Creative is about the only word of praise which comes to mind for this story from the church in Holland.
"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death."
Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.
God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience”
"When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience."
Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.
Apparently one 6th of the clergy in this church, a mainstream reformed church in Holland, are atheist or agnostic. It makes the CofE seem like a hotbed of fervent fundamentalism.
If this had been one of the 7 churches of Revelation, the other 6 would have been saying to each other 'well, at least we got off lightly, looks like we're not that bad after all.'
I'm all for rethinking the church, and the presentation of the gospel, but this Dutch bathtub lacks both bathwater and baby. It also seems fundamentally dishonest. If you're an atheist, what's the point in dressing it up in Christian language and pretending it's something else?
Heresy is not a new phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteJesus was a myth, but Christians caring for the sick during the plague was not.
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