It dawned on me the other day that I have allowed myself to be drawn into and consumed by negativity. How did that happen?
Pessimism and negativity and confrontationalism is overwhelming so many people in this country on both the left and right.
An aspect of many, not all but many, people who tend to be on the more liberal side of things is a residing negativity that seems to be always present. I’m not sure why, but that has been my observation. There is always a crisis right around the corner that will destroy just about everything. Of course, we also see this kind of attitude when dealing with morals and God’s coming punishment on what has become the Religious-Right. Right now, the left pushes the next crisis as global warming. In the 1979’s, I can remember it was the coming ice-age. In a matter of 20-30 years, we went from dire predictions of advancing ice-sheets that will cover most of the upper part of the northern hemisphere to dire predictions of melting ice-sheets that will flood all our costal cities and forever damage our fragile environment. Does anyone remember the coming energy crisis when all the world’s oil will be completely depleted by the 1990’s and the world economy will be plunged back into the pre-industrial era?
This isn’t the stuff of philosophical liberalism, but it is the way liberal politics fueled by political-correctness and identity-politics (and lots of other things) has played out over the last 40 years or so. I have to say, too, that the emphasis on dealing with the less fortunate and less advantage among us that permeated liberalism is quite laudable and far closer to a core of the Gospel than was evident in many blue-blood Republican conservatives. If it were not for these liberals, much of the care for and integration of those who are not WASPs into every aspect of American life may not have happened as quickly or at all, no matter that the methods to achieve such care and integration didn’t work very well.
One thing I liked about pre-Bush & pre-Religious Right culture-wars era conservatism is the optimism that seemed to imbue many, not all but many, conservative people. There was a trust in human ingenuity, there was faith in the human spirit, and there was an expectation for personal liberty and responsibility. The idea that the solutions to our problems were always available as we humans put our minds to the solutions and as the need (and economic imperative) made such solutions available and probable. We can face our future head on with a positive and hopeful spirit.
Again, many conservatives didn’t want non-WASP’s anywhere near them nor to participate in the full life of the nation. Many conservatives would have rather impose their solutions on the populace rather than allow the people to decide for themselves.
Those who whether intentionally or unintentionally worked against the positive aspects of both philosophical liberalism and conservatism betrayed their own inner inconsistencies. They were and are not “true conservatives” or “true liberals” in the classical sense.
So, I’ve found myself falling into the pseudo-liberal negativity, (which has also overtaken the pseudo-conservatives) even though I really do identify as a moderate (whatever that really means). I have seen the nefarious intentions of those godless or apostate types, as do so many post-Bush/Religious Right pseudo-conservatives. I have found myself being so absorbed by all this stuff that I have not lived into, as I used to do, the positive-ness that sees the future as hopeful and anything but negative despite obvious hardships and problems, as an opportunity to live life in the full (being content in all things despite the circumstances, as Paul wrote), as an opportunity for human ingenuity (an aspect of being make in the image of God) to work to solve our pressing and future problems. I have let negativity rob me of the joy and eagerness for what lies ahead; and you know what, that really deadens one’s life! Life and all its stuff is not a zero-sum game.
So, I refocus and retake control of my future. As a Christian my happiness or hopefulness do not lie in the “systems of this world.” There are dire problems in our world and great human suffering, but we work for their relief. Let those who want to destroy and denigrate go right ahead. They are destroying their own lives, their own security and satisfaction, and I don’t have to participate with them. I take the step to move forward with what I believe to be a vision for ministry and life that is given to me by God (no, not just me but to all of us), a means of living that draws me closer to who I am in Christ and for the purposes God has for my life. There is nothing negative about that. Why do I find myself so easily pulled away and into the quagmire?
Monthly Archives: July 2006
Sermon to CofE’s Synod by ABC Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, sermon in York Minster during the Church of England’s General Synod.
‘Take nothing for the journey‘ (Mk 6.8)
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement to The C of E General Synod
Here is the link to the just released statement of ++Rowan Williams to the Church of England’s General Synod. Rowan seems a bit annoyed. He comments on the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, his Reflection statement and how some have interpreted (or misinterpreted) his statements, and with regard to the troubles the Communion is now facing. Hat tip to Titusonenine.
