Hong Kong Liberal Religious Forum

American Episcopal (Anglican) retired bishop of Diocese of Newark John Shelby Spong is the definitive voice of Liberal/Progressive Christianity.

You can subcribe to his regular "Bishop Spong Q&A" at his official website at www.johnshelbyspong.com .



"John Shelby Spong" @ Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong

Robert Daley, from the Internet, writes:
I call your attention to the biblical story of Jesus saving the adulterous woman from death by stoning, when he allowed that the stoning could proceed if only the "sinless" man cast the first stone - knowing full well there was no such sinless person present. And the clincher was that he proceeded to write something in the sand for all to read. For most of my life I firmly believed that the story said Jesus went before each man present and wrote his personal sin in the sand. In later life, when I was challenged to show that conclusion to the story in the Bible, I couldn't find it. Can you tell me if such a version exists or where I might have been misled?


Dear Robert,

Thank you for your letter. There is nothing in John's gospel, which is the only gospel containing this particular story, more than the note that "Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them not" (KJV). What you have done is to take an interpretation developed in Cecil B. DeMille's epic motion picture The King of Kings as if it is biblical. In that motion picture DeMille interprets Jesus' writing in the sand to be his prophetic insight into the sinfulness of each of this woman's accusers. DeMille has Jesus write in Aramaic and then the film shifts his letters into English words like cheater, adulterer, thief, murderer, etc. That scene entered the minds of those who saw it and then people began to read that scene back into the gospel text. After this version had been passed on a few times people assumed that it is in the Bible itself. It isn't.

Later, when DeMille produced another blockbuster biblical movie, The Ten Commandments, he depicted the crossing of the Red Sea so dramatically that people have also read that scene back into the Bible itself. What Moses crossed in the Hebrew text was the Yom Suph, which got mistakenly translated in the Bible as "the Red Sea." In fact it means the Sea of Reeds, a swampy marshy piece of land near the present day Suez Canal. It is of interest to note that if Moses had actually crossed the Red Sea, he went hundreds of miles out of his way and the Israelites would have had to average five-minute miles to have gotten through that body of water in the time the Book of Exodus says it took for its navigation.

From time to time it is good to check what the Bible really says instead of depending on what we once heard.

- John Shelby Spong

Larry J. Kluth from Mesa, Arizona, writes:
Where was the Christian God before he appeared to Moses and declared that the Israelis were his chosen people? Why didn't the great civilizations of the world, prior to this appearance, know about this God?


Dear Larry,

I'm tempted to follow the old adage attributed to Augustine of Hippo, who, when asked what was God doing before he created the world, responded, "God was creating hell for people who ask questions like that." I shall, however, avoid that temptation.

The Christian God, as you describe this deity, did not appear to Moses. That would be the God of the Jews. The idea that any people are God's specially chosen is a tribal idea that is shared by all tribal entities. We tend to associate that idea with the Jews because Christians have incorporated the Jewish God into the Christian story by proclaiming that we have encountered this God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses in a new way in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

However, it is not God who is ever changing. It is the human perception of God. Of course, God was present among the ancient people of the world. God was called by different names, endowed with different qualities and understood in different ways. Some of these aspects of God are seen as immoral by people living today, such as child sacrifice, the purging of anyone who thought outside the box and the divine blessing of violence.

The human God consciousness is always growing. This is true even in the Judeo-Christian faith story. There is an enormous difference between the God of Moses, who was perceived as sending plagues on Israel's enemies, the Egyptians, the last of which was the murder of the firstborn son in every Egyptian household; the God of Joshua, who was perceived as stopping the sun in the sky to facilitate the slaughter of the Ammonites by Joshua's army; or the God of Samuel, who ordered King Saul to commit genocide on the Amalekites; when that God is compared to the God of Jesus, who said, "Love your enemies."

