Monday, November 13, 2017
574 - Get Real
Spirituality Column #574
November 14, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Get Real
By Bob Walters
“Nobody in the West
can be wholly non-Christian. You may
call yourself non-Christian, but the dreams you dream are still Christian
dreams.” – Don Cupitt, Philosopher of Religion, Scholar of Christian Theology,
Author, Atheist and Life Fellowship holder at Emanuel College, Cambridge
University, England
Leave it to
an atheist theologian – a formerly-ordained Anglican curate and career-long
Christian “non-realist,” no less – to exist within this stated bundle of
oxymoronic footings and perhaps unawares express a valuable truth of modern
liberal politics and culture. A more
Christ-centered way to put this would be:
“You can run but you can’t hide.”
As
virtually all of the Western world’s public (and many non-public) colleges in
the last century have replaced “Theology” departments with secularly correct
departments of “Religious Studies” – thus absolving scholars of the too-often
humiliating need to publicly profess Christian faith – since the 1960s
Cambridge’s ancient school for priestly training is host to Cupitt, one of Britain’s
most prolific and well-known non-God, non-Jesus, non-Holy Spirit purveyors and
media darlings of Religion Without God.
Personally,
I don’t blame Cupitt’s empty faith on Cambridge, because that school also
produced and for many years was home to my fervently faithful and brilliant
Christian brother and mentor Dr. George Bebawi, who was a divinity lecturer
there. When I asked George about Cupitt,
whom he knew, George assured me that Cupitt was never considered a major
intellectual player nor given a teaching job.
Family financial contributions to the school, he explained, account for
Cupitt’s presence there.
Forty books
and a broadcast career later, Cupitt is commercial evidence of the secular
world’s spiritual thirst for “something greater” in this life without the
intellectual entanglements and ultimate reality of Jesus Christ. The notion of One True God is an absolute
buzz-killer for today’s progressive liberals who seek spiritual meaning without
accepting God’s objective truth. Hope for a Christian is the ultimate good and
eternal home we have in Christ. Secular
“hope” – consider the energy expended on today’s non-Christian political
agendas – is assigning one’s untethered cultural expectations to worldly
political programs. Its creed declares: “Mankind
can fix its own problems.”
Good luck
with that. Secular religion offers no redemptive
“endgame,” what Christian theologians call the eschaton, i.e., “How it all ends.” As we read in Revelation, the Christian “end”
proves Jesus is real, God wins, and through God’s grace and love humanity is
rescued from its sin by faith in Jesus Christ.
Secular theology’s “end” offers nothing more real, true, permanent, or
moral than the next election, debate, or protest.
The seeds
of God’s truth are everywhere, and I believe John 3:16 is correct in saying
Jesus came for all humanity, so let’s not leave anyone out. Cupitt’s “Christian dreams” are God’s seedlings,
and God’s harvest means eternal Jesus is looking for us.
The reality
is: religion without God is as imaginary as love without relationship.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) offers evidence of “secular religion”: just look at the next “coexist” bumper sticker you see. God is
whatever you want, or not.
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