(Midwest Cons.Journal): Re: Episcopalians, "And Now...Idiots"

http://themcj.com/?p=39589#comment-174268

AND NOW…IDIOTS

Thursday, April 4th, 2013 | Uncategorized

In some of the finest pseudo-theological imbecility that I’ve ever read, Washington DC Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde attempts to turn “resurrection” into the next “live into.” (WARNING: if you decide to read this, you will be dumber when you finish):

To say that resurrection is essential doesn’t mean that if someone were to discover a tomb with Jesus’ remains in it that the entire enterprise would come crashing down.

Told you. Yes it would, “Bishop.” If the Lord didn’t walk out of that tomb, you’re wasting your time.


The truth is that we don’t know what happened to Jesus after his death,
Nuh uh.

anymore than we can know what will happen to us. What we do know from the stories handed down is how Jesus’ followers experienced his resurrection.

By seeing, touching and talking directly to Him?

What we know is how we experience resurrection ourselves.

I don’t have the slightest idea what that means.

That experience is the beginning of faith, not in the sense of intellectual acceptance of an outlandish proposition, but of being touched by something so powerful that it changes you, or so gentle that it gives you courage to persevere when life is crushingly hard. It is experiencing a presence so forgiving that you can at last forgive yourself for your greatest failings, and forgive those whose failings have wounded you, and so loving that your own capacity to love expands beyond your wildest imagining.

To a degree. But the problem, Bishop, is that none of that other stuff can or will happen unless and until you accept that outlandish proposition. If you don’t, or if you try turn the Biblical term “resurrection” into a concept that satisfies you intellectually, all you’re doing is kidding yourself.
Or damning yourself.

Yeah, I know. I could cite John 20:27 or John 21:4-13 until I’m blue in the face and you probably could throw in at least a dozen other verses. But what possible good would any of them do for someone who is as abysmally ignorant (or willfully contemptuous) of the Word of God as Mariann Edgar Budde seems to be?

Budde and her Spongian ilk will, no doubt, claim that they’re the only ones who tell people whatever they want to hear engage Scripture and take it seriously while the people who believe that words mean what they say and that the Apostles wouldn’t willingly have suffered martyrdom for the sake of a dead body fundamentalists who take Scripture literally leave no room for the all-compassing love of God.
Bearing in mind that, to the Episcopalian, the word fundamentalist applies to anyone from Roman Catholics to Orthodox to Southern Baptist to that storefront Holiness church down the street from your house, ask yourself two questions. Which approach changed the entire world? And which one is dying?