Please remember that while the experience of God may be a universal experience, the explanation of the God experience is always a human creation shaped by the perceptions of people living in history. Every God explanation, every sacred text and every creedal formula is always time bound and time warped. That is why literalizing religious formulas is so destructive. It is literalized formulas that cause us to believe our limited view of God is the same as God. Out of that view come questions like yours that reveal the absurdity of so many popular religious claims and therefore I thank you for your question.

- John Shelby Spong

John Wheeler from from San Diego, writes:
Thank you for the inspiring and informative article about the present struggles in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. I had not known about the super-majority required to pass the policy, nor had I known about the small size and aging nature of the splinter groups. I hope you will submit a version of this same piece for publication as an op-ed piece in several prominent newspapers. These facts need to be more widely known by those who are not already convinced of the wisdom and humanity of your church's position.

On another subject, I recently read your book A New Christianity for a New World immediately after reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I was struck by how much the two of you agree! I'm wondering if you have read his book and what you think of his arguments there. (By the way, he speaks highly of you at one point in the book).

I'm a member of Christ Lutheran Church in Pacific Beach, California, and have heard you speak there and elsewhere in San Diego on several occasions. My wife and I were among the facilitators of our church's welcoming statement. I have been frustrated for some time at the language that continues to be used in the services that reinforces and prolongs the theistic concept of God. A welcome topic for a future piece would be suggestions for substitutions for outmoded language in the liturgy.

Thank you for continuing to speak and write your beliefs.


Dear John,

Thank you for your kind comments. My online essays are available to newspapers for reprinting as op-ed pieces any time they wish. The only requirement is that they state, "Reprinted by permission of Waterfront Media, Bishop Spong's online publisher. Bishop Spong's columns appear weekly on his Web site, www.JohnShelbySpong.com ."

In regard to your question about Richard Dawkins, I am not surprised at the level of agreement you find between us. I think Professor Dawkins is both brilliant and an incredible communicator. The definition of God that he rejects is the same one I reject. The difference being that he thinks the God he rejects is the western God of Christianity and I believe that deity is a distortion of who and what God is. The Christian Church has made such incredulous claims about who God is and who God hates and how God acts that it is always on the defensive when new learning that challenges old definitions appears. Traditional Christianity has been buffeted by the insights of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Freud and many others. They have destroyed the credibility of much of our God talk. Richard Dawkins points that out in powerful ways, feeding his conclusion that God is a harmful delusion that ought to be dismissed. I agree that God is in fact a delusion and ought to be dismissed. We disagree on the question of whether that God is the God encountered in Jesus of Nazareth or a gross distortion. I believe it is a distortion.

I met Richard Dawkins some years ago when I gave a lecture at New College, Oxford. I had just that day read his incisive book The Selfish Gene in the Bodleian Library at Oxford so I was pleased to find myself seated next to him at the High Table for dinner.

I am glad his book is so popular. I think it feeds the very debate that the religious tradition of the west needs to have. J. B. Phillips, another Englishman, once wrote a book entitled Your God Is Too Small. I believe that is the great problem facing contemporary Christianity. Richard Dawkins helps to make sure we face that problem and, for that reason, I welcome his book.

- John Shelby Spong

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"I have been frustrated for some time at the language that continues to be used in the services that reinforces and prolongs the theistic concept of God."
Alex's note: UU services answer this.

Heather Satrom from Silver Springs, Maryland, writes:
I am an avid reader of your books and was delighted that you have written yet another one. Thank you for making scholarly research related to the Bible accessible to the general public. I have given copies of your books to dozens of friends and relatives over the years in an effort to generate dialogue among Christians and non-Christians alike. I think Jesus for the Non-Religious is particularly useful for humanists/agnostics who want to understand the historical Jesus. Thank you for this book!
As a member of the "Church Alumni Association," I have been frustrated by many aspects of the church, for reasons that you describe so well in Why Christianity Must Change or Die. However, I was delighted to discover, relatively recently, a spiritual path that works for me: Attending Quaker meetings in the unprogrammed/silent tradition. It seems to me that the Quaker concept (that of "God in everyone") relates to Paul Tillich's idea of God as "the Ground of All Being," which you often discuss. Do you have any thoughts on this? I have so much respect for your work, and I would be delighted to hear your reflections on Quakerism, Quaker thinkers/activists, and your experience in a Quaker meeting, if you've ever attended one.


