Ecclesiastes 9:5 tells us that the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward….. It is the living who deserve to share in some of the fire we put on the souls of the departed. After all, we still have the capacity to repent.
As contemplated in Preparing the way, repentance as defined Biblically, has much more to do with the transformation of mindset than some magical recitation of a formulaic sinner’s prayer. And transformation of old paradigms is essential if the church is going to lead the way in the development of the new multi-ethnic and religiously heterogenic societies that have emerged in the Western Hemisphere. And thinking matters.
The Western church can either assign to hell the droves of its flocks now being drawn away by the new currents: the return to the Pre-Christian indigenous religions; the siphoning off of disillusioned Christians to the fervency of Islam, the stability of Judaism or the New Age appeal of repackaged Eastern Religions ; or as is most often the case, a turning away from religion altogether; or it can pursue its straying sheep and perhaps in the process, end up taking new territory.
My friend who committed suicide was one of these who had begun to identify with the First Nation People and their ancestral ways. He left his wife in the church to pursue a relationship with someone with whom he felt he could resonate at his stage of life. When that relationship failed, it broke him utterly.
When relationships whether within a church, family or nation are tested, either those relationships deepen, or they end up being discarded because of their failure to adequately cover the human need to belong. And that is the need that church covenant is designed to fill. If it fails in this mission, it has become salt that has lost its savor and is worthy of being discarded and trodden underfoot.
And that’s the need that drives the Saviour in his redemptive mission of pursuit, restoration and recovery. The need to find that precious soul that belongs to Him……but somehow got lost. The ‘club’ orientation of Western Christianity with its self-centered ‘my way or the highway’ paradigm of ‘conform or go-to-hell’ reminds me of the very reason that Christianity is losing ground with millennials.
Yesterday, I read the letter Columbus carried to the First Nation peoples of the Americas to my sister and cousin.*[copied in full in my blogpost: From Rape to Reparations]. Both recoiled at the naked arrogance which informed the church’s self image, which apparently for some, still holds true today. Like the brother of the Prodigal son, they seem completely immune to self criticism.
These stay-at-home sons cant identify with the impulses of their growing numbers of brothers and sisters who are feeling the need to explore the wider world. It never once occurs to them that maybe the in-house intimacy-starved relationships, more concerned with performance and status rather than authenticity and the celebration of one’s personhood (as evidenced by the relative indifference upon return of the lost sheep as opposed to the Father’s own elation) may have sparked the need to venture away from home. Staying at home for them seems to be the whole purpose of life. They never enrich home life with new experience. Their bitterness and withdrawal is due to stagnation.
Stuck in the old paradigm of a covenant that presents a God who favors those who keep covenant with Him but punishes those who do not, they cannot imagine the goodness of a God who pursues His rebellious children scattered and dispersed across many nations and over several generations ….. for Old Times’ Sake. His Love REMEMBERS.
Won’t we?
See also
YeKengalé 
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