Embarking

From Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008:  Opening Worship

Isaiah 40:28-30
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

I thought I was going to blog about leadership stuff, but honestly, the opening worship was moving for me.  My family has been through a lot lately, and last night my wife and I talked on the phone about how we both feel at a limit.  I know we’re not, because many people handle more, and we could, too, but it doesn’t feel like it right now.  So, the second song of the conference was a song I love, I think by Chris Tomlin.  It’s from the Scripture above, and goes like this. 

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
You do not faint
You won’t grow weary

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
You do not faint
You won’t grow weary

You’re the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You life us up on wings like eagles

I found myself unable to sing, with tears in my eyes, realizing that this is for me.  God spoke to comfort my heart this morning (notice that verse 1 of Isaiah 40 is “Comfort, comfort my people says your God”, that he will carry my wife and I and my kids, that he will lift us right now when we feel weak.  He will carry us on his wings.  I wish my wife had been with me when they led this song.

I’ve been away from blogging for awhile now.  For those of you who read regularly, I apologize for not writing.  I don’t share much personal/ family stuff here, but for a long time now, my family has been very sick and I’ve been on a couple of vacations.  We’ve had a number of crazy illnesses, including all 3 kids each having pneumonia twice.  We’ve had an average of about 2.5 doctor, hospital, or ER visits per week since November, and it’s been wearing us down.  In addition, our house got struck by lightening and our dog almost died twice.  (No, I’m not joking).  I don’t talk much about spiritual warfare, but nothing else explains it.  Yesterday I was talking to a doctor from the Infectious Disease Clinic at Devos Children’s Hospital, and told him to continue to run tests, but that I was asking a lot of people to pray for us. 

I’ve been continuing to read as much as I can, which isn’t enough, and continued to think.  I had a lot of ideas for posts, and then they got lost along with the sleep that seemed to disapate right before my opened eyes.

Recently, I’ve been reading some critics of what are called either postfoundationalists/ postconservatives like Stanley Grenz, John Franke, Roger Olson, et al.  I’m interested in the conservative evangelical response to projects which seek to take postmodern thinking seriously while also holding strongly to evangelicalism and scripture.  I’ve been reading all sides, but I tend to tip towards the Grenz, Franke, Olsons as well as some of what James KA Smith, Carl Raschke, Kevin VanHoozer, John Stackhouse, and others like them would say.  I like to read the critics because it helps to clarify and challenge my own thinking. 

I’ve also been toying with some article and book ideas, but haven’t recently found the time to write with the kids’ being sick and life in general.  Some space/ time to write would be awesome.

Anyway, I’ll be back with what are, I think, some interesting posts coming from my interchange with Jim Speigel on Gum, Geckos, and God starting on Monday.  I couldn’t limit my questions to one, so we’re going to go back and forth a bit on a number of questions.  I hope you enjoy it… and the book is a lot of fun to read.

Songs at Night 2

I mentioned in my previous post that I used to sing to my daughter at night.  Well, I’ve changed songs a couple times.  Only a couple of times.  For awhile, I sang an old spiritual called “Give Me Jesus.”  In the midst of a pretty crazy time in our lives recently with much upheaval for our whole family, I was singing the song to her as she lay in bed:

            In the morning when I rise

            In the morning when I rise

            In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.

            Give me Jesus, give me Jesus.

            You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.

Suddenly, she interrupted me…

“Daddy, is that song true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, is it true, you know, about the world and about Jesus.”

“Yes, it is.”

Isn’t it amazing, that in the midst of the chaos of life, the wisdom of a child can cut through the confusion and bring clarity?