Dear Heather,

I have always held the Quaker movement in high regard. Early in my career, I gained much from the writings of an Episcopal priest who had become a Quaker. When I was a rector in Richmond, a member of my staff in her retirement joined a Quaker meeting house with her husband and derived much strength from that association. About two years ago, I led a National Conference for Quakers that was held on the campus of Virginia Tech University. Every contact I have had with them has been enriching.

The witness of the Quakers is deep in American history. Ben Franklin both honored and was later deeply bothered by their presence in Pennsylvania in the 18th century. They are peacemakers, deeply ethical people. I find that the Quaker movement has served as the conscience of our nation. It has always been small in numbers but powerful in making its message heard. Quakers always seem to appeal to those turned off by traditional, organized religion.

Two of our presidents had Quaker roots, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. It would be interesting to find what the residual influence of Quakerism was on the formation of their character.

So, if you have found a home there, I rejoice for you and I commend it to others when traditional worship patterns begin to offend more than to enhance.

- John Shelby Spong

Kenneth Jacobson from Frazee, Minnesota, writes:
ws has been received that a California Episcopal Diocese (San Joaquin) has reached the second stage in voting to leave the national Episcopal Communion over the issue of homosexuality. The media is describing the anti-gay position as biblical, the pro-gay as being against Bible teaching. After reading Living in Sin and The Sins of Scripture, I cannot believe that it is that simple. Reporters are not doing their job of careful investigation.
Have these biblical stories and texts that are quoted to support the anti-gay position ever been read, analyzed, thoroughly debated, and defended in bishops' conferences? These are supposedly intelligent people who respect scholarship. How can they support exclusion on such flimsy evidence?
Am I wrong to think this struggle among Episcopalians might be a healthy thing, and that resistance from the highest levels might be a way of teaching and illuminating facts and reality, exposing the prejudice for the evil it is?
Where is all this going? What could or should be done to bring about a rational and acceptable result? Your thoughts and your comments would be very much appreciated.


Dear Kenneth,

It is not fair to expect secular journalists to be biblical scholars, nor should it be anticipated that they would spend the necessary time to research the issue. It is for that reason that they tend to accept uncritically the oft-repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti-gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro-slavery and anti-women.

There is also a widely accepted mentality that if the Bible is opposed, the idea must be wrong. That is little more than nonsensical fundamentalism. The rise of democracy was contrary to the "clear teaching of the Bible," as the debate over the forced signing of the Magna Carta by King John of England in 1215 revealed. The Bible was quoted to prove that Galileo was wrong; that Darwin was wrong; that Freud was wrong; and that allowing women to be educated, to vote, to enter the professions, and to be ordained was wrong. So the fact that the Bible is quoted to prove that homosexuality is evil and to be condemned is hardly a strong argument, given the history of how many times the Bible has been wrong. I believe that most bishops know this but the Episcopal Church has some fundamentalist bishops and a few who are "fellow travelers" with fundamentalists.

The Bible was written between the years 1000 B.C.E. and 135 C.E. Our knowledge of almost everything has increased exponentially since that time. It is the height of ignorance to continue using the Bible as an encyclopedia of knowledge to keep dying prejudices intact. The media seems to cooperate in perpetuating that long ago abandoned biblical attitude.

That is not surprising since the religious people keep quoting it to justify their continued state of unenlightenment. That attitude is hardly worthy of the time it takes to engage it. I do not debate with members of the flat Earth society either. Prejudices all die. The first sign that death is imminent comes when the prejudice is debated publicly. The tragedy is that church leaders back the wrong side of the conflict, which is happening today from the Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury to the current crop of Evangelical leaders. That too will pass and the debate on homosexuality will be just one more embarrassment in Christian history.

