Let it Die, Man, Let it Die!

Too often the church preaches resurrection but effectively denies the death out of which alone the grace of resurrection proceeds. Its cure of choice, for its own hills or for the world’s, is not death but simply more doomed living. The church, for example will keep sinners (the morally dead) in its midst only as long as they do not presume to look dead—only as long as they can manage to make themselves seem morally alive. Moreover, ecclesiastical institutions are no more capable of accepting death for themselves than they are of tolerating it in their members. Like all other institutions , they cannot even conceive of going out of business for the sake of grace: given a choice of laying down their corporate lives for a friend or cutting off the friend at the knees, they almost invariably spare themselves the axe. Worst of all, when the church speaks to the world, it perpetuates the same false system of salvation. It is clearly heard as saying that the world can be saved only by getting its act together. But besides being false, that is an utterly unrealistic apologetic. For everyone knows perfectly well that the world has never gotten its act together and never will—that distaste has been the hallmark of its history—and if there is no one who can save it in its disasters, there is on one who can save it. (p. 474)