Embarking

[this is a response to a comment by Henry to my post 1972]

Thanks again for your comments, your thoughtfulness, and your graciousness.  I appreciate you engaging these thoughts, offering questions, and even challenges.  (By the way… do I know you?)

On your question about why others are not commenting on my blog.  I’m not sure.  The blog gets hit fairly regularly each day, but not many people are commenting.  So… to you readers out there, I’d love to hear from you.  Let me hit a few things that Henry mentions.  Here’s the first:

You say that truth is personal– that “knowing Jesus is knowing the truth”– OK, I can agree with that in a general sense, but what does “knowing Jesus” mean? How do we discern, from that, what the truth is? Lots of people “know Jesus” in their own way, and they come to vastly different conclusions about what it is Jesus is saying. Again, you say “I know Jesus and I trust what he says.” So do I, but what if we disagree about what it is he’s saying? Where do we go then? We can try to deconstruct our faith all we want, looking at it through modern lenses or ancient lenses or contact lenses, but in the end we need some agreement as Christians in order to engage the world effectively.

This is a great question, and a hard one because I want a more solid answer.  I think our desire and inclination is for something more solid, something proveable, something “objective” that you can point to, hold onto, and that is incontrovertable.  It’s not necessarily “wrong” to look for that, either.  Thomas wanted proof, and Jesus provided his hands and side, but he did say, “blessed are those who do not see, and yet believe.”  Faith requires trust when solid proof isn’t there.  That’s one angle.

The other angle is this:  God provided several things.  He provided thousands of years of revelation that is coherent, connective, embedded in history, historically reliable, and surprisingly consistent as ancient documents go.  God has also provided thousands of years of personal commentary and interpretation by people of faith.  He has then provided for us communities of faith within larger collectives (denominations, etc.) within larger historical trajectories (reformed, anabaptist, catholic, eastern orthodox, etc.) within larger cultural environments (eastern, western, American, African, etc.) all who find their grounding in Greek and Latin initial understandings of the Jewish and Greek original scriptures.  (Here is where the Patristics are important, as you mention in the comment.)  So, God has provided historical context, contemporary communities, written revelation, and thousands of years of reflection.  In addition (and don’t miss this), he has provided the Holy Spirit, of whom Jesus said this:  “when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears…” [John 16:13]  That’s what God provides.  But because we so often desire to make sure, to nail it down, and to be sure we’re right, we try to go further than God went into philosophy, science, and archeaology.  I don’t mean to be glib, but why do we try to get more than God has given us?  Partly, we want to be right, and we have a hard time when others disagree.  But really, should we have any less conviction or faith because someone else disagrees?  They can still be wrong.

Let’s take your example of working with couples who might be considering abortion, helping them to possibly take responsibility.   That’s great work.  (By the way… let’s throw as much money at working with real people instead of legislation and see what happens!)  It’s important work.  I’d say protecting life is biblical and part of the trajectory of Christian history.  That should be a strong conviction that’s worth protecting.  There’s good reason and interpretation within the Scriptures.  That’s probably as much as we’re going to get, other than the power of God working in people’s hearts.

What many (including me) are advocating for in terms of deconstruction is a recapturing of God’s own self-revelation through Scripture and the Spirit’s leading in Christian community.  Some would say it’s important to “rescue” the concept of God (or theology) from metaphysical philosophy.  A lot of our systematic theology and Doctrine of God comes from the trajectory of Kantian metaphysics more than from the self-revealing God does within the narrative of his interaction with his people.  Often this “god of metaphysics” trumps God’s own self-revelation because it’s cleaner, easier to “box in” and rationalize.  What then happens, in my view, is that we create a god in the image that works for us based on philosophy rather than engaging with the one true God of the Scriptures who has already revealed himself, albeit without full self-disclosure.

Here’s the thing:  I’m ok with others disagreeing and us hitting the Scriptures more deeply for an understanding of who God is.  I’m less ok with our constructions of God so that we can maintain a rationally defensible position or hold to political or moral decisions that may not themselves be biblical.  If they are, awesome, let’s see it in the Scriptures.  If not, let’s reconsider the things we’ve “known” or agreed upon if they are less than biblical.  And if God doesn’t speak much about it… maybe it’s not as important to God as we think it is.

