You’re right–people do use any excuse they can to keep from changing things. That’s not exclusive to the Church, but one would hope to see less of it among Christians. Instead, there are all sorts of things where Christians sort of say “well, it’s not going to be perfect so we’ll deal with it.”

I’ve experienced that attitude when it comes to the justice system, the environment…all sorts of things.

I also think preaching the fullness of the Gospel shouldn’t allow us to be complacent, but I’m frustrated because complacency abounds in the church. I mean, we’ll get fired up about gay people (and I mean the church in America as a whole, not just Episcopalians), but otherwise people seem satisfied to go to church on Sunday so they can die and go to heaven.

I’m not saying that’s a bad a bad thing in and of itself, but it’s incomplete (I guess that’s where the full Gospel come in). Christians are far too satisfied with the status quo IMHO. I’m in a big and pointless discussion on T19 about the death penalty, and someone who was arguing with me said that there will be no perfect justice until the Kingdom of God, so we’re just stuck with what we have. I’m not satisfied with that. We shouldn’t be sitting around waiting to see if the Kingdom of God will come to us; we should be doing our part to usher it in to being.

I’m idealistic, and I freely admit that. I’m not completely naive, but I’m afraid most of us have become too jaded. Maybe that’s part of why men don’t go to church. I don’t know. I’m just fired up myself about that right now.

I actually like Murrow’s book, and many of the points he brings up. He’s very even handed, but he’s not afraid to ask tough questions and deal with real issues. That said, I don’t think people start out thinking that they’re making a theological statement when they sound warnings like this… I think they are just being pragmatic. My concern is how it looks in a theological framework. In some ways it’s the ecclesiological equivalent of getting people to a faith in Christ by scaring them with Hell first.

Now, theologians from Origen to Jonathan Edwards have recognized the importance of the doctrine of Hell, but it’s something that can be very misused. In this case too, I think the statements that “the Church (the whole thing) is going to die if _________” is over used and can feed into a tendency we have to think of the Church as just an institution like any other. That’s my only concern. But Murrow’s book is good…after I finish it, you’re welcome to borrow it, I’d like to hear what you think.

Thanks for catching the typo–don’t know how that happened. I’ll blame the demons that power the internet… they’re nice little scape goats.

However, the real risk for some people in knowing how it ends is that it leads to complacency. Now I haven’t read Murrow’s book, and you say this comes up “white” (sorry) a bit, but it could be that he doesn’t really believe that the church will be overrun, because he believes we will re-engage men. He could just be “speaking prophetically” about where our current actions (or inactions) are leading, without really believing that his prediction will ever come to pass.

Having said that, I realize I may be overly generous in that characterization. In fact, I suspect that the truth is closer to what you posted. I just have a tendency to present the other side, and it hit me re-reading this post that there may be an alternative explanation.