THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US II

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

I remember my favorite classes at the university were my fiction writing classes.  In one class there was a student who wrote a story about a Christian young man, who, like himself, was struggling with his faith in the world.

The young man in the story, like the writer, had been attending the local fundamentalist Baptist Bible, but the world was persecuting him because he lived in a way he deemed faithful to the Lord.

In the story, the primary conflict was between an unholy world and a holy young man.  

His holiness made him separate, unique, and not like the worldly people who lived a secular existence.  In their eyes, he was a fool, but in God’s eyes, he was a genius.

In other words the young man believed his piety consecrated his existence.

During the question and comment session, our professor pointed out that piety did not make anyone unique.  It was rather common in life and literature.  There was really nothing special or holy about piety. People of faith in other religions, even agnostics and atheists, could be pious.

The young writer had accepted a certain Baptist teaching about the world.  This doctrine of the world is all wrong.  There are two aspects to this doctrine.  One has to do with piety.

The world drinks alcohol, cusses, fornicates, masturbates, watches movies, goes to the theater, smokes, drinks alcohol, doesn't go to church, and drinks alcohol.  In other words, most people in the world are not pious.  A very few are pious, and that narrow road Jesus spoke of is their lonely highway to heaven.

Unfortunately, being pious is a personality trait.  It suits well certain personalities with a low capacity for fun and sex.  It elevates personalities wracked with guilt and a yearning to be ever in conflict with themselves.

Some pious people wrote scripture, but so did a lot of impious people.  For example, concerning the latter, the Song of Songs was hardly written by a pious person.  I see no piety in Koheleth--the so-called book of Ecclesiastes.  Job argues against the purpose filled living of a righteous life insofar as it means suffering will not happen to the pious man.  The gospel of Mark is not very pious.  

Indeed, Jesus hardly acts pious at all.  He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.  At a wedding where all the wine had been consumed, he created wine that was better than what the host had served. 

The second aspect of the world doctrine has to do with the wisdom of the world versus God's wisdom.  The belief is that Christianity must be totally absurd so God can prove scientists, historians, and other thinking people to be absurd.  The wisdom of the world is foolish before God.

Fundamentalists willfully and ignorantly cling to ignorance because they believe the sillier their knowledge seems to the world, the more valid it is in God's eyes.

Thus, we get terrible superstitions like biblical inerrancy, the Rapture, Millennialism, guns in church, the Curse of Ham, and young earth creationism…to name a few.

Scholarship is ignored for the sake of dogmatism.

Next time I will write how we Christians are not of this world.

Blessings...