Whys and Wherefores

The old saying goes: sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees, but it's also true that you can see the forest and forget that it's a complex system of living creatures that includes individual trees, animals, fungi, and thousands of different sorts of micro-organisms, all contributing to the "big picture."  In the ongoing dialogue that I have been tracking on the interwebs, some people have come around to asking a rather poignant question: do we need church?

While it may trigger some immediate negative responses among those who have found real value in a religious community, the question is valid all the same, and I think we, who are invested and intend to continue to invest in church, would do well to give some consideration.  Why do we need church?  Most of us trees in the forest will immediately leap to talking about spiritual matters, how our faith gives shape and meaning to our lives, but we will begin to equivocate when it comes to offering some justification of the physical institution of the church.  We feel a little guilty about our big fancy buildings and paid staff, we feel a little more guilty about our bureaucracies and hierarchies, we are downright sullen when it comes to considering all the ways that the actual human form of the body of Christ so often fails to glorify it's head.

And yet, somehow, in God's ineffable nature, there is no plan B.

Jesus did not say to his disciples: "try your best, but if this doesn't work out we'll go back to the drawing board."  In fact, it is a reality of the covenant with Noah, symbolized by a rainbow after the flood that God is done going back to the drawing board.  In the Incarnation, which is at the center of Christianity, God has committed to a plan of action that is rather foolproof, meaning that human brokenness and sin can no longer mess it up.

We would do well to remember that, as we consider whether there is a place in the current world for religion, and the institutional expressions of humanity's quest for God.  Each tree in the forest might feel as though it has no need to be connected to the larger ecosystem, but that feeling is not a reality.  Feeling independent and disconnected only proves that the individual does not understand their place in the ecosystem.  They may think that they do not need the other trees, they may think they can stand alone, but they are forgetting the millions of microbes that break down nutrients to be used by their roots, they are forgetting their ancestry that planted the seeds, they are forgetting the birds and critters that might have played a part in their existence.

I have read several individual, therefore consumer-based, analyses of the question: do we need church (or religion in general)?  What I have not seen is a "ecological" analysis of the question.  Of course, I cannot begin to offer an "objective" framework, because I believe that the forest has a specific purpose, and is designed rather elegantly and graciously to be something particular, and moreover that the One who is behind that plan and purpose, has built in to the creations an inherent drive to seek the Creator.

Many religions seek a higher reality, but the specifically Christian understanding of God, tells us that that higher reality is also seeking us.  In fact, the God who reaches out offering to be understood by creation is a rather important theological assumption.

Anyone who has engaged in a journey of faith will be aware that God certainly does not extend handfuls of easy answers, and I think searching for philosopher's stones and holy grails is a rather pagan pursuit at it's core.  The place of theology and religion is not in finding one secret, but in appreciating the mysteries and the wonders that exist everywhere (which is why the perceived conflict between science and faith is a stupid thing, but that's for another day).  Pantheists sometimes come very near to the truth, but they misapprehend the mechanics.  God is present in everything, but not everything is God.  The fingerprints of the creator are in the soil and the roots as well as the leaves and the branches, and the breath of God moves over the face of the deep, but the understanding and appreciation of that fact has been left to humans.

And that's why we need the church, because to start from ground zero, imperfect and self centered as we are, we would never begin to appreciate the deep mysteries of God's revelation.  The traditions of the church, even though they may seem stodgy, antiquated and sometimes misguided, are like the textbooks that tell us of the discoveries made by those before us.  Just like a high school chemistry student is not required to re-discover Bohr's law or Planck's constant in order to apprehend their effect on reality, so we are able to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn more and new things about God, year after year, century after century.

It is certainly valid to ask questions.  Deconstruct away, but be a responsible forester, and don't just slash and burn, you may lose something valuable and irreplaceable.  Do you understand the collective "spiritual ecosystem" well enough to be sure that we just don't need God? Or that we should just stop looking?  Or that worship of something greater than ourselves is not important?