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.
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.
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.
Building a new Christian ship January 8, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Emerging church.3 comments
Brian McLaren’s character, Neo, says to a group of college Christians: “…[T]he modern version of Christianity that you have learned from your parents, your Sunday school teachers, and even your campus ministers is destined to be a medieval cathedral. It’s over, or almost over. … I want you to invest your lives not in keeping the old ship afloat but in designing and building and sailing a new ship for new adventures in a new time in history as intrepid followers of Jesus Christ.” (A New Kind of Christian, p. 38)
Most people would see me as part of the crew, an officer, of the old ship. I’m a Baptist denominational worker. Many years ago when I worked in another denominational position I wrote, for no one’s eyes to see, that I felt like a mole, the kind that crawls along beneath the surface of the ground. I was a bit uncomfortable about having a job to exalt a denominational body when what I really wanted to be about was exalting Christ and helping others (and myself) to love God and love others better.
That denominational body and the one I now work for do those very things. But I found myself wondering if they represented, and represent, the best way to do exalt Christ and help others (and myself) to love God and love others better. That is a regular question before my mind.
I know I am part of a good thing; I wonder if I am part of the best thing.
Finally reading McLaren January 8, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Emerging church, Spirituality, Truth.2 comments
I’m finally reading a book that “everyone” seemed to be reading a few years back, A New Kind of Christian, by Brian McLaren. As he admits in the intro, it’s not a masterpiece novel, but the ideas are important, and I’m finding a kindred spirit. For years I have felt a disconnect between Christ and current Christianity. McLaren seems to feel the same disconnect.
“I can’t tell if I’m being insubordinate in exploring these thoughts or if I need courage to go farther,” one of McLaren’s characters prays. “I feel tht I may be falling away from my faith. But then again, if I hold back from honrestly pursuing the truth, wouldn’t that be pulling away from you [God] — even worse.” (p. 25)
McLaren spoke that for me.
At times in my spiritual pilgrimage I have felt myself falling away from my faith, then God always brings something to pull me back. McLaren is His latest gift to me. I am not alone. Other people obviously have been dealing with some of the same issues. That is encouraging.
