ONE OF THE difficulties confronting the Christian church throughout history has been the extent to which it should identify with contemporary culture. Should it cut itself off and become isolated from the world or immerse itself totally, accommodating new attitudes as they come along? In practice it has settled for a bit of both.
The problem was there from the beginning when there was disagreement between St Peter and St Paul over the expansion of the church into the Gentile world. Peter's instinct was to remain closer to Judaism. In the early church women were subordinate to men and were to remain silent in church thus conforming to the social norms of the time.
Slavery was generally tolerated as a fact of life for many centuries. Christmas was originally a pagan winter festival taken over by the church at a fairly late date so when Christians complain about the commercialisation of Christmas we do well to remember that it is something we borrowed or took over from another culture. The same applies to Easter which has its roots in another ancient pagan festival. Down the centuries we see the worldwide Christian family feeling its way, step by step through complex issues; sometimes getting it terribly wrong as was the case with the crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of witches and the appalling persecution of the Jews and other minorities. In most of these cases political interests were the dominant theme; the gospel of love was often compromised and still is.
When we bemoan the level of controversy in the church today we should remember that it is part of a process of learning and discovery which has gone on for generations as the church seeks to engage with the society it is called to serve complicated by the fact that different parts of the world have differing cultural traditions. Somebody once said that when Christianity shakes hands with the world it's goodbye Christianity but the church has to engage if it is to understand what matters to ordinary people. Archbishop Michael Ramsey late of Canterbury recognised the danger: "There is a tendency of religious people often to picture themselves a God who is supremely interested in the religious aspect of life . . . and is less interested in the drama of human life itself. Is it not true that the image of God can be seriously distorted in this way in the attitudes of devout people?" The New Testament teaches that it was because God so loved the world - not the church - that he sent his Son into the world.
In tomorrow's Gospel reading Jesus touches on the subject when he makes the point that his followers do not belong to this world no more than he does; they are called to be in the world but not of it. This non-belonging is not about complete isolation or detachment but rather being free of the self-interests and defective values of this present world combined with an ability to see beyond the present order to that superior order described as the kingdom of God where God's law of love rules supreme.
It cannot be said often enough that the church of God and the kingdom of God are not one and the same. The church is an instrument of the kingdom and it is the vocation of every member to live and promote the values of that kingdom.
Father Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, explored what this might mean: "To choose the world is not merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of all an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world in history and in time. In my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I'm capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother and sister, to make the world better, more free, more just, more liveable, more human. And it has now become transparently obvious that mere automatic rejection of the world and contempt for the world is in fact not a choice but an evasion of choice."