- John Shelby Spong

Øystein Evensen from Oslo, Norway, writes:
You mentioned the problem of miracles and the hand of God in prayer, but even men and women have power to affect the world. In what sense do you believe that God has such power?


Dear Øystein,

It is easier to document how human beings affect the world than it is how God does. That is because human beings can experience God but they cannot define God. I do not understand the reluctance of human beings to understand that simple truth. The human mind cannot embrace what it means to be God. We cannot view the world from God's perspective. We cannot show where God's intervention was decisive.

If we could do that, we would presumably be able to explain why God does not always intervene. If God can be quoted or appealed to on one side of that ledger then we must also raise the other side.

Can God stop a hurricane from barreling down on New Orleans? Can God stop a tsunami before it kills 300,000 people in the Indian Ocean? Can God stop the inevitable progress of an incurable disease? If God can do that, why does not God do so?

What is easier to see is how God might enable a person to be more attuned to the world and thus more sensitive to its evils and more dedicated to committing human energy to eradicate these evils.

I am convinced that we must stop seeing God as a being like us, but without human limits, and begin seeing God as a permeating presence, a life force, the power of love or even what my favorite theologian, Paul Tillich, called the "ground of being." If we could do that, I might begin to be able to answer your question. Until that shift takes place, your question will always perplex human beings.

- John Shelby Spong

Paul Kennedy from Honolulu, Hawaii writes:
Have you read Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris? If so, I think many of us would like to learn what you think of his seemingly well thought out arguments in condemnation of religion.


Dear Paul,

I think Sam Harris has a great deal to say to America and I am pleased that he is writing. People need to hear the criticism of an honest atheist who is not afraid to speak his mind about what Christianity has come to mean to him. The public face of Christianity in America is already something with which I do not want to be identified. So many people who call themselves Christians are aggressive, hostile, closed minded and insensitive to anyone with whom they disagree. The public face of the Christian Church today is still both anti-female and anti-homosexual. Yesterday the public face of Christianity where I grew up was pro-segregation and anti-black. I reject the Christianity that Sam Harris rejects. The big difference is that I am aware of another and quite different Christianity. Sam Harris does not appear to be so. When I wrote A New Christianity for a New World, I tried to spell out what that different Christianity might look like. I believe it makes for a far greater and richer dialogue to engage the criticism of Sam Harris than to do what so many Christians seem to me to do, namely to search the Scriptures to find a way to give biblical authority to their latest prejudice.

- John Shelby Spong

Diana from North Carolina writes:
Since the Bible contains so much misinterpreted information, what kind of reference should a praying, spiritual person use? Are there certain translations that are less derogatory than others? Also, in looking at a deeper and clearer understanding of the Bible, are there metaphysical understandings that would enhance one's spiritual journey and that would be useful? If so, what are they?


Dear Diana,

Part of the problem that underlies your letter is that in your mind and in the minds of countless millions of others like you, a distorted Bible and a distorted understanding of the Bible has shaped your life for far too long. To undo that damage would almost take a lifetime. Some translations of the Bible are certainly more accurate than others, but any honest translation of the Bible will still confront the reader in many passages with an understanding of God who acts in an immoral way. That is simply part of the tribal story the Bible tells. Tribal gods have chosen people, which of course means that those not of that tribe are God's unchosen. Tribal gods hate the enemies of the chosen people. So the God of the Bible conducts a reign of terror against the Egyptians with plagues, against the Ammonites by stopping the sun in the sky to allow Joshua more daylight in which to slaughter them and even orders King Saul to commit genocide against the Amalekites. No version of the Bible can remove the horrors of some of its stories. That, however, is not the way to read this book. It is not the word of God in any literal sense.

