November 14, 2005
Risk
William Temple was one of the greater than lessor archbishops of Canterbury. It was he who said that Christianity is the most materialistic of the religions. Its incarnational premise suggests that we are spiritually imagined by God’s grace and called to be human. It’s a shaky place to be. But Jesus said to fear not, that God is love, and that love has cast out fear if we’ll just get out of the way.
One of the characteristics that troubles me most about the so-called religious right is that it often seems neither all that religious nor all that right. That it is so intense about being right should be one of the first warnings. A close second to that is its unswerving conviction that what’s right for it is also right for those who aren’t of it.
Such seems to have so little to do with and so little place for faith, simply bypassing faith as risk and substituting a doctrinaire system by the same name in its stead. The kind of faith Jesus asks of us is the key that opens to us this grand relationship with God after him. The risk of such faith is neither right nor wrong, but that which by grace always gives us the right to be wrong. And maybe makes any other path at the least questionable.