Finding Jesus

Gressing is moving. Pro-gressing is moving forward; re-gressing is moving backwords. Un-gressing, were it a word, would mean sitting around hoping to maintain the status quo. The Church – the singular noun we fondly use as if Christianity were unifed – often appears to be stubbornly ungressing, which might be appropriate if we weren’t so divided and so contentious. God can’t be pleased.

Neither were the Roman emperors pleased back in the old days when their efforts to kill off the Church failed, and Constantine finally had to buy up the Church to make things easier to manage. Nor over the years have those within the Church who were seeking to achieve and maintain power been pleased with the church’s diversity – or as they have been wont to call it – “heresy.”

Western Christianity over its history has held the patent on “heresy,” the word for the crime of any and all visions of Christianity differing from the positions of those who have won the contests for power in the institutional church. But who is to say that the winning positions, even or especially those positions eventually cemented as creeds, don’t have it wrong and are themselves the “heresy”?

Here’s an example of the Church’s ungressing. Certainly, many of the early bishops seeking to bring the church under control were good Christian gentlemen. Certainly many bishops over many centuries have been good Christian gentlemen. Only in very recent times have we had bishops who are not good Christian gentlemen. Good Christians, for sure, and reasonably gentle – just not only men. And the Church in more than one of its dimensions is coming apart over it.

It’s time, probably well past time, for the Church to stop ungressing and start moving into the present. My favorite metaphor describing this condition tells us that we are racing down the road with our eyes glued to the rearview mirror.

It’s time to go, perhaps even well past time to go. As my sports channel would report: “Our secular culture is ahead by two goals late in the second half and the Church is down a player.” But I would have us follow my “traffic and weather” station’s motto: “Know before you go.”

The question “Are We Progressing” is the title of an article in my March 2009 issue of “The Progressive Christian.” Author Fred Plumer begins his reflection by reporting a statement made ten years ago at the end of a two day conference on “post-modern theology.” The speaker, an elderly man he didn’t recognize, stood up in the back of the room and asked if he might make a statement.

Plumer goes on, “He started his comments by saying that he wanted to thank everyone for the event and the hard work that went into its planning. He went on to say that the conference helped him to understand a little better what is meant by postmodern theology. Then he said with a strong voice: “The fact is that you postmodern folks seem to be avoiding the real issues. Was Jesus God or wasn’t he? Was he killed in some cosmic, sacrificial act by God to redeem the souls of believing sinners or did he die as a result of his controversial teachings and his unwillingness to bend a knee to Caesar? Was Jesus about abundant life or life in the hereafter? These are the questions that have been left unresolved for over sixteen hundred years. It seems to me that until we can talk about these issues openly, we are not post anything.’”

How glad I am that the speaker was not recognized! That allows him to be the famous Everyman – you and even me. If, like Jesus, we want to evidence and advance the Will of God, we have our work to do.

Which brings up one of the very significant problems plaguing the church over its whole history, accounting for the divisions and the contentiousness in the church up to and including our day. That problem is the multitude of biases of which we are not always aware and which can limit our ability to see clearly whatever we may be looking at. A number of those blinding biases are the subject of Part I of this book.