I remember the day my journey began. It was Sunday, October 15th 2023 and I had gone to Church as I did every Sunday. The regular preacher was away and two lay-preachers were leading the service. They opened the service with a special prayer calling for peace in Gaza.
It was just over a week since Hamas fighters invaded Israel, killing (as we later found out) 1200 civillians and 200 military personnel, committing the most appalling atrocities and returning to the acclaim of their relatives and neighbours in Gaza. These people had committed the worst act of genocide since the holocaust and one week later my church was calling for peace? I have never seen such an act of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls 'cheap grace'.
I took my coat and walked out without waiting for the rest of the service. I haven't been back since.
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Revelations 3:15-16
I don't blame the two Lay-readers, they are good people as are all the people of the congregation, as are most people who attend church on Sundays. I'm sure they didn't write that blasphemous prayer themselves, it was given to them by the Anglican Synod. My argument isn't with them but with the Anglican Church.
So why was I so upset? Was it wrong to pray for the people of Gaza? Of course not, Christ tells us to pray even for our enemies and I don't think the people of Gaza are my enemy. Shouldn't we always pray for peace in time of war?
Well, no, not necessarily. Did the Church pray for peace while World War Two was raging? I doubt it, I think they prayed for victory. Eventually we want peace, but there are conditions to be met first. Christ did not say 'blessed are the peace lovers' he said Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9). Peace must be made, sometimes by men with guns.
I too pray that one day there will be peace in Gaza, and in the whole land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean sea. What my church was trying to do was to avoid passing judgement. It is always the easiest thing to do in a conflict. The moment you can draw a moral equivalence between both sides, you can throw up your hands, cry 'a plague on both your houses' and go back to your comfortable lives. When God speaks to us, sometimes He whispers, sometimes He calls and sometimes He shouts. On October 7th, God shouted loud enough to be heard around the world.
My Church's response? Be quiet God and let us sleep.
This was not the fist time I was uneasy about the weekly services. Far from it. My mother was always impatient with so called 'inclusive language' in the new book of common prayer. In the Nicene Creed, when everyone else said 'for us and for our salvation' she would determinedly say 'for us men and for our salvation' and later she would say of Christ 'and was made man' rather than 'was made fully human'.
Over the years I've seen the Anglican Church become more and more accomodating, less and less willing to judge, but not in the spirit of 'judge not lest ye be judged' (Matthew 7:1-5). I will talk about this in more detail later. The Anglican Church avoids being judgemental not out of virtue but out of moral cowardice and moral laziness. They don't want to offend anyone in case they become unpopular.
What the church doesn't realise is that the more they try to accomodate everyone, the emptier their pews become. As the old saying goes,; if you try to please everybody, nobody will like it. The Synod has even come up with alternative ways of referring to the members of the Trinity because terms like 'Father' and 'Son' are triggering to some people. I wondered where I had seen something like that before.
"Justice moved my great maker; God eternal wrought me: the power, and the unsearchably high wisdom, and the primal love supernal.
Nothing ere I was made was made to be save things eterne, and I eterne abide; lay down all hope, you that go in by me."
There it was, in Dante's divine comedy, and we all know where that gate lead to.
That day I went back and listened to my audiobook of The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I thought of all the years of listening to wishy-washy prayers for peace and end of suffering, how the church was always careful not to judge, not to take sides. This was the cheap grace Bonhoeffer tried to warn us about. I won't try to explain it here, Bonhoeffer does it much better. You can get his book on Audible, but it should be available in most libraries or through Amazon.
My Church had become like one of those ultra-liberal parents so afraid of being unpopular that they abandon the duties of a parent in the hope of being their child's best friend. A parent who acts like a parent will win the love of their child but a parent who tries to be the child's friend fails even in that. What use is a church or parent who either can't tell the difference between good and evil or lacks the moral courage to take a stand? My church was neither hot nor cold, so I spat it out.
That is why I have decided to go back to the bible and to other bible scholars, to wrestle with the angels and see which are true angels and which are only pretenders. One day, I expect I will return to the church, or to a different church, but for the time being I will be a voice crying in the wilderness.
I don't know how many of you are out there, or how many are willing to join me on my journey. Many or few, it will be as God wills. However many you are, bless you.
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalms 19:14
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