Boxing, brides and the Reformation

Tonight is the unification fight for the WBO, WBA and IBF heavyweight title fight between Anthony Joshua and Joseph Parker, and I, for one, will be glued to the TV! I have watched boxing most of my life, one of my earliest memories was watching "Smokin' Joe" Frazier defeat Muhammud Ali on a black and white portable TV in the kitchenette of my foster parents home. It was March, 8th 1971 and back then I was glued to the TV, my "Uncle" Ted was a huge boxing fan and had introduced me to the Art of pugilism from a very young age. Even back then there were a number of titles available; the WBC and the WBA, this was in spite of a rationalisation of the IBU, NYCA and NBA into the World Boxing Council (the WBA). These were joined in 1983 by the IBF and in 1989 by the WBO. There has only been one period - between 1885 and 1919 - when there was only one unified title, last held by Jack Dempsey. To me it seems totally ridiculous, putting the two darts titles BDO and PDC in the shade for an excess of hubris, despotism and self-interest and only overshadowed by that of modern day politicians (of all persuasions). Enough of the boxing history as this is probably getting boring for you, but it did give me food for thought yesterday. I was thinking about the traditional Good Friday service at Central Methodist Church in Chippenham, an occasion that I rarely miss as I enjoy coming together with people from various denominations to mark that solemn occasion. My mind wandered, as it has a habit to, and I found myself considering the bride of Christ, and to me I sensed that the bride of Christ represented in the hallowed halls of the Methodist church on Good Friday was like boxing; not one title but many, not one bride but several brides. We can talk about the Church as one body and wax lyrical about how the different denominations work together, but there still exists  deep, dividing differences between denominations, a schism if you like, that go much deeper than styles of prayer, baptism and worship. If you deny this then you are fooling yourself and continuing to try and fool the world! If there were not such a difference then all the denominations would have folded back into one, or maybe two or three denominations once this happened, somewhat better than the 20,000-30,000 currently estimated by those in the know. This is even worse than boxing!

I am not sure that when Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of that Wittenberg church  in 1517 that he intended it to lead to the ridiculous situation that we have today! We can ask why this happened but a good part of it is because of an excess of hubris, despotism and self-interest. Not characteristics one expects in the bride of Christ, but one only has to look at the Church of England which split from Rome under King Henry VIII in the 16th century, in the most part because Pope Clement VII refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Or to consider the actions of John Calvin, an important author of the Reformation, who was complicit in the burning of Michael Servetus in Geneva in 1553. Heretic or not, isn't it God who is judge, jury and executioner? Like many actions taken by frustrated me with godly intentions, the Reformation, whilst delivering freedom of worship to millions, resulted in the frankly ludicrous situation we have today. Hoping to wrestle power from a corrupt church that had lost it's way, the Reformation actually lost its way, with many denominations claiming (either blatantly or otherwise), that they are authentic church. 

God created the Church and not the contrary, as some atheist would have you believe. He created it as the bride for His son, Christ. The one who died a horrible death on the cross so that all of us, if we wished, could taste the freedom of truth. This truth was hijacked and hidden by those very people who were supposed to ensure it remained a "pure virgin" (2 Corinthians 11:2), it was then fractured into thousands of pieces by other men, some of which who did have good intentions. I ask myself, will Jesus return to wed his bride whilst it is in such a sorry state? Is there a bride at all at the present time? What can we do about it? I believe the answer is that, like tonights heavyweight unification bout, we need true unification, one church, no denominations, everyone coming together under one God, one Faith! I am not saying that the Pope, the Archbishops and other leaders of the denominations need to engage in fisticuffs, but I do think the denominations need a good slap to make them realise what has been done to the bride of Christ. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pompus?

Reading James the other day I was quite surprised to find the word “religious”. There in the midst of my favourite book of the Bible was a word that frequent readers of my blog will know often raises some comment from myself, if not my hackles, especially in a 21 st  century context. So, when I saw it there, having never noticed it before for some reason, I had to do some digging (vernacular for research) on why this word was used. A quick search revealed that “religious”, or “religion” is not a common word in the Bible, in fact it is only used 6 times, twice in James in quick session, three times in Acts, once in Colossians. Referring to one of the heavy tombs available to me in the form of Strong's Concordance - in fact although I do possess a copy I cheated and enquired of it online - I discovered that in Greek religious was θρησκὸς (thrēskos) and that it “refers probably to a careful observance of religious restrictions” and in a limited sense, it may mean devout. Further enqui...
Read more

Choose the Red Pill!

Image
  What we read in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy is both amazing and terrifying; God knew that in spite of all he had done and was about to do for Israel, that the people would still go ahead and rebel. He knew that they would, they knew that they would, and they knew that he knew they would, but they still did it. For me this speaks volumes about two things:  One is that we have complete and total free will before God, I utterly reject the doctrine of predestination because I believe that no matter how you package it, or what intellectual gymnastics you do with it, this cannot allow for free will. For the Old and New testaments and Gods message therein to be relevant then free will has to stand unadulterated.  Secondly, the wilfulness of the human condition; like Cypher in the matrix movie who, even though he knew that the matrix was an illusion, chose that illusion over the reality of freedom (you can watch it here ). We are presented with an excellent  analog...
Read more

Preaching to the Converted

As I have done myself of numerous occasions along with multitudes of preachers in a church context, I delivered sermons that were just telling people what they know already, telling them how it was. Yes this often involved clarifying points of scripture and encouraging people in their faith, but the messages whilst not falling on deaf ears was generally just going over somewhat familiar ground but in a new way. What we might call 'Preaching to the Converted'. However, in some cases a preacher will actually challenge the converted, assaulting the listeners ears and their faith, and getting them to ask themselves where they actually stand with God. Today I had the pleasure of one such sermon preached by a dear friend of mine at a local Baptist Church.  Speaking on Ezekiel 37 - the Valley of the Dry Bones - the preacher challenged us to reflect on our own situation, our own faith, our own Christianity by asking if we were in fact Dry Bones; did we come to church faithfully every S...
Read more