Encounter

 

Speaking of dear old Tiff Shuttlesworth, US tele-evangelist, yet another making a real good living from what is basically a "modernism" - a North American brand of Protestant Reform Theology, born first of Martin Luther and fueled by the invention of the printing press and mass literacy, A wonderful recipe for replacing the Living Word which blows where it will, with the "Word as Text".

Looking up Tiff, and his latest Tweet, he posts:-

Without Christ, all of your good deeds can not keep you out of hell. With Christ, all of your bad deeds can not keep you out of heaven.

Fair enough, and in fact this is the heart of all our world's Faith Traditions - if the wind is allowed to blow. Here is zen, when the Emperor of China asked the Buddhist missionary Bodhidharma exactly what merit he had earned by all his good deeds. The answer:-

"None at all".

The self-same point/lesson/sermon - call it what you will. That ethics/morality is only a by-product of what can be called "wisdom" - and the only wisdom is of God (Reality-as-is) and can never be "ours" as such.

Browsing through a few Journal entries of Thomas Merton, and he is responding to a passage from Irenaeus.....

If you are the work of God wait patiently for the hand of your artist who makes all things at an opportune time........Give to Him a pure and supple heart and watch over the form which the artist shapes in you........lest, in hardness, you lose the traces of his fingers......

Merton comments......

The reification of faith. Real meaning of the phrase we are saved by faith = we are saved by Christ, whom we encounter in faith. But constant disputation about faith has made Christians become obsessed with faith almost as an object, at least as an experience, a "thing" and in concentrating upon it they lose sight of Christ. Whereas faith without the encounter with Christ and without His presence is less than nothing. It is the deadest of dead works, an act elicited in a moral and existential void. To seek to believe that one believes, and arbitrarily to decree that one believes, and then to conclude that this gymnastic has been blessed by Christ - this is pathological Christianity. And a Christianity of works. One has this mental gymnastic in which to trust. One is safe, one possesses the psychic key to salvation......

As I see it, what Merton speaks of as an encounter with Christ in faith can be as diverse as the uniqueness of every human being. It cannot be restricted to a formula or a creedal statement, a "belief" of any kind. This is borne out by the evidence of the fruits of the spirit, which St Paul tells us are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Such fruits are in evidence right across the spectrum of humankind and are not the possession of any religion.

Anyway, Tiff can carry on with his "end-time" stuff. Each to their own. He can keep it........