Three New Year Resolutions

As a new year dawns with hope and promise, people turn almost inevitably to the future. That is what produces resolutions aimed at self-improvement. In that mode, I would like to gaze into the future of the Christian Church and shape three New Year's Resolutions that might guide the church into tomorrow.

Resolution #1: The church will move away from its fear of maturity and stop patterns that encourage worshippers' childlike dependence.

Traditionally, the religion of the West has emphasized a relationship between the believer and a supernatural parent-God who lives somewhere above the sky. A faithful worshiper is encouraged by this deity to be passive, docile and dependent. The liturgies of our churches are filled with references to human weakness. We sing such passive words as "Thou are the potter, I am the clay." Our theological systems have traditionally focused on human ineptitude, depicting people as dumb sheep, passive followers, who must stand as fawning praise-givers before the almighty deity.

The result of this emphasis has been the encouragement of an immature, childlike lack of responsibility. If we can do nothing good without God's help, the nerve that drives us into maturity is cut. We become little more than passive recipients of God's grace. The faithful are taught not to challenge or to question the authority of the church, but, rather, like obedient children, to do as they are told.

The church that claims to follow Christ must take seriously Jesus' words as St. John records them: "I have come that you might have life, and that you might have it abundantly." One cannot offer the gift of abundant life and still require the recipient to eschew maturity. To get beyond passivity in religion is a first step in the necessary reformation that is inevitable if the church is to live.

Resolution #2: The church will cease its concentration on evil and begin to see the beauty in human life. A vision of original goodness needs to balance the church's concentration on original sin.

I wonder the Christian church seems to believe that the only way to glorify God is to concentrate on human evil. Listen to the words of our liturgies: "There is no health in us." "We are miserable offenders." "We are not worthy to gather up the crumbs" under God's table. Even when we sing of God's "Amazing Grace," we have to add that the reason this grace is amazing is that it saves "a wretch like me." We have become immobilized by our concentration on guilt and sin. We say: "We are born in sin." We say that this sin is so deep and terrible an affliction that it required Jesus to die "to pay the price of our sins." We are worms, unworthy, lost, depraved, evil creatures who brought about the death of Jesus.

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