The Bible is a developing narrative, portraying the developing God-consciousness in human life. It moves beyond the tribal deity of some of its earlier parts to a universalism that defines God as both Love and Justice, and even calls us to love our enemies. The essential truths of the Bible, useful on all of our spiritual journeys, is that in creation God proclaims that all life is holy, in the Jesus story, the Bible asserts that all life is loved and that through the Holy Spirit, who is said to be "the Lord and giver of life," the Bible issues a call to each of us to be all that we can be.

I work on these primary premises of the Christian story, and that is why I still treasure, read, study and try to live into what I believe is the essential truth of the Bible. I do this by rejecting everything that is present in either the Christian Church or the Christian Scriptures that is used to diminish the humanity of any child of God, based on any external characteristic of tribe, gender, sexual orientation or religious tradition. I invite you to walk with me into this new perspective.

- John Shelby Spong

John from Sydney, Australia, writes:
Sydney is a conservative place, where the only approach to the Bible is literal and judgmental. The God of the Bible seems to be vengeful and angry. The God in the Old Testament is particularly unappealing. What resources could you suggest to help me find a more open and life-affirming interpretation of the Old Testament God?


Dear John,

I have been to Sydney on at least eight occasions and have experienced exactly the attitude you express. The Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches are so out of touch with the modern world that they are an embarrassment to the whole of Christianity. There are some isolated congregations in the Uniting Church of Australia (I think of Pitt Street Uniting Church in Sydney and one or two Anglican Churches with whom I am in contact regularly) who buck the trend, but the trend is overwhelmingly negative. So individual Christians and honest seekers after the truth must find resources outside the normal ecclesiastical structures. I recommend two such resources to you. One can be done individually. The other needs a group or community commitment.

The first is a study resource developed at Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, by the senior minister, Ian Lawton; his father, Bill Lawton; and a member of that congregation who is a university professor in the field of biology, Howard Van Teal. Of note is the fact that both Ian and Bill Lawton were priests in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney at an earlier stage in their careers. Ian left first to go to Auckland and then to Spring Lake. Bill retired, but the roots that both of them have in Sydney are deep. Ian is even a graduate of the Moore Theological Seminary in Sydney, which is more evangelical and fundamentalist than any place I know outside of Bob Jones or Oral Roberts Seminaries in America.

These three gifted people have developed an online study resource on the Old Testament beginning with the Book of Genesis. I have read it and I think it is super. It is an "e-course" to which individuals can subscribe for a very minimal fee and get the entire course sent as an e-mail five days a week for three weeks. Its focus is on the relationship between science and religion. A message board will be set up to allow subscribers to discuss the course with others. After reading the course I sent the authors the following endorsement: "Would you like to meet a God greater than the one most frequently met in Church? This e-course on science and religion and the Book of Genesis will open doors that you never imagined."

For further information, go to the Christ Community Church Web site. Other e-courses are under preparation. In my opinion, this is one of the most creative churches in the United States, perhaps in the world.

The second resource is entitled "Living the Questions," a multi-week adult education resource that many churches all over the world are now using. It too is a downloadable study that features many of the top names in progressive Christianity in the world today. "Living the Questions" is the creation of two young and multi-talented Methodist ministers in Phoenix, Arizona: Jeff Procter-Murphy and Dave Felten. It would be more effective if a group inside or outside the church wanted to do this course together. It would also be more cost effective. For more information go to Living the Questions. Both of these resources can be used anywhere in the world. Good luck in Sydney.

- John Shelby Spong



Alex's notes:
Christ Community Church = www.christ-community.net
Living the Questions = www.livingthequestions.com

Katherine Honts from San Jose, California, writes:
Do you believe in the devil?


Dear Katherine,

No!

Evil is real, but an external being who causes it is a human projection of part of our own reality into the external world of being. The devil is an excuse, someone to blame, part of the system of control that religious institutions set up to keep themselves dominant.

