© 1993 Jack Rogers
© 1993 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Of all the columns that I have written, this has been the most difficult. With the recent national election I took seriously the national vow to become part of the solution, not the problem. Yet, when I consider the missionary outreach of the modern church, it is easy for me to criticize, but difficult to offer practical solutions.
The Urantia Book explains to us that there are two primary types of religion. A revealed religion is personal, borne out of experience, and is nearly impossible to define as it is a part of the experience of each individual. In contrast, evolutionary religion is traditional, institutional, has established beliefs and dogmas, and tends to crystallize over time. The missionary effort of the modern church has a 2000 year evolutionary history. In my last column, I discussed the need for change in the missionary approach of the Christian church even though the institutional church has always been slow to accept change. The Urantia Book states:
Evolutionary religion makes no provision for change or revision; unlike science, it does not provide for its own progressive correction. Evolved religion commands respect because its followers believe it is The Truth; “the faith once delivered to the saints” must, in theory, be both final and infallible. The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision always be forced upon it. (UB 92:3.4)
Indeed, the realities of the information age are forcing change upon the contemporary church. As cultures become militantly self-conscious and celebrate their indigenous diversity, the willingness to change as the result of external pressures will be increasingly resisted. The church has come to the realization that indigenous cultures are resistant to imported forms of missionary activity, and outreach methods are beginning to be questioned.
For centuries the missionary effort of the Christian church has been founded on the premise that to “go out and make believers” meant an imperialistic approach to evangelism. Such dogmas have often caused serious cultural damage and have produced a world-wide impression that Christianity is not just a religion, but is part of the culture, the artistic forms, and the ideologies of Western society. This impression is so strong that in Muslim nations such as Egypt it is illegal to convert to another faith, particularly Christianity.
A dominant idea of the Western church is that we are the “saved” in a world of the “lost.” That belief has been founded upon a perception of the superiority of our materialistic life-style and has justified cultural tyranny, enslavement, economic domination, materialistic greed, and thousands of wars. How does this translate into the missionary activity of the church? Again, The Urantia Book states:
Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become identified in the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the industrial life, and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has Christianity unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without conscience, and industry without morality. (UB 195:10.20)
The missionary effort of the latter part of the 20th century has lost the essence of Christ’s message because it has become identified with the commercial messages of Western culture, ideals, and values.
The missionary effort of the latter part of the 20th century has lost the essence of Christ’s message because it has become identified with the commercial messages of Western culture, ideals, and values. With increasing evidence that mainline missionary activity has not led to church growth in recent years, one must ask what is the appropriate missionary activity today? Though the answer to that dilemma may be difficult to define, the reason for it is clear. As The Urantia Book states:
Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living faith, growing spirit, and firsthand experience of the faith-comrades of Jesus in the brotherhood of man in the spiritual association of the kingdom of heaven. The praiseworthy desire to preserve traditions of past achievement often leads to the defense of outgrown systems of worship. The well-meant desire to foster ancient thought systems effectually prevents the sponsoring of new and adequate means and methods designed to satisfy the spiritual longings and the expanding and advancing minds of modern men…Christianity is seriously confronted with the doom embodied in one of its own slogans: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The non-Christian world will hardly capitulate to a sect-divided Christendom. [UB 195:10.8]
The contemporary church has tremendous competition for the hearts and souls of the modern world. The religion of the modern age is the faith of religious secularism, the philosophy of humanism, and the commercial appetites of materialism. The world appears to be accepting the Western ideals found in the politics of democracy, the economics of the marketplace, the culture of consumerism, and the music of the rhythm section. In this competition for the attention of the world, the church has found itself ignored by an indifferent and busy population. Thus, in its effort to reach out to a “world gone mad,” it is truly ironic that Christianity has suffered the same fate from the non-Christian the world that it has given The Urantia Book revelation of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ-indifference. It should not surprise the church leadership that the missionary message of the church has effectively been lost in the current climate of theological stagnation.
The church has a high calling to rise above the commercial din of contemporary society and offer a new word of hope. It must renew its spiritual message and forsake the cultural baggage and social implications of its traditional missionary message:
The hope of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it humbly bows itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn anew from Jesus of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear-the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. [UB 195:10.21]
Many people of the church have spent their entire lives parroting an age-worn theology that today is being questioned by mainline Christian theologians. Many members of the church persist in holding antiquated beliefs that were not founded by Jesus and are culturally ruinous.
