The Bishop of Unbelief

Bishop John Spong, of Newark, NJ, has called, in his diocesan newsletter, for the Anglican (in the U.S., Episcopalian) Church to abandon most, if not all, of its traditional Christian doctrine.

Spong rejects "theism" or belief in God. He says Christianity in general is bankrupt. He doesn’t believe in the virgin birth, miracles or Christ's resurrection. He says the concept of Christ's death on the cross is "barbarism." Spong, as you might suspect, also holds very liberal views on human sexuality.

It occurs to me to ask the question, "Why is this man a still bishop in the Church -- any church?" Clearly the Church of England is far more tolerant of heresy than many churches with you and I have become familiar.

Bishop Spong has long been a controversial figure in the Episcopalian Church in the United States. His outrageous statements have frequently made headlines. He's notorious for making off-the-wall pronouncements. He seems to thrive on the incredulous reactions to them.

Some years ago, when I was the manager of a communications unit for a major life insurance company, I had a Jewish staff member who was an atheist. His wife, who was Episcopalian, was also an atheist. Both of them went to a Reform synagogue in which the rabbi and his wife, also a rabbi, were atheists.

For most of us, these enigmatic facts simply "don't compute." How can a person be religious, and at the same time be an atheist? What is the point of being religious, or of being a bishop in a church, if one does not believe in God, or in the kind of personal morality that flows from ethical monotheism?

The author of Hebrews wrote, "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6).

Clearly, Spong and his ilk do not believe the propositions contained in this verse. If God doesn't exist, He can't reward anybody for anything. Nor, if He isn't there, can we "come to Him." If He doesn't exist, He can't have a moral will.

I wonder how diligently Spong has sought God in the past? Has he ever made a serious attempt to get in touch with the supernatural Being who is the ground of all being? Perhaps he has. Perhaps his efforts were not rewarded. Perhaps God had His reasons.

I believe the time is coming, and now is, when God will begin to manifest His own overwhelming reality first within the Body of Christ, then before the world. There will come a point at which we know to the depths of our souls that, "…in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). God is a supernatural being of enormous, incomprehensible, power. He is not a mere abstraction of the human intellect. He is a living Being of utter consistency. He has not changed one iota throughout the entire history of Mankind. The Bible is replete with theophanies. How often has God broken into the natural world of man to rattle our collective cage. I believe He will do it again. Our Creator wants us to know that He alone is God.

Earth is a divine incubator. Here the children of the Lord struggle for survival, watched over by their ever-living, always loving, Parent. The "eyes of the Lord" scan constantly the earth to assess what's going on in this place (Zechariah 4:10b). God looks for the humble, the contrite, among His children. He yearns to answer their prayers:

"The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all" (Psalm 34:17-19).

 "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers" (Psalm 34:15).

"…those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing" (Psalm 34:10b).

Back to Bishop Spong. If I was a member of his diocese, and I wanted to learn about God, and to enter into a relationship with Him, what kind of in instruction would I receive from the Bishop? Of what help would such a person be to me? None at all. Why then does he hold high ecclesiastical office? It's beyond me.

What I do know is this: we should pray for Bishop Spong that he will have an encounter with the living God that will remove from his fuzzy mind all thoughts of atheism. It is our prayer that the bishop of unbelief will return -- if indeed he ever was there -- to "the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls" (cf. 1 Peter 2:25). If and when he does, perhaps his message to the Church will change from nonsense to good sense.