Servanthood
“Sometimes
critics decry spirituality as individualism, but they miss the point.
Spirituality is personal, yes. To experience God’s spirit, to be lost in
wonder, is something profound that we all know directly and inwardly. That is
not a problem. The real problem is that, in the last two centuries, religion
has actually allowed itself to become privatized. In the same way that our
political and economic systems contracted from ‘we’ to ‘me’, so has our sense
of God and faith. In many quarters, religion abandoned prophetic and creative
vision for humanity’s common life in favor of an individual quest to get one’s
sorry ass to heaven. And, in the process, community became isolated behind the
walls of buildings where worship experiences corresponded to member’s tastes
and preferences and confirmed their political views.”
Diana
Butler Bass (Grounded: Finding God in the World—A Spiritual Revolution)
In one
paragraph, Diana Butler Bass summed up the current state of the church. Over
the last few decades, the church has gone from being centered around Jesus’
ministry to the poor and rejected, to being centered around proselytizing
political agendas and warped messages about the holiness of affluence. The
evangelical church especially aims toward exponential growth to the exclusion
of meaningful dialog and spiritual seeking. In short, the church, like our
top-down culture, has sold its soul, which is why people, especially young
people, are leaving in droves.
On the Redeeming God
website, Jeremy Myers reports: “According to recent research, of the 210
million adults in the United States, 65 million of them used to attend church
regularly but no longer do, and 2.7 million more leave the church every year.”
And the truth is, people aren’t leaving the church because they don’t love the
teachings of Jesus; they are leaving because the church has become just one
more secular, political entity. Because of that, it has lost its sanctity and
its relevance.
In her book, Grounded,
church historian, Diana Butler Bass speaks of the new spirituality as being
earth based—of being in the temple of nature, and more aware of the needs of
the earth and other living beings with whom we share it. A new consciousness is
coming into the world that encourages mutual acceptance and respect for all
people regardless of religion. Perhaps because the west has seen first-hand the
results of fundamentalism and tribalism, we are reminded that these are not
desirable ways of life. As we watch the Taliban reestablish Sharia law in
Afghanistan, there is a new appreciation of why the separation of church and
state was written into our constitution and our collective values. Fundamentalism
is the same no matter which religion it comes from—it believes that its way is
the right way and will impose its will on everyone else if given the power to do so.
I pray for the church.
May it find its way. In Biblical terms, may the scales fall from its eyes so
that it can clearly see its way forward—toward servanthood, which was its purpose
from the beginning.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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