The Agony of Being Anglican
So often I find myself thinking how the real church, the real Body of Christ, is not any of the numerous Christian denominations as such. There are many true Christian believers both within and without the established or institutionalized churches - and there is much that constitutes the rest that, like chaff, will one day just be blown away.
Matthew 7: 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
I have often found the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be insightful and inspiring, and the following (from The Cost of Discipleship, 1959) are certainly prophetic for the situation that exists today:
“The price we are having to pay to-day in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and the sacraments wholesale, we baptized, we confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and the unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard…What happened to all those warning of Luther’s against preaching the gospel in such a manner as to make men rest secure in their ungodly living? Was there ever a more terrible or disastrous instance of the Christianizing of the world than this?
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God.
“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.”
See here for more excerpts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship.
For too long the image of God as the God of love has been presented without the rest of His character. This was the heresy of Marcion back in the second century, but we hear the same thing repeated often enough today, that “God is love” - period! Our God of love is also a holy and righteous God, a God who requires obedience to His Will from His children - for their own good as well as His glory. We are loved by a holy and righteous God, but that is forgotten by those who create their own images of God via the heresies as popular today* as they have ever been.
The real church, the spiritual Body of Christ, must be holy as God is holy. That which conforms to the world and mankind’s philosophies does not comprise this spiritual body which must, by definition as Christ’s body, have the character of God.
The church can make itself as relevant to the 21st century as it wants, but that is not the spiritual church I am talking about here. Although Christians are in the world, we are not to be of the world. We are to be united with Him who is other-worldly and no follower of man’s philosophies, doctrines and dogma. The church can market itself to appeal to greater numbers, offering the dispensation of “cheap grace” as enticement, upholding the “rights” to self-seeking self indulgence, worldly self esteem and happiness for all - but this is not the holy and righteous Body of Christ wherein we are to die to self and follow our Lord in obedience to His commands. As un-politically correct as it is, the real church is actually exclusive, not inclusive. All are invited, but those who put their worldly idols before Him go ahead and exclude themselves. The father of lies offers the counterfeit version - the inclusive church where worldly idols take precedence over denying oneself to follow Him.
We cannot “remain faithful” to a church that teaches lies instead of God’s truth. We cannot allow our children to be raised in such a church. As sad as it is, those of us who remain the true believers must eventually separate from those heading off into the darkness. Many have tried hard to stop them going that way, off into the darkness, but if they are determined then there will be no stopping them. Orthodox Episcopalians or Anglicans may have no real choice left but to part company with those who prefer their own agendas to the lordship of Christ. Those others don’t see it, and so folk like myself will be accused of being self-righteous and judgemental for discerning that it is they, not us, who have chosen the darkness. As it is, I have not rejoined the Anglican Communion where I live as the Church of England in New Zealand is known to be largely at the liberal end of the spectrum, my own local parish heavily weighted with women priests and the teaching influenced by liberal theology. I do not have a church home in a physical sense just at present. But meanwhile, my consolation is that the true Body of Christ is a community that exists unconfined by walls of buildings anyway.
* Read Matt Kennedy’s The Presiding Bishop’s Top Five - Pelagiagism, Marcionism, Pluralism, Universalism, and Gnosticism.
Throughout the time that Judah’s Journal has been up and running, there have been visitors coming from over 70 different countries. By far the majority come from English speaking nations, but over 40 different languages are also represented here. I greatly admire those of you who fluently read or speak more than one language as I have only smatterings of a couple of others.
If the relentless commercial build-up to Christmas with all the tinsel trappings has you pondering where in the whole business is the original meaning, and if it has not been thoroughly abandoned to the worship of something else instead, you could be forgiven for considering taking Time Out from the occasion and leaving the rest of the world to manage it without you.
Twenty or so years ago I included a chatty hand-written letter with a Christmas card that I sent an elderly in-law and received back a response: “Thank you for your form letter with all the news.” I was shocked - and stung. It was not a “form letter” and I had gone to far more trouble than I probably really had the time to spare. Her brief couple of sentences, the only personal comment made, were scribbled hastily on the bottom of a badly typed and photocopied page roughly folded and put in with her card. Thus began my love-hate relationship with the ubiquitous Christmas letter that pads out most of the Christmas cards we receive this time of year.
An online group member recently told how a work colleague, the father of a young man who had got himself into big trouble, had become so desperate about his son that, unable to cope any more, he had ended his own life. It was said by another how hard that was to understand, and yet another added that hopefully the mother of the young man would reappear on the scene (she and the father were estranged) to be there for her son instead.
The parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant has appeared numerous times in both Western and Oriental thought, expressing the supposed fact that people tend to understand only a tiny portion of Reality and then extrapolate all manner of doctrine from that, each claiming only his one is the correct version. 
Pope Benedict XVI has inherited the Catholic Church’s Catechism which holds him to the view that the God of Abraham is the deity in common to Jews, Christians and Muslims. All three monotheistic faiths claim the God of Abraham as their own, and the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges that to be the case. 
One of the authors I have referenced in my comments on Islam is Robert Spencer. He is committed to exposing the facts about Islam and the prophet of Islam. However, in doing so, he receives considerable flak from Muslims who resent what he writes and accuse him of disseminating lies based on hatred and fear. It is important for the reader to regard critically all such protests that set about trying to discount this kind of information. Many who protest are Muslims who want to present a nicer side to Islam. They themselves may truly and wholeheartedly believe their version of Islam to be the truth, but it is a version that is at variance with the facts highlighted by these authors noted here and on websites beyond this one. Some of these Muslims have adopted a “moderate version” of Islam and claim that the “radicalized” Islam of the Middle East is not true Islam. However, there is much to be said about this position as the “moderate” believers do little (if anything) to defy their own Muslim brotherhood whose beliefs and behaviours are such a cause for concern, and much else is also denied in the face of objective reality. The claim that these authors are spreading lies and have an agenda based on hatred and unrealistic fear is unfounded. Objective reality demonstrates very clearly that reasonable fear of Islam is not unrealistic and that the facts are proven truthful, substantiated both by world events and Muslims themselves. One must really question the agenda of those “moderate” Muslims who deny that it is the case and insist upon a benign interpretation of Islam instead.
