Religion needs some sort of a nobel prize. The Nobel Religious Progressive Prize maybe? Nobel Tolerance & Love Prize? Oh, here’s a good one: The Nobel Prize for Spiritual Innovation in Church Life. The Nobel Prize (Swedish: Nobelpriset), as designated in Alfred Nobel’s will in 1895, is awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace! An underlying theme is recognition for breaking the eggs of normalcy and discovering truth beneath what we think we already know.
Science begins wth theories! and then everyone goes about trying to affirm what it is that the theory suggests and usually in such a process, new discoveries are unwrapped. Religion has a major problem with challenging any of its “belief systems“. In fact one cannot even allude to the “beliefs” being theories. Instead such beliefs are the “words of God“.
Being such, it’s heresy to question any of them.
And thus religion becomes stuck in antiquated traditions: conservative paradigms, and over time, unchallenged beliefs become stale and obsolete of meaning. And there is no passion. Science is seen as progressive and most importantly, “self-correcting“. When one begins with the premise that there’s nothing to correct (can you say inerrancy?), every belief and canon is true INFALLIBLE, there’s no where to go!
And that’s where religion find itself today!
In a blind alley! No place to go unless you decide to exit the fundamentalist cul-de-sac and look for other streets. In so doing one is not denying foundational truths, but discovering new truths not yet discovered. How desperately the church, religion in America, and you and I need to adopt that premise.
It’ll take courage because the institutional church will not allow anything that challenges it’s beliefs, let alone its power.
There will be no Nobel Prizes for the church or religion until we come down from our ivory tower of arrogance, self-righteousness, and admit we don’t have all the answers. And better yet, until we cheer on those pioneers who go ahead of us searching for new truths to rather than burning them at the stake of “ridicule and emotional ex-communication“.
It’s a time for courage!
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