Ruth Gledhill from the British Times Online wrote a commentary this past weekend.
This one sentence is, well, the most important in my mind:
“Sometimes I just wish the Anglican hierarchy could step back and consider for a minute how all this looks to the outside world.”
I’m getting up on a righteous indignation soap-box, so get ready…
This whole situation is just so very sad. People from the right and the left yell, and yell, and yell about being all righteous and verbally attack and verbally attempt to kill their opponents with one more rhetorical jab, all the while the world looks on and says, “Yes, we are justified in ignoring the Church and believing it no longer offers anything much important for a good life.”
If the very people who claim to love Jesus so much (conservative or liberal) will not listen to the very command of Jesus to love our neighbors (in this case, simply sit down at a friggin’ table with a neighbor), or abide by the even more demanding, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”, then why should any non-Christian listen to us?
Why should they see the hope of Christ in us? Most have already spoken - they don’t! Christians church-hop, and when they do one group or another claims God’s divine approval of their position because at the moment they have the most “already-decided” bodies in their pews. Those floundering “in the world” don’t bother looking our way any longer. How sad that we so defame the Mystical Body of Christ in the eyes of the lost by our childish antics!
Frankly, the “worldlings” probably shouldn’t look to us, because we are as screwed-up as secular society! Lord have mercy. Oh, God, please have mercy!
I’m getting off my soap-box, now.