Belief in an external devil has done more harm than we can imagine. Executing the witches of Salem, Massachusetts, is only one of them.

It is time for the human race to grow up and let go of these childish ideas.

- John Shelby Spong

GordonLee from St. Louis Park, Minnesota, writes:
It's a small point, but in your January 30 essay you refer to a "three-days-dead body." How do you and most others manage to count three days from Friday afternoon to before sunrise on Sunday? I know the usual explanation is that according to Jewish reckoning what is meant are parts of three days (part of Friday, part of Saturday and part of Sunday), but that is not how the average reader would understand what you wrote. The obvious tie-in is to Matthew's three days and three nights referring to Jonah and Jesus, but do we need to perpetuate the confusion just because Matthew could not count?


Dear Gordon,

You are correct, but that is what biblical literalists use to prove that the resurrection was in fact the resuscitation of a "three-days-dead body." That is why I put that phrase in quotation marks. The three day designation comes, as you suggest, from the gospels themselves even though if one counts the time in the gospel narratives there is actually only a period of thirty-six hours that elapses between Friday at sundown to Sunday at sunrise. In my way of counting that gives us not three days, but a day and a half.

I think the three-day symbol is just that, a symbol. On three occasions, Mark has Jesus predict his resurrection "after three days." Matthew and Luke, both of whom have Mark in front of them as they write, change Mark's word "after" to "on." "After three days" and "on the third day" do not give us the same day. So there is a dancing, not firm, quality to the use of the phrase "three days" even in the gospels themselves.

Mark tells us no story of the raised Christ appearing to anyone, but he does suggest that they will see him in some manner in Galilee. Galilee is, however, a 7-to-10-day journey from Jerusalem, so that projected appearance in Galilee could not have occurred within the three-day boundary.

Luke stretches out the appearances of the raised Christ for forty days and John, if one treats Chapter 21 as an authentic part of John's gospel, hints that appearances continued for perhaps months.

My study has led me to view the three days as a liturgical symbol designed to allow the Christians to celebrate the day of the resurrection on the Sabbath following the crucifixion and not as a literal symbol at all.

When I wrote Resurrection: Myth or Reality? I postulated that the Easter experience could have been separated from the crucifixion by period of time from six months to a year. I see no reason to change that assessment today, even though I cannot in the space of this answer go into the reasons that lie behind that conclusion. By literalizing all of the symbols of Easter, we have created numerous interpretive problems. This is only one of them.

Thanks for raising the question.

- John Shelby Spong

LarryHester from Denver writes:
You recently suggested that the split in Christianity today is between those who assert yesterday's religious explanations and those who find no meaning in yesterday's religious explanations and give up on religion altogether. If that is so, is Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great, a message from the religiously disillusioned? If so how do those religious people who defend the past deal with that book?


Dear Larry,

If I understand your question correctly, let me begin with three declarative statements:

1. Religion must always be questioned
2. Theism can be abandoned without abandoning God
3. Christopher Hitchens' book is a real asset to the current debate.

Now just let me put some flesh on each of those statements.

Since human beings are creatures of both time and space, and since we know from the work of Albert Einstein that time and space are relative categories that expand and contract in relation to each other, then we must conclude that any statement made by anyone, who is bound by time and space, will never be absolute. There are no propositional statements, secular or religious, that are exempt from this principle. Words reduce all human experiences to relativity. That is why every religious formula must be questioned; that is why no word of any book is inerrant; that is why no proclamation of any ecclesiastical leader is infallible; and finally, that is why no religious system or institution can ever claim to possess the true faith. Religion is a journey into the mystery of God. It is not a system of beliefs and creeds and when it becomes that, it always becomes idolatrous and begins to die.

Theism is not God. It is a human definition of God that assumes that God is a being, perhaps the "Supreme Being," supernatural in power, dwelling outside the world (usually thought of as above the sky), who periodically invades the world in miraculous ways to answer human prayers or to effect the divine will.

