At the Crossroad

The church of our day does stand at a crossroad.  And while some seem to be seeking life in sync with the word which Jeremiah spoke when he said, " Thus says the Lord:  Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls,"  (Jeremiah 6:16)  there are also many which look not for the ancient paths, but for the untested and untried paths which inevitably lead in a direction far from the direction of the ancient paths.  

The church we see standing at the crossroad is a divided church, one that in many denominations can no longer live in the same house. The ancient paths find their authority in the Word, in tradition, and in values which are threatening to those who are choosing the more modern paths where the authority of the Word is filtered through values centered on the common consensus of culture.  The conflict of the crossroad is not so much about the differences in liberalism and conservatism as it is the source of authority for the church.  Certainly, adherence to the authority of the Word creates some discomfort, but then the Word has never promised to be something which makes us comfortable.  It is full of tensions between one thing or another and seeking to create a world free of the tension generated by the Word is to seek something which the creation itself tells us is impossible.   

What seems obvious is that the church will not choose the ancient path, or the untested path paved by the mores of the culture, but both.  The problem is that the church has come to a place of being unable to live in compassion and love with the tension and, therefore, will diminish itself by division, weakness, and further polarization.  Yet, despite the outcome, one thing is certain.  The church will not disappear.  It has faced such moments in the past and has not only managed to survive, but has arose triumphantly.  Such is its future.  What we often forget is that the church is not just a visible physical presence among us, but an invisible spiritual community which stretches from Pentecost to the present and from here into the eternal.