Friday, August 08, 2008
The Other Way
Glenn Lucke, writing at CGO recently put up a "one-sided conversation" that was extraordinary. Excerpting a good bit of it:
But here is the crux of the matter, for the church to adopt such forms just emphasizes the problem, it does not address it.
My heart broke when I read this post because Glenn's description of the institutions that do not love us so fit the church that I found myself experiencing genuine despair. It was as if he were writing of an alternative to the church. That is an incredibly sad state of affairs.
One may ask - Can an institution ever "love"? As best as I can tell, the answer is "no." Therefore, it becomes part of the church's mission not to become institutionalized.
How's that for an alternative?
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If you and I serve these companies, institutions, and individuals, if we will follow them, they will give us something we know is essential: normal. If some people are talented, resourceful, blessed and persistent, such people will attain an type or level of ‘normal’ that also confers elite status and comfort.From this flows a fascinating question - Can the church love us? My short answer is, "It should, but it has failed miserably." Worse, the institutions of this world do a much better job of pretending to love me than the institution of the Kingdom. At the very least they offer me a next alternative - somewhere else to turn when disappointed. And now, the church seems to be trying to set up the same thing.
The brands, the scripts, the jobs, the accessories for what a normal, successful life looks like....all this seems so utterly true, so inescapably necessary, that we cannot imagine life another way. Our ability to reflect upon these matters is often limited by our busy-ness to mere snap judgments; “loser” or “winner”, have and have not.
When ‘Christianity’ is presented to us, or when it was presented to us years ago, we did the only thing with it we could imagine: we added Jesus or more likely we added ‘Christianity’ to the scripts, the brands, the jobs, the accessories. If we can be normal and add Christianity, super.
The companies, organizations, individuals competing for our love, our time, our money? With the exception of family and some friends, they do not love us.
[...]
There is another ‘way.’
There is an alternative reality that is actually the most real and truest and most beautiful reality. It is the realm of God’s rule. This realm is material, social, and spiritual, all three. The ancient scriptures refer to it as ‘the kingdom of God’.
Most of the people we know or are acquainted with are not ready to be set free, even though the alternative Way delivers forgiveness, joy, pleasure, love, peace and justice, along with suffering of various kinds.
The portal into the Way-- the material, social and spiritual realm called the Kingdom-- is a bloody Cross. Entry comes at incalculable cost, yet it’s free for you, and yet even more paradoxically, this incalculably costly free entry also costs you your very life. You can be free of the scripts, free of the Matrix, free to love and be loved, free from being a scared person who needs to wear and be and do life a certain way to fit in.
But here is the crux of the matter, for the church to adopt such forms just emphasizes the problem, it does not address it.
My heart broke when I read this post because Glenn's description of the institutions that do not love us so fit the church that I found myself experiencing genuine despair. It was as if he were writing of an alternative to the church. That is an incredibly sad state of affairs.
One may ask - Can an institution ever "love"? As best as I can tell, the answer is "no." Therefore, it becomes part of the church's mission not to become institutionalized.
How's that for an alternative?
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