A Church for Our Times

Serious Thinking on a Major Problem

Accept up front that this post will be offensive to people I generally like. In the course of preparing for our departure to una patria nueva, the wife and I spend a lot of time thinking and praying about what comes next. While she has visions of a mission in our future where we share the message of the Lord, a hopeful blessing for us both, the question that racks my mind is what message do we share?

The Bible is more than just a complex book. It is a gateway to a different sort of thinking, and for those who know it well, we also know that we hardly know anything at all because with each new reading comes new insight. What starts with a series of narratives and metaphors, good and practical advice about how to live, and a story with hope of salvation evolves quickly. One finds the prophetic undertones, speech about a new person born within, and supernatural tales of calamity and overcoming. Most churches put their toes in the beach of that ocean, but rarely explore the deeps where the pearls of wisdom exist to be won, which is why with most of their bodies caught in the world, the message too often doesn’t resonate.

With joy for the few churches who look at these questions across any denomination, a quick survey reveals the sorry state of each major thread of Christianity. Mainline Protestantism is dead, serving mostly now as realty offerings in posh neighborhoods or invitation to be possessed by woke women pastors, contradiction that is, trying to just get along with the world. The Evangelicals are more lively, but you have the Baptists on one end who have all Scripture as a dead letter lest they misinterpret Pentacost, and their Pentacostal mirrors out there praying up feeling as an end unto itself. Christ found answers 40 days into the desert alone, but they think soft rock concerts are the way to go. Not impressive, and it only gets worse from there.

Catholicism is run by a literal pantheist and apostate, that a more honest time would label as an anti-pope, but the ship creaks on bolstered by ritual and catechism. Perhaps their willingness to ignore Scripture for so long has given them the staying power to continue forward, but even here, religious networking only gets one so far, and probably no closer to heaven as treasures belonged there rather than in the Vatican. Too bad for Vigano and the trad caths who fight onward.

I can’t speak so much to Orthodoxy which I know is growing, other than to observe it is an import to the West that is coming into a giant vacuum. Other smaller groups as well like the Amish, who at least had the sense to separate themselves, and then the ones who are beyond the canon like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses fill out the roster with having the virtue of being different, but still probably not right.

This Judeo-Christian world needs to die already, and a new vitality needs to break out. Christian Nationalism might be the precursor, but I dislike the phrase because if we are going to go there, let’s call it Christ Nationalism. Reconcile left and right, what is collective and individual, and hold each other to account. The problem is if that exist, I suspect it would look a lot like the old Essenes, separate yet united, and set apart from the world. You may conquer under the sign of the cross like Constantine did, but winning a worldly Empire is no path to heaven, but rather an invitation to allow the disbelief of others to lead you toward perdition. There is no easy answer, and I blame no one who chooses not to surrender.

What church, My Lord, I wonder do we need? I know it isn’t here yet, and I know the questions you ask of us are not the ones we are answering. I stay more quiet these days, looking in the Word for truth, in prayer for answers, and in the strangest of modern visionaries and prophets for the message we may not have received. Weird insights like that this world really is just pulled before our eyes arrive, yet how does one share a message people are not ready to hear. Learning is a process, and to offer someone sight of the penthouse without a stairway is just cruel. How do we build that?

In humility, my life in Christ is always one of learning. The hope and the wonder first, but then the service and the dangers. A season passes, life withers away, but new growth from the true root of seeking Christ says reach higher toward the Light. Death begets life, and the dualism of the early fathers rings true, yet people take that to places they must not, abandoning Christ in vanity, and finding a lesser truth to be their false idol. The timid and strict abandon the quest, the fancy and playful wander off, and the straight and narrow path becomes less clear - if to God, then it is always to ask, but to understand, is to question.

We are never alone in this question. Our greatest friend, and our many foes come. One cannot understand this until they hear those voices. I renew my quest, and two tires blow out in three days. Flack over targets happens in the spiritual war as well, but that is okay: I am not afraid of what I cannot see, because at the center, the Father awaits those who elect the journey. An insight there, throughout the Word, there are some few wanting to return, and how do we discover this in ourselves, and how do we find this in one another?

That’s the question. Lord guide us wisely. Let us find each other, and then help us find you.

I miss preaching, but more than that, I miss being part of the family in the Word. This is not my season to talk, but to learn, and may this find whom it should.