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Edited on Mon Jan-22-07 08:26 AM by MrWiggles
This Bishop here (Bishop Spong) explains how the Christians killed God and he wants reformation by going back to the Hebrew way: " The Hebrew Biblical View
The hebrew God
The Hebrew Biblical View
In the biblical time of the Old Testament the Hebrew God and the world were not antithetical, nor were they identical. God was the creator; the world was the creature. God was bigger than the creation, but the creation revealed the creator’s glory. The Hebrew creation story affirmed the goodness of life. God made it all, and when it was complete God surveyed it and pronounced it good indeed. The physical world was the object of God’s love. It was showered with God’s blessings: sunshine and rainfall. For human life a garden was built called Eden. God walked in the garden “in the cool of the evening” (Gen 3:8). Material things were good; they were meant to be used. Physical things were good; they were meant to be appreciated. Life was good; it was meant to be lived. The world was good; it was the object of the divine love and was therefore meant to be engaged. With great joy the Hebrews could sing of God’s world and God’s creation. To be spiritual for the Hebrews meant to be alive to God and alive to the world. It did not mean to be pious or otherworldly. To have faith, for the Hebrew, was to have the courage to enter life, for that is where God is to be found.
The Early Christian Dualistic View
The early Christian God
Christians took on a dualistic view, which was adapted from the Greeks. There is a separation between the spiritual and the physical, between God and the world. Christianity and the church were identified with the realm of the spirit, and all worldly pursuits and physical concerns were identified with the realm of the physical. The world became a place to be escaped, not to be engaged. Christians who followed the “higher calling” turned their backs on life and gave themselves to the “spiritual” pursuits of prayer, meditation, contemplation. The goal of the Christian life was now not the transformation of the world but the beatific vision. Otherworldly concerns became dominant. The meaning of life was not found in life but beyond it. The goal of life was heaven, not earthly fulfillment. As the church grew in dominance the realm of the spirit with which the church had made its special identification grew in importance, while the realm of the physical began to shrink as an object of concern. This attitude reached its culmination, its highwater mark, in the thirteenth century.
The Thirteenth Century
The Thirteenth Century God
By the thirteenth century life on earth was considered only temporary and therefore just something to be endured. In such a world no passion for life was exhibited, no war against injustice was fought, no reform movements were initiated. This world was considered too unimportant to be worthy of serious efforts at change. There was a sanctified mood of resignation, of acceptance of one’s status or circumstances, because life here did not really matter that much.
This fact has had its ramifications in our later history. Because efforts to reform life in this world, to increase justice among men and women, to throw off the shackles of human bondage were not the concern of Christians, they inevitably had to become the concern of non-Christians. This spiritualized, benign neglect by the church of the festering sores of injustice guaranteed that reform movements in Western civilization would be violently anti-Christian movements. One has only to look at the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Revolution to see on which side the institutional church took its stand. It was the pious, otherworldly attitude in the face of overt oppression and injustice that caused Karl Marx to write his famous words, “Religion...is the opium of the people.”
Given the anti-world, anti-physical reality stance of thirteenth-century Christianity, the science-versus-religion battle was unavoidable. When scientific pursuits emerged in Western civilization, they were inevitably anti-Christian and antireligious...
...The Church vs. Science
By the sixteenth century scientific facts begin to confront Christian theological dogma. God is no longer required to explain what science can explain without God. God becomes a gap-filler God. Wherever gaps in human knowledge or experience exist God is cited to explain it. As science expands the role of God diminishes. Step by step, from contest to ultimate conquest, in every single conflict of Fact with Faith, the Church has been defeated and has retreated -- put to shaming rout. It has been a slow and tortuous progress,--
"For faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last"!
The process of adjustment for the Church has throughout a thousand instances been the same: Faith is confronted with a discrediting Fact; it curses it and denies it. It viciously persecutes anyone who sides with science rather than with the Church because the Church desperately wants to retain its power. Any scientific knowledge which diminishes the role of God also diminishes the power of the Church.
When a scientific fact is finally crammed down the Church's throat and they are forced to change their dogma they then claim the Bible supported the scientific view all along and they just made a "mistake" in interpreting scripture, oh and sorry for all those people they burned at the stake.
But the self-inflicted damage the Church does to itself takes its toll. Their ultimate infallible authority is brought into question and the Church is irreversibly humiliated. People loose respect for the Church. People gain respect for science..." More: http://members.cox.net/deleyd/religion/whereisgod.htmlGod today:  On edit: added Quotes |
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