I used to sing to my daughter at night.  Then I sang to my oldest son.  Now I sing to my youngest son as I put him to sleep.  But I have to tell you how it all started.  My wife loves to sing.  In fact, she has a song for everything.  So, during the day and at night, my wife would always sing to our daughter.  I don’t know how old she was, but I think she was only about a year old.  I was walking by her room as my wife was putting her to sleep, and I heard her singing “Jesus loves me.”  I thought that was pretty cool.  You know, sing her a little ditty right before laying her down to sleep.  Then, only a week or so later I was walking by the room as my wife was putting her to sleep again.  Now, you have to understand that my daughter could barely talk at this point.  She was just forming words.  But as I stood by the door, I could hear her start to sing with my wife, forming words into song that she couldn’t even understand.  The words of that song have never meant more to me than in that moment, hearing a 1 year old singing sweetly and softly in her mother’s arms, “Jesus wubs me, ‘dis I know, for the Bi-bo tews me so.  Witto ones to him bewong.  Dey are weak, but he is stwong.  Yes, Jesus wubs me.  Yes, Jesus wubs me.”  I knew that truth for me, and for her more in that moment than ever before.  And of course, as I stood at the door and listened, I did what any good father at this point would do – I cried tears of joy.

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the course corrections that some people are advocating for in cultural shifts of the last couple of decades is a move away from reliance upon the philosophical foundationalism (or strong foundationalism) of modernism that has moved from playing a supporting position to Christian theology to something more center-stage.  In this move away from the “God of metaphysics” and a reliance on objective principles to what some would say is a more biblical approach to the Trinitarian personhood of God rather than the principles of God causes a lot of concern… not to mention confusion and misunderstanding.  Those advocating a “postmodern approach” to scripture can often be attacked by virture alone of the use of the word postmodern.  Or those, like myself, who use the word “deconstruction” to talk about more clearly understanding the cultural, historical, and philosophical influences on our understandings of Scripture so that we can possibly discover more clearly the revealed Word of God sometimes are misunderstood becuase of the fears attached to the philosophical history of deconstruction.  I’m trying to speak into this issue a little bit in order to help provide - possibly - a little clarity that we are not easily labelled as relativists, liberals, or post-Christians.  It’s simply not true. 

I’ve advocated earlier for some different understandings of truth that are more personally grounded.  Not personally in the relative sense, but personal in the Trinitarian sense in which we seek to know God in three persons as He is self-revelatory through his written, spoken, and incarnated Word.  A few weeks ago, when I was reading a book on culture studies (which I might comment on later), I read this quote from Calvin’s Institutes 1.7.4 [I have not yet looked up the reference, so I hope it's right]:

…the testimony of the Spirit is superior to reason, for as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.  The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convinces us that they faithfully deliver the message with which they were divinely entrusted.

I’ll say it again:  The Spirit leads us into all truth.  God is relational.  He apprehends us by interacting with us.  We do not apprehend Him by acknowledging, believing, or assenting to philosophical categories, truths, or principles about Him.  Principles, categories, and even the traditional “omni’s” are helpful to understanding God, but we need to be careful that we do not replace God himself in Three Persons with our philosophical, psychological, or otherwise categorical understanding of Him.

Think of if this way for a moment:  my best friend could go to a psychotherapist.  That psychotherapist along with a doctor and maybe even a metaphsycian could tell me a lot about what it means to be human, what my friend’s characteristics are, how his brain tends to function, and even give me a diagnosis based on the DSM IV.  I can learn a lot about my friend that way.  But are those diagnoses a correct description of my friend?  Are they exhaustive?  Do they replace what I learn and even experience of him when I sit down with him for coffee or listen to the pain or joy he might currently be experiencing?  And even what  I learn in that interaction, as I give language and thought to it, I will not have discovered the objective truth about my friend.  I will have learned some basic things that have truth value about him, but do not constitute his being or his truth in being.

Relationship with God takes faith in the leading and guiding of the Spirit as God reveals himself personally to us in ways that defy categories, that blow our minds, that overwhelm our spirits, and that cause our hearts to leap with excitement.  Objective truth categories can never do that.  Believing the truth - consenting to objectively true principles - does not even lead us to salvation.  Remember, even the demons believe and shudder, as James tells us.  Knowing what is objectively true isn’t bad (if we can know it), in fact it’s very helpful.   It’s just way less than enough, less important than trusting and obeying the One self-revealing God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The God of metaphysics is a a construction of the modern philosophical age of enlightenment - not of the Scriptures.   The God of the Scriptures is a living, powerful, and interactive Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Setting:  Walmart bathroom; 3 year old in one stall, 5 year old two down – so they’re yelling.

