CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS: Will it Survive?
Ministers decry the growing decadence of our time: the moral rot of our age; the rapid plunge into materialism and secularism; our permissive society; the casual attitude of many Christians toward their religion.
The Bible, the bedrock of Christianity for these many centuries, is a marvelous book. It has provided inspiration and consolation for Christians for hundreds of years. Even so, it is in serious trouble. Why are so many Bibles gathering dust on out-of-the-way shelves? Apparently the time has come when the Bible and the Christian religion must be viewed objectively.
Certain trends among Christians can no longer be ignored. Studies and surveys show that well over one-half of Christians no longer attend church. It is probably safe to assume that at least 99 percent of those Christians do not read the Bible. Christians who do attend church appear to evince little interest in studying the Bible. How long has it been since you read the entire Bible just to refresh your memory of its teachings? Are Christians rendering the Bible obsolete by default? The Bible is not under attack by Christians: They simply ignore it for the most part. In fact, many Christians seem to view both the Bible and their religion as being mostly irrelevant.
The disinterest by large segments of church members in the teachings of present-day Christianity has numerous causes, among them:
1. For three hundred years Western thinking has been progressively secularized. Religion has become more and more a nominal influence, largely a ritualistic exercise. The majority of professed Christians of Western civilization are unwittingly actual secularists. This secularistic human society, notwithstanding its unparalleled materialistic achievement, is slowly disintegrating.
A. History shows that when the search for new and higher religious truth is overshadowed by the preservation of the known, stagnation is the unfailing result followed by certain deterioration.
B. Civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family. The breakdown of the family in the United States has virtually guaranteed that large numbers of our youth will receive little or no religious training.
C. In addition to a stagnating religion, our society is now bottom-heavy with mediocre, unprogressive, mentally inferior, antisocial, and other types of degenerate persons. When fifty per cent of the persons in a nation are inferior or defective, society is teetering on the brink of doom. The stimulus of a progressive and advanced religion is often a decisive factor in cultural development. True religion is the indispensable source of that higher energy which drives men to establish a superior civilization based on human brotherhood. [72:9:8] [79:4:9] [79:6:10] [79:8:4,8,9] [195:8:3,10]
2. The praiseworthy desire to preserve a religion handed down through the centuries as complete, infallible, inspired, and authoritative has led to the defense of an outgrown system of worship. Ministers, in their commendable effort to preserve the Christian religion for the present and the eternal future, have tied it hopelessly to the past. In the process, the Christian religion has devolved into a religion of the mind. However wise it may be to glean wisdom [and truth] from the past, it is folly to regard the past as the exclusive source of truth. [79:8:8] [155:6:3] [195:10:8]
As a religion of the mind, the Christian religion as practiced today has become a settled, crystallized, fossilized, and established religion of authority which requires only a passive and purely intellectual assent by its followers. The fatal flaw in such a religion is that sooner or later it loses the ability to satisfy the spiritual longings of the expanding and advancing minds of many thinking men and women.
It is regrettable that the Christian religion makes no provision for self-criticism and periodic revision designed to keep pace with the changing times. Truth is infinite. This means that one book can never contain all truth. Although truth is infinite and does not change, the people who study truth do change and will continue to change. But God always provides an enlarged revelation of truth by divine sources which consistently keeps pace with the intellectual and spiritual growth of those who practice a religion. [155:5:9] [195:10:8]
3. Christianity, as it
is subdivided and secularized today, presents the greatest single obstacle to
its further advancement. Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when
it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Christianity
faces the doom embodied in one of its own slogans: A house divided against
itself cannot stand.
Christianity is threatened
by slow death from formalism, overorganization, intellectualism, and other
nonspiritual trends. So-called Christianity has become a social and cultural
movement as well as a religious belief and practice. [195:5:2] [195:10:7,11]
[195:9:10]
4. Some religious leaders of today stand as stubborn obstacles to the immediate introduction to the expanded teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Many Christian leaders, as custodians of the most rigid and unyielding institution in our society, are determined to defend the status quo at all costs. They will not update a religion until change is forced on them. Fortunately, thinking men and women want religion redefined, and sooner or later this demand will compel Christian leaders to re-evaluate the Christian religion. [92:7:9] [195:10:8]
5. Paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of the Master’s life on earth. [195:9:2]
6. The sole business of the church should be the constant enlargement of the kingdom of heaven by producing persons who are willingly spirit-led. Religion needs new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare to depend solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings. So-called Christianity has become a social and cultural movement as well as a religious belief and practice. If Christianity persists in neglecting its spiritual mission while it continues to busy itself with social and material problems, the spiritual renaissance must await the coming of these new teachers of Jesus’ religion who will be exclusively devoted to the spiritual regeneration of men. These spirit-born souls will quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world. [195:9:4,11]
7. Theology may fix, formulate, define, and dogmatize faith, but in the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. There must come a revival of the actual teachings of Jesus. [170:5:19] [196:2:1]
A comparison of the Jewish religion of nineteen hundred years ago with the Christian religion of today reveals several disquieting similarities:
The
Jewish religion. By the times of Jesus the Jews had arrived at a settled
concept of their origin, history, and destiny. They had become spiritually
stagnant and dying because they had crystallized truth into a creed. To the
Hebrews of those days Jewish theology was irrevocably settled, forever fixed.
