What Good is the Church

A number of valuable points are made in this discussion.

1.        We should not expect leadership to come from the church, but should instead look to the charismatic people of the world.

2.       The value of tradition is the passing on of a lineage.  To pass on the experience of a founder , we need an institution or community committed to the message.  An institution, however, is made up of people with all their good points as well as their faults and it is people who can hinder the aims of the institution.

3.       The handing on of the message has led to ritual.

4.       People get stuck and don’t move beyond symbols to the mystery they communicate.

The humour and presence of the two men add much weight to what is said.

I was reminded of the post on Post-Metaphysical Buddhism in which Roger Jackson experiences the symbols and rituals of Buddhism as the aesthetics of the tradition. He had clearly moved beyond religious dogmaticism and beyond the symbols, and encountered the mystery.

Losing faith in the literal accuracy of metaphysical claims does not necessarily imply that all claims made by a tradition are worthless.

The video and the article met each other in my experience – a meeting of east and west.  The result: a softening and a further release of much of the bitterness and sadness I had once felt with regards to the church.