Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century

by Marcus J. Borg

So the first way in which I would say the external forms matter is that they are meant to be vehicles of wisdom, vessels through which the Spirit speaks to us and operates within us. A second way in which the external forms matter is when they matter too much. This is the downside, when the external forms are overemphasized; that is, when being Christian or Muslim or Jewish means believing this set of beliefs and not that set of beliefs. When the external forms are emphasized, or made central, then the differences between religions become more apparent than their similarities. And when the external forms—the scriptures and doctrines—are absolutized, as they are in religious fundamentalism, then religious exclusivism is the inevitable result. Religious dialogue basically becomes impossible if the external forms are absolutized. Conversion becomes the goal, and conflict is often the result. So the external forms matter, but they matter precisely as relative expressions, as vehicles of the sacred and not as absolutes in themselves.