[121:7:1] [155:3:3]
[See the paper "Death of a
Nation: Rise and Fall of Israel" which describes the horrendous penalty the Jews
paid because of their inflexible religious beliefs.]
The Christian religion. Today, Christians in many denominations are told exactly what to believe. In these churches it definitely is not "politically correct" to question any statement in the Bible or in the church creed. From birth Christians are taught that the Bible is the infallible and complete divine truth as inspired by God himself: not one word shall be added to or taken away from the Bible; the truth as presented in the Bible is final, ultimate, and shall stand unchanged forevermore. [155:6:3,4]
It
seems that in some respects Christian teachings are actually a hindrance to the
development of spirit-led individuals. Christians are taught that in order to be
"saved" they must profess their acceptance of the teaching that Jesus died on
the cross to pay for the sins of mankind. Also, they must accept Jesus as their
savior. Once persons believe they are "saved," they assume they can now get on
with business as usual. They pay lip service to the teachings of the Christian
religion, but in their hearts they remain unchanged. Now that they supposedly
have assured their entrance into heaven, there is little incentive to strive for
a higher level of spiritual development.
But
let us digress a moment and consider a worthy incentive for achieving ever
higher levels of intellectual and spiritual development.
The Reserve Corps of Destiny. ~ 114:7 ~ Many Christians might be interested in achieving relatively higher levels of intellectual and spiritual development so they can be automatically enrolled in the Reserve Corps of Destiny. This corps is made up of the men and women of each generation who are chosen by the spirit directors of the realm to assist in the conduct of the ministry of mercy and wisdom to the children of time on a planet. As soon as men and women appear on the stage of temporal action with sufficient mental capacity, adequate moral status, and requisite spirituality, they are quickly assigned to the appropriate celestial group of planetary personalities as human liaisons, mortal assistants. In the 1930s there were 962 persons in this corps. [This number fluctuates as persons die or are admitted to the corps.]
Christian leaders are in a fortuitous position to take the lead in introducing the expanded teachings of Jesus as the Bible already contains a limited amount of his teachings. They have a marvelous opportunity to position themselves at the forefront of the great movement to insure that the eternal truths taught by Jesus can spread more quickly around the world. However, given the rigid nature of religion many of them may consider it their Christian duty to rigorously defend the status quo. If Christian leaders are unwilling to lead Christians in the study of the more comprehensive teachings of Jesus, the task will pass to other groups.
Christian leaders today stand at a crossroad as did the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ times. When the Sanhedrists and the majority of Jews rejected Jesus and his new gospel the mission of taking his teachings to the world passed to the gentiles. When the Jews rejected Jesus and brought about his crucifixion the Most Highs withdrew their special oversight of the nation of Israel. Only forty years later, the Temple was totally destroyed; the nation of Israel ceased to exist. Will Christian religious leaders themselves assure the demise of present-day Christianity?
The hapless minister who is sincere at heart and recognizes the plight of present-day Christianity is truly wedged between the rock and the hard place. Dare he speak up? But he has been imbued with the belief that the Bible will endure forever. He is fearful of rocking the boat. Will he refuse to read the writing on the wall and go down with the ship?
The authors of Part IV of The Urantia Book, "The Life and Teachings of Jesus," assure us that the expanded gospel of Jesus will prevail. So we view the future with supreme confidence: A new and fuller revelation of the religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. [195:9:2] [196:3:30]
Christians
as well as followers of all other religions can benefit from the following
suggestions:
While
your religion is a matter of personal experience, it is most important that you
should be exposed to the knowledge of a vast number of other religious
experiences [the diverse interpretations of other and diverse mortals] to the
end that you may prevent your religious life from becoming
egocentric--circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial.
[103:1:3]
True
and genuine inward certainty does not in the least fear outward analysis, nor
does truth resent honest criticism. [146:3.2]
Source: The Urantia Book, published by Uversa Press 2003, a subsidiary of Urantia Book Fellowship. http://www.urantiabook.org. fellowship@urantiabook.org. Note: Numerous statements in this paper were quoted verbatim from The Urantia Book.
Revised May 28 2005