Babylon is fallen, is fallen,...
Come out of her, my people,
Revelation 14:8/18:4
Come out of her, my people,
Revelation 14:8/18:4
There seems to be a "contemplative" route on the Streets of Babylon...
"A Lighthouse Trails reader sent us an article this week from a Pacific Northwest newspaper describing how members of a local church are changing the way they practice church and view Christianity, doing away with their traditional church methods and embracing what they call a “contemplative approach.” The article states that they were inspired, in part, to go in this direction from reading Diana Butler Bass’ book Christianity for the Rest of Us.
Bass is a contemplative proponent, and like so many of her contemplative constituents who wander into the contemplative prayer world, her views toward the Cross and the atonement have become outright hostile; and those who adhere to the “blood of the lamb” and who cling to the old rugged Cross are seen as an enemy and hindrance to world peace and “restoration.”
Christianity for the Rest of Us is filled with the ideologies of contemplatives, emergents, and socialist-like figures such as Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Eddie Gibbs, Marcus Borg, Joan
Chittister, Parker Palmer, and her “friend” Brian McLaren. A prevailing theme in the book is “sitting in silence,” meditation, and contemplation. She says things like:People need silence to find their way back to interior wisdom. They need a recovery of the contemplative arts of “thinking, meditating, ruminating.” (Kindle Locations 1789-1790).If this and other churches continue following the same path as Diana Butler Bass, they may also begin to embrace her view that “the jig is up” to those who believe in the “blood of the lamb.”
True knowledge of the self, of love and meaning, comes only in silence. (Kindle Locations 1795-1796).
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