The Bible says three things. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, believe in me and love each other. The rest is 6000 years of private interpretations.
Private interpretations of the Bible are all we can make of what is written. To construct theological formulas out of a collection of historical narratives relating how earlier human beings perceived and related to God in order to get a reservation to God's "country club in the sky" is not religion practiced but theorized.
Believe in me and love each other. Everything else will take care of itself.
In that regard, Bishop Spong is right on the money. Christianity must change or die. Suite101's Religion & Spirituality community illustrates this as clearly as any venue where life, spirituality and human interaction are discussed. There are entire choirs of like-persuasion where preaching to each other, justifying and validating each other in some theological conforming way is all that seems to happen - in every "choir room".
No peacemaking efforts, no efforts to bless the poor or poor-in-spirit, no Good Samaritan Activities, no refraining from judgment, no real hungering after righteousness through activism.
John Danforth, in a NY Times Op-Ed 6/17/05 writes:
It would be an oversimplification to say that America's culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers.
Rather than act like persecuted victims straining to right imagined wrongs and imagined dangers in venues elevated above the highest commandment of loving neighbors, the most influential Christians ought to be involved in Jesus' most powerful declaration:
Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. and affirmed by Paul: For God is not the author of confusion but of peace as in all churches of the saints.
Christians find themselves in a situation of having to respond to conflicting spiritual views that reflect disagreement as to what their religion stands for, what values are most important and what methods should be used to work for the common good.
If part and parcel of Christian activism today includes an aggressive evangelical effort then I see liberal Christians empowered to counter the evangelizing of questionable theology and priorities of the Christian Right with an evangelical effort that builds rather than destroys, that seeks peace rather than attempts to justify war, that, like God, encourages awareness of every sparrow that falls - leaving no child, no adult, no family, no culture, no nation or race and no society behind or left out of God's "neighbor" venue.
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