This may be one of those times when I need to take a breath, and ask for God's grace--so with those two needs in mind, I'm using this as an outlet.

In this month's United Church Observer, there were a series of articles about prayer--how we pray, its efficacy, how it changes us, etc etc. As per usual, Gretta Vosper has found a place to voice her thoughts. For some reason, people continue to ask Ms. Vosper's opinion regarding things theological, without recognizing her utter theological ineptitude. I don't get it, and I don't understand why so little is said about her absolute disregard for the United Church, let alone the Christian faith it supposedly represents. It's mind-boggling.
In her article about faith, she undermines and belittles those of us poor Christians who pray to a "theistic interventionist God," claiming that our continued prayer to such a God is simply indicative of our lack of inclusivity (another word she continues to abuse). She points to the lives of non-Christian people who's lives have been meaningful and purposeful as proof that we can't say that God is the basis for life-giving work.
Her principle problem is that she doesn't understand that God is not confined to the Christian church, nor does God require Christians to do his (or her or whatever) work--if that were the case, the world might well have been doomed from the get-go. This is not to say that Christians aren't called to live as examples of the full life God longs for every human being. We are indeed. That's what the Gospel is all about.
She also notes that praying to an interventionist God means that we are unable to live strong courageous lives, or to "find meaning in our lives without God's added effort."
The humanistic project has alread failed dramatically, and perhaps someone should point that out to Ms Vosper. The desire to live life that affirms whatever we claim is good is at the root of most of the world's problems. Setting up idealistic goals, or values, or ethics and assuming that people are able and indeed willing to meet them by their own power and sustained by their own sense of self-worth is as unfair as the Pharisees who loaded their listeners with heavy burdens and refused to lift a hand to help them carry them. To insist that the only way to do good works is by understanding your own self-worth and responding to it, is demand something that most people at best struggle with, and in many cases are completely unable to do.
She's exactly right that God's call to relationship--with God and with each other--is what gives my life meaning. Not the fact that God will do something for me, but that God sustains me, God calls me to love all of his creation, and God is the reason to do it. Though many people, including Ms Vosper, don't recognize that the thrust towards life is part of God's plan for all creation, that doesn't make it not so. Indeed it's true that many people are much closer to doing the work of Christ unbeknownst to them. Jesus even claims that many who don't think they know him, are in fact much closer to him than many who think they know him.
The final thing that bugs me in the article, is the claim of inclusivism, which is actually a denial of our differences and an insistence that we are all beige, vauge, life-lovers, and that that is a sufficient reason to do nice things. The "radical ethics" that she proposes are nothing more than the call of the Gospel without the inconveniences of discipleship and service to God. Unfortunately, the end result is that "I" become God. This masturbatory understanding of life ends consistently in a confused mess.

I think that this post is beginning to spiral out of control and may be nothing more than senseless rambling. Perhaps that's because it's in response to an article that says little, written by someone who understands less about the Gospel of Christ, and the faith to which we are called. Nevertheless, I'm sure Gretta wants to do good work. For this I can't fault her. And hopefully, despite the fact that she doesn't understand why she's doing it, she'll find herself with the sheep--as one who clothed and sated and visited and healed and did the work of the One who loves us all beyond measure, and by whose will our lives have meaning.
May God grant us all grace and wisdom.