Henry asks some great, probing questions.  [see his comment under "How Deconstruction Saved My Faith 2] And just as an aside… Henry… I really appreciate how you’ve written these questions and challenges to myself and to the emerging postmoderns in the church.  You show your concern, raise real issues, and do so in a way that is not condemning, hostile, or out of fear.  How I wish more people would approach conversation in such a careful and honorable manner.

I’ve struggled with your questions, too.  I address a few of the issues you’re asking about in a limited manner in the follwoing posts:

• Truth, Beauty, and Resonance
• The Future Communication of the Gospel 5
• The Future Communication of the Gospel 6

The question really is, what can we know for sure?  What is true?  What doesn’t change?  And how do we know what is truly true?  What is orthodox, and aren’t there certain, base objective truths?  I hear in some of your questions some of the key concerns that some are raising around the Emergent church like the virgin birth, the atonement wars, the wideness or narrowness of salvation, etc. 

The first thing that I would say is something I’ve said briefly before:  truth is personal.  Not relative, and not “this is my truth” personal, but instead, truth is personal because Jesus is the truth, and he is a person.  Knowing Jesus is knowing the truth.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.”  I believe that.  Do I know it for sure?  I know Jesus, and I trust what he says.  I trust that the Scriptures are God’s word and that it’s true and that it tells me about Jesus and that I can encounter him through the Scriptures.  That means I also trust the virgin birth.  I trust that my sins are atoned for and covered by the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Can I say those things are objectively true?  You see, here is where I get stuck.  I believe - have faith - that it’s true.  I put my trust in it.  I believe it is “objectively” true, I suppose, but more and more I don’t really care much about objectivity.  I don’t really care much about proof.  I don’t mean to be glib, but what I mean is that what I think is objective, someone else will likely see differently.  Is there an unmoveable reality out there that is truly true?  Yes.  Do we have access to that truth in a way that is ”descriptively” true for everyone?  If we did, we wouldn’t be having this discussion because it would be clear.  But I don’t think that means I can’t say someone is wrong.  You see, because we cannot ascertain what is true on our own because of our cultural embededness, our biases, and even more - our sinfulness, we rely on the personal nature of God as he speaks to us in individuals within communities of faith.  The community of faith - throughout the ages, and in our current context - is really important as we discern what God has said and is saying.  

I really like what Franke and Grenz say on this matter in which the Holy Spirit speaks in the context of our culture through the trajectory of Christian history and creates our current reality as he interacts with us in a living way.  (that’s a bad simplification… but it gives a broad brush).  That is alive and relational and faith-based and dependent upon the God of history who continues to live and speak today.  He doesn’t speak in contradition to himself, but He does help us to interact with a changing world.  There is, then, a historical theological continuity combined with a contemporary constructive creativity consistent with his character and unfolding plan.  We discern this in conversation with God through faith, engaging his Word within the living community which is the body of Christ.  It is this living body, grounded in the Word and birthed out of Christian and Jewish history that gives us the boundaries and rules of engagement.  And here is where the deconstruction (or reforming) comes in.  The body, because it is always embeded culturally, doesn’t always get the picture of what God is saying right, and so our theology develops as our relationship with God develops as we continue to deepen in our understanding of his revealed Word as we live into new historical, cultural situations.

Does that make truth relative and not objective?  I don’t think so.  Relative to God’s working with a fallen community, maybe.  Certainly our ascertaining the truth is always positioned, encultured, and understood within the eyes of our times, families, language, etc.  I just don’t think the categories of “objective” and “relative” are all that helpful anymore.  I’m more concerned with how we hear God, how we read the Bible with an understanding of our cultural, linguistic baggage, and really hear God’s living word through the Scripture, how we find more faithful understandings of his revelation, and how we can trust him more and hear his voice more clearly. 

You ask what my gold standard is:  God’s self-revelation primarily through the Scriptures (sola scriptura) and secondarily through his body, the church, as we hear, speak, and live the Word together.  I know that’s not as easy to nail down, but faith and trust rarely are. 

I think things like the virgin birth, the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the Trinity, the missio dei, and many more things have been clearly spoken, heard, and lived out by the church throughout the ages.  But I also share the concern of many emerging leaders that we have attached many cultural, philosophical, and historical items to these that are inappropriate and have functionally become a part of the core for many Christians - especially evangelicals and fundamentalists.

