Category Archives: Values, Faith, and Church

From Connie Schultz, panelist on last night’s Bill Maher show: I was raised by a born-again Christian who taught us that being a good Christian meant fixing yourself and helping others, not the other way around. Okay, folks, there’s your … Continue reading →

I wrote a big, long introduction to this, trying to find some way to explain it — but I just can’t explain it. Perhaps their good intentions can be their excuse. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/30/145245/63/817/647006

We’re working through Brian McClaren’s book Everything Must Change at church on Sunday nights, and it’s been a good study of a challenging book. (There are still some weeks to go — come join us.) Today’s section contained a point that really helped crystalize a thought for me, and challenged me as well. Here’s the gist of it.
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I’ve started re-reading the book Stages of Faith (Amazon link) by Fowler. It’s an important book, and I’m sure I’ll post some more on it as I work my way through it. For tonight, though, I want to touch on an opening idea: the difference between faith and belief.

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I’ve been reading an interesting book (if you’re a policy wonk like me) called The Utility of Force. It’s by a British general and military historian who explores the changing ability of military force to be useful politically, or as the author puts it, to "have utility."

It got me thinking about the word "utility" and its application to other things. Instead of saying "Is this useful?" you ask "Does this object have utility?" To me the first question is more about the object’s usefulness to you, while the second is more about the object’s usefulness to anyone. There is also the question of exactly what the utility is — a hammer has a somewhat limited utility, while a computer has an almost infinite utility, depending on the software available for it.

So, here’s the question of this posting: Does a church have utility? And if so, to whom and for what?

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You know, I’m really getting tired of religion.
I don’t mean spirituality, necessarily, and I certainly don’t mean the practice of Christlikeness. But I surely do mean the earthly-focused, useless, institutional, powerless, unexamined fabric of delusions and rituals that pass for Christianity in many churches and places.
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Our pastor, Joe Phelps, passed along an essay he did for Ethics Daily (link at the right). I cross-posted it on dailyKos here. Please go give it a read — it’s very good. Labels: Christianity, Jesus, non-violence, torture