Those are some totally cosmic uncharted waters!

Someone apparently moved from Eugene, Oregon (where I live), to England, and is now offering up the sort of vague, cosmic "wisdom" that is usually wrapped in rainbows, accompanied by sloppy drumming, and filled with empty clichés. Via the letters page in The Herald:

As the Sassenach Bard once philosophised: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, etc" The Roman Catholic Church had the opportunity to set sail into unchartered waters after Vatican 2 - Protestant churches had already evolved to a certain degree through their centuries of change. What we see now is the result of missing the tide and being "bound in shallows and in miseries".

Like Ron Ferguson (August 20), I remember the heady days of Charismatic Renewal, but to quote a well-known cosmologist and mathematician of today, Brian Swimme, as a human race we have to reinvent ourselves. Scientifically, technologically, we have progressed too far ever to think of holding on to antiquated doctrines of what the church has to offer. Didn't another Teacher say it wasn't possible to put new wine into old wineskins? Christian or atheist, we must accept responsibility for the state of our world and justice for its peoples. We remain stewards of all living creatures. This fact is our common ground.

What should the west do with its ancient Christian tradition?

Look to the universe, look to the cosmos, look to what earth needs from us and let it teach us. We need fresh eyes and daring. Those who believe in Christ should see Him at the heart of matter and spirit and not separate from any particle, any atom, any cell.

Only then shall we be truly alive and enabled, prepared to face the enormous challenges of the future with our fellow men and women - of any persuasion or none. Whatever evolves out of all that is what some may refer to as "church" one day.

Yeah, yeah; whatever. That's so deep I fear it stained my big toe. Now, let's turn it over to an Englishman for a short response. G.K.?

"The ideal was out of date almost from the first day; that is why it is eternal; for whatever is dated is doomed." — G.K. Chesterton, The New Jerusalem

Bravo! More? Go for it.

"For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say." — The Superstition of Divorce

Let's hear it for antiquated doctrines!

Comments

[LJ]

"Didn't another Teacher say it wasn't possible to put new wine into old wineskins?"

Is there some blog I'm missing or is there a talking points memo that I'm not receiving? That is the second time recently I've heard that reference in a similar context.

They love to call him Teacher, don't they? As if they can relegate him to the status of a guru or some such nice convenient category. I like what C.S.Lewis said,

"You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

[Carl Olson]

LJ: Great quote! And from yet another Englishman!

[LJ]

Mere Christianity, Book 2, Chapter 3, last paragraph.