What I think a lot of the detractors of the emerging church miss is that much of the movement (not all of it… there is much wrong with the emerging church movement) is a back to the bible movement.  The problem comes when going back to the bible challenges our current biases, our current comfortable ways of life, our preferable politics, our desirable economics, or our (forgive me here) mostly upper classs suburban cultural mores. 

Henry, thanks for your response.  I agree that I think we do have something substantive to say.  The question is who “we” are.  The counter-cultural nature of the gospel and the world-tranforming power of the resurrection, the power of the right-side-up thinking of the sermon on the mount, the unbelievable value Jesus placed upon people and not on power, and on and on.  There is something distinctive, substantive, and powerful to say.  My frustration here is that as a collective, “the church” speaks in a totally different kind of way or not at all in a way that proclaims the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.  In this way, the church has become so much a part of the contemporary culture that on a descriptive level, it has nothing counter-cultural or world-transforming to say.  The church has lost her voice because she does not know her own identity.

Yes, I think we can learn some things from the Catholics here.  I was pleased to see some of John Paul’s personal humility and love for the poor and downtrodden has rubbed off on Pope Benedict.  That is good for the Catholic church.  The humility and concern for the least of these is so powerful in a movement as potentially powerful as Catholicism.  Here is where, particularly, some evangelicals have gotten it right, but the “public face” of so many evangelicals have gotten it wrong.  Our history is littered with people who have been involved in justice, freedom, poverty, etc.  However, the rise of the desire for political power - particularly wedded to the Religious Right - has, in my own estimation, drawn the evangelical soul into a dangerous place.  It reminds me of the request of the mother of the sons of Zebedee in Matthew 20 - “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”  Jesus cuts back with a question about whether they can drink from the cup that he will drink - meaning his own death.  It is precisely the Kingdom that runs counter to the ways of the world that gives us our voice, and yet the world does not hear this voice of Jesus.  They hear the voice of the sons of Zebedee among us.

I love what Roger Olson says in a recent book called “How to be evangelical without being conservative”:

…what should evangelical Christians do to transform their culture now?  First, they should be the church.  Before trying to change society, evangelicals must reform themselves and their congregations and institutions away from individualism, consumerism, and therapeutic Christianity… to radical Christian communities that serve as beacons of faith, hope, and love to the dying world around them.  Unfortunately, too many evangelical churches and organizations have taken on the values and behaviors of the secular world while casting aspersions on it. [p. 126, emphasis mine]

That’s part of the issue, maybe the heart of it.  The church has in so many ways lost its voice, its credibility, its heart, its soul because we too often speak against a world to which we ourselves have given allegiance.  We are not truly vassals of another Kingdom.  If we were, then our voice would be much more distinctive, much closer to the visions and words of Jesus, and much more instigative.  More successful?  I’m not sure.  That depends.  Possibly less successful.  It depends on how the world responds to the true call of Jesus to live for Him, his Kingdom, and his values.  But churches have to first respond to that call before calling others to respond.  Then, we might hear our voice again.

So, I just upgraded recently to the new Wordpress and somehow I had it set so that you couldn’t comment.  I noticed that there were many people reading, but no one commenting.  I wondered why.  Thanks Jen for pointing that out.  You don’t have to register anymore, although I do have to approve comments to avoid spam comments, nasty language, etc.

If you have been reading, I’d love to hear your comments.  It inspires more thinking and more writing.  Besides, I’d like to know who some of you are!! 

Thanks for reading.  It’s nice to know that I’m not writing into thin air.

tom

Time to get back into writing a little bit again.  I wanted to follow up on a couple of things that Jeremy raised in a recent comment. 

Why is it that many young Christians are evaluating the actions of adults, seeing that their lacking, and judging that Scripture, God, modernism, Church, and Christianity doesn’t work? Why can’t they see that the people they’re [sic] judging are simply not being faithful to the Word? They are modeling something Christ never intended!

