Funerals are for Evangelism?<\/p>\n
The church where I serve is large enough to have a Pastor of Benevolence and Care as well as an assistant to that position.\u00a0 Together they handle all requests for help, visitation, bereavement, marriages, funerals etc.\u00a0 I oversee this department \u2013 from a distance.\u00a0 So, it was to my chagrin that, instead of just officiating at the funeral, I was thrust into the practical aspects of preparing for the event.\u00a0 The aforementioned pastor was on Christmas vacation in Florida, when unfortunately, the assistant\u2019s father passed away.\u00a0 The duties of planning all aspects of the funeral and helping the bereaved fell to me.\u00a0 What I found interesting and in-line with the readings of Charles Taylor was the wife\u2019s request for a very purposeful salvation message to be given.<\/p>\n
I find it perplexing that mediocre Christians, who seldom if ever vocalize their journey of faith, nevertheless want a salvation message shouted from the rooftops when a loved one dies.\u00a0 In the closing pages of A Secular Age<\/em>, Taylor stresses that we are schizophrenic.\u00a0 We want to keep a \u201csafe distance from religion, yet are moved by dedicated believers,\u201d and although people don\u2019t necessarily \u201cwant to follow, they like the idea that the gospel is proclaimed out there.\u201d\u00a0 He would intone that the actions of the bereaved wife made perfect sense.<\/p>\n Taylor, in this marathon writing, seeks to help us understand why we have come to the point of an expressive proliferation of ideas and paths to fullness \u2013 other than the orthodox Christian journey.\u00a0 He, in repetition, explains what historical factors have promoted this diversity of believe, those in the West are currently expressing and following.<\/p>\n Taylor charts the course from 1500 to the present day in the first chapters, following the philosophical developments that led to our humanistic outlook on life and lack of dedicated faith.\u00a0 He promotes the idea that as \u201cself-flourishing\u201d becomes practical through humanism rather than a transcendent interaction, one sees opportunities of progress and fulfillment within oneself.\u00a0 Humans begin the task of constructing our place within the universe.<\/p>\n In his thinking, deism is the key to this migration of thought.\u00a0 Deism is the theological concept and link that bridges, for many, the leap from belief in a transcendent God, to belief in a very distant, unapproachable or imaginary force.\u00a0 As god becomes more and more impersonal, humanism rises as the answer to our problems and eventually becomes the source of ethics and morality.<\/p>\n Later, this migration has become accentuated with our individualist and consumerist lifestyles.\u00a0 This breakdown of the sacred has allowed numerous spokes to appear from the hub of belief.\u00a0 These new forms of spirituality, or plurality of faith, although very different from traditional orthodoxy can be good and bad.\u00a0 As they lead to other forms of humanism and expressions that are far from belief, they hurt traditional orthodox society.\u00a0 But if the changes can be seen as new and different forms of sacred expression, bringing the sacred back to areas of life that have been separated in the past, then they can be beneficial.\u00a0 Taylor sees art, music, environment, poetry and other means as ways to experience transcendence in new forms.\u00a0 He believes that God is still present, if we open our minds to these \u201ctypes of sensibilities, rather than holding to traditional theology.\u201d\u00a0 In essence, God is sanctifying us everywhere.<\/p>\n Taylor uses a term I\u2019d never heard of to express believers in this age \u2013 pusillanimous. Defined as lacking the courage and resolution to act on our beliefs, he uses that term to accuse those involved in orthodox religion, reproving us as culpable for much of the abandonment of traditional belief.\u00a0 He goes further to describe the \u201cmalaise of immanence\u201d and suggest reasons for the eclipse of traditional Christianity.\u00a0 Maybe today\u2019s believers are infected with pusillanimous.\u00a0 Maybe there are problems with our \u201ctheodicy\u201d as he states, which has led us to a rejection of the transcendence.\u00a0 This might be the opportunity for deconstruction.<\/p>\n If faith could be deconstructed, beginning anew, using Deism as a place to begin faith rather than a place where the end of faith begins, we might have hope.\u00a0 Deism believes that \u201cwe are endowed with a special bent to act for good on behalf of our fellow beings.\u201d\u00a0 Christ began at that point as well.\u00a0 Then, as God in His transcendence breaks through in little bursts through new forms as Taylor suggests, faith might be seen as desirable, over the multitude of humanistic and spiritual diversions.<\/p>\n Taylor\u2019s book explains a lot about our journey to unbelief.\u00a0 Although he does help us see new possibilities, the answer to my question at the beginning regarding funerals remains unanswered.\u00a0 There are many paradoxes in current Christianity that modern man can use to accuse orthodox believers.\u00a0 Taylor expressively outlines the many reasons why doubt is present.\u00a0 Perhaps we need to embrace these accusations and realities, deconstructing what we believe, so that faith can be reconstructed in an age of secularity, and actually be seen as the key means of fulfillment and personal flourishing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Funerals are for Evangelism? The church where I serve is large enough to have a Pastor of Benevolence and Care as well as an assistant to that position.\u00a0 Together they handle all requests for help, visitation, bereavement, marriages, funerals etc.\u00a0 I oversee this department \u2013 from a distance.\u00a0 So, it was to my chagrin that, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,186],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminglp","tag-taylor","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1784,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/1784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}