The Visitor’s Card January 31, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Religion, Spirituality, Truth.4 comments
I get bored with most blogs, but then I find something special. Holly’s The Visitor’s Card is such a site.
I love the way Holly talks about life and reality. She has a great way with thoughts and with words. Here’s a word she coined to talk about those of us who are astounded and brought to worship by the mystery that is God — “mysterians”.
In confessing to my love of the mystery of God, my thoughts are immediately haunted by the Christian condemnation of mystery religion. I don’t care. To me, God is so big, and I don’t just mean spacially, that mystery must be involved if we are going to begin to “approach” Him. I don’t think, however, that it takes some secret, ego-enhancing, code-breaking skill or blessing to approach Him. I think He’s there and trying so very hard to get our attention and to show Himself.
Food for thought: Tears January 31, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Uncategorized.add a comment
“Eyes must be wet or hearts will break.” — Aeschylus in “The Persians”
What have we cried over lately?
A little jarring. Is it true? January 30, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Bible, Christianity, Emerging church, Holy Spirit, Religion, Salvation, Scripture, Spirituality, Theology.2 comments
“There is need of greater light than the word [Bible] of itself is able to give; for it is not all the promises in Scripture that have … wrought any gracious changes in my soul.” — John Cotton, 17th century
Cotton, a Puritan who was a pastor in early Boston, was emphasizing the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation and sanctification.
The Bible, we often say, has an amazing power to speak to our lives today. I think John Cotton would say that the Holy Spirit has an amazing power to speak to our lives today and that the Spirit often uses Scripture. I think this is correct. And by attributing the real power to the Spirit, we are really attributing it to God.
I think it also is true that we are in need of greater light than the word alone can give. God’s Word is greater than the words on the pages of the book we call the Bible. We all may know that, but we don’t act like it.
Cotton’s theology differed from most of the other ministers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was more centered on the work of the Spirit and on grace, as opposed to law. It is, in short, a scarier way to do faith.
“Without the work of the Spirit, there is no faith,” Cotton said.
(Cotton quotes come from American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, by Eve LaPlante.)
Turning on lights January 20, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Emerging church, Postmodern, Scripture, Theology, Truth.Tags: Southern Baptists
2 comments
We turn on lights so easily today that I think we fail to see the miraculous in it. Let me state the obvious. Enter a room with no light and you cannot see what is there. Flip the switch and what was there all along is now visible.
That’s how I feel in my spiritual life right now. God is helping me to turn on a light switch and see what has been in the “room” all along. The light is coming from looking at Scripture in a different way. Rather than mining it for theological truth; I’m trying to let the story speak. I find myself wondering, is systematic theology the greatest enemy of genuine godwardness?
Some years ago I began to explore Calvinism because of its growing influence in Southern Baptist circles, of which I was then a part. Calvinism, as a theological system, is very compelling; and Calvin himself is even more compelling.
I told a Calvinist friend of mine that if you’re going to be an inerrantist you almost have to be a Calvinist. I also did some doctoral work at a conservative Presbyterian seminary. In one of the papers I discussed free will regarding some target. I stated that free will, while not explicitly stated in Scripture, is inferred. I made an “A” on the paper, but the professor wrote a note indicating he didn’t buy the argument.
Calvinism makes so much systematic, logical, biblical, modern sense; but I think it’s ultimately flawed. If God had wanted us to have a systematic theology on which to build our faith, I think he would have given us one. So, you say, maybe he has in the centuries since the biblical record was written. Well that doesn’t help because there are so many variations on theology.
No, I think God wants our understanding of Him to be a bit mushy, hard to nail down. That’s why his most important revelation, Jesus, was a living story.
People who want structure in their lives, including mental and theological structure, cannot abide this. Those who want God in their lives can if that’s what God intended and intends.
Muslims and Christians January 16, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Islam, Religion, Truth.5 comments
I have been privileged in recent days to be involved in a public discourse with Ummadam, a Muslim. This conversation has taken place in the comments sections of our blogs, but I thought I would bring some of it to the surface.
I had to confess to Ummadam that I know little about Islam and have never read the Quran. I told her that I have had a hard enough time trying to comprehend my own faith and its implications.
