[As this series continues, I want to remind readers that what follows is a continuation of an essay I drafted in 2003 in protest of the imminent confirmation of then-candidate for Episcopal bishop V. Gene Robinson. This series begins at this link; it addresses homosexuality in the context of the Episcopal Church's theology. This series is not about homosexuality in general, or its place in society at large. And I would add that any major changes or additions to the original essay will appear between []. Peace. BG]
What's Left of the Triumvirate? (cont.)
IV. Call it the Fallacy of New Love
Elsewhere I have criticized the modern Church for its compromises with the zeitgeist. Perhaps its most egregious compromise is its dalliance with the democratization of truth, of assenting to ideas, beliefs or church policies because of the will of a majority, which is a very fallacious habit. I have also criticized the Church for its tepid defense of ancient creeds and even older truths. This tepidity is exemplified within the Church in what St. Paul aptly called the “form of godliness”†. The “form of godliness”, manifest most acutely in the liberalizing of churches throughout the West, consists almost entirely of a soft-headed view of love, a view which characterizes love as the support and endorsement of behaviors which the Church has held throughout its history as sinful or wrongheaded.
Truly loving people, pulpits are now preaching, are tolerant and open-minded, expansive in their permissiveness, non-absolute in their moral constructs, and commited to intellectual relativism [though not really (more later)]. But this godliness is off-base. It is the godliness that denies the power of God and the power that is to be found in the presence of His holiness. For real godliness believes that God can and will change people, that He will transform them when they themselves cannot affect personal change. Real godliness loves with a love that is hard-headed, and soft-hearted, and not vice versa. It is a love that confronts people with the awful truth of their lives without denying the awful truth of their lives.
A line from The Book of Common Prayer, eucharistic prayer C, Rite II, addresses where so many of us find ourselves regarding our understanding of love. In this beautifully written prayer, the respondent says: “Let us not presume to come to this (Eucharistic) meal solely for solace, but strength; not solely for pardon, but renewal.” The prayer admits that there is a tendency in the heart of every supplicant to seek only what one wants to hear from love––the comfort, forgiveness, and approval––and not the other side of love as well. That side is where God gives us strength to be better than we presently are; it's the side of love that confronts us by saying that each of us needs to be renewed, not just emotionally, but totally: sexually, spiritually, intellectually, physically. This is the side of love we don't really want to hear, for it implies that we are not quite as good or as whole as we pretend to be.
Herein lies the great fallacy of new love: love has become mere approval solely to make things easier. If, for example, society sweepingly reformed itself, moving from censorship of herion addiction to celebrating such addiction as beautiful and lovely, everyone with a heroin addicted child would find it easier to love that child. If an alcoholic father actually received monetary and social promotion, even fame and glory for his alcoholism, his children might not find him at all embarrassing when he stumbles into their school Christmas pageant. So, too, with homosexuality: remove the sinfulness or the aberrance of such behavior and one finds it easier to love those who behave homosexually, or “are” homosexuals. I could feel this type of love make its strong, tempting appeal in the recent [1993 remember] meeting at my parish church regarding the confirmation of Gene Robinson. There was a clear, emotional tone to some of the things said in favor of homosexuality; the quality of which suggested that if homosexuality is considered 'sinful' or 'wrong', everything will be so much harder. Of course, we know that true love is confrontational: Jesus, the incarnation of God's love, was not walking about the Levant dishing out approval. He called people 'whited sepulchers' and a 'brood of vipers.' He vandalized a temple market. He also told people not to judge others, and then reminded them not to throw their pearls before swine, which requires them to be judgmental, since one must discern the swine from the clean [(there is power -- and a lesson -- in paradox)].
Yes, Jesus is Love Incarnate; yes, God is love. And we know His love is liberating precisely because it is judgmental: God makes a judgment to purge us of that which harms us.
I often tell people that my father was effective with me when I was a teenager because he loved me more than he loved his rules. A truly loving father, like God, has rules for his children. A father with no rules is not a loving father. A God without rules is no God. But a truly loving father, like God, loves his children more than his own rules. If he didn't, then he would not be a lover of life, but of principles, which are less than life. My father's love for me was never less than his love for his rules. So, when I failed to obey him, I was loved to wholeness. For my dad wished nothing more than to be with me. He never wished to be alone with his rules. This is God's way with us. God loves us more than His rules. But, if we break God's rules, no matter how He restores us, He does not restore us by destroying His rules. God does not say, 'Do not lie. But if you do, I will love you anyway, and you can lie all you want; and there will be no rules about lying.' Instead of granting us some distorted immunity, God sets out to make us truthtellers. Similarly God makes all sinners, straight and gay, thieves and murderers, whole if they just let Him. No one is exempt from this 'difficult' love of God.
