Interfaith Group

Last edited Tue Mar 19, 2013, 11:05 PM - Edit history (1)

People hear one mega organization after another bellowing at them all day every day. Uncounted orthodoxies are produced, massaged, focus group tested, formatted and injected into their heads for every direction. They hear the Apple orthodoxy right behind the Toyota orthodoxy. All day long every day they hear, "This is how it ought to be" wrapped around a product.

There is no single problem that confronts us today any more than any other time in history, but one of the most pervasive to my mind is the confusion caused by a plethora of choices that only lead to a desire to choose again. It's like drinking Coke to quench a thirst. We don't have to take an idea and actually make it work. All we have to do is discard it for one that most easily seems to fit the task at hand.

So how is a church supposed to distinguish itself from among all of the other claimants to orthodoxy? I don't have a clue. Religion is in a tough spot. People have become desensitized by spin. There seems to be a sort of exhausted cynicism in the world. So if some church somewhere actually did produce an orthodoxy that would offer us the tools we need, how would we get the message? It would have to format it for distribution in the same culture that would discredit it for it's delivery. It would have to become the thing that is killing us. That's the problem with "reimagining" Christianity. Again. The Christian faith hooked its cart to the horse of mass production and that horse is dragging us over a cliff. And that's probably why "It seems perverse to say that members of liberal denominations show their displeasure with religious conservatism by walking away from their own churches, but that seems to be exactly what’s happening."