Monday, April 24, 2006
Catholic Bigotry?!
Tim Challies put up a post last Friday, that Mike Spencer thought needed explaining, without comment and Andy Jackson found bizarre. Here is Challies' thesis
Since we are into analogies here, I find this kind of thinking analogous to that which produces anti-Semiticism because after all, "Jews are Christ killers." Such thinking reveals a complete misunderstanding of the nature of grace and of redemption. It also reveals a hubris concerning the holders view of his own correctness that completely defies the necessary humility when confronting God Almighty.
Do I think Roman Catholic doctrine and mythology correct? Of course not. Do I think the RCC was and is in some areas still extremely corrupt - Indeed! But guess what, I can find corruption in every church, I promise you. I can also find bad doctrine in every church. In the end I do my best to understand, but only God can judge.
See there is a difference between doctrine and corruption. We are not saved by doctrine, nor is it evidence of salvation - it is simply our attempt to undertsand that which we hold most dear. We cannot make large pronouncements or fatal judgements based on doctrine.
Corruption is a different story, in the end, if it cannot be redeemed, or refuses to be redeemed, corruption must be expelled. But that said, our goal, our desire, is for redemption and the grace we have received demands that we work towards that redemption with every fiber of our being.
The implications in what Tim has written are that Roman Catholicism is somehow outside the definition of Christianity. I do not understand how this can be true. For 1500 years it was the holder of the faith - absent it we would have had nothing to reform from and itself has reformed tremendously.
I realize this is a it of a heretical view, but I for one think God even has some special place in His judgement for faithful Jews, they were His chosen people and they are our heritage, but in the end those details are for God.
The likely objections to what I write here are that Tim's post was simply about historical accuracy. I disagree because for one thing Tim never tries to untie the historical and doctrinal knot and secondly somewhere there is a line between historical accuracy and faith. Our adherence to God cannot be subject to the latest archeological findings, after all even hisorical and archeological evidence is subject to interpretation - it often does not rise to the level of the purely factual.
In the end, Tim's post displays primarily a lack of grace. That's a sin we are all guilty of from time-to-time. But when our gracelessness rises to the level of implied bigotry I feel that I must address it directly.
Besides, in the end it's just movies for crying out loud!
Related Tags: The Da Vinci Code, The Passion Of The Christ, Roman Catholicism, bigotry, doctrine, grace
It was only two years ago that another film exploded into the box office, causing people to consider Jesus as perhaps they had not considered Him before. Christians heralded the arrival of this movie, defending the film and its creator from charges of being outrageously violent and being anti-semitic. They lauded the film--praised it--as being a beautiful, accurate, stunning portrayal of the last hours of Jesus' life. Yet in many ways this film, The Passion of the Christ, took as many liberties with the truth as does The Da Vinci Code. Just as Dan Brown has an agenda that he seeks to further in the work of fiction he declares to be fact, so Mel Gibson, who wrote, produced and championed The Passion of the Christ wished to further an agenda in mixing truth with error, fact with fiction.I, sadly, find this kind of thinking niether bizarre or unclear, I find it to be rooted in bigotry. While Tim admits "there is a difference in scope and seriousness between the inaccuracies found in Gibson's film and those found in The Da Vinci Code" the equation he makes in his comparision implies that Roman Catholicism is somehow as abhorent, distasteful, and corrupt as pure secularism. There is indeed a diffrence between "disagree" and "wrong" and a large chasm between those two words and "condemnable." The charge of " hypocrisy" is a very strong charge indeed and is much more on the "condemnable" side of the chasm than the "disagree" side.
This time, though, Christians are not embracing the film. Nor should they. Yet there is no small amount of hypocrisy in overlooking the unbiblical agenda of one man, celebrating his film, while criticizing another and lamenting his film.
Since we are into analogies here, I find this kind of thinking analogous to that which produces anti-Semiticism because after all, "Jews are Christ killers." Such thinking reveals a complete misunderstanding of the nature of grace and of redemption. It also reveals a hubris concerning the holders view of his own correctness that completely defies the necessary humility when confronting God Almighty.
Do I think Roman Catholic doctrine and mythology correct? Of course not. Do I think the RCC was and is in some areas still extremely corrupt - Indeed! But guess what, I can find corruption in every church, I promise you. I can also find bad doctrine in every church. In the end I do my best to understand, but only God can judge.
See there is a difference between doctrine and corruption. We are not saved by doctrine, nor is it evidence of salvation - it is simply our attempt to undertsand that which we hold most dear. We cannot make large pronouncements or fatal judgements based on doctrine.
Corruption is a different story, in the end, if it cannot be redeemed, or refuses to be redeemed, corruption must be expelled. But that said, our goal, our desire, is for redemption and the grace we have received demands that we work towards that redemption with every fiber of our being.
The implications in what Tim has written are that Roman Catholicism is somehow outside the definition of Christianity. I do not understand how this can be true. For 1500 years it was the holder of the faith - absent it we would have had nothing to reform from and itself has reformed tremendously.
I realize this is a it of a heretical view, but I for one think God even has some special place in His judgement for faithful Jews, they were His chosen people and they are our heritage, but in the end those details are for God.
The likely objections to what I write here are that Tim's post was simply about historical accuracy. I disagree because for one thing Tim never tries to untie the historical and doctrinal knot and secondly somewhere there is a line between historical accuracy and faith. Our adherence to God cannot be subject to the latest archeological findings, after all even hisorical and archeological evidence is subject to interpretation - it often does not rise to the level of the purely factual.
In the end, Tim's post displays primarily a lack of grace. That's a sin we are all guilty of from time-to-time. But when our gracelessness rises to the level of implied bigotry I feel that I must address it directly.
Besides, in the end it's just movies for crying out loud!
Related Tags: The Da Vinci Code, The Passion Of The Christ, Roman Catholicism, bigotry, doctrine, grace