That’s a good question.  I’ve felt that way myself.  But here’s maybe a clarification and maybe a couple follow up questions.  First, I’m uncomfortable with the question because it puts to burden on the outsider.  Remember, we’re mostly talking about the non-Christian outsider, not the person like myself or like you who should really know better.  Should we put the burden on the one outside to make such an insider-like observation?  And that leads to the second issue, and that is that the many people that are living in a kind of religiously cultural Christianity that has been co-opted by the wider culture and almost sycretistically made into a new mix of Americanachristianity have heard the gospel, have studied the scriptures, and frankly, we should know better.  If we’re really honest, we ignore or explain away so much of the plain-talk of the Scripture with one side of the mouth and with the other we harp on literal readings of the Scripture when it suits our personal, political, social comfort zone.

Question and comment…Would you be willing to say that much of the modern church is inept, undisciplined, socially unconcerned, because of the SEEKER SENSITIVE METHODOLOGY? …In our desire to be “relevant” we have watered down the Gospel and made “Christians” in name only.

Hmmm.  Another good question and comment.  I do think that some of the Seeker Sensitive model has been a part of the problem, but it’s a bit too simplistic to put it on that.  Seeker sensitivity is important.  Remember, the Holy Spirit convicts when people are lead to Jesus.  Being sensitive to people’s felt needs, unspoken/ unknown needs, and to using a language that is understandable, culturally sensitive, incarnated in the local garb - or as I like to call it - “indigenous” is an important part of what it means to be the kind of loving Christians in the world that Paul talks about in Colossians 4:5-6:

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

 So, I’m not going to get down too much on seeker sensitivity because merely communicating the gospel to someone who doesn’t know it requires a high level of interpersonal sensitivity, so I think on a corporate level that would apply in an even higher sense, particular if we put ourselves second and others first.

Has the basic gospel message lost its power in our culture? Must we wrap it in “relevant” social causes?

Wow.  That’s loaded.  Because some in the church are rediscovering the biblically high value of justice, addressing poverty, and issues of power doesn’t mean we’re wrapping the gospel in relevent social causes.  Could it just be that the biblical message is one that is deeply concerned with these issues whether they are currently relevent or not?  Is it also possible that its ability to address these kinds of issues gives the gospel even more power?

On the next part… you have to read everything Jeremy wrote in his comment about framing stories and McLaren’s retelling of the Genesis story.  Then, Jeremy ends this way:

Notice that McLaren is injecting a Marxist framework into his interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis. Gone are the ideas of sin, rebellion, disobedience against God, the fall of man, and the Lord’s solution to our sin in the promise of a savior. McLaren has replaced those Biblical themes with the economic & political categories of consumption, class warfare and imperialism. Is this the new framing story you are looking into? Or are you suggesting something else…basically I’m asking…to you, what is this framing story? Is it a one and only, for all time Biblical story, or one that evolves with culture?

I’m actually not that far into McLaren’s book, yet.  I was just using the phrase “framing story” as a different way of saying “metanarrative”.  I like the language better.  I wasn’t necessarily invoking McLaren’s categories or thoughts.  However, given your questions, I’m not sure that I like the dichotomy.  I don’t think that McLaren is pitching the classic, orthodox creation-fall-redemption framing story.  I think he’s seeing some contours within that story.  He’s seeing textures that apply to issues, particularly of power and exploitation, including violence, destruction, and even political power.  Too often we want to pit McLaren against orthodoxy and try to label him a heretic or discount his thinking because it removes the cross.  I don’t think that’s the case at all, and believe McLaren would take huge issue with it.  I think, instead, he’s learning new ways of thinking in a changing world to apply the always relevent, ancient, orthodox truth of the creation-fall-redemption epic by seeing within it some powerful sub-stories.  But again, I haven’t read the whole book, yet.

Oh, and on the Marxist framework.  Is it possible that Marx was seeing some truths about how humans relate and abuse power and relationship within a fallen world and wanted to see a more basically human reorientation of our relationships to one another based on equality rather than power, and that, rather than McLaren imposing a Marxist framework on scripture, he’s merely seeing some of the same truths in the scriptures as Marx saw through the general revelation of human behaviour?

Lastly, this question:

How do we turn this mess around, while staying completely grounded in the Scriptures.

In my opinion, that’s the best question you asked, and the one that I think is being engaged in books like UnChristian and Everything Must Change and many others.