There is so much happening in this world and the church seems to be floundering for a voice in 2020. Kevin Kallsen and George Conger discuss this and much more on this week’s Anglican Unscripted.
There is so much happening in this world and the church seems to be floundering for a voice in 2020. Kevin Kallsen and George Conger discuss this and much more on this week’s Anglican Unscripted.
I agree with Kevin and George that the answer to the problem is in Scripture. Unfortunately, it seems that our religious leaders are looking for secular solutions. One other thing I see is that in our self-centered secular society we are taught to view ourselves and others as objects. We see objects to be used to satisfy our needs; then discarded. You cannot form a relationship with an object. As objects, it is easy to use and discard people, to denigrate and to abuse them. In the Gospels, we are taught by Christ that to look at each person not as an object, not as the sum of his or her deeds but as person created by God. As person who can be reborn in God. This allows us to seek to form meaningful relationships with everyone.
Westminster Abbey also has Janani Luwum, Oscar Romero and Ester John.
George touched on the huge addiction issue at the end. Overwhelming. Not many good solutions. Back in the late 1950s it was theorized that if alcoholism was awkwardly reclassified as a disease we could finally get Uncle Albert out of the closet, treat, and cure him. It didn’t work. Uncle Albert is still drunk. I took an upper level psychology class taught by a full fledged psychiatrist doing original research at University Hospital discussing these issues back in 1970.
Back in 1970 the only program that had more success compared to doing nothing was 12 Step. Any group suffering from a particular affliction can be actuarially broken down into future outcome. Doing nothing, a certain percentage will get better, a certain percentage will get worse, and another percentage will stay the same. Other than the 12 Step all of the other programs have the same percentages as doing nothing. Sobering (pun).
My observation is few people suffer from addiction. They embrace it. I see some poor souls every day so far gone that the only way they’ll get better is to die. I have no answers.
There are reams of evidence about the social and environmental context of Jesus’ words. He is the most studied person in all history.
The fact remains that his words speak for themselves, since they are the very words of God.
Many with long qualifications from great institutions have trouble coping with this – that a simple uneducated person can understand the important things in Jesus’ words as well or better than the most wealthy and educated.