Anglican Values 4: Complexity

ANGLICAN VALUES 4: Complexity
October, 1996

What sets Anglicans apart from other Christians? All Christians believe that God is revealed in Jesus Christ, that the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth has set the seal of God's love on humanity and has given us the ability to lead new lives, that our lives are no longer limited by death but that God's new life waits for us beyond. But Christian differ in their emphases and explanations of this faith.

Many churches try to simplify faith and life for their people, and many people want this. What exactly does this or that mean? What exactly am I to do in a given situation? What exactly does the Bible say about this or that? These churches are often big and popular. Other churches offer program after program, their staff thinking constantly about how to appeal to the market of this or that age group or segment. And these churches are often big and popular.

The Anglican church may try to answer questions, and it may offer appropriate programs. But we also have a more complex life.

Anglicans are in dialogue with tradition and are not ashamed of the past. It is sometimes said that Americans are not interested in the past, but in the here and now, and in the future. I think this is true. But Anglicans are aware that what we are is a result of what we were, and that the circumstances of our lives were not created from the mind of God yesterday. And so we are in dialogue with the past. Our music is not just the music of our own day. The language of our worship is not simply what we think appeals at this moment. We value the dialogue we have with something other than ourselves, and we call others into that dialogue, because it is truer than ignoring what we and those who came before us were and did.

Anglicans know that some questions do not have fast answers. Many problems of contemporary life cry out for answers. The state of American family life, personal morality in a culture which values gain, greed and instant gratification, present challenges to all Christians. To some questions there are easy answers: not taking experience-altering drugs is better than taking them. Chastity for young people before marriage is better than promiscuity. But for some of life's questions, there are not answers but the shared experience of a loving community. When a marriage breaks up, when a child is inexplicably caught in a cycle of negativity and self-destruction, when our work presents us with two or more choices, each of which is less than ideal: in such cases it is not answers, but fellowship, friendship in the Lord, lasting and understanding relationships, which provide what we need. In such cases the Bible is a resource, not a lawbook, and theology is a helpful friend along a path new to us but worn smooth with the experience of others.

Anglicans know that God trusts humanity to co-create the future. We do not believe that God has a single "plan for man", but that the future emerges as we accept our place as His sons and daughters, growing up, as St. Paul says, into the full stature of adulthood in Christ. We are not cookie-cuttered into a lock-step pattern (to mix metaphors) but rather given power through our intelligence, moral discernment and faith to create the future with Him. We are set free from sin, justified in faith, and then trusted. Anglicans know that this complicates our lives, because we now have responsibility to build and to care for others.