The document summarizes how Christianity can address humanity's spiritual crisis in the modern world. It argues that Christianity is unique in that it presents both a myth and a historical truth. As a myth, the story of Jesus nourishes people spiritually by giving them a place in the narrative. As a historical truth, it can be believed factually, allowing modern people to have both facts and significance. While Christianity has undergone struggles with modernity, it has emerged purified with a deeper understanding, satisfying both science and spirituality. It responds to deep human longings, completing rather than destroying previous myths.

1. TALLER DE ÉTICA
SEXTO
(Semana del 16 al 20 de Marzo)
(Trabajo de Clase)
1- (Luegoderealizarlalecturadeltextoacontinuaciónextraigatresconclusiones)
(Reflexión)
EN LOS MOMENTOS DE CRISIS
por el Hermano Pablo
A fin de rescatar su colección de discos, un hombre se deslizó por el piso de su sala que tenía
una inclinación de 45 grados. Una joven de dieciocho años, resuelta a rescatar su loro que
había quedado atrapado, pasó a través de una ventana rota. Así mismo un joven de veintiséis
años, para recuperar la vieja Biblia de la familia, se metió en su apartamento cuando aún
temblaba.
Todos estos, y muchos más casos, se registraron en el valle de San Fernando, California,
después de uno de los fuertes terremotos que sacudió el lugar. «A la gente le gusta correr
riesgos —explicó Carl Frederick, psicólogo de la Universidad de California—. Es una manera
de hacerle frente a la desgracia.»
El terremoto inicial que sacudió todo el valle de San Fernando fue uno de los más desastrosos
que ha sufrido el estado de California. En cuestión de segundos dejó sin hogar a más de
quince mil personas, dando como resultado inmensas pérdidas materiales. Y así como en toda
gran desgracia colectiva, el espíritu de solidaridad manifiesto, que es uno de los valores
humanos más importantes, produjo emocionantes pruebas de consuelo y ayuda mutua. Las
autoridades del estado acudieron de inmediato con toda clase de ayuda. Y la fe religiosa de
muchos cobró nuevo impulso.
Andrés Rogers, un joven que neciamente entró a buscar sus zapatos en su apartamento
derrumbado, dijo: «Dios salvó mi vida del terremoto. No me va a dejar morir ahora.» Otro
hombre que desafió la orden policial de no entrar a su edificio fue a buscar una caja de clavos.
«Tengo que colgar mis textos bíblicos en mi nuevo apartamento —dijo—. Cristo nunca falla.»
Es interesante ver cómo en los momentos de gran calamidad las víctimas piensan en Dios.
Como que la fe se acrecienta en tiempos de angustia. Como que nos es más fácil orar cuando
experimentamos la desventura.
Lo cierto es que fue también así en los días de Jesucristo. Haciendo un repaso de los cuatro
historiadores de la vida de Jesús, vemos claramente que los que se acercaban a Cristo eran
los que habían agotado todo recurso humano.
¿Será que sólo buscamos a Dios en los momentos de crisis? Es triste pensar que sólo nos
acercamos a la Divina Majestad cuando estamos en derrota. La fe en Cristo es algo que
necesitamos todos los días de la vida. La comunión con Dios debe ser habitual, una costumbre
de cada momento.
Si no lo hemos hecho todavía, experimentemos el agrado de tener a Cristo como amigo
constante. No esperemos llegar al fracaso para buscar a Dios. Él quiere ser nuestro amigo hoy
mismo