In her most recent comment on my blog titled “Where’s the authority?” Ummadam replied the following to a question of mine:
“Muslims believe in all of God’s Messengers, Prophets, and Revelations. We believe that He sent revelations to Prophet Moses as well as Prophet Jesus (peace be upon them both. However, we believe that each of their communities strayed and that the original Revelation no longer exist and what we have now known as the Old and New Testaments are not the original Revelations We believe that as God sent Jesus to guide the people back to the straight path, that He too sent Muhammad as his last and final Prophet to mankind as a guidance. We believe that the quran confirms the truths in both previous revelations and we believe that it also clarifies some of the falsehood that has crept in. Anything else we remain silent about as God is the Best Know-er.”
My response:
“Thanks, Unmadam. That is helpful. I think there is no doubt that the communication of revelation has been shaped by culture and that we Christians (I will not speak for Jews) have given poor expression to Christ’s teachings at time. As someone who admittedly knows little about Islam, I would say that I suspect your honored text most likely has also been influenced by culture and that the people who honor it have given poor expression to Muhammad’s teachings. I find it interesting also that Christians and Muslims see their honored texts in such finality.
“I hope I have not offended in anything I just said. I am predisposed to express what I’m thinking and do not mean any disrespect you and your faith when I raise questions and see difficulties.”
I had an interfaith dialogue with a Hindu friend a few years back, but this is my first dialogue with a Muslim. I must say that in this dialogue I fear being misunderstood or disrespectful. Of course, I can feel that way with some Christians, as well.
I do not know much about Islam and I feel I know so little about my own faith, but I do know this: God loves us all, and I pray that His love is manifested in me in my dealing with others.
Scripture and reason January 15, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Bible, Christianity, Emerging church, Philosophy, Religion, Scripture.1 comment so far
“… [N]othing taught in Scripture would work, could possibly be effective, except on the assumption that those to whom these words are directed over the ages have sufficient rationality to match up Scripture with the actual affiars of life.”
That is Daniel N. Robinson’s paraphrase of what Richard Hooker had to say in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie (1593). Robinson references Hooker in The Teaching Company’s Great Course titled American Ideals: Founding a “Republic of Virtue” (lecture 2). To continue the paraphrase:
“A providential God must have equipped us intuitively with sufficient rational power to comprehend our relationship to God, our relationship to each other, what the terms of political and social associations should be, etc. So, what we have Hooker appealing to first is the requirement that Scriptural interpretation not fly in the face of reason itself.” (p. 28)
Hooker was a “devout Christian writer, but he distinguishes between extreme literalism in the matter of Scripture and what a reasonable person’s understanding would be of what Scripture claims and means and requires of us all,” says Robinson, who is on the philosophy faculty of Oxford University.
One more quote from Robinson: Hooker was “trying to remove religion as the grounds of political upheaval, and revolutionary zeal, and one man turned against another.”
I think many of us would like to remove religion as “the ground for one man turned against another.” Religion need not be that way. Bad religion does so, but good religion does not. It is one thing to disagree with someone; it is another to demonize him.
First time to play tag January 14, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
There was always something about playing tag. I felt bad for the current “it” if I didn’t get let “it” tag me. I shall be true to form and be easily tagged by Glenn.
1* What’s the most fun work you’ve ever done, and why? (two sentences max)
Being a substitute teacher when I was between jobs, because I loved being with the students and reading while they worked.
2* (a) Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did? (one sentence max)
I used to play adult indoor soccer with some great friends, including my wife.
(b) Name one thing you’ve always wanted to do but keep putting off? (one sentence max)
I’ve always wanted to run for public office.
3* (a) What two things would you most like to learn or be better at, and why? (two sentences max)
I would like to learn how to sail because it seems like it would be so peaceful on the water and being propelled by the wind.
I would like to learn to play the drums because I love music and I think all other instruments would be too hard to learn at my age.
(b) If you could take a class/workshop/apprentice from anyone in the world living or dead who would it be and what would you hope to learn?
It would have to be C.S. Lewis. No one has influenced my thought life more, and I have many questions I would like to ask him.
4* (a) What three words might your best friends or family use to describe you?
dependable
tired
good
(b) now list two more words that you wish described you?
courageous
humble
5* What are your top 3 passions?
family
truth / religion
politics
6. If you could change one thing about the church, what would you change?
I would tear down the buildings.
7. * Write and answer one more question that YOU would ask someone? (with answer in three sentences max)
Q: What epitath do you want written on your tombstone?
A: He loved God and people.
I tag…
I wish I had more friends, but I’m new at this.