It is my sense that this definition of God has been mortally wounded by the successive blows of Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, just to name a few. I do not believe, however, that this means that God has been mortally wounded even if the theistic definition of God has been.

Suppose God is not defined as "a being," but is simply experienced as a power, a presence. Then describing that experience is quite different from claiming to know who or what God is. Then the question is, "Are we delusional or is this experience real?" I think God is real and I believe we are in the process of defining our God experience in a new way that will replace the dying theistic definition of the past.

Finally, Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great, is a description of the theistic God of the past who is dying. The theistic God certainly appears in the Bible and is guilty of many things that are genuinely immoral, like killing the firstborn male in every Egyptian household, stopping the sun in the sky to allow more time for Joshua to slaughter the Amorites and ordering genocide against the Amalekites through the prophet Samuel. Christians need to remember that it has been the theistic God who has been responsible for the development of such things as anti-Semitism, the Inquisition, and the oppression of people of color, women and homosexual persons. This deity has also been perceived as justifying war, fighting crusades and creating slavery. Let us agree with Christopher Hitchens that this God is not great. We need to challenge Christopher Hitchens' assumption, however, that this is the only way we can think about or conceptualize God.

I think of the God experience as the power of life, love and being flowing through the universe and coming to consciousness in human self-awareness alone. I therefore feel that by living fully, loving wastefully and being all that I can be I can make the God experience visible. I also believe that it is my Christian vocation to build a world where all people have a better chance to live, love and to be. It is when I do these two things, I believe, that I am engaging in the essence of worship.

- John Shelby Spong

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Susan from St. Paul, Minnesota, writes:
I find it difficult, very difficult, to participate in the life of the Church because of its negativity and distance from contemporary scientific knowledge. What can I do? Where can I go? Is there any hope for a revolution within the Church?


Dear Susan,

The Church is a complex organism. Many seek in it security from all questioning. A few seek to move beyond its understanding into the world of the 21st century. The tension between the two groups is palpable. Recall that Galileo was condemned and forced to recant from his idea that the earth rotated around the sun and therefore was not the center of a three-tiered universe. Both Galileo and the Pope were members of the Christian Church. The Pope was seeking religious security; Galileo was seeking truth.

The same could be said for Isaac Newton, whose work made both miracle and magic unbelievable. Newton covered his vulnerability by stating that there were two books that revealed the Truth of God. One was the Bible. This, Newton stated, was the book the church and the theologians were meant to interpret and to determine what it says and what it means. The other book, said Newton, was the "Book of Nature," which, he stated, was the domain for the scientists to explore and to interpret. Thus their truths did not overlap. Newton got away with that simplistic distinction, but only because most people did not know much about either book. If one treats the Bible literally, it does proclaim a three-tiered universe, a seven day creation, God's ability to stop the sun in the sky to provide Joshua with more daylight, and the ability for a virgin to conceive and for a deceased person to be called back to life. None of these things is possible in the world we inhabit today.

When the Bible and empirical or scientific truth are in conflict, I think we need to recognize that the Bible is probably the one that is wrong. That is not a problem unless you think that God wrote the Bible, because that would mean that God had to be wrong. The gods of human beings are frequently wrong, just as they are frequently inadequate and frequently evil. Why is it that we do not recognize that no human being and no religious system can finally capture the truth of God?

The Bible was written between 2000 and 3000 years ago. Do you know anyone who would think that absolute truth has been captured in a 2000- to 3000-year-old textbook on any subject? Would you go to a doctor who practiced medicine out of a 2000- to 3000-year-old medical textbook? Would you study astronomy, geography, chemistry or biology out of a book that old? Religious claims for the literal accuracy of the Bible are nothing more than the conclusions of frightened people who cannot deal with the world of today and so they hide in irrational conclusions.

There have always been voices in the Church that force the Christian faith to face reality. I hope you might be willing to become one of them.

- John Shelby Spong