Okay, here’s an example, from the UMC.org site’s “What We Believe” section. I pick on the UMC because this is what I identify as “My people” (since I could no longer say that about the Southern Baptists after a great “growing up” in that denomination prior to it’s dismantling as a diverse, loving, nurturing “home” as it turned to doctrinaire, ultra-conservative, nationalistic drivel). All the other denominations do this, too. What is “this” you ask? It’s a vanilla, non-descript, theological cliche’-ridden rhetoric that leaves things wide open to any number of notions. Even “good news of God’s love in Christ” can be associated with something truly embarrassing if that is one’s experience of the people who used this language in conjunction with the story they told of their faith by the manner in which they embodied what they called “the faith”.
Reflecting on Our Faith
“Theology is thinking together about our faith and discipleship. It’s reflecting with others in the Christian community about the good news of God’s love in Christ”. Read More: http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/reflecting-on-our-faith
We need to be more specific and talk about what is being said when we say “the good news of God’s love in Christ”, for when it uses these “generic” , non-arguable affirmations without explanation, and then proceeds in a manner that is , by omission, unconcerned with some rather obvious problems in the world and in our manner of living, then we do damage to the notion of “the love of God in Christ”.
Now this is directly related to my earlier post about “Salvation” and how “Gnostic” we have become. When we continue to go on and on about how “Salvation” is the end of all ends, and our “number one priority”, we still haven’t said much. When we continue to allow ourselves to ignore life threatening realities that millions of American Christians just continue to support by virtue of our participation in an economic mode of operation that is now clearly unsustainable, and often even actively condemning this recognition of the dangerous path we are on, we have lost grasp of any important notion of “salvation”. When we separate our ecological realities and dependencies from “the spiritual”, we are lost. And when we fail to preach the “good News” of the really BAD news (the Climate Crisis”, then we are participating in the “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”; working against the “Ruah” that is the breath of God moving upon the face of the waters and in the garden, seeking fellowship with us in Creation. (Again, the notion of “Blasphemy of the Spirit” here is from Leah Jacobs Schade in here book “Creation Crisis Preaching)