So the fallacy of easy love is really about making love less difficult. But that is not real love. It is akin to telling a child not to play with matches and then, when one finds the child striking a match, handing the child a book of matches with a “wink, wink” of the eye. Such a compromise may make it easier to 'deal with' the child, but it will not make it easier when he burns himself. The compromise itself is unloving.
Peace.
[†2 Timothy 3:1-5: 1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.]
Part VII of this series begins here.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Episcopal Church, Anglican Communion, ECUSA, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Identity Politics, sacraments, sacramentalism, marriage, consecration, Gene Robinson, Gay Bishop,
tradition, idolatry, goddess, mother earth
8 comments:
Hi Bill. I wanted to comment a bit on the passage at the end of your post:
"There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited..."
So, they'll be lovers of themselves, but without love. Interesting. Hmmm. I also don't think there's anything inherently wrong with disobeying parents, any more than there's anything wrong with disobeying authority in general: what matters is the reason for that disobedience.
Actually, here's my biggest gripe: can anyone find a time in history when the above depiction froM Timothy was NOT true of the general population? Indeed, the "end times" are with us always. That's highly convenient for those who have a vested interest in the end of the world.
So-called "prophecies" like Timothy's are a piece of cake to make, and every bit as vapid and unenlightening as the daily newspaper's horoscope.
Also, I have to say that the "Have nothing to do with them" at the end of the passage seems curiously out of line with your idea of Contratimes as a cocktail party. But, after all, we're talking about the scum of the earth here. You don't want the harbingers of the apocalypse to walk into your party. They would undoubtedly ruin the atmosphere. But let's go a bit deeper:
It's interesting how Timothy uses the word "people" in this verse: what people? Everybody on earth? It certainly sounds that way. If everyone is living such arrogant, deceitful lives, who will notice the difference? Anyone who has read the New Testament as many times as I have already knows the answer: the elect, meaning a handful of faithful Christians, who, after the "end times" which always seem to be upon us, will stand with Christ and judge all of humanity. So really, when he says "people" he means everybody but the faithful few--and if the faithful few are not people, what are they? Judging by their transformation as depicted in the Book of Revelations, one might say the answer is something like this: they are gods, and will soon be allowed to act like it.
Luke
PS--The issue of my magazine featuring your lovely poem has been out for about a week, now, and I've been getting some strong compliments on it. It's also been banned from a local restaurant at which it had previously been quite a popular item, but I won't let that slow me down.
I'd like to give you some copies, but I don't have your address. Of course, you can always come & pick it up in person. :)
Dear Luke,
Hooray! A Luke sighting!
I think that you make a couple of assumptions here that might be worth noting. First, the reason I cited what St. Paul wrote to Timothy is because of the phrase, "A form of godliness." I placed the entire passage outside of the body of my essay for two reasons: to give context to Paul's (not Timothy's) remarks, and to make clear that not all of the passage was germane to my essay.
Second, not one word of the New Testament is addressed to non-Christians, or those outside of the Church. Thus, Paul's remarks here are regarding people who are inside the Church: these are the people of whom Paul is speaking. In short, he is talking about apostasy, a falling away. Paul is exhorting Timothy to have nothing to do with those who preach a gospel that is not only damnable, it is damnation. He is warning, I believe, that Timothy needs to be wary not of those outside the church, but those in; those who have perverted the gospel into something other than what was entrusted to Timothy by the apostles. Hence, Paul's remarks are utterly prescient, and are not easily dismissed as something even you could spin out: You were thinking (I suspect) Paul was talking about non-Christians. He was not.
As you must recall from your reading of the New Testament, Jesus described the kingdom of God as a field sown with good and bad seed, with wheat and tares. Both must grow together, side by side, receiving the same sunlight, fertilizer, water, and care. Neither can be separated from the other until harvest; to try before that is to risk damage to the good plants. Paul is only amplifying this image with this rather dire warning: the tares will eventually be the leaders. They shall have the good plants following after false gods, the gods of self, money, power, carnality; all in the name of the love of self. The question is when this shall happen and how will we know the difference between wheat and tares.
