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August 15, 2006
[Book Review] A Heretic's Guide to Eternity: Chapter 1...
Despite my hurt finger (ahem) and a fairly busy schedule (wink), I thought I’d carve out some time to continue my blogging the latest Spencer Burke book, “A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity.”
Chapter 1 of “A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity” is entitled, Jesus Beyond Chrstianity. The chapter begins by describing how Christianity has been skewed, over the last two thousand years, into something that hardly resembles Jesus Christ’s original message. The chapter continues to explain our world’s current state of “religious” variety and culture’s current thirst for something more spiritual.
In today’s world, we no longer have just one religion seeking dominance but instead a cacophony of voices all vying for our allegiance. The evangelical preacher can be found next to the imam, who lives beside the Buddhist, who sits on an ecumenical council with the local rabbi. Each religion has different claims, and all are fighting for the hearts and minds of a searching global populace.
“In addition, an unlimited number of spiritual and cultural perspectives are available to us through the Internet and satellite radio. These technologies make each religion’s claims to ultimate truth even more difficult to resolve.”
The overall premise for Chapter 1 is that culture has reduced “religion” (as an institution and/or an ideal) to something that is both confusing to followers, and harmful to a real relationship with Jesus Christ — that the true message of Jesus has somehow been lost throughout years of making Chrstianity ours rather than God’s.
“We need to move past religion. I believe the time is right for another way of looking at the Chrsitian message, freed from the confines of religion and open to the possibility of a radical new incarnation and manifestation. The message of Jesus needs to evolve for our times.”
The chapter ends by bringing up a couple of well-known heretics in history: Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus, you’ll remember, is the guy who originally said that the earth isn’t the center of the universe as the church said it was. Copernicus was so scared of what people might say if he made his claims public, that he waited until shortly before his death to publish his findings. Later, Galileo championed Copernicus’ claims and himself became labeled as a heretic.
Burke goes on to connect Copernicus and Galileo to what he thinks has happened with Christianity:
“Throughout history, the church has put up creeds and doctrines to ensure that all things related to Jesus rotate around the axis of religion. The institutional church has become the center of the Christian universe. The challenge, I believe, is to reorder that universe. Jesus put it another way. Challenging the Pharisees on a point of law, he asked them whether the Sabbath was made for man or man for the Sabbath.”
Chapter 1, Jesus Beyond Religion, ends with an admonition of sorts. Burke speaks about our tendency to hold on to things that are familiar — that Christianity, for some, tends to be “a place we retreat to, where we hear old stories, lovingly preserved but frightfully disconnected from the realities of life.”
I tend to agree here, but I feel like we need to preserve some of those things we’ve preserved. Even Christ’s new paradigm was built on stories that his culture was familiar with.
Between Chapters 1 and 2, there is a brief interlude called, “What is a Heretic?” It describes five different types of heretic (from church reformers to intellectuals) as well as the historical punishments for different subsets of herecy. It is very interesting — and quite a stark description of some of the Church’s dirty past.
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