Letter to Dave: On the Death of the Church and the idol of success
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:date: 2021-09-13T13:53:48
:category: faith
:tags: theology, Christianity, culture, 

(`Dave Schmelzer`_ asked in his monthly letter for thoughts on
the situation of the Church in America, so I have replied)

    So, if you're game, I'd love to ask your thoughts on two
    things. Do you believe that something has fundamentally gone
    wrong with the American church? (I'm in forums that do.) If
    so, tell me more about what that is. And do you perhaps have
    any thoughts about what the solution might be? That said, if
    you disagree and you by no means believe that the American
    church has gone off track, I'd love any thoughts you have on
    that as well.
    
    If you live elsewhere than America, please forgive the
    provincialism of my question! But then do help me overcome
    that provincialism by suggesting a question or two that you'd
    like to see addressed! And if you have thoughts on which
    fascinating person you'd like to hear discuss this current
    question on air with me, I'm all ears.

Hello, Dave,

I don’t think it is provincial to care for your own nation (is
“provincial” as an adjective a word?), don’t be ashamed of that.
I could talk with you about this for hours, because I was
thinking about similar themes lately a lot, but let me add you
just couple of points:

* Dying church. Jesus Christ promised us only that the Church as
  whole will not be prevailed by the Gates of Hell (whatever it
  is), he certainly never promised that each national or local
  church will live forever. And certainly there are many
  particular parts of the Church which are gone: the mighty
  Church of North Africa, once a home of the greatest theologians
  like Tertullian, Lactantius, Cyprian, and of course St.
  Augustin, is gone (mostly), whole gigantic Church of East (see
  https://amzn.com/0061472816 or https://amzn.com/B000ZOMDVU)
  died its final breath (I am afraid) during our lifetime. The
  Church in Europe is certainly not dead, I see life wherever
  I look, but even I can admit that its vitality has been greatly
  diminished during the last two hundred years or so. Otto Mádr,
  one of the greatest teachers of the Czech church in the
  twentieth century (spent fifteen years in the Communist lagers
  and his releasing documents concluded that “the purpose of his
  corrective time was completely missed: the prisoner leaves the
  institution same as he came”, and it was so), wrote a short
  essay on this topic in 1976 (probably the second darkest time
  during the Communist era) which I have translated into
  English_.

* On the similar note, while living in the European Church with
  greatly diminished vitality, I was thinking a lot about this
  question: “What we did wrong?” Specifically, what we Europeans
  did so wrong, that we have our Church in the state it is? There
  are many many possible answers and NONE of them persuades me as
  the plausible one. There are many affirmative answers (yes, we
  did something wrong which caused all this): too much following
  modernism/industrial revolution (aka theological liberalism),
  insufficient following modernism/industrial revolution (aka
  Biblical fundamentalism), following Jeremy Bentham and
  utilitarianism (one of my favourite causes of all suffering in
  the current world), and many many others.

  However, I am currently more fascinated (although not fully
  persuaded) by the possibility of the negative answer. No, we
  didn't do anything wrong, there are just waves of the level of
  religiosity in history. Sometime it is up (Middle Ages, Baroque
  in Europe), sometime it is down (Renaissance, Ancient Rome), and
  Christians role is just to live well in whatever situation they
  found themselves in (“All we have to decide is what to do with
  the time that is given us.”). Yes, it doesn’t sound completely
  convincing even to me, it is either a cheap excuse (“not our
  fault”) or those external impersonal forces changing the history
  look too much like something demonic, but still there seems to me
  a lot which makes this interesting.

* On the other hand, does finding the root cause of all our
  problems really matter at all? Whatever causes were of the
  death of the Church in Europe (or upcoming death of the Church
  in the Northern America) they are wast, complicated, and
  probably way above anything this little ol’ me can influence.
  I was preaching two guest sermons during the summer. One (in
  Czech) was exactly about this, Death of the Church, and other
  (in English, in our congregation) was about the similar fun
  theme, the last judgement of believers (1st Corinthians
  3:10-15). I won’t certainly repeat everything from the latter
  one, just one thing: one of the biggest idols we Christians of
  the current time worship, I believe, is *a success*.

  It seems to be rooted in very complicated idea of meritocracy
  (see https://amzn.com/0375420835 on the related concept of the
  status anxiety). Democratic society of the last roughly two
  hundred years tried to overcome previous class-based structure,
  where the status was mostly based on your ancestors. They
  promised new world, where everybody would get everybody what
  they deserve. I agree that it is much improvement over the
  previous system, but it has its very very dark side. The sad
  part of life is that a huge part of every society of every era
  are people who are unhappy with their life, who feel rightly or
  wrongly as a failure (and our pop culture doesn’t help, see
  also your Trump voters and our equivalents of the same on this
  side of The Pond). Those people got in the feudal aristocratic
  society a message, that their poor position in life is the
  result of their ancestors and there is not much to be done
  about it. Many even lower class communities developed their own
  level of honour and pride (see British working-class pride who
  are offended when called gentlemen or ladies). The message in
  the meritocratic society (and let's ignore for a moment, how
  the playing field is truly equal and how much reward truly
  corresponds with the achievements) is quite dark: whatever
  position in life you've achieved is what you deserved. If you
  are on the bottom of the society it is because you are worse
  person than people on the top. Material and financial success
  became the measure of the quality of one's human life.

  However, when you look at the New Testament, I don't see
  success as the measure of quality of one's life. It seems to me
  that much more important is **faithfulness**. The Lord doesn't
  ask us to be successful, he asks to be faithful. And that
  applies even to our success as the Church. Does it really
  matter that much whether we are successful in our spreading of
  the gospel, or whether we are faithful with bringing the good
  news to our neighbours?

So, that's just few thoughts on your question.

Blessings,

Matěj


.. _English:
   https://matej.ceplovi.cz/cizi/modus-moriendi_EN.html

.. _`Dave Schmelzer`:
   https://journey-on.net