As for this being inconsistent with my hospitality at Contratimes, it is you who has made that suggestion. There is nothing that suggests that here, other than a New Testament passage you have taken out of context. Besides, I have made it clear that this series is largely a replay of a letter I drafted in 2003, one that had nothing to do with Contratimes at all. My reasons for running this series now have to do with recent decisions of the Episcopal Church and the interest those decisions have generated. The citation from Paul's letter to Timothy is in the context of a three-year-old piece I shared to a narrow audience via email. Lastly, I have not here reported that I believe everyone should heed Paul's imperative that readers should have nothing to do with "them." Even if I had an opinion about that -- and I do -- this sort of exhortation by Paul is best left for others to decide for themselves: each person must decide if it is proper to withdraw from relationships with certain folks. Who am I to know what that entails for anyone other than myself? Besides, a case could be made that Paul is telling only Timothy to have "nothing to do with them." Only a cranky fundamentalist like yourself would interpret Paul to mean that his specific words to Timothy exhorting him to withdraw from others should be followed by all of us today. (I am joking, of course, about you being a cranky. Hah!)
I am glad that you stopped in. I admit freely that I was a bit worried about including the 2 Timothy 3 passage. I am sorry that it offended you; or that it at least prompted you to feign offense.
I don't know if you will be around, but I am in Keene tomorrow night to see "An Inconvenient Truth." There is a panel discussion following the film; the panel is formed and led by faculty and friends of Antioch-New England Graduate School. Now, how can I miss that? Perhaps I will see you there. I intend to drive my RV over with a Hummer in tow, dragging anchors.
Peace to you, my dear friend. I am blessed to know you. You keep this "olding" man sharp. Well, at least you keep me from being uselessly dull.
BG
Hi again--
A very dear friend of mine will be visiting me tomorrow night, but he would undoubtedly be interested in checking out the film at Antioch--I'll have to find out when it's playing, however, since I'll be working until 7:15pm.
Perhaps I should have made myself clearer. I don't buy that the words of Timothy were written only toward the church, or only towards christians, and here's why: Timothy, like most devoted believers, thought that everyone should convert to faith in Christ, and that those who wouldn't would be damned. So you see, in that sense he IS writing to the whole world; me, you, the Roman Empire, Bob Costa, John Tesh, Cindy Crawford, everybody.
Even if Paul was writing only for Timothy at the moment of his letter, the passage has taken on quite a different character now. For it has become part of the most popular, widely disseminated book on the entire planet, and the vast majority of people who read it quite reasonably read it's thunderously passionate prose as if it were directed at themselves.
I WAS talking partly about the few true blue in the church rising, haloes and all, above the "corrupt" in the church, not only about Christians rising above the rest of the world. (I still see the latter as part of the message).
And I don't think for a minute that Paul's condemnation is leveled only at the corrupt elements in the church. However, you're the first christian I've met who reads it this way, and your originality (or status as part of a worthy minority?) is to be commended, or at least viewed with interest.
Perhaps an interesting way to bring more clarity to this debate would be to ask a simple question: do you, Bill Gnade, believe that those who don't accept Christ's teaching and Christ's spirit, commit their lives to it, and spread it to others, are on their way, literally, to hell eternal?
If you say, as a good christian friend of mine often does, that you don't know, I'd say that's a form of heresy, even if it's a wise answer.
I'm glad you feel that I sharpen your mind; I feel the same about you. It's good that we can make each other look deeper. Perhaps that cocktail party isn't in danger after all.
;)
Luke
I see that I misread your message, neglecting to look at the date. Tomorrow night is now tonight. I'll be there at 8:30. See ya.
L
Luke!
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I cannot make it tonight to the film and discussion. Alas! I am too late! You are off!
Forgive me.
BG
Bill
I looked for your bald head among the audience, and once I thought I had located it, until the man in possession of the head, when he cocked his cranium to the side for a moment, revealed a bulge of neck-fat that I knew did not belong to you.
The proceedings were efficient, articulate and not without humor, but I still felt alienated. Environmentalism, taken by itself, is purely animalistic, all about mere survival instinct, isn't it?
And so I get bored. Because if environmentalists express no interest in an artistic and intellectual revolution to go hand-in-hand with their lifestyle recommendations, then they have given no particular reason for the human race to continue, have they?
Indeed, Keene felt rather lonely last night, and it would have been fun to run into a fellow iconoclast.
peace
Luke
PS--Here's a lyric that's been ringing inmy ears lately:
"Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
one little Hitler does the other one's will"
--Elvis Costello
Luke,
I am sorry to have missed both you and the grandness of blandness to which you were a witness. It is a shame. But sometimes -- most times -- family calls.
Thanks for the lyric. Go Elvis!
See you around -- soon?
Peace,
BG
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