Where’s the authority? January 13, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Bible, Christianity, Emerging church, Postmodern, Scripture, Uncategorized.16 comments
“What if the real issue is not the authority of the text … but rather the authority of God? …”
Now Brian McLaren is challenging me, not speaking for me. I have been rather proud of stressing the authority of Scripture as opposed to those who stress its supposed inerrancy. But McLaren’s words didn’t remain a challenge long. The truth was instantly apparent.
Of course, by moving authority away from real words on real paper, belief can and will get more mushy, more pliable. Those who are personally wired to need concrete theological handles to hold onto will find this mushiness untenable. It’s much harder to “win” an argument when one views authority as resting beyond the wholly tangible.
This, my inerrantist friends would argue, is a slippery slope on which there is no solid theological footing, that relativism lies at the foot of that slope. They are probably right about the slippery slope, but what will one slide into — falsehood or truth. History is rife with people “climbing” toward the wrong goal. What if most of the Christian church has been “climbing” away from God instead of toward him.
Or to change the metaphor, what if we’ve been heading along a slope that heads downward instead of upward, that by slipping we will turn around and grab the lifeline that is being thrown to us from on high and behind. Instead of walking away from God down our own slope of comfortable religion we allow God to pull us up to him.
I’m not sure if that metaphor works. I need to think.
I end with a quote from the rest of McLaren’s paragraph in A New Kind of Christian, with Neo speaking.
“What if the issue isn’t a book that we can misinterpret with amazing creativity but rather the will of God, the intent of God, the desire of God, the wisdom of God–maybe we could say the kingdom of God?” (p. 51)
Dancing dinosaurs January 12, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Emerging church, Postmodern, Truth.2 comments
“… [T]here are some of us dinosaurs out there who want to learn to dance.”
The fictional character Neo speaks those words to a group of college Christians in Brian McLaren’s book, A New Kind of Christian. Again, McLaren speaks for me. A bunch of years ago I started writing some short stories about my life, and I called them “A Dinosaur Speaks.” I was speaking of myself as religious and cultural dinosaur in the midst of world that seemed increasingly different. I say that to establish my identity as a dinosaur. (I also discovered later that C.S. Lewis used the term.)
The reality is that I was rather proud of my dinosaur status. Maybe T Rex and friends were rather proud of their status as the kingpins of creation shortly before their extension. Reminds one that pride goes before the fall.
I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to invest my short life in seeking to sustain a religious and cultural perspective that is out of touch with the world and time in which God has inserted me.
Let me quote the part in McLaren’s book that appear right before the quote I started this with. Neo is speaking.
“Well, much as it might surprise you, I think a lot of my peers when I was in college were going in this direction [toward postmodernity]. I think that maybe 30 to 40 percent of my baby boom cohorts were leaning into postmodernity. The majority were thoroughly modern. I think the great economy of the 1980s managed to convert most of my secular postmodern friends from my generation back to modernity; money has a lot of power to influence the way people think, right? As for those in the church, well, as you say, one just can’t talk about this sort of thing among most older folks, so if there are any older people thinking this way, they tend to keep quiet about it.” (p. 44)
I’m one of those Neo spoke about. It’s why this blog is basically anonymous, for now. I’m exploring. I’m thinking. But exploring and thinking make some Christians uncomfortable.
Maybe I’m on the right track because Jesus definitely made people uncomfortable, and He is still doing it today.
Will Bush’s plan work? January 11, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Democracy.Tags: President Bush
1 comment so far
After watching President Bush’s speech last night announcing a surge in troop levels in Iraq, it seems there is really only one pertinent question to be asked — Will it work?
I don’t think so. It might have worked three years ago but not now. The chaos has spread, and a civil war has erupted. It seems to me that it would take a lot more than 21,000 additional troops to even have a chance of succeeding; but ultimately outside intervention is not going to solve the problem in Iraq.
I wish all people in the world had the chance to live in a liberal democracy where the common good is pursued and minority rights are respected; but, ultimately, a people have to want it, not have it imposed on them. This is because democracy requires sacrificing what you want individually in order to pursue the greater good. It also requires the rule of law, and Iraq has shown more interest in the rule of power.
George W. Bush is a good man, but he took a misstep in leading us into Iraq. Then he made more missteps in executing the war effort. This will be another one. Once you start down the wrong path, the only way to solve the problem is to admit it and then find another path.
