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.
