Lost our edge. . .

It is no secret that much of Christianity has become a tame and boring imitation of either the world around us as this present moment or some imagined future utopia.  Because liberal Christianity has devolved into a mere echo of whatever it is that people are thinking or doing today, it is always a day late and a dollar short and so struggles to be relevant.  Because progressive Christianity has become an ideology that purports to make the world into a better place (largely through ideas that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Gospel, it is no longer a faith but a political movement for justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, and liberation (especially sexual).  As such it must compete not against other religions but with politics and political parties for the attention of people.

I wish I could say that conservative and orthodox Christian bodies are better off but most of them are not.  Rome is trying to hold together views and ideas that inherently conflict with each other -- sort of like the handle of the umbrella that holds together the ribs stretched almost to the breaking point.  If there were a strong pope, it might be manageable but with Francis the ribs are buckling and the whole thing is in danger of folding up into ruins.  The Anglicans have tried, especially those in the developing nations, but there is no mechanism except the bishop to enforce the boundaries and that has brought less than a glowing success.  Besides, the Anglicans seem to draw the line at homosexuality but have thoroughly embraced the ordination of women and have been reluctant to say much against abortion.  For Lutherans the mantle has fallen largely upon Missouri and its fellowship partners.  I wish I could give a glowing report about our success but the results are mixed at best.  Missouri often finds itself between those who are fixated on the things that divide rather than unite and those who really do not care -- both those who do not look beyond their own parish and those who have transcended such sectarian things for the pursuit of an evangelical style identity.

We have lost our edge.  We either argue too much about little things because it is easier to fight about them -- easier than addressing the elephant in the room.  Sadly, many of our people have quietly decided that children may not be such a good thing, that birth control is the only adult and responsible path for married as well as unmarried, and that marriages can easily be broken when they become difficult.  Sure, we are against abortion but the decline in the birth rate among the numbers of those in child-bearing years says a great deal about what else we believe.  We are against injustice but hesitant to speak out and when we do we often sound like those in the liberal corner or else a we come too late to the party and are ignored.  We espouse a morality that is different by degree from the world but not in essence.  We quietly confess things that we know the world rejects but we do not confess them too loudly or too clearly.

We have lost our edge.  We think it normal that half or more of our people claiming to be members are nowhere to be found on Sunday morning.  We have normalized divorce and cohabitation to the point where a pastor who has the nerve to bring it up is often roundly condemned as either a hypocrite in pointing out the specks in the eyes of others while failing to own up to the log in his own eye or we blame the prophet for speaking what God has said (sort of like the Old Testament).  We raise our children to believe different than the world on Sunday morning but to fit in at school and in the rest of the shape of modern day life the rest of the week -- especially with their use of the screens and the internet and social media.  We say that Church is important but our stewardship is pathetic -- giving less than a quarter of the percentage of our incomes that the Old Testament people did by demand and so the Church is forced to beg for money and pastors, teachers, and other church staff are told that they should be paid more but cannot.  We say that service is important but congregations go begging for folks to serve in key leadership positions and then to give those positions the fair commitment of time and energy they deserve.

We have lost our edge.  Our worship services reflect our low commitment to the things of God and so we settle for canned music instead of raising up qualified and faithful parish musicians and organists and we seldom have a choir anymore -- this from the Church of Bach, Brahms, Walter, Pachelbel, Schein, etc...  Our buildings content themselves with delayed maintenance that is revealed in water leaks in roofs and antiquated systems.  In addition to that, we have surrendered art to the connoisseur at the museum and so our walls are filled with the pictures of memes instead of crucifixes and paintings that honor the Lord with beauty.  Our educational programs are more concerned with making kids happy than teaching them the faith and so we judge by statistics of attendance more than by the content we deliver to those young in the faith.  Our support of missions is from the leftovers of what we think we need at home and so there are few dollars left to support the mission of speaking the Gospel to anyone but our own ears.  Our surrender to preference is so deep and so profound that we cannot constrain ourselves from eating and drinking during worship, gabbing through the Divine Service, running in and out of the Nave to satisfy every desire, and walking away when we make a mess with our spilled coffee or breakfast bars.

We have lost our edge.  Our faith has become a tame and timid thing and so the Church looks more like us than it does the wild and shocking creation of Christ.  Who would be offended by what we say and do today?  Would there even be a reason for our enemies to persecute or lock us up or bring us before a magistrate?  If charged, would there be enough evidence in our words and deeds to convict us of even being a Christian?  

I know I am part of the problem.  We all are.  That does not excuse me or any of us nor does it mean that it is too late to be the people and Church God has called us to be.  Christianity was once edgy and shocking and offensive to the world.  Maybe it is time we learned how to be just that for the sake of the Gospel.