It seems the mariner has stepped on a yellow jacket nest with his examination of the church and its lack of commitment to the principles espoused in the Gospels. He does not intend to quote the Sermon on the Mount and the many parables. He will not extrapolate the overarching principle of faith derived from the crucifixion. The mariner welcomes everyone to revisit their Christian faith by reading the Gospels for themselves. In this post, he focuses on individual church congregations. Connectional institutions will be addressed at another time. In preparation for connectional institutions, watch the movies “The Shoes of the Fisherman” starring Anthony Quinn (1968) and “Saving Grace” starring Tom Conti (1986).

Irrefutable points:

• Jesus requires his followers to be humble. The second Great Commandment requires Christians to treat others as they would want others to treat them. There are no exceptions to this commandment.
• Jesus requires that we must sell all we have and follow him. This is where religion, in general, conflicts with sociological arguments about culture. Two thousand years later, we are closer to being the Romans than the abused population in which Jesus lived. What priorities in lifestyle must each of us sacrifice to follow Jesus?
• Jesus never intended the distraction caused by organized pursuit of worldly manifestations such as church buildings. Alternatively, Jesus wanted his followers to emulate the good Samaritan, caring for others at every opportunity – a personal responsibility, not an institutional one.

These three points are not debatable. They are virtual iterations of the word of Jesus.

Given these Christian requirements, one must consider the value of modern cultural distractions. In an earlier post in the Religion category (All Things Evolve – Even Christianity), the mariner makes the case that a Christian indeed is confronted by different conditions and asks how Christianity can be presented to the current culture. Cultural presentation and integration of Christianity must change to be effective. However, these changes cannot deviate from the three points cited earlier. Taken from the earlier post:

“We must live the word of Jesus. Words like forgiveness, kindness, goodness, acceptance, constitute a way of life. A Christian, no matter the historical account, is someone who is devoted to the happiness and wellbeing of others – no matter their style of life or their ethnicity. This is the message that must not fade in the midst of these troublesome days.”

The mariner has been in many denominational, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox churches. With only one or two exceptions, the church is made of the finest materials appropriate to the economic neighborhood and built with as many square feet as affordable. These edifices are groomed as if they were the Golden Calf. These edifices have first priority in the consumption of contributions – that is, first after the professional staff is paid. Somewhere, way down in the budget, a few dollars are committed to the wellbeing of others.

How can this inverted priority be ignored? The Christian must ask, “What is the purpose of this building?” Most will answer, “It is a Holy place where God and Jesus are worshipped.” To what end, the mariner may ask. Another response is, “It is necessary to educate and attract the community to the Christian faith.” Yet so many churches are shrinking – except the TV evangelists, who appeal to a very broad audience of evangelical believers and couch Christians.

Interestingly, many individuals who are not affiliated with a church can be found working as volunteers in services for the poor or Habitat for Humanity or building schools in impoverished areas of the world or traveling to disaster areas to aid the local community. How does the church attract these purveyors of goodness? More importantly, how does the church emulate these purveyors of goodness?

Research into psychological and sociological reasons suggests that there are benefits to being part of a congregation:

• Companionship – The mariner has witnessed the power of  the church when providing a positive and comforting environment for many  who otherwise would have no opportunity to share life with others.
• Comfort – The promise of eternal salvation satisfies  the need to be accepted through faith that life does not end; that one’s  life has value no matter its station or circumstance. This is a legitimate  goal among all people.
• Status – Belonging to a group such as a congregation bestows a  personal sense of importance, even as a non-participatory member.
• Limited responsibility is the tendency for members to feel less responsible for their actions when surrounded by others who are behaving in a similar manner. Any church nominating committee can attest to the resistance of individuals to step into additional responsibility.

Limited responsibility also relates to activist behavior. A member finds it rewarding to perform within the church membership but stepping out into the community at a one-to-one level is not a desired experience.

The mariner acknowledges these benefits. However, if the major purpose, the major workload, the major investment is not to carry out the word of Jesus, which requires personal sacrifice of time, assets, and lifestyle for the benefit of those in need, then the church membership is not carrying its load as a representative of the Christian faith or in the manner that Jesus intended.

If the personal act of goodness to others is the reason each member comes together to magnify that goodness, then a church is a valid extension of the spirit of Jesus. Church members must see the light and become the light. To quote Peter Böhler, an ordained Moravian, “…preach faith until you have it and then because you have it, you will preach faith.” To paraphrase, do good until you want to do good and then because you want to do good, you will do good. Faith is doing good. Nothing more.

Ancient Mariner

The mariner has had feedback critical of his opinion about churches, that they are not a force that does good work as Jesus would want.

The mariner mentioned that a percentage of contribution to the church is spent on missions. However, it is the last priority and smallest percentage. The reader is challenged to review their church budget (atheist or theist). The mariner calculates that for every one thousand dollars in the budget, twenty dollars is deliberately allocated to missions. The dollar percentage demonstrates the distraction of a church from the force to do good works. Nevertheless, this train of thought is not the correct mindset to define goodness. One does not measure goodness with budgets or dollars.

