The hills are alive with the sound of Dawkin

A few months back, we spent a weekend with a couple of hundred singing Austrian families. After I’d got over the weird thought I had entered the fantasy life of someone who dresses up as a nun twice a week and goes to a Sound of Music singalong, it was actually really fun. There were some funky guys on the team with us; including a Catholic monk who had become a millionaire in his early twenties and given it all away to take a vow of poverty before he hit 25! In fact behind every door in the beautiful lakeside mansion in which we were staying seemed to be a funky singing Catholic.

Not that that surprised me. I’ve met many funky Catholics and many horrid Evangelicals. And you should know I am not one of those giving up the title: evangelical, just because it has become identified with a few charlatans. After all, I call myself English, despite most of Europe equating me with drunken skinhead football fans. So I like Catholics. It’s the institution of Catholicism I struggle with.

A few weeks back a crazy young American tried to change that, by showing us around the Vatican. She has a life mission to show Catholicism can be fun. Sadly I didn’t buy it. I’m not sure St Peter would have felt at home in his basilica, let alone Jesus. But then I am very aware that most of the world don’t buy my Evangelicalism either, and some of my colleagues would say that that is because Jesus also doesn’t feel at home in our church. My antipathy towards Catholicism is another man’s antipathy towards evangelicalism. Even in our most trendy, up to date forms, people seem to be saying we’re irrelevant. However modern we are, they are beyond all that.

It’s hard to argue against that, except to say of course, that for both Catholic and Evangelical, the problem isn’t with Jesus, but the package. By that I don’t mean the essentials such as the Bible as the inspired word of God. Nor do I mean the incidentals such as the music played on a Sunday morning, or come to that, whether music is played at all and whether anything happens on a Sunday morning. I mean the sanitized, “10 steps to heaven” deal. People aren’t interested in a “ten steps to heaven” deal anymore. In the west at least we’re wealthier, more self sufficient and on the whole more self-confident. Consequently we tend not to buy into community or religion to look after us. Both were like insurance policies taken out by our parents and grandparents on our behalf, but for which we’ve now stopped paying the premiums because bluntly the pay offs seem irrelevant to us. In fact community and religion both make demands of us without offering much, so we dump them. For instance we don’t need to hold on to the hope of an after life when we have more of a life now. And if we do have a nagging doubt about the value of an after life, then Dawkin will tell us its all bunkum anyway. Of course this doesn’t answer our doubts so much as increase them to state of hopelessness, so we just say: Stuff it, and return to life now.

The church can’t assume allegiance any more. And that’s a good thing. It can’t peddle self seeking mumbo jumbo be that Catholic or Evangelical mumbo jumbo. And that’s a very good thing. My fear is we will merely seek to make our message more attractive and relevant to a post modern world without making it more authentic. So the temptation will be to make the premiums of worshipping a crucified Christ: more health and more wealth for us. Perhaps this will work for a bit like institutionalized religion worked for a bit in previous generations. But ultimately only a radical authentic Christ is real enough to transcend the arrogance of every age including the post modern ones who really think they’re it! When push comes to shove, this Jesus rises above the nonsense. When times are tough and the church is persecuted, only those who know Christ passionately stick with it, and then He becomes relevant to people shaken out of their false securities. The question is: do you and I know the authentic Jesus? And in such a way to impact life here and now and for ever?