We can find no name that expresses what God is for us.
God who comes to us as One unknown,
without a name, as of old, by the lake-side.
God came to those who did not know God.
God speaks to us the same word: "Follow me!"
and sets us to the tasks to fulfill for our time.
God requests.
And to those who obey, however they may be,
God will be revealed in the toils, the conflicts,
the sufferings that they shall pass through,
in God's fellowship,
and, as an ineffable mystery,
they shall learn in their own experience Who God is.
How can one begin to critique this?? It is beyond correctability, all possibility of good prose (God came to those who did not know God?? Who talks like that??), and has no redeeming value. This statement of faith simply directs one to their own works and experience - a recipe for despair. And what about that first line? "No name for what God is for us?" I have one: how about Immanuel, God with us.
My heart grieves for the people of my hometown who have to put up with such garbage. kyrie eleison!
2 comments:
Your post about the Philadelphia bulletin brought me gladness, as I and my wife lived there while I attended seminary. Your post reinforced that I am now delighted to be away from such theological foolishness. Blessings to your ministry.
Oh. My. (Insert word to take the Lord's Name in vain).
Utterly embarrassing that a Christian church, any church for that matter, that is supposed to confess Jesus Christ (I guess that name was to hard to put in that "statement of faith") would use such a blatantly empty, meaningless, and theologically vapid "statement."
You just have to shake your head and pray.
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