Liberal Christianity
By Arthur RugerLesson 8: Social and Political Activism
The path of Jesus is there in the holiness of scripture:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”
I have not been called to join a church or be validated by the formality of an organized sect. God, the Eternal Father in Heaven communes with me. His spirit lives in me always. Father has called me and invigorates me through the Spirit. I and the Father are one. And so are each of you.
“He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.”
Our Father is the God of Compassion. The poor are numerous and their poverty is not only a want of bread, but a poverty of spirit. Yet theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. The gospel is a living practice of the life of compassion, concern, kindness and advocacy on behalf of the poor. I am not called to get the poor to join churches, but to love the poor as I myself love the Father.
“He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted.”
Those who mourn will be comforted. The meek will inherit the earth. He hath not sent me to say ‘Be of good cheer, say your prayers, and God will bless you.’ He hath not sent me to say ‘Take upon yourself my name and declare that I am your redeemer and all will go well with you.’ He hath sent me to cheer the brokenhearted with my own strength and spirit, pray for the brokenhearted as I pray for my own broken heartedness.
He hath sent me to bring the brokenhearted into my own circle of prayer and bless them by deed more than word.
“To preach deliverance to the captives.”
Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled. The merciful will be shown mercy. He hath sent me to teach the captives about their freedom and to work with them to attain freedom. He hath sent me to place less value on my own riches and comfort and a greater worth on acts of goodness for the sake of goodness. He hath not called me to stand in a church, speak from a book, condemn from the pulpit and retire to my mansion.
“And recovering sight to the blind”
He hath not called me to say, ‘Lo, come to my chapel and be saved,’ but to send me out of my chapel and into the darkness with a light of compassion and action. Where there is blindness, I come to teach vision, a life led by the Spirit, and knowledge of the God of Compassion.
I come to urge repentance to wholeness in an absence of blind guilt, sorrow and a sense of condemnation at the hands of those who deem themselves righteous rather than upright.
“To set at liberty them that are bruised.”
The pure in heart will see God. Peacemakers will be called the sons of God. And the persecuted? Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He hath not called me to inflict fear, shame nor guilt, but to bandage wounds, pour on oil and wine and carry to the inn and pay from my own sources for the ministrations of healing.
“To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
A time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. The acceptable year of the Lord is every year, every month, every week, every day as God and Heaven are a living part of every moment.
The Father of the Prodigal Son is the God of Compassion. The Prodigal Son is but one of all the marvelous offspring of the God of Compassion. He is frail and flawed, but now wise from his earlier immaturity. Aware of his failings, he knows that he has failed to hit the mark and owns his own mistakes.
In not blaming Satan for his actions, he has not only ownership of his failures and successes, but proprietorship of his life. He has come to know what Jesus knew. The Christ Path is a Path of Action and Impact. It is impervious to whether or not we are deemed good or righteous by others. It is the path that does not seek outward recognition, but personal and private satisfaction in the pursuit of goodness.
It is that Spirit of Life that will cause the God of Compassion to reward openly.
The New Christianity is in fact the oldest Christianity; that which came to flower in the beginning before the confusion of men led to misconceptions about church and belonging; before priests and popes took it upon themselves to tell God what to do and the people how to behave; before preachers built churches after the fashion of courthouses where they could throw the book at the congregation.
Christian goodness brings to pass the will of God when it is individually infectious, passing from one soul to the next spontaneously. An epidemic of this sort will more thoroughly impact our people than all that crusades, revivals and political legislation have accomplished in the two centuries of our nation and two millenniums of regulated orthodox enforcement.
There seem to be two fundamental approaches to Christian practice in our day and age. One is the social construct of churches and their potential for group achievement. Many practicing Christians will find sufficient satisfaction only in this context and that will be, in my opinion, a good thing.
The other fundamental approach is that of Mystical Christianity. Many practicing Christians hunger for something more powerfully spiritual in their lives. For them the Holy Spirit does not come in flashes during exceptionally powerful moods of righteousness or good deed.
Rather, constant awareness of the Holy Spirit, of communion and oneness with God are part of their deepest desires. The world needs both – not to be saved by the ultimate religion of the greatest truth, but to be enhanced by an exemplar of organized social achievement on the one hand and by personal spiritual invigoration, experience and inspiration on the other.
We need not be imperial with an idea of bringing the world to Christ. We need to stop pretending that the world is that to which Adam and Eve were banished. Rather, we must recognize that the world we have is that from which in God’s wisdom, Adam and Eve were sent.
Like that marvelous couple, we must realize that we are not only in the world, but of the world. If we do so, we will seek, find and be one with our Father, the God of Compassion; the God proclaimed by Jesus the Christ.
What is it that draws people to religion?
We hear contemporary couples with young children expressing the idea that they want to find a good church where the children can learn about God. Some of these couples have not set foot in a church since they themselves were children.
Other folks come to churches seeking an alternative to spiritual and psychological attitudes that have not served them well. Some are drawn to religion and to churches after some sort of personal trauma or loss, seeking answers to questions to which they’d never given conscious prior attention.
There are also those who seek an opportunity to give service, expecting that the social circle within a church congregation will provide that opportunity as well as one for greater social contact and interaction.
Opportunities to give service in contexts other than church congregations are abundant and I would not suggest that the primary appeal of religion is an opportunity to perform some good work in a formalized moral setting.
Just what is it that our Christian congregations offer in their communities – and does that offering have a real potential of satisfying the needs or hungers of those looking through the doors and windows?
The enduring power of religion is not as a social club. Rather, it lies in the realm of the needs for meaning and purpose in living. The venue in life that seems to require endurance is more in the perceptive realm of mind and spirit and is not better countered by an approach of moralizing and exhortation to conscious believing with strict conformity to tradition and doctrine.
Exercises:
1. Christianity ought to hold out the possibility to the internally restless that there is something available that fills the void – something more than just Sunday worship, potluck suppers, and clichéd generalities around believing.
If being Christian means more than just going through weekly motions and repeating worn out slogans then what ought to be offered is something responsive to that internal hunger, what Alan Watts called a “non-verbal experience of the divine.”
a. How would you describe or elaborate on what a “non-verbal experience of the divine” might look like?
b. The power behind our beliefs is not our ability to become educated in what the Bible SAYS, thereby permitting us opportunities to publicly display how well we can read or memorize famous verses. The power is something else. Based on what you have learned about a liberal viewpoint in the previous lessons, what might that be?
c. Sermons on righteousness must not be sermons on self-righteousness. Sermons on judgment day should not be given in such a way as to incite thoughts of how righteous it feels to be judgmental. Goodness should be taught as something desired rather than something by which salvation is earned. Agree or disagree and why?
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