The missionary effort of the modern church has evolved a crystallized and stagnant view of the cross that needs serious reconsideration. Many people of the church have spent their entire lives parroting an age-worn theology that today is being questioned by mainline Christian theologians. Many members of the church persist in holding antiquated beliefs that were not founded by Jesus and are culturally ruinous. The message of Jesus does not contain a hierarchy of those who have and the have not’s. The message of the cross is much larger.
The cross is that high symbol of sacred service, the devotion of one’s life to the welfare and salvation of one’s fellows. The cross is not the symbol of the sacrifice of the innocent Son of God in the place of guilty sinners and in order to appease the wrath of an offended God, but it does stand forever, on earth and throughout a vast universe, as a sacred symbol of the good bestowing themselves upon the evil and thereby saving them by this very devotion of love…
When thinking men and women look upon Jesus as he offers up his life on the cross, they will hardly again permit themselves to complain at even the severest hardships of life, much less at petty harassments and their many purely fictitious grievances. [UB 188:5.9-10]
The realities of modern living are an open challenge to the church to present the life and teachings of Jesus without 2000 years of evolutionary baggage:
…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…
[…]
Religion does need new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare to depend solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings. 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…
The modern age will refuse to accept a religion which is inconsistent with facts and out of harmony with its highest conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness. The hour is striking for a rediscovery of the true and original foundations of present-day distorted and compromised Christianity — the real life and teachings of Jesus. (UB 195:9.2-5)
It is time for the leadership of the Christian church to face the fact that the complete life story of Jesus is available for study and instruction. A detailed history of the life of Jesus accompanied with lengthy direct quotes from his teachings and sermons has been extant in published form on this planet since 1955. Included in the text is detailed information about the organization and personalities of the universe of which Christ is Sovereign, the most thorough description of eternal life extant on the planet today, a significant discussion of the history of religion, and much, much more. You would think that a serious theologian would do everything in his or her power to obtain such information. Yet, in spite of its importance, after almost 40 years most Christian theologians and ministers are either unaware of the existence of The Urantia Book, or they refuse to seriously examine it and are indifferent to its significance. The ultimate price for this failure will be the continued deterioration of the mainline church’s vitality.
It is time for the leadership of the Christian church to face the fact that the complete life story of Jesus is available for study and instruction. A detailed history of the life of Jesus accompanied with lengthy direct quotes from his teachings and sermons has been extant in published form on this planet since 1955.
As the missionary effort of the modern church languishes in commercialized packaging using secular forms and methods, the spiritual brotherhood of humankind falters for a lack
The Spiritual Fellowship Journal of visionary leadership. Ministers of the church decry the sinful nature of the world from the pulpit while their own missionary efforts stagnate from a lack of wisdom.
Without courageous and wise leadership, the church looses its creative vision. In my opinion, one of the greatest problems of church leadership is spiritual cowardice. Church leaders are afraid to face this enhanced revelation of the life and teachings of Jesus. They are afraid of the changes it will bring in their lives and the life of the church.
Primitive man lived a life of superstitious bondage to religious fear. Modern, civilized men dread the thought of falling under the dominance of strong religious convictions. Thinking man has always feared to be held by a religion. When a strong and moving religion threatens to dominate him, he invariably tries to rationalize, traditionalize, and institutionalize it, thereby hoping to gain control of it. By such procedure, even a revealed religion becomes man-made and man-dominated. Modern men and women of intelligence evade the religion of Jesus because of their fears of what it will do to them — and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The religion of Jesus does, indeed, dominate and transform its believers, demanding that men dedicate their lives to seeking for a knowledge of the will of the Father in heaven and requiring that the energies of living be consecrated to the unselfish service of the brotherhood of man. (UB 195:9.6)
This fear of change in the leadership of the church fosters an even stronger reluctance to change in the laity. Comfortable in their traditions, Christians around the world have developed a theology of convenience. From the comfort of the padded pew and the air conditioned auditorium, to the security of time honored rituals and professional prayers, their lives are no longer challenged to face the radical demands of the religion of Jesus. It is precisely because the leadership of the church has been so unwilling to strike out on the new horizons presented in the revelatory message of The Urantia Book that the church is lacking in spiritual vision and is defaulting in its missionary responsibilities.
