Don't you love open questions?

In our imagined understanding of Christianity, there are few real fundamental doctrines which must be believed and the rest are all open questions.  It does not matter how you answer them, if you have the core convictions correct.  In this modern day view of things, even the Trinity is not quite essential.  We have long ago gravitated more to the idea of a single God with three persons being a confusing muddle which we attach to His unity out of deference to those who went before.  Some Christians call this unitarian God Father, others Jesus, and still others the Spirit.  Perhaps at best we are modalists overall.

So it also goes with the incarnation.  Virgin, well, maybe.  Or maybe a Joseph and Mary who got a little frisky before it was appropriate.  Strangely, modern Christianity resents the whole idea of virginity as if it were an asset wasted -- even when it comes to Blessed Mary.  Talk to clergy about the ever virginity of Mary some get offended at the idea that Mary and Joseph did not have at least a 47 shades of gray sex life.  The hypostatic union?  Who can even pronounce it and who cares?   

Even the cross is not without its detractors.  The old vicarious atonement seems too medieval for modern ideas.  We love Christus Victor with Jesus the underdog -- we all love to cheer on the underdog.  But the idea that our sin is so bad it requires blood, suffering, and death is seldom heard from Protestant, Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or even Lutheran pulpits.  It would seem that Jesus died so that we can have our best life now -- how to grab hold of your goals and achieve them at every cost.  The resurrection is a great idea but too much of it is lost on a life that is vague, sketchy, spiritual, and not all that real.  Reincarnation has more appeal to us than the resurrection of the body.

Jump down to other things and you see our fascination with open questions.  Same sex marriage?  Trans identity?  Divorce?  The ordination of women?  Abortion?  Birth control?  Euthanasia?  Assisted suicide?  There is a sad but real truth that churches in America have decided that none of these is important enough to be dogmatic about -- except to be dogmatic that you cannot say no to any of them.