Friday, August 21, 2009

The Immutability of Conservative Dogma.

“If your faith isn’t static” I always teach young Christians, “our Loving Father is going torture you for all eternity.” This principle is something all the important names in the Glorious Schism understand; they might speak of the “living’ God, but you’ll never catch anyone at Viagraville implying God’s interaction with humanity might be in any way dynamic.

Sure it was in the past, as suggested by errors in the Infallible Word of Scripture such as Jonah 3:10, which depicts God as having a change of heart concerning the smiting of Nineveh, doubtless because it seemed easier to simply wait a couple of thousand years and let George W. Bush and the American taxpayers do it instead. Yet this passage should foremost be seen as indicative that Jonah clearly lacked focus when it came to building the kind of congregation that Rick Warren bothers soliciting.

After all, when it comes to travelling to speaking engagements Jonah’s standards were distinctly lower than contemporary expectations; correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think Bishop Tom Wright accepts “in the belly of a great fish” as an acceptable substitute for Business Class (although given little Peter Jensen’s investment prowess I believe his serfs are being ordered to investigate it as an affordable alternative to flying – the current problem is finding a fish capable of swallowing Bishop Falstaff).

No, if we are to grow subservient, unthinking hordes for Jesus we must dismiss the archaic notion of a dynamic God the same way we have replaced the notion of faith as only finding expression in community; with simplistic misinterpretations of single verses removed from their Scriptural context. Thus when confronted with the notion that God is calling us to move on from a nasty late-Victorian notion of sexual identity and marriage, we need to chant Hebrews 13:8 (“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”) in much the same way as the sheep chant in Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Never mind that the author of Hebrews said this in the course of a polemic against the idea that gentile Christians should submit to the Torah – it’s only the rhetoric that matters. More crucially, never permit people to think about the implications of interpreting that verse literally, or else they may start to wonder how Jesus could've learned how to use modern firearms. After all, how can anyone be the Son of God if they can’t operate an automatic rifle? And on a similar note, 6,935 days without once putting on fresh underwear is excessive for anyone - even if they are divine.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

11 comments :

Anonymous said...

May I beg to differ, only slightly, Father. You will find that God's revelation of Himself has always been dynamic. But He stopped speaking in the 16th Century.
Thank you.

poppy tupper said...

I've just come back from holiday - no computer. Fr David Heron's blog is no longer there. does anyone know what happened to it/him?

poppy tupper said...

Oh, I've just clicked on the post above this. Ssshhhh!

Anonymous said...

For Rev'd Ackerhoff, that may be true but, now at least, praise God, we have others who speak for Him. They and they alone are His voices. They and they alone are the vessels that carry the "faith once delivered" No, there is no new revelation; it can't happen and our provident God has granted to GAFCON and GAFCON alone the sure knowledge of what has been revealed... It is just lucky that God's revelation happened to agree with what we already knew to be true before his 17th and 19th century messengers arrived on our coasts.

Brother David said...

I wonder...

would Jesus be a bikini or a boxer guy?

Anonymous said...

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)once said: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

JimB said...

I think you nailed this post. Now if only the wrong wing would get the point.

FWIW
jimB

Frank Remkiewicz aka “Tree” said...

And all this time I thought a conservative dog ma would look like a French Poodle.

Gerry Lynch said...

More poppycock from Revd Ivan Ackeroff. God was certainly still dynamic when he revealed the glorious and historic doctrine of the pretribulation rapture to John Nelson Darby in 1827. And he continues to speak through His chosen ones today: why, only last week I myself attended a lecture "Ulster in Bible Prophesy" at the Christadelphian Hall.

What could be more Christian than that?

Anonymous said...

I will grant to Mr Lynch that the Almighty raised up the "Revd Dr" Ian Paisley as one of his foghorns. Mr Paisley helped bring peace and reconciliation to the Churches in Northern Ireland. But surely that is the opposite to what Churches are for.

Anonymous said...

Did John Nelson Darby make babies?