strictly as an ideal nor as a specific object, but a larger unity underlying and pervading all we are, all we know, all we can be. Again, at least when I'm writing about this stuff or pushed to ask what kind of God might make sense to me. There isn't much need to worry about such depictions or definitions of God for my daily living. In practical terms I tend to leave "God" unfettered by words and overly specific expectations.

So if you're trying to figure out which category my views belong in when figuring out what angle I'm coming from in relation to the topic at hand, it's one of those really open approaches that drives some people with more fixed notions of what God must (not) or can(not) be to distraction. Yet I bring this up for more than honest disclosure about my own take on the idea of something like the concept of God. Because how one thinks about God shapes how one thinks about the value and purpose of formal religion in state-level societies as well as the larger global community.

If I had some need to worry about it, I suppose it would make sense that "God" (used here to represent the central concern or focus of religious notions of spiritual depth and personal transcendence) would be omnipresent yet not limited to any particular place or time. One of those weird sounding ideas theologians and philosophers talk about, this is sometimes rendered as being immanent (it's here with us) and transcendent (it's far beyond us) at the same time. There are ways of discussing how this works, including a kind of split-level monism in which immanence and transcendence reflect differences in perception and thus represent different modes of awareness, but we aren't getting into anything so heavy here. Not today.

But why does it matter where God is "located"? And what does it have to do with how those who identify as Christian behave and how they are perceived?

Can liberal Christianity be saved?

English: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori examining a historic crozier from the first bishop of the Diocese of Minnesota, being held by James Jelinek (in red mitre and vestments, facing her) as he prepares to pass it to his successor, the ninth bishop of Minnesota in the Episcopal Church (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently saw this question posed while referencing this recent article in the New York Times.While the article discusses more than one denomination found in the United States, the emphasis is on the Episcopal Church, which recently approved transgender recognition in their non-discrimination policies and adopted a rite to bless same-sex relationships. 

Episcopalians, then, are taken in the Times piece as representative of liberal Christianity in general, which has seen its population aging with fewer and fewer young people drawn to replace them.

To return to the general question of whether or not liberal Christianity can be saved (with questions of whether or not it should or will continue aside), if liberal Christians do want to see their parishes, orders, denominations and ministries continue they need to more clearly and forcefully articulate their bottom line. 

What bottom line? 

I'll give it a go based on my discussions and readings involving liberal Christians. For example, keeping in line with some generalized expressions of liberal Christian views they would do well to clearly articulate:

• that there is an unseen but felt presence that is both immanent and transcendent and which gives rise to everything which can be known or experienced, a presence called God; 
• that this presence has been described (sometimes wonderfully and sometimes poorly) in the common language and style of the authors of the texts collectively known as the Bible, frequently borrowing "pagan" imagery and fables and reworking them to express this ineffable presence in terms familiar to their audiences;
• that this same process of revelation and interpretation went on in the early Church and needs to go on today;
• that reading such texts operates at different levels, the emotional "Oh!" of the literal interpretation, the intellectual "Aha!" of the symbolic interpretation, the metaphysical "Whoa!" of holding both views simultaneously, and the mystical silence of transcending all interpretations;