HOW LOW CAN SYDNEY EPISCOPALIANS STOOP?

Recent disappointments with a Sydney Episcopalian blogger are a miniature of the bigger problem within the Diocese. It is said that pride goes before a fall but in many instances there is a blow that brings the fall. Nevertheless, that blow can be avoided and the problem of pride rightly addressed.

John F. Brencher became aware of this as did some other notables of the past. Consider the following extract of an essay of John F. Brencher on the matter:

"Dr [Benjamin] Franklin of America related a lesson he had learnt from Cotton Mather in 1724. 'On taking my leave, he showed me a shorter way out of the house, through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning towards him: when he said hastily - "Stoop - Stoop!" I did not understand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man who never missed an occasion for giving instruction, and upon this he said to me - "You are young, and have the world before you: Stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps." This advice, thus beat into my heart, has frequently been of use to me: and I often think of it when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people, by their carrying their heads too high.'

There is a general shallowness with respect to our conception of the Person of God and the nature of His providential works. Glibness of speech in spiritual matters is invariably the product of shallow thinking, feeling and understanding in the things of God. There is therefore nothing more contributory to the holy art of stooping than a good grasp of true theology in all the fulness of its biblical extensiveness. Yet today, there is a treatment of Scripture characterized by a picking and choosing which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God. If people were not so obsessed by that well-meant but prohibitive cliché the 'simple Gospel', doubtless our churches would greatly benefit from preachers who unleashed all of His dynamic Word and not merely favourite parts. Considering the type of preaching which has been so prevalent it is no wonder that modern Christians have often such a poor conception of the immeasurable greatness of Almighty God! Of course not all people have got the time to examine the Scriptures and their original languages as they would like to do, and because of this full attention should be given to the public exposition of the Word and other allied means of grace. Let all the attributes of our triune God be vigorously evidenced in our thinking and prayers, and let the comprehensive workings of His gracious will be known among His people that we may be increasingly brought into conformity with His image by Christ Jesus. Such a goal will leave no room for shallowness and it will certainly encourage a bowing down of the entire personality."

The Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney prides itself on its theological seminary and its own self as being a bastion of evangelical conservatism in the worldwide Episcopalian church. All along it is flirting too much with the world.

To maintain such a position it engages in an exercise of "picking and choosing [Scripture] which deprives people of the splendour of an expansive sweep of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of revelation, and consequently gives them a distorted and restricted view of God."

Within the Diocese emphasis is placed on Jesus Christ being the Son of God, Priest and Redeemer but His office as Creator is constrained to being fed through the filter of the world's view on Origins so that a distorted view (if anything) of Him as Creator is presented to the pewsitter and the world.

The Diocese needs to stoop. To stoop in prayer, in repentance, in submission to the clear utterances of God. A 'simple Gospel' is no match for the full revelation of Jesus Christ in all His majesty.

Sam Drucker