Alex
Is the Church like a Coral reef?
Posted on: 07/20/2010 21:03
The following is an essay I started writing in order to help me figure out what is happening with the church, and also to reconcile that all things are loved by God and have a place in her world. Even those people and processes, and structure that I see as destructive.
Nothing I say is something that I might change my mind. In fact I do change my mind about it several times in the same day, as I my mood and optimism changes. It is also not really an esay but a gathering of some of my thoughts, which are always changing.
The analogies might be weak or wrong, but it is an attempt by me to use different language to see good. And create a framework with which i might understand and thus be able to engage the whole church.
Any comments are welcome. i do not intend to insult or inflame. I would welcome comments that point out how wrong I am, or how I am half right, or how I might be able to use different language to say something that others understand. I do not even claim to be able to understand it myself, as I see it as part of my process of evolving, understanding and growing as a human and a Christian.
The Church is like a Coral reef.
4 years ago I read a book Creative Disobedience, by Dorthee Solle, a Lutheran Theologian who grew up in Germany during World World 2. She was interested in explaining why so many Christians participated or did nothing to oppose the holocaust. This book, assigned to us to read in one of two mandatory Catholic Theology and Ethics course for all students, was a major part of the journey I had to take to return to a United Church of Canada. The book explained that in Christian Churches the value of obedience was highly placed. So much so, she says that as a result German Christians had not developed the moral capacity growing up to disobey authority when it was necessary.
She proposed as an alternative value something similar to self-actualisation based on the life and teachings of Jesus. Among other things she pointed out that the sacrifice Jesus made at the end of his life was only possible and only meant something (as a sacrifice) because he had lead a full life, not one of denial.
She also used the term ossification of faith to describe what had happened to the Christian Church. Since obedience was so highly value, the process involved in change was stopped, and when things stop changing they become even more rigid, faith becomes just like bones of a body. Relatively unchanging and rigid. Thus ossification of the faith.
I have been developing over the years a new theory to explain to myself what happens to the church, and likely other religions as well.
Basically it is that the church and likely most organisations become ineffectual and starts to die whenever they are unable to adopt to change. Since everything changes, and change is happening at alltimes, we human can not always adapt quickly. This is for various different reasons at different times and places.
However this fails to explain why the churches do eventually change and survive. Something that is dead, or like bones do not create new life similar to the life they were created by.
So I imagined that the church was like a coral reef.
Bones are largely made up of calcium and small amounts of 4 other kinds of tissue. Coral reefs are mostly made up of calcium carbonate secreted by corals. So bone and coral reefs are similar in that they are both largely made of calcium which is inanimate, rigid, and relatively unchanging. The coral's calcium provides support and protection for new and living corals. They are also become the home for a diverse and vibrant eco system. Coral reefs occupy less than 1% of the world ocean surface, yet they provide a home for 25% of all marine species.
Yet if one looks at the mass of the reef it is mostly just dead calcium remains form long dead corals.
Similar the churches (and others) if examined appeared to be just dead or dieing. (People often say the church is dieing when they mean dead, but even when ones is dieing there is still change and life. The life (or change) of the Christian Church is provided by the change that Jesus Christ makes possible for Christians. While the church may seem dead or dieing, it is like the coral reef, calcified but still providing a home for an rich and diverse spiritual and religious eco-system. If we look at the church as the reef, we will see life, which in physical size is small to the totality of the reef/church, but which is actually the living reef, or living church. that which brings life, and change.
It is why almost all great religious leaders or reformers, who today we see as orthodox, were at their time heretics, or close to it. All life creates change and that same life ends up creating part of the reef for future life, long after that life has died.
If we see the church as being more calcified today than living, we may have because we are in a stage of growth, that looks more like death. What we see is the death of the old church, a massive structure built to accommodate empires and not people. It is allowing for the growth of the church in unprecedented and beautiful ways. now that it is being untied from empire. Growth not in numbers of people attending, but in other ways that affect the power of people in the church to create positive life affirming ways, for themselves and our communities, in ways that the old church of the empires was unable to do.
In one sense, in the time when church membership was socially, economically and politcally necessary, it just put bodies in the church, while diverting it from it's core purpose. All those people to marry, baptize, and so on could have had their needs filled elsewhere, were it not seen as necessary to belong to a church for other reasons, Also when you have a people who are looking for change in their life by encountering God, mixed in with large numbers of people who belong to a church for social, political and economic reasons, it not that resources are taken, as the focus of church is diverted.