3 year old:  [Singing Jesus Loves Me modified]  Jesus doesn’t love me; Jesus doesn’t love me. 

5 year old:  That’s not right.  Jesus loves you.  He always does.

3 year old:  I don’t like Jesus.  He won’t let me touch these blue walls, so I don’t like him. [Pauses]  Jesus, it’s me!  I’m sorry Jesus.  Jesus, it’s me!  I’m on da toilet!!” [Now to mommy] I just talked to Jesus, mommy.  Just for a minute.  He’s upstairs.

5 year old:  Jesus isn’t upstairs, he’s in the sky.

3 year old:  Not in the blue sky.

5 year old:  Yes he is.

3 year old:  In the blue sky!?

5 year old [yelling]: YES!!

3 year old:  How does he fly?

5 year old:  He doesn’t.

3 year old:  The angels fly.

5 year old:  Yes they do.

3 year old:  With their wings.

(And it went on… but who can ever re-create these things?)

This happened a few years ago when my now 8 year old was 5 and my now 5 year old was 3.  I was reminded of this when I read the first few lines of a new book by an old friend (well, he’s not old… we were just friends while I was in college and he getting his doctorate) called Gum, Geckos, and God.  It’s a book about God, theology, and questions that James S. Spiegel wrote from conversations with his kids and interaction with his philosophical mind.

I’m going to tell you some more about it in the next post or two, along with maybe one or two kid stories… but first a little about its author, James S. Spiegel (click to read his bio).  Jim is a Philosophy professor at Taylor University, a wonderful thinker, and a mean basketball player (at least he used to be).  You can read the official bio, which you should do… but I’m going to write a few other rememberances.  Jim and I played in a band back in college days, and I was often inspired by Jim’s wit and his intelligence.  I remember playing with him at the Michigan State Student Union, at a local bar, at a retreat, and at our church.  I remember Jim getting mad at me for some bad decisions I was making with some friends who were a negative influence.  Jim is a thinker and a lover.  He loves God and he loves his family and he loves his friends.  Jim also loves music, philosophy, and certain sports and TV shows.  

Honestly, I haven’t seen Jim since a buddy of ours got married several years back, but I have fond memories of jamming late into the night to the strange mix of Cranberries and Classic Rock.  I’ve only started the book, but I’ll be participating in a Blog Tour, and I hope you’ll not only read along, but get the book.   It’s funny, helpful, and serious all at the same time.  If you have kids, you’ll certainly recognize some of the great theological questions of 5 year olds from your own experience and Jim takes the deep philosophical and theological issues to bear and tries to put them into concepts that even a child can understand.  What a concept.

Ok, this is getting way too long for what it’s worth.

Anyway… so the guy wakes up startled.  I - as nonchalantly as I can - ask him what he’s doing here.  “Sleeping.”  He says.  Well, that makes sense.  So I ask why he’s sleeping here.  Turns out, he just got out of rehab, and in Ann Arbor to get back into the shelter, you have to be out of rehab and clean for 30 days, or something like that.  He’d been out, but had no place to go, yet.  He was 29, a nice guy, and I felt like we could be friends.  I asked him how he got in here, and he said that it was really cold outside, and he happened to try the back door and it was open.  Made sense to me.  We talked for awhile about his journey and what he had learned and how he was now trying to get straight and get a job. 

Then came an awkward silence.  He asked if I wanted him to leave.  I supposed that would have been the right thing to do in terms of my job, but ringing in my ears were the words of Jesus: when you welcomed one of these, you welcomed me.  What would Jesus really do?  So, I told him to sit tight, and that I was going to think about it while I cleaned up the pump and water and I’d get back with him.  I came up awhile later and told him to move downstairs where there was heat and I let him stay the night.  I asked him to leave in the morning quietly and if I could help him in any way to get ahold of me.