Selfish men and women simply will not pay such a price for even the greatest spiritual treasure ever offered mortal man. Only when man has become sufficiently disillusioned by the sorrowful disappointments attendant upon the foolish and deceptive pursuits of selfishness, and subsequent to the discovery of the barrenness of formalized religion, will he be disposed to turn wholeheartedly to the gospel of the kingdom, the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. (UB 195:9.7)
The indifference, ambivalence and failure of so many contemporary church leaders to live by the teaching’s of Jesus instead of the theology about Jesus — influenced by the writings of Paul and Old Testament records — is probably the single greatest handicap of the modern missionary effort. If the church leadership want to see their people invigorated by the message of Christ, they themselves must be willing to strike out on the uncharted seas of spiritual revelation to live anew the religion of Jesus. To do this they must be willing to rethink and possibly abandon some elements of their religion about Jesus:
The world needs more firsthand religion. Even Christianity — the best of the religions of the twentieth century — is not only a religion about Jesus, but it is so largely one which men experience secondhand. They take their religion wholly as handed down by their accepted religious teachers. What an awakening the world would experience if it could only see Jesus as he really lived on earth and know, firsthand, his life-giving teachings! [UB 195:9.8]
The Urantia Book clearly calls the world back to a religion of dynamic living and personal spiritual experience. It urges humanity to learn anew from the uncompromised teachings of Jesus. In our discovery of the truth of the life of Jesus, we will discover the difference between evolutionary religious experience and a living revelation of the religion of Jesus.
Theology may fix, formulate, define, and dogmatize faith, but in the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for tradition nor a mere intellectual belief which he held as a sacred creed, but rather a sublime experience and a profound conviction which securely held him. [UB 196:0.5]
As the leadership of the contemporary church witnesses the graying of its membership, the ineffectiveness of its evangelistic efforts, the draining off of its populations by the theatrical high-tech methods of the “mega-church” and conservative dogmatists, along with complaints about the lack of meaningful personal religious experience by congregation members, they must face the fact that something is lacking.
After years of preparation and training for missionary service, I was compelled to leave this service because the basic premise of the missionary enterprise of many churches is, in my opinion, seriously flawed. As the leadership of the contemporary church witnesses the graying of its membership, the ineffectiveness of its evangelistic efforts, the draining off of its populations by the theatrical high-tech methods of the “mega-church” and conservative dogmatists, along with complaints about the lack of meaningful personal religious experience by congregation members, they must face the fact that something is lacking. Hopefully, ministers and theologians will come to realize that this new revelation of the life and teachings of Jesus is the key to the revitalization of the church and its missionary message.
The church must strike out for a new indigenous form of worship and spiritual expression. The great strength of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ is that it crosses all cultural barriers with an eternal and spiritual message. Through direct knowledge of the life and teachings of the Master, all the peoples of the world will be able to practice the religion of Jesus using as many forms and styles of worship as there are indigenous peoples. It is not necessary for the church of North America to transplant itself in Africa, Latin America, or the far East. It would be better for us to serve the spiritual brotherhood with a new willingness to let the religion of Jesus be shaped by indigenous cultures as they flourish and grow. In our diversity we shall find strength:
The true church — the Jesus brotherhood-is invisible, spiritual, and is characterized by unity, not necessarily by uniformity. Uniformity is the earmark of the physical world of mechanistic nature. Spiritual unity is the fruit of faith union with the living Jesus. The visible church should refuse longer to handicap the progress of the invisible spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom of God. And this brotherhood is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations, but it must not be supplanted by them. (UB 195:10.11)
The great strength of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ is that it crosses all cultural barriers with an eternal and spiritual message. Through direct knowledge of the life and teachings of the Master, all the peoples of the world will be able to practice the religion of Jesus using as many forms and styles of worship as there are indigenous peoples.
The quest for the personalization and indigenization of faith will continue throughout eternity as diverse peoples serve in the kingdom of God. Many varieties and expressions of faith will emerge and society will be enriched by this diversity. As we abandon our strategies of religious imperialism, spiritual creativity will flourish; and the world will be a much safer place in which to live.