Chopra On Church
Here’s a hypothetical situation. If I had my own radio/television show (maybe even a podcast), I just might devote an entire show each week to tracking the jibberish that comes out of Deepak Chopra’s mouth. Chopra has become an emblematic voice for 21st century American spirituality; he has an unmatched ability to speak ad nauseam without ever saying anything of actual substance.
Somehow this also translates into printed form. Take, for example, his article in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle. Referring to the ECUSA’s recent decision, he writes:
[It] was an act of cowardice because it did not reflect the ideals of love in Christianity and was motivated by reactionaries in the Episcopal denomination. Countering a long tradition of laissez-faire tolerance, the reactionaries have gotten tough and threatened to form their own church if gays are promoted in the priesthood. The worldwide Anglicans are more intolerant, upholding that homosexuality is forbidden, unnatural, wrong or an outright sin, depending on who is doing the disapproving.You’d think that someone would stand up and ask a simple question: Who are we to condemn gays if Christ didn’t? In fact, who are we to condemn any sinner, since Christ didn’t? Christianity is about forgiveness, and for the past two decades, as fundamentalism swept through every Protestant denomination, moderates and liberals have been driven out, and were roundly condemned as they left. Along with them went tolerance and forgiveness, not to mention love.
Did Christ teach love or is that just a liberal bias? In the current climate, it’s hard to remember, but one thing is certain: Once a tight cabal of fundamentalists takes over any denomination, Christ’s teachings go out the window. The reversal of Christianity from a religion of love to a religion of hate is the greatest religious tragedy of our time.
Actually, Jesus has a lot to say that relates to judgment and wrath. And it’s not just a matter of homosexuality, but it strikes at the heart of the sin that infects and afflicts every son and daughter of Adam. And Jesus understood this - he came to “seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Unfortunately, Chopra’s Jesus is one that is far too common in the popular mind. He leaves the matter of our guilt untouched and simply tells us to be “better people.”
But this is not Jesus and this is no Christianity. Another religion, perhaps, but not Christianity. Chopra’s Jesus brings to mind the indictment issued by H. Richard Niebuhr against liberalism’s gospel in The Kingdom of God in America (1938): “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”