Religious Language

I find that the more my personal spirituality evolves, the more I struggle with much of traditional religious language. I suppose that has been true for a while now, but up until recently I was able to rationalize it or translate it internally into something I found more accurate even as I said words I found to be inaccurate aloud. After having taken a hiatus from parish ministry and now returned to it, I am no longer able to turn off my mind and engage my mouth. Perhaps some examples would help explain the kinds of things I am talking about.

Many traditional Baptism rites have a question such as this in them: Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? My problem is that Satan is a mythological character that doesn't really exist. I might as well be asking: Do you renounce the Boogey Man? Moreover, what exactly are the "spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God"? If God created everything that is (no matter whether you understand God to be the energy present at the big bang, or hold to one of the Genesis creation myths, or some other explanation of God's involvement in creation) then everything has to be good because it's all God. Where do these "spiritual forces" come from? Who or what are they? How is it that such forces could threaten God's power or sovereignty? Don't misunderstand, I believe that human beings make bad choices because they lose sight of their own divinity. I believe that some people do things that are in fact evil. Such things are a far cry from "spiritual forces," however, Human beings are not iron filings being pulled this way and that by magnetic forces both good and "wicked."

What about Confirmation rites? Here's an example from The Book of Common Prayer: "Defend, O Lord, your servant N. with your heavenly grace, that he may continue yours for ever, and daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more, until he comes to your everlasting kingdom. Amen." Defend your servant? From what? Who, precisely, is going to steal us away from the very God who created us out of Godself? Another one of God's creations, also created of God-stuff and therefore also inseparably connected to God? Sounds like more iron filings to me!

Here's a prayer I stumbled across just the other day:

Lord God,
when our world lay in ruins,
you raised it up again on the foundation of your Son’s Passion and Death.
Give us grace to rejoice in the freedom from sin
which he gained for us,
and bring us to everlasting joy.
through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever. Amen.

I have several questions. The first is, could any image be more depressing? When, precisely, did our world lay in ruins? I've checked the history books and can't seem to find a clear place when that way the case. Apparently, it happened before Jesus' Passion and Death. This prayer is loaded with an antiquated view of God as an abusive heavenly parent who created a system of Laws that were impossible to keep and so would have had to wipe out the world had he not committed child sacrifice. It's called Atonement Theology, and moderate to progressive theologians have rejected it for some time now as a culturally and time bound explanation of the death of Jesus. Good thing, in the view of this prayer, that God is a child killer, because now we can all rejoice - our sorry behinds have been saved! Exactly how immoral would we have to be to dance a little jig because someone killed their son, even if it meant we got a pass for our bad deeds?

Of course, some people still get great comfort from this stuff. If you are among them, I don't want to burst your bubble. You are free to believe whatever you like and I will defend your right so to do. However, if you have the same problems with this that I do, know that you are not alone and that there are people who are working to develop ways of expressing what we believe in more accurate - and far less grisly - ways. Integrity demands that we say what we mean and mean what we say, especially when trying to share our beliefs!