Yesteday we walked a fair distance: longer than is our habit on a Sunday. Our Sundays generally start with church, and we then go into the country. This photo was taken yesterday, and yes, we live in a wonderful part of the world, and yes, those spiky things are native plants.

Some Sundays are wonderful. Some are not: last Sunday the most striking part was a dedication of children during which a video of the (two children, different marriages, but two of the parents are cousins) had their grandparents –at 85 and 90 — pray for them. And praise God they could still serve in God in one’s old age.

Such things shame me. For they pray with such authority and power, and I have difficulty coming to the throne of God.

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

(John 6:52-59 ESV)

Now, some have taken this text as a proof of transubstantiation, that in the Eucharist one literally eats the flesh of Christ and the drinks the blood. The reformed refer to the words of Christ when he said to the disciples — passing bread — that this is my bread, broken for you, this is our blood, shed for you. What the Romans have correct, however, is that it is a means of grace.

But for the shamed, the penitent.

Here’s the problem. Christ’s Mercy, which is INFINITE, can only apply if the person is SORRY for their sins. We have to be sorry. If we aren’t sorry, if we do not believe that our sins are sins, or if we believe that our sins DON’T MATTER because we have a “legal right” to be forgiven and we gone through the motions and mindlessly bleated out the right words with no actual contrition or shame behind them, or if we simply don’t care, then Christ, who can work with infinitesimally little, at that point has NOTHING to work with. When we give Him NOTHING to work with, we go to hell. And while we can never know if any specific person is in hell because we can never know if at the very last instant they gave Our Lord “something to work with”, what we can know for an absolute certainty is that people have, do and will go to hell. Lots of them. Our Lord and His Saints have made this crystal, crystal clear. In fact, when taking Our Lord’s and the Saints’ warnings together as a whole, the prudent man can operate under no other assumption than that it is far, far easier to achieve hell than the Beatific Vision.

In this society, I am fortunate indeed: as are my sons. For we are descended from the two groups in our society — the English and the Chinese — who the people of this age blame all the faults of society upon. We are told we have to take collective responsibility for everything from famines in Africa to Crucifixion in Iraq. Our society encourages people to project — to take their guilt, their shame, and place it elsewhere. Our society says that none can be judged — but those they choose for this years seven minutes of hate, and at the moment that person is the Evangelical Christian.

(Nest week it will be the Jews. Or the Mormons, Or the Catholics, or Cliff Richard).

But by projecting guilt, one remains a child. One never has to live with the shame and guilt of what one has done wrong. One is never in tears. One never is guilty.

One is never human.

Among other things, I am a musician. I love the music of the liturgy — to the point where I can recite much of the missal and I am not catholic. I also love the music of the modern church and the hymnody of the old. Such things are good.

But if there is no pain and tears within our practice and prayer, our worship is not efficacious. The very presence of God should scour our conscience. We should feel unworthy.

For without understanding that we ourselves are accountable for our sins. It is from an understanding that we have no business anywhere near heaven, what Ann Barnhardt called the beatific vision, that we can worship. For our salvation is an act of infinite mercy, and it is not our doing.

We should be ashamed of our sins, not base our theology on them. The most recent form of projective theology is the Gay theology…

Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries, said that with insiders on the offensive such as Vicky Beeching, a British-born artist who has become popular among evangelicals in the U.S., he expects “attacks on Christians in America like we’ve never seen before.”

He explained that after the Stonewall riots in 1969, homosexual activists banded together to oppose every American institution that did not fully accept and promote homosexual behavior.

The first victory was over the American Psychiatric Association, and within 40 years, every other group had been conquered, he said. The Boy Scouts were the latest to fall, just a year ago.

Now, the only organization left is the church, he said.

“All of their battle-hardened activists and enormous resources are all directed at the church,” he said.

The problem is that church leaders haven’t been preparing for such a fight, Lively said, and don’t really know what the movement is about.

Beeching revealed she is a lesbian in an interview last week with the Independent newspaper of London.

“What Jesus taught was a radical message of welcome and inclusion and love. I feel certain God loves me just the way I am, and I have a huge sense of calling to communicate that to young people,” she said.

Lively, however, said Beeching represents “the drawing back of the tide before a tsunami” and an indicator of “how bad this is going to get.”

Um, no. Ms Beeching. No. For the sake of Christ, no. I understand your desire to sleep with your partner: but you, like me and like many, have sinned sexually. So I need to say that — regardless of your nausea around men, regardless of your lust and desire, regardless of what you have done, you do not base your theology on some sense of equality and inclusion.

Because we are all equally damned, and all equally included in the rolls of hell.

You have a terribly hard road to walk in penitence. Being celibate feels dry and horrible after being in the same bed, being intimate with one another, and even in the separation is made for good reasons — as Augustine had to leave his mistress — we are called to obedience. If you are married, you have to sacrifice yourself to your spouse, in obedience to Christ.

If the wife, you have to obey your husband cheerfully as if to Christ: if the husband you have to defend and provide and work to protect and cherish your wife, as you are accountable to her before Christ, and if single, you have to obey Christ.

Imperfectly. I do not judge the gay, because I’m very straight: I do not have that temptation. And I have my own sins to struggle with.

But I do not project my sins onto God, and blame him for my faults. I chose these sins. I have sinned not merely in ignorance, or in weakness, but by deliberate choice.

And for that I should be more ashamed than I am.

All theology based on projection: on class or race or orientation is an error. In Christ we are one: in Christ we are worthy. But that is the work of Christ, it is not any quality we have, and it is not our works. Beware the social justice warrior(ess) that asks the church to be equal. For the only equality we have, in Christ, is our dependence on him for our salvation.