All around the church there are pocket of vibrant life, often silent, or not clearly visible as life on a coral reef, but it is there. Dwarfed in physically size by the remains of the old church, but teaming with life, diversity and change. `It is creating new life and new challenges to life. It is creating new possibilities, new stories, and new resurrections. Even for those of us who can not see change, or the promise of change that it provides. You have to practise looking for it to see it. You have to see it to particiapte in it, and you have to participate to experience it as an individual, being part of a spiritual community.
i am no expert of church history but I am told that lower official membership is seen by some as a sign of a decline in faith and or community. However I could imagine that it is more about how the church has changed. Lower memberships could just reflect those who do not believe, no longer feel as obliged to attend for other reasons. Those who belief often stay away because either church is inaccessible to them for various reasons, or they feel the church is irrelavant, insencere or ineffectual. What lower numbers could also mean is that the
This also means that those of us who called unchanging faith dead and without value, are not seeing the whole picture. Unchanging, calcified faith will die, but it has and had value, on it's own, and in being part of a living faith's eco-system. We can not bend it, but learn to live with it. We can have faith that together with others we are able to change. We have to find our niches in the church's ecosystem, overcome, or work around the barriers created by the rigidity, and work with others in this diverse and living spiritual eco-system that is the church. Where we embrace the change that is promised/offered to us in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated waters. However some can also be found even in deep, dark and cold waters.
Search
Recently Active...
Comments
chansen
Posted on: 07/20/2010 22:54
The immediate answer that comes to mind is, "Yes, in the sense that they are are outwardly attractive structures, ancient, and the cause of many great tragedies."
More seriously, I think the "dead coral" are the scriptures. They've certainly done their damage in years past. Attempts to take the bible metaphorically are well-intentioned and I'm sure there are some expert translations that make the bible less immoral than it initially appears, but the words are still there, and they will do damage again in the future.
Alex
Posted on: 07/21/2010 00:02
The Bible is art and filled with metaphors and analogies. That is not something only modern people believe. So did the ancient writers, as well as Christians and Jews through out history. Even fundamentalist literalists do not believe that mountains actually clapped.
It's like a play or movie script, not all the voices are there to speak the good, but to show what the good has to respond to or deal with. Also as a tool the Bible can be used to harm or to hurt. Just as water is a substance that we we all need to live, it can also be used to drown people or torture them. Still regardless of what they do with water, it still remains a good essential to life.
Coral reefs do cause many disasters, however, the coral's dead calcium reefs provides support and protection for new and living corals and a diversity of life. They are the home for a diverse and vibrant eco system. Coral reefs occupy less than 1% of the world ocean surface, yet they provide a home for 25% of all marine species.
chansen
Posted on: 07/21/2010 00:33
No, but they do believe they are about 6000 years old, and other nonsense.
Without water, we can survive for about 3 days. Without religion...wait...no change. Test it out if you want. You can use Jae for part 1 of the experiment if you'd like.
And water doesn't tell people to torture and drown others for holding the wrong beliefs about water.
Churches can do one better - they house almost 100%, or tens of thousands of Christian species (denominations), each of whom thinks their interpretation of Christianity is correct.
Alex
Posted on: 07/21/2010 02:08
No, but they do believe they are about 6000 years old, and other nonsense.
Well that points to a lack of imagination or a bad education. Some people might think the Lord of the Rings is a literally true story. However you can not blame the Lord of the Rings, or Tolkien. it's the readers lack of imagination or a bad education.
Without water, we can survive for about 3 days. Without religion...wait...no change. Test it out if you want. You can use Jae for part 1 of the experiment if you'd like.
Your original point was to the fact that religion and believing in God does harm. I agree. I was just pointing out that many things that can do good can also do harm. Just because something can be used in a harmful way does not make it bad, by itself. Only in the way it is used. Water is just an example of something that can cause harm, but that in itself does not make water a bad thing.
And water doesn't tell people to torture and drown others for holding the wrong beliefs about water.
Neither do all religions. Just as some religions will kill if used so will some water kill if drunk.
Churches can do one better - they house almost 100%, or tens of thousands of Christian species (denominations), each of whom thinks their interpretation of Christianity is correct.
[/quote]
That is not true. Most people belong to denominations who understand that there are 4 gospels in the Bibles. Each is a different story, so it is also understood that there are different ways to understand Christianity, and thus there is no one single correct way. Among other things, the main defining aspect of Christianity is the resurrection story. In 3 of the gospels there are multiple people present. Each person present represents a different form of Christianity, with a different response to what the resurrection was and means.
Plato used a similar literary device when he wrote his dialogues. He put Socrates in dialogue with other philosophers who were long since dead. He used them and there names as a way to represent different schools of thought in philosophy that Socrates was in dialogue with.
The people who wrote the gospels assumed that people would understand that those present at the resurrection represented different schools of thought and traditions present in Christianity at the time. The people who compiled the New Testament understood that as well. That is why they had no problem including four gospels with different stories and with different people at the empty tomb. They all had different people, and each person represented different interpertations of Christianity that were current when the gospels were written. This means that from the begining that there were many different types of Christians.
No one believes that there is only one correct interpertation, except those who belive the earth is only 6000 years old, and they are a small but vocal majority, who are just ignored by everyone else.
You should ask other members of Wondercafe
As an engineer you should understand that you can build something in many different ways, and some are better than others for different reasons. But what is best will change when you have different materials to work with, and different technologies, with different types of skilled labour, different amount of time, and different amounts of money.
Likewise Christians will be different according to the situation and place. However just like some engineers will wish to build things in only one way, because that is all they know and it is easier to do so for themselves rather than learn what is best according to new contexts, some Christians are like that too. That is why you have bad religion, and that is why bridges some bridges fall, and some buildlngs are not safe, and some oil wells are dangerous.