Here is what theologian George Lindbeck
has written:
Every major literate cultural tradition up until now has had a central
corpus of canonical texts....Without a shared imaginative and conceptual
vocabulary and syntax, societies cannot be held together by communication,
but only by brute force (which is always inefficient, and likely to be a
harbinger of anarchy). But if this is so, then the biblical contribution,
which is at the heart of the canonical heritage of Western countries, is
indispensable to their welfare, and its evisceration bespeaks an illness
which may be terminal.
Now of course we don’t have to live in a
culture governed by the stories of the Bible. We could find something else.
For 17 years I lived happily in Japan under a moral code based largely on a
mix of Confucianism and Buddhism. Japan’s is a society that clearly works
pretty well, and I’m sure I’d be quite comfortable living in the West under
a Confucian system where the husband is the undisputed head of the
household, and children have an absolute, lifelong duty to honour and
respect and care for their parents.
But here in my country Australia we live
in one of the most multi-cultural societies ever in the history of the
world, yet there are no signs of our culture embracing any alternative
system. Instead, we are moving from a system of values given to us by the
Bible to - nothing. It is a trend that is evident throughout the West.
Of course, if we were abolishing God in
order to install a different values structure, it might matter only to those
of us who are Christians. But our societies are working to abolish God,
without finding anything else, and that surely has to matter to every
thinking person in the West.
We urgently need to reclaim the stories
of the Bible. And if we in the church don’t do it, then certainly no-one
else is going to.
I wrote a few
days ago of how for some years in Japan I was deeply involved in
Buddhism, and that one of the incidents that disillusioned me was the sight
of a group of homeless men in a public park. It made me question what hope
Buddhism could offer these men, other than its traditional teachings that
the world is a miserable place and our lives are meaningless.
Yet a couple of years ago, concerning
that incident (which I have written about several times before), I received
an email from a man in Europe who had become a Buddhist. He wrote:
“Regarding those drunks you came across in the park. You must realise that
those people made that hell for themselves; it is their karma.”
That is the teaching of Buddhism and some
other Eastern religions. That the victims of misfortune have created their
own suffering, because of sins in a past life, or simply because it is their
karma, or fate.
In fairness, I must say that Buddhism
does include teachings on compassion for the poor. But it is hard to have
much compassion when you believe that those who are suffering are
themselves, for whatever reason, utterly responsible for their plight. And
unfortunately, that belief is becoming pervasive throughout the West. Even
within the church.
October 11th, 2002
