Re Beyond Sunday School Faith, November
Although I’m sure it was inadvertent, your editorial came across as a disservice to Sunday school. I don’t subscribe to the Jesuits’ Counter – Reformation approach of ‘Give me the child and the church will get the man,’ but Sunday school does meet a vital need of children and so of Christianity. I recollect enjoying the stories about the Old Testament warriors but the stories about Jesus were different. Probably because we were told and shown how Jesus, like our parents, cared for us. See, this we could easily relate to because a child’s whole life rotates around the love of his or her parents and this is the real point of Sunday school. A child can grow up to be straight and honest without algebra or geography but not without love. For me in recollection, Sunday school did the job, although I didn’t understand this at the time and didn’t need to. It is true that the young child doesn’t pass Christianity through a rational filter—thank the Good Lord! You conclude from this that most Christians believe that they learned all they need to know about Christianity in Sunday school and make no further attempt to grow in faith. But even if this were true, which I doubt, it isn’t the lack of theology or of rational thinking that makes us “rail in ignorance against a perceived evil,” which lack you seem to think is the hallmark of today’s fundamentalists. It was inquisitors trained in theology at universities who burned women at the stake over 400 years ago.
You quote St. Paul about childhood but Paul also said to the Corinthians “Where is the one who is wise? … Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Unless Paul is contradicting himself, I think he was referring in the first to the need for people to mature from being self – centred like a child, to extending love outside of themselves. In the second he was taking aim at Greek philosophy. Later, this did became a platform for Christian theology—St. Augustine held Plato’s idealism in high regard while St. Thomas Aquinas favoured Aristotle and Neoplatonism. This philosophy was woven into Christian theology and remains today in Roman Catholic, Anglican and Reformed teaching.
This determination to prove the truth of Christianity by reason led to further development of the “fissure over leaders (Peter, Paul, Apollos, Jesus)” that you cite, into that of numbers of different communities of faith in the early church cited by Dr. Thomson on page 18.
How then is the secular liberal democratic world to be reconciled to Christianity in our post – Enlightenment day? Thomas Jefferson thought he had found the answer with his famous or infamous scissors, Bishop Shelby Spong in his sins of the scriptures and Marcus Borg in his condemnation of the narrow beliefs of the fundamentalists. Each of these, by passing Christianity through the filter of post – Enlightenment reason, ended up with a pale, anemic Jesus irreconcilable to Jesus of the gospels and with a god reduced to a notion in deism.
As a footnote, you ask what it was like for Mary and Joseph and the shepherds. For Joseph and the shepherds this would be mere self – serving speculation because of the lack of hard data. The Church did more than speculate about Mary and its conclusions remain with us in Orthodox and Roman Catholic doctrine. Mel Gibson tried to speculate about Mary and brought nothing on himself but grief from many quarters. I think it is admirable to “reflect … on our faith …” but if this is equated to rationalizing our faith to conform to today’s secular liberal democracy, then look out for confusion! I prefer Jesus’ solution of “render unto Caesar …”
The polestar of Christianity is in Jesus who said: “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15). Obviously, he isn’t telling us to remain a child but he is saying after you have reached the kingdom by experiencing the love and compassion of God, he will show you how to use your intellect and reason. I live by that and I’m still able to take advantage of the fruits of the God – given scientific method, both materially and intellectually, while hopefully at the same time recognizing its pitfalls.
So Mr. Editor, the problem Christianity has in this secular humanistic world of ours is not attributable to the sins of Sunday school—you will have to look elsewhere.