One poignant paragraph on the professed Catholic nature of Anglicanism:
The real agenda – and it bears on other matters we have to discuss at this Synod – is what our doctrine of the Church really is in relation to the whole deposit of our faith. Christian history gives us examples of theologies of the Church based upon local congregational integrity, with little or no superstructure – Baptist and Congregationalist theologies; and of theologies of the national Church, working in symbiosis with culture and government – as in some Lutheran settings. We have often come near the second in theory and the first in practice. But that is not where we have seen our true centre and character. We have claimed to be Catholic, to have a ministry that is capable of being universally recognised (even where in practice it does not have that recognition) because of its theological and institutional continuity; to hold a faith that is not locally determined but shared through time and space with the fellowship of the baptised; to celebrate sacraments that express the reality of a community which is more than the people present at any one moment with any one set of concerns. So at the very least we must recognise that Anglicanism as we have experienced it has never been just a loose grouping of people who care to describe themselves as Anglicans but enjoy unconfined local liberties. Argue for this if you will, but recognise that it represents something other than the tradition we have received and been nourished by in God’s providence. And only if we can articulate some coherent core for this tradition in present practice can we continue to engage plausibly in any kind of ecumenical endeavour, local or international.
Tourists or pilgrims? – A quote
Each of us, what are we? Tourists or pilgrims?
Only the walker who sets out toward ultimate things is a pilgrim. In this lies the terrible difference between tourist and pilgrim. The tourist travels just as far, sometimes with great zeal and courage, gathering up acquisitions (a string of adventures, a wondrous tale or two) and returns the same person as the one who departed. There is something inexpressibly sad in the clutter of belongings the tourist unpacks back at home. The pilgrim is different. The pilgrim resolves that the one who returns will not be the same person as the one who set out.
Andrew Schelling
Church of Nigeria Synod statements
Here are a couple statements coming out of the latest Synod of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. Akinola continues on a path of separation from the Anglican communion of churches in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The only option for a group of churches, leaders, or people who will not work to formulate compromise is authoritarianism. While we are a church of bishops, we are not one like Rome. There is a democratic essence within our structures and understanding of things that do not enable us to be a church under a Pope or a Curia, no matter what some may want or how they want to change Anglicanism to be more like Rome.
2. THE ANGLICAN COVENANT
Synod is satisfied with the move by the Global South to continue with its veritable project of defending the faith committed to us against present onslaught from ECUSA, Canada, England and their allies. The need therefore, to redefine and/or re-determine those who are truly Anglicans becomes urgent, imperative and compelling. Synod therefore empowers the leadership of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) to give assent to the Anglican Covenant.
3. THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE
The Lambeth Conference which is one of the accepted organs of unity in the Anglican Communion is due for another meeting in 2008. the Synod, after reviewing some recent major events in the Communion, especially the effects of the ‘revisionists’ theology’, which is now making wave in America, Canada and England, observed with dismay the inability of the Church in the aforeÂmentioned areas to see reason for repentance from the harm and stress they have caused this communion since 1988 culminating in the consecration of Gene Robinson, a practicing homosexual in 2003 as a bishop in ECUSA. Synod also regrets the inability of the See of Canterbury to prevent further impairment of the unity of the Church. It therefore, believes strongly that the moral justification for the proposed Lambeth Conference of 2008 is questionable in view of the fact that by promoting teachings and practices that are alien and inimical to the historic formularies of the Church, the Bishops of ECUSA, Canada and parts of Britain have abandoned the Biblical faith of our fathers.
4. GLOBAL SOUTH CONFERENCE
Synod underlines the need for maintaining the age-long tradition of a ten-yearly Conference of Bishops in the Anglican Communion for discussing issues affecting the Church. It therefore calls on the leadership of the Global South and Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) to do everything necessary to put in place a Conference of all Anglican Bishops to hold in 2008 should all efforts to get the apostles of ‘revisionist agenda’ to repent and retrace their steps fail.
Here is the link to the entire communique.