Anglican Perspectives

What is God Blessing?

The following article by Bishop Bill Atwood first appeared in the May 14, 2013 edition of the International Update. Sign up for this email here.

GlobalView

duckThere is a community pool in the neighborhood where we live. Besides a rectangular lap pool, there is also a free-form one that has a long narrow channel where the water is pumped to provide a current to carry people around in a big loop that is called a “lazy river.” While it is still too cool for non-Canadians to swim in the morning, the ducks don’t know that. This morning, three brightly colored mallards were racing around the not-so-lazy river. Swept along by the current, the ducks were able to move two or three times faster than they could go on their own. One would pull ahead and uproariously quack his superior standing only to be passed by one of the others. Then that one would quack derisively at the other two until one of them would pass. At the point where the lazy river spills back into the main pool, they followed the eddies of the current and wound up circling around each other, flapping, and quacking in water fowl cacophony in what I’m pretty sure is the equivalent of chest-bumping among footballers.

It is amazing that with their little tiny green heads, holding little tiny duck brains, they were able to suss out the movement of the current of water and cooperate with what the current was doing and use it for recreational enhancement.  Like Solomon says in Proverbs 6, consider the bird and the ant and learn from them.

A great deal of energy is invested within church asking God to bless our plans. While that is not a terrible thing to do, it is not the best thing to do. Instead of asking Him to bless our plans, just as the ducks used the current, we should ask to join in with what He is blessing and cooperate with the way He is moving. At its heart, the distinction between what we want and what God wants harks back to the Garden of Eden and the decision to decide for ourselves rather than to obey. It is so deeply ingrained that we often don’t even realize that we are doing it.

In the Anglican Communion, at the heart of the devastating conflicts is the demand by activists that their agenda be blessed by the institution. The core of the agenda is about the right to declare what is good and what is holy. Sadly, that prerogative rests with God alone. Anyone can claim it, but it does not make it so.

The basic rebellion of self-determination is writ large in many of the pursuits of revisionism: departures from the revealed nature of Christ, eschewing the path of redemption, and refusing the authority of Scripture. Not only are we asked to endorse changes to the faith, they demand that we bless that which God seeks to redeem and cannot be blessed.  While it is true that everyone should be treated with kindness, the understanding of what is kindness actually is at question. It is not kindness to let people perish.

Christ’s law of love is violated when we encourage behavior that shortens lives or leads them away from Christ. Thoughtlessly endorsing behaviors which are proscribed by Scripture is just another face of the same rebellion of doing what we want to do and asking (or in many cases demanding) that God bless it.

What God is clearly blessing in the Anglican Communion is Biblical fidelity, Gospel mission, and Kingdom transformation. The Provinces that are pursuing those priorities are growing, even in the midst of what are sometimes extremely challenging circumstances. The Provinces that are pursuing their own agenda and asking/expecting/demanding that God bless it are dying. They are not just stagnant, they are shriveling and dying. Even worse than that, they are plummeting headlong away from Christ and into Hell with their foot firmly on the accelerator.

While that is grievous and extremely unsettling, there is good news. The good news is that the Good News is still being proclaimed––most notably in the GAFCON/FCA Provinces. The decision to have a GAFCON-2 meeting in Nairobi is a huge encouragement. It is a demonstration that the center of gravity for the communion has moved from the North to Africa. As the Jerusalem Declaration makes clear, there is still great appreciation and affection for the Gospel coming to Africa from the North. There is appreciation of the historic contributions that have been made by Canterbury. The highest allegiance, however, is to the Lord of the Church and to His Word. That will be celebrated in Nairobi at All Saints Cathedral in October of this year as GAFCON-2 meets. The gathering will include Bishops, clergy, and laity, and will model and proclaim Biblical faith in a way in which the institutional structures of the Anglican Communion are unable and/or unwilling to do with the same clarity.

He that hath an ear, let him learn from the ducks.

Share this post
Search