Friday, February 03, 2006
The New Prophet
Boris Johnson, a British MP, writing in the Telegraph of London said this:
But the real question is why has the church allowed this to happen? Where have we gone wrong so that our answers have been rejected only to have shamanism and pseudo-science fill the void we left behind.
Well, for one thing, we abandoned our fear of hellfire as well. Annihilationism is "the thing" theologically these days. As Christians, we are far too "enlightened" to succumb to such primitive concepts. And by abandoning it, we let someone else take that fundamental claim on the human soul.
In Christian thought apologetics has gotten a bit lazy. I am teaching a class on CS Lewis right now and I was amazed as I reviewed his primary apologetic works how few in the class had even considered the idea of apologetics. That's part of this, but I fear this runs much deeper.
Simply put Christ does not shine through us. We rely on staff to be Christ's amabassadors, we're just His citizens. The church looks like something done to us instead of something we are a part of. We are not transformed into creatures without fear, we have our fears manipulated to garner response, and those fears are not of a life without God, but of a life of bad self-image, or lonliness, or....
The answer here is to reclaim the gospel.
Related Tags: hellfire, London Telegraph, global warming, gospel, Christ, church
But the more one listens to sacerdotal figures such as Lovelock, and the more one studies public reactions to his prophecies, the clearer it is that we are not just dealing with science (though science is a large part of it); this is partly a religious phenomenon.I cannot help but think there is genuine wisdom in there. Our intellects have done away with hell, and still we have the primal urge to fear. I wonder if there is not an epistimological theistic arguement here - "the argument from fear."
Humanity has largely lost its fear of hellfire, and yet we still hunger for a structure, a point, an eschatology, a moral counterbalance to our growing prosperity. All that is brilliantly supplied by climate change. Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self-disgust, and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods.
And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful. One sect says we must build more windfarms, and these high priests will be displeased with what Lovelock has to say. Another priestly caste curses the Government's obsession with nuclear power - a programme Lovelock has had the courage to support.
Or is he completely wrong? To say that would be an offence not just against science, but against a growing world religion.
But the real question is why has the church allowed this to happen? Where have we gone wrong so that our answers have been rejected only to have shamanism and pseudo-science fill the void we left behind.
Well, for one thing, we abandoned our fear of hellfire as well. Annihilationism is "the thing" theologically these days. As Christians, we are far too "enlightened" to succumb to such primitive concepts. And by abandoning it, we let someone else take that fundamental claim on the human soul.
In Christian thought apologetics has gotten a bit lazy. I am teaching a class on CS Lewis right now and I was amazed as I reviewed his primary apologetic works how few in the class had even considered the idea of apologetics. That's part of this, but I fear this runs much deeper.
Simply put Christ does not shine through us. We rely on staff to be Christ's amabassadors, we're just His citizens. The church looks like something done to us instead of something we are a part of. We are not transformed into creatures without fear, we have our fears manipulated to garner response, and those fears are not of a life without God, but of a life of bad self-image, or lonliness, or....
The answer here is to reclaim the gospel.
Related Tags: hellfire, London Telegraph, global warming, gospel, Christ, church
