in the meantime

The church of the future therefore, needs to go back to the first century and try again. Back to when we had the teachings of Jesus in its infancy— before His stories became exaggerated and before new stories were created by the new testament writers to further their cause—which however, was totally justifiable at the time as it was the only way for their religion to survive in that era.

The problem is, we are no longer living in that era, so we need to go back to that time and discover ‘Jesus the person’ once again, keeping in mind that the gospel writers were merely painting a portrait, not using a camera. If we can do this, we will go a long way in finding the ‘church of the future’—one that rejects a religion of fear, close-mindedness, and self-deception of the past, and replaces it with an honest and living faith of the future.

Jesus said there were higher understandings to be realised at a later time when, in John's account of his life, he told his listeners that he had "much more to say to you, more than you can now bear." (John 16:12) therefore implying that there would be a later time when such understanding would be possible, that time will be, when human growth has finally learned to respond to inside prompting and no longer feels constrained to parrot and conform to the socially familiar.

I believe this is a natural progression and we will get there, but until then, I won’t have much to do with the churches of today. We will always of course, still go to celebrate and validate friends and relatives rights of passage—where people are ‘hatched, matched, or dispatched’ through its ceremonies to be sure, but the ritual of going each and every week to worship as we have done in the past, I do not think will survive.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace

-  Sri Chinmony Ghose

we need religion however

Huston Smith says. ‘Historically, religion has given people another world to live in, a world more adaptive to the human spirit. Of course, not everything about these religions is wise.

Their social patterns, for example—master -slave, caste, and gender relations—have been adopted from the mores of their time. But in their view of the nature of reality, there is nothing in either modernity or postmodernity that rivals them."

spirituality = religion – prejudice

therefore

spirituality + prejudice = religion

-  MiesterX

breaking up from within

Along with the eastern religions which I mentioned earlier, other Christian churches have also sprung up to fill this void, with many people moving toward Protestantism. The Catholic Church has in response made some token concessions (rather than risk losing the rest of it’s population base) to place the bible into some sort of context that we can recognise in today’s world. It has even acknowledged some of its many contradictions and straight out falsities from days gone by, but continues to be preoccupied in giving black and white answers in an ultimately grey world. This may work for the right wing believers who need to fill their insecurity with certainty (by the way, why is it these churches who claim to have the answers don’t allow any questions?) anyhow, while they refuse to progress, they will never reach secular society as a whole, let alone my liberal viewpoint.

In a higher world it is otherwise; but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.  -  J.H. Newman

partners in crime

Let me note at this juncture that the apple hasn't fallen far from that lofty pedestal with the fundamentalist Christians who are riding around in their four wheel drives and trucks draped in American flags who judge the entire world through the lenses of an absolute creed in a man who died for our sins.

One paradigm, one set of absolutes.

They and the Catholic Church who seem far more eager to expend energy defending their limited truth than to see its holy words for what they are—mere pointers towards a reality of the past which cannot be taken into our day and age in a literal way. The extent to which the Catholic Church has gone to keep information from the masses is riddled throughout history. It initially denied Charles Darwin’s argument for evolution with vigour and took 340 years to change its mind!!!
 

We are no longer being taught to think...only to count. With virtue and wisdom no longer of value. Once you stop asking questions, you loose the capability to generate the answers.  -  Decadence TV series

now I'm getting angry

This leads me to sinking the boot into what I feel is one of the biggest offenders, and one of the best examples of hypocrisy throughout history, Catholicism. The Catholic Church has been (and still is) in a position of influence. Despite this, it has historically, been willing to criticise, marginalise and even expel its most creative thinkers.

For example, Galileo dared to say that the Earth revolved around the sun, which (contrary to Catholic belief) meant the universe did not in fact revolve around us. Galileo was therefore condemned to death as a heretic. In order to save his life, he was given the opportunity to recant, which he decided to accept.

Perhaps the full acceptance of his idea was not complete until December 1991, when the Vatican finally admitted officially that Galileo had been right and that the Church, as well as its interpretation of the Bible, had been wrong all along. And, as if to prove that it inhabits another planet, this institution still even believes in Adam and Eve, Noah and his Ark and all those implausible (from a scientific perspective) bible stories as literal rather than symbolic. At least the Orthodox and Muslim religions who both share these same stories and also take them literally, simply believe God over Science—their inability to question may reveal they have no confidence their belief system would survive such an inquiry, but at least they still have their integrity and do not try to bend the facts to make their spiritual ideals match up with an incompatible post-modern word.

What if the Hokey-Pokey is REALLY what it's all about?

and who's there to help us?

The undercurrent therefore remains in that people are now searching for something more than the Church of antiquity is able to provide us. The eastern religions will continue to pick up this slack until these old deities use their influence to enhance life, rather than (as they have historically done) to bless the status quo, increase priestly power, and support those claims of state that have expanded the wealth and power of themselves and the ruling classes.

Now there's a man with an open mind ... you can feel the breeze from here!  -  Groucho Marx

how can we negotiate this?

So without the church to guide us any more, what do we do? And who do we look to for direction? Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who most likely is closer to Jesus than most church leaders, says it is much safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit than through theology. He says that if we touch the Holy Spirit, we touch God, not as a concept but as a living reality. This simplistic approach should in no way scare us as it is in essence the message the early church preached before it became lost in politics and obsessed with control. An approach that I argue is at the core of all faiths. It may not be often sprouted from the pulpit but I kid you not, the early Christian monks in fact meditated as a large part of their worship for many centuries before this internal relationship with God threatened the Church’s agenda for control of its members and its plans for world dominance. So meditation as a tool of worship, quietly and conveniently just faded away.

To look back at the gospels and especially the writings of Paul with fresh eyes, allows us to see that there was no such exclusivity. Jesus proclaimed an acceptance of EVERYONE, he replaced the rigid commandments of the torah with a simple call to ‘love your God and your neighbour’. We are told worship is a matter of practice and in fact we read in the Lord’s prayer that we do not go to the Kingdom of God when we die, but rather it comes to us—now: “Thy Kingdom come. . .” this parallels the other major religions on so many levels that I can’t believe how we could allow ourselves to be brainwashed over the years by a church who proclaims its word to be inerrant (which alone smacks of insecurity). This ‘us or them’ type attitude only arrived as the church gained power—and we all know how power corrupts! So lets strip the message back to the legacy as Jesus left it hey? I am very comfortable worshipping God, following Jesus and also abiding by the teachings of Buddha. I see no need for them to be mutually exclusive. In fact, if I had this same discussion with Jesus, I’m confident he’d say that he’s glad I’ve found my door to God, but I suggest he’d alliterate with a wry smile, that of course mine is not the only one. That’s indeed profound, and too left field for the church leaders of our era to comprehend.

Was not Jesus a radical in his day? I suggest that should he return now, he would be again.

Holy Spirit = mindfulness  -  Thich Nhat Hanh