Liberal Christianity

Lesson 6: Ethics and Morality

The Role of the Church

Jesus’ criticisms of the priestly class are a part of New Testament scripture. He was at times quite caustic, indignant and outrageous in his effort to deal with a society in which the literal interpretation of scripture had gone to the extreme.

The letter of the Law was the basis for social behavior and decision-making. The spirit of the Law, despite the presence of scripture, tradition and history, was not. Fear of the priesthood was the basis for acceptance and validation and an impetus for feeling fear of both the priesthood and one's peers or neighbors.

Jesus did not come to write new laws or overthrow old ones. Rather to teach again the need for wisdom and understanding regarding the laws of a God who had been reduced to two-dimensional form: a judgmental divinity who was either pleased or displeased.

Many Christians behave as if seeking good is a commanded practice with the promise of happiness and future reward. Others behave as if seeking good for the sake of goodness is what matters.

The former, despite ministerial protests, amounts to "telling God what to do and the people how to behave", as Watts wrote. Furthermore, from a literal perspective, one would have to assume that Jesus told his Apostles that it is the divine will that they spend the rest of their lives telling everybody how to behave – rather than preaching the Resurrected Lord.

The latter suggests that the human will is of itself capable of perceiving the highest good of all concerned. That such giftedness need be practiced in order to be obtained might very well be what human life is about.

EXERCISES

1. Stephen Mitchell: “No careful reader of the Gospels can fail to be struck by the difference between the large heartedness of such passages and the bitter, badgering tone of some of the passages added by the early church. The epitome of this narrow-hearted, sectarian consciousness is a saying, which a second-century Christian scribe put into the mouth of the resurrected Savior at the end of Mark: Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever doesn’t believe will be damned.’

No wonder Jefferson said, with barely contained indignation: ‘Among the saying and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.’ “

a. Do you agree with the idea that God’s kingdom is a kingdom of enforceable order? Why or why not?

b. Based upon your own thinking, discuss how one can combine perceptions of a God of Compassion with those of a God who cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance; a judgmental God who keeps score and will eventually get you in the end.

c. Discuss the meaning of Jesus’ exhortation to “Love God with all your heart, might, mind and strength” and to “Love your neighbor as yourself” as it corresponds to the Biblical teaching of the need to “Fear God” and “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.”

2. The whole construct of God's reality is not the deteriorated Jewish version that existed in Jesus' lifetime in which obedience or punishment is the only choices. Nor is it the perversion added by the early cleric dominators of the Bible who taught that it was necessary in some vague mandatory way to align your belief and understanding with some "established" (by who?) order of belief or suffer excommunication or torture as a heretic.

The primary purpose of much of early Roman Catholic theology was to justify the need for a formal Church in order to obtain salvation.

a. If heaven is a magnificent mansion behind a gate guarded by St. Peter, then we might say that the Church is the vehicle that, like a limousine, conveys us to the very gates of heaven.

As an internal mental construct, does heaven’s actual mansion include a formal Church with its requirement to belong and conform? (In other words, will be be required to pass throught the Pearly Gates in the church-limousine?)Elaborate please.

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