2. 2- The Christian
response to humanity’s1
spiritual crisis
Published September 26, 2014
In the third and final article on the
crisis of the spiritual in today’s
culture, a writer and former
educationalist explains how
Christianity can provide nourishment
and truth.
In two previous articles (Open House May and
August 2014) I attempted to outline the spiritual
dimension of human beings – their freedom and
their orientations to the truth, the good and,
through them, to God – and to diagnose the
crisis which modern science has brought about
by undermining the old myths and sagas that
used to provide human beings with their
motivation and guidance for living. I finished by
saying that this crisis could also be seen to be
Christianity’s opportunity and in this article I will
attempt to explain why this is so.
Christianity’s claim to be able to meet the
distress felt by so many modern men and
women – which might be summarised as a
feeling of emptiness and futility at the base of
things – rests on the unique character it claims
for itself: it is myth that is also history.
The mythological character of the story of Jesus
revealed in the Gospels cannot be denied. The
God-man who mediates between God and
humankind; who operates a ministry of healing
and salvation; who suffers betrayal and death
but then is raised from the dead; who is the vine
of which his followers are the branches; who is
the truth we live by; who shares with us his very
life so that we live his life in living our own lives;
who redeems us from our sins and from the
finality of death itself. All of this is the stuff of
myth, the ‘big story’ that nourishes our spiritual
being by providing us with a structure to live by
through the very fact of giving us a place in the
story
1
http://www.openhousescotland.co.uk/christian
-response-humanitys-spiritual-crisis/
ourselves: we live the story, we are woven into
its plot, and by that very fact we communicate
with the divine, we are divinised. The Christian
story has all the life sustaining and energising
qualities of myth.
But the Christian story also claims to be true, to
be an accurate historical account. It is this fact,
which Liberal Protestantism was always inclined
to surrender, that gives the Christian story its
capacity to satisfy the needs of modern, rational,
scientific humanity. Once the spell of the old
myths was broken, as happened when science
invaded the mentality of those who lived by
them, the force that was in them melted away
and could not be retrieved or restored; it was
gone forever. Their motivating and explanatory
power was dissipated by being replaced by
modern scientific accounts.
But if the essential ingredients of the story of
Jesus can be shown to be both myth and
historical fact, then modern men and women
have a myth they are capable of living by, a
myth still capable of nourishing and sustaining
them because it can be believed to be factually
true. We can have the history and the poetry, the
facts and the significance of the facts, the bare
historical account along with its revelatory
power. We can have nature, astoundingly
beautiful in itself, even more astounding in being
a window to what lies beyond nature; we can
have human life that by virtue of its very
humanity is oriented to God. Modern men and
women’s spiritual yearning can be satisfied by
rejoicing in the fruits of intellect, the discoveries
of science, the products of rational inquiry while
finding in these nothing, in principle, that clashes
with religious practice.
It is true that Christianity has not arrived at this
position without undergoing a considerable
struggle. It has itself had to pass through the
cauldron of modernity, has had to take stock of
itself, refusing to be complacent and being
prepared to Religion and culture JOE

3. FITZPATRICK The Christian response to
humanity’s spiritual crisis In the third and final
article on the crisis of the spiritual in today’s
culture, a writer and former educationalist
explains how Christianity can provide
nourishment and truth. If the essential
ingredients of the story of Jesus can be shown
to be both myth and historical fact, then modern
men and women have a myth they are capable
of living by, a myth still capable of nourishing
and sustaining them because it can be believed
to be factually true. 6 OPEN HOUSE September
2014 discriminate between what is essential and
what unessential, and willing to discard the
latter. Science and modern scholarship have
searched Christianity to see how far its claim to
historical authenticity can be sustained. The
Christian texts or scriptures, and the land with
which they are associated, have been subjected
to stringent examination, explored and probed
piece by piece. If anything, the results of this trial
by scholarship and scientific inquiry have been
beneficial.
For example, the picture of Jesus that emerges
from our expanding understanding of the social
and economic milieu in which he grew up and
worked, is so much fuller, so much more human,
so much more truly Jewish, than the caricature
of the Divine Being I as a child and many
generations before me – and since – were
introduced to. Just as modern X-ray technology
can sometimes detect an old master buried on a
canvas beneath some more conventional
painting, so modern Biblical scholarship has
stripped away the accretions of centuries and
revealed Jesus in his humanity – as a human
being who makes amazing claims for himself.
(‘Do you not believe that I am in the Father and
the Father is in me?’ (Jn 14,10); ‘I proceeded
from him, I came forth from him.’ (Jn 16,28);
‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ (Jn 8,58) ).
Scholarship helps us grasp, for example, how
clever a dialectician Jesus was, how shrewd in
debate with his opponents, how entertaining, apt
and revolutionary his rejoinders when they
seemed to have him cornered. It shows him
tussling over an extended period of time with the
mindset of his disciples in his efforts to challenge
their assumptions and lead them to a genuine
understanding of what he was about; this was a
task that he continued after the resurrection, as
the story of his encounter with the two disciples
on the road to Emmaus in chapter 24 of Luke’s
gospel illustrates, an encounter that presaged
the Church’s ongoing quest to deepen and
clarify its understanding of Jesus and his
mission. If I am right in believing that Christianity
has passed through a testing time and come out
the other side purified and with a deeper self-
understanding, then Christianity has the
potential to satisfy both the canons of science
and the canons of spirituality.
The unique claim of Christianity to be both myth
and history should not be seen as triumphalist;
there is no place for complacency and little
prospect that modern culture would allow such
complacency. Religion of all kinds is having a
tough time of it in today’s secular culture. What I
have been striving to demonstrate in these three
articles is that if we remain calm and reasonable
we can make a good case for Christianity as
responding to the deep-seated longings and
needs of the human spirit. Christianity is not
imposed on human nature from the outside, so
to speak, but rather is something that answers to
the questions and the yearnings already within
human nature and spoken forth in the old myths.
God’s presence is already in those ancient tales.
They simply stand in need of a new direction in
some cases, and in all cases of being filled out
and completed. What Jesus said a propos of the
ancient Jewish traditions might, with some
modifications, be applied to the non-Christian
myths and sagas, ‘I have not come to destroy
the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them’.

4. 3-