By providence (i.e., the Super Bowl preempted NBC Nightly News) I had to watch ABC News and there heard Ted Haggard's first TV interview in the two years since he fell from favor in the church following a homosexual liaison with a male prostitute. Surprisingly, I found that on a few points I agreed with his assessment of the church today. As he stated in his interview, "I think the religious right is increasingly impotent right now in America. And it's going to have to return to the gospel in order to regain its strength." I couldn't agree more! But his proposal to amend that failure came up far short in my estimation for the same reason the church too often fails today.
Again, as stated in his interview with ABC News, Haggard says, "Just as the church made a horrible mistake several centuries ago, insisting that the Earth was flat when, in fact, the Earth was round, I think the church may make a major mistake in our generation saying that sexuality should be this and nothing else when, in fact, there's a lot more diversity." At this point I have to say he's right on history but wrong on the path forward. The church did get it wrong in confronting the early challenges of science, famously accusing no less than Galileo, the Father of Astronomy, of heresy and persecuting many who proposed notions contrary to doctrine. But if the church had done a better job of shaping doctrine by the teachings of Scripture we might not have the antagonism between theology and science that persists to this day.
The Prophet Isaiah is, no doubt, one of the most towering figures is the Bible, whose lengthy work is the Old Testament book most often quoted in the New. It was by the words of Isaiah that Jesus proclaimed in the synagogue in Nazareth the focus of His ministry. If the good churchmen of old had only turned back two chapters from that passage they could have found a valuable clue to the shape of the earth:
It is [God] who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.... - Isaiah 40:22
Most interesting, don't you think, "the circle of the earth." Right there in the midst of that most famous prophet, a bit of news that wouldn't dawn upon the world of science for over a millennium. Ever since our exploration of space has taken us to the moon, we are familiar with that lovely image of the cloud wrapped "blue marble." But how did Isaiah know about it? Where in the world could he, or anyone else, have seen "the circle of the earth." Let's just say the Prophet was a ghost writer (or better yet, a Holy Ghost writer) for the One "who sits above the circle of the earth." That being the case, we ought to take the Bible seriously as the word of God. It should be foundational not only in the pulpit and the parish but in the heart of us all. If we begin with God's word, we can begin to mend the church that has failed so many, and it's Maker most of all.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen
Pressly