I never saw him again, but he did send me an Easter card thanking me for a warm night’s stay and good conversation.  He got a job and was getting back on his feet, and by that time… was 6 months without a drink.

Buildings can often be a pain and can hinder or help us in ministry in a lot of ways.  The church is the people, and not the building, but this was one night when this building and all of its awards served Jesus by providing a warm night’s stay to a wanderer out in the cold.  And it also made me rethink what buildings are for, what Jesus would really do, and has deeply affected my understanding of the place of the church in the world.  Once [chance] encounter late into the night because of a flooded basement.  Only God can orchestrate that.

Oh… and during all of this long conversation I forgot to call my wife, and since I was gone a lot longer than she anticipated and she was worried about someone being in the church, well… nevermind.

I was reading an interview with Brian McLaren on his book Everything Must Change from The Other Journal, and I read something in his narrative from the early 90’s that is very similar to what I was going through during 1990-1999.  Here is what he says:

[Lost people's] questions re-opened for me something I had encountered a long time ago in graduate school, and that’s postmodern philosophy, and this cultural shift from modern to a postmodern culture.  So in the early nineties I started grappling with that shift, and it was really tough… If you want to use a term that comes out of that postmodern world, the word would be deconstruction.  I was undergoing a deconstruction.  Not a deconstruction of my faith as a personal trust in God, but of my theological categories and of my theological methodology.  So that’s not an easy thing to go through, but once you do a lot of deconstruction, then you have to start reconstructing or else you end up with nothing but a bunch of fragments.

The difference here for me from McLaren is that I actually discovered a more personal trust in God after the deconstruction of my theological categories and cultural history.  In about 1993, I began the reconstruction even as I continued the process of theological, cultural, and denominational deconstruction.  In fact, I think today I still go through a continual process of deconstructing.  I would prefer to call it reformata et semper reformanda - reformed and always reforming.  And here is the key to so many things right now for me (and for people like Roger Olson, John Franke, Stanley Grenz before he passed, Kevin VanHoozer, Nancey Murphey, LeRon Shults, John Stackhouse Jr., NT Wright, Rob Bell, Scot McKnight and many many more people).  I could probably write a book right now about how so many people in the evangelical world are misunderstanding some new theological and practical movements in the emerging church as heretical, when what these people are honestly trying to do is reform the church according to the Scriptures.  In fact, they’re trying to re-read the Scriptures in a way that takes seriously the impact of cultural and theological history upon our reading in good ways and bad.  More on this in a couple follow-up posts to come.

Psalm 93, altered
October 19, 2001

The Lord is in control.
     He is clothed in the garments of majesty.
     He is armed and is strong.
The world is solidly founded
     And will not budge.

O Lord, 
     your throne was established 
     ages ago, for you come 
     from eternity.

The seas roar, O Lord, the seas
     Are raising their voice.
     The seas have risen with 
     Pounding waves.

But even greater than the thundering seas
     More powerful than the waves of the sea
     Is the Lord on high in might.

Your ways and desires 
     Are established, O Lord 
     Your house is adorned in purity
     For days into eternity.

Psalm 92, altered
October 17, 2001

It is a good thing
     To give praise to the Lord
     To make music to your Name, O Most High God!
     To proclaim your love in the morning
     To proclaim your faithfulness at night to the music of the strings.
For You bring gladness by what you do.

O Lord, I sing with joy at the work of your hands!
Your works are great, O Lord!
Your thoughts, profound!

Those who are senseless don’t know you
     And the foolish cannot understand you.
Though evil comes out of nowhere and seems to flourish
     Evil will forever be destroyed.

But you, O Lord, you are exalted forever!
And those who love you – the righteous – 
     They, too, will flourish!
     They will flourish like a palm
     They will grow like a mighty cedar, planted in the house of the Lord.
     They will bear good fruit even in old age.
     They will stay fresh, and green.
          And they will proclaim
          “The Lord is sturdy and straight!
          He is as solid as a rock!
          There is no darkness in him!”