For those who insist on an institutional approach to goodness, the best example of a “church” is a free shelter for the homeless or a free soup kitchen. Another example of institution is relief efforts in areas of tragedy or great want, where volunteers drop what they are doing and work hand in hand with the unfortunate. The dollar contributions spent on these examples of churches is a lot more than twenty dollars out of every thousand; it may be the inverse. Bringing relief to those in need is the first priority. Institutional and logistic spending is allocated only because it is necessary to provide goodness. Goodness is the motivation; personal involvement and sacrifice demonstrate that motivation.

The mariner advocates these institutional efforts. Doing good, as Pope Francis suggests, is what it is all about. The mariner thinks, however, that goodness rests with an individual, not an institution. There is nothing wrong with many individuals coming together for the common good, if institutional structure is a minimized distraction. The one-on-one human experience is the root of goodness. A church can be one person. That is how it was with Jesus.

The mariner was at a church meeting a while ago. Two hours were spent on organization with barely a hint of interest in doing good. It occurred to him that a better use of the two hours would be to organize a flash mob so that in a moment’s notice, everyone in the room spontaneously would come to the aid of a specific person or group of people in the local area. Not much organization needed; goodness is the first priority.

In the last years of the mariner’s duties as a pastor, he had a growing feeling that so much of what he did was irrelevant to society. He finally left the ministry and took a job as a probation officer. Unlike the tasks in the church, his new tasks required him to spend time in poor neighborhoods. He talked with people on a one-to-one basis. He had a conscious awareness that these people were victims. They were victims of being born beneath the crush of a social system where money is king.

Some were able to stabilize their lives with manual labor jobs or even open a very small business. Most, however, had been damaged by family life, repeated failure in efforts to find an identity, and lack of goodness in the culture that entrapped them. Many turned to illicit activity for money and a sense of independence. These folks were his new congregation.

It was serendipitous that his supervisor was an unusual person. His supervisor was polite but always on task. Occasionally, the mariner would have lunch with him. This meant walking the streets of the red light district looking for homeless street dwellers. When he came upon one of these individuals, he would invite them to have lunch with him in one of the local eateries. It was obvious, however, that the individual gained a lot more than a meal. He received compassion – a rare commodity indeed.

The supervisor had the opinion that our job was driven by empathy, not by reinforcement. It is true that some would not respond and eventually return to the courts for violating parole or probation. However, the mariner learned from his supervisor how important it is to keep empathy at the forefront of one’s awareness.

One cannot perform goodness without empathy.

One cannot perform goodness when the institution supersedes goodness.

Pope Francis said faith is doing good. Nothing more.

Ancient Mariner

The mariner read the Bing homepage this morning to discover an interesting link. It was about the emergence of atheist churches (is that an oxymoron? Etymology says “church” means ‘of the Lord’). If you are interested, visit

http://news.msn.com/us/atheist-mega-churches-take-root-across-us-world?ocid=ansnews11

Follow with the comments of Pope Francis:

http://news.msn.com/world/atheists-are-good-if-they-do-good-pope-francis-says?ocid=msnnws

The mariner likes Pope Francis.

The mariner had his days as a Methodist pastor. He never understood why a church had to be the center of the “faith,” receive the lion’s share of contributions, and be the greatest distraction from doing good. Now the atheists, who have no religion or theistic magnet to unite them, want to build churches. The mariner has a blind spot about churches. He often expresses his confusion by saying “What is more important – paying the church electric bill or buying supper for the unfortunate mother with children who lives four miles away and otherwise will have no supper?”

Sadly, theistic or atheistic, the mother goes unfed.

The mariner wrote a lesson booklet for adult study groups. It is based on the Gospels Matthew and Luke (for the purist, the Q Source). To put the booklet into a few words, Jesus never said build churches [The fundamentalist may claim that Jesus said Peter was proclaimed the rock upon which the church will stand; “church,” however, is a Greek word derived from kiriakon, later evolving into Middle English chirce via Old German kirche. The Greeks were famous for building temples with a moment’s notice]. Jesus’ life was spent entirely among those abused by the Romans and judgmental Pharisees. Pope Francis must have read the mariner’s booklet…

In an earlier post, the mariner recommended the new book, Zealot, the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan. The book is written deliberately without Biblical sources even though Aslan is a name of renown among religious institutions. It depicts the horrible life of most Jews during the Roman occupation. No one had the money or dare the circumstances to build a church – if that idea existed in those Jewish times.

It is presumed that the atheists are building churches to avoid feeding unfortunate mothers and their children.

Pope Francis is correct: faith is doing good. Nothing more.

This commentary has led to thoughts about why institutionalization is so important. Readers will have to wait for another post.

Ancient Mariner