A New Kind of Christianity - McLaren
I would love to hear your thoughts on how the outlook on the narrative spins their theology and defines where they are today in their faith...
Rob Bell Likes His Art Chocolate and Ryan Likes His Thorny Bushes
In relating Rob's thoughts on creation and art to my own personal interests, I found myself retorting a hearty "AMEN BROTHA!" while reading this interview. I have always been a sort of creative person and I love art. I also have seriously studied our natural world from the perspective of a Rangeland Management Specialist. I have spent a lifetime marveling the natural beauty of our setting in the mountains of Montana; I've spent weeks and months out in the prairies and hills of the Western US doing meticulous rangeland surveys for management purposes, monitoring, and Ecological Site Descriptions, or ESDs. The more time I spend studying the creative nature of our Creator, the more I realize the "beautiful poetry about a God who gets off on things just cause they are and that to me is central to any sort of living, breathing spirituality is going to be plenty of room for things that don’t have any purpose other than their own beauty, design and order." As Rob mentions the passage in Job where God is like, "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE STORK?," my education and experience points me to the question, "have you considered the graceful bluebunch wheatgrass? how about the lowly slender phlox? What purpose does the indian paintbrush flower serve other than looking pretty? How beautiful is the wood's rose?
If you all are not familiar with wood's rose, most Young Earth Creationists will scowl when they observe this plant. This plant is a self-serving contradiction to their philosophy of the fall of man. The low to mid-sized bush has beautiful red flowers that produce a fleshy, red, globose to ellipsoid fruit called rose "hips". The real kicker to this plant is that it has those "cursed" thorns! Ha! Sometimes the imagination of a YEC perplexes me... Last year at a Creation Science Conference held here in Bozeman by our local Grace Bible Church, a very educated looking man tried explaining to me the proof that he had that these thorns magicly appeared on these once beautiful flowers after Adam decided to piss God off. He pulled a very professional looking book off his table and illustrated the "hyper-evolution" of thorns that took place once the entire Creation was deemed "cursed." It was at this same conference that I sat through a lecture that described that our beautiful Montana hilly landscape is a result of "water gaps" that formed as the world wide flood waters of judgement subsided. With this narrow and twisted perspective that many Christians have about our natural world today, the intrinsic beauty around them is lost as they fit their worldview into a simple mis-interpretation of scriptures. That is pretty sad.
It was at this same conference at GBC that I tried passing out some free copies of "Beyond Creation Science." Of course, the people in charge of the book table did not want me and my censored books anywhere near their stash of doctrinally homogeneous material causing controversy. Nevertheless, I succeeded in placing about a half-dozen copies in the hands of respective truth-seekers.
Rob Bell says at the end of the interview, "I think you have to cry out to God and and asked to be delivered from a system. American culture in the year 2008 is an oppressive system. It tells you to just buy, to follow the rules and be happy. I think you have to ask whether or not you want to be delivered from the system because that’s what it is... People have to ask themselves questions about what they even want or desire. Because it all begins with a deep dissatisfaction of how things are. And we do not change without pain. So a person would have to be in enough pain and despair to say “I do not want to be a part of this anymore. God, please show me another way of understanding things.”
Just as Rob Bell's "My Sweet Lord" chocolate sculpture serves as a commentary on the church in America and as a brilliant and provocative piece of art, the unmistakable beauty and creativity found in a little thorny bush out in my Montana backyard can be just as provocative.
"The Great Emergence"
This book has had profound implications on my understanding of what we got ourselves involved in here at Trailblazer Ministries in Bozeman, Montana. I find myself in a great group composed of truth-seekers and mavericks that embrace a forward style of thinking coupled with a broader understanding of our past. This did not happen by accident. As I look back at my own personal journey to how I have arrived with such a group in a college town in Montana, I notice that my own story parallels what Phyllis Tickle says is happening all over the world. Without even knowing it, people everywhere have been exploring the same conclusions as I have. Tickle observes that movements like this occur in Christianity every 500 years or so, “a semi-millennial rummage sale,” and I feel honored to have been lucky enough to find myself in such a time of transformation.
The transformation she speaks of has not come about suddenly. She gives us a “Google Earth” view of history over the last couple centuries that primed us for what is happening today. By the way, my usage of Google Earth as an example of Tickle’s approach is indicative of the age of information that has brought us together in Bozeman. Just as we came together through networking and seeking answers using our computers, Tickle says this technology enables us and the priesthood of all believers in ways the Reformation could have never envisioned, “…To the extent that faith can be formed or dissuaded by the contents of the mind as well as those of the heart, then such license has huge implications for the Great Emergence and for what it will decide to do about factuality in a wiki world.” I start off by acknowledging this as one of Tickle’s points because if it were not for email and the internet, our group may have not found the means by which to form and the seeds of the Great Emergence may have been much slower to grow in our area. As with the rise of Protestantism and the influence of Gutenberg, “which would be impossible to overstate the importance of the printing press in 1440… that made Holy Writ more or less available to everyone, thereby enabling sola scriptura and the priesthood of all believers,” it is absolutely analogous to the central importance of the World Wide Web to the Great Emergence. In the post-Protestant era, Christians have slowly been gaining the tools by which to share ideas and communicate efficiently in this present age where the divisiveness of denominationalism has kept us separated since the printing press first placed the bible in the hands of believers.
In this book, she lays out the gradual steps that have brought us to this Great Emergence that we see happening today. From the Reformation five hundred years ago, she covers the history of events, conflicts, and teachers that have continued to withered away Luther’s principle of ‘sola scriptura, scriptura sola’ as “having been little more than the creation of a paper pope in place of a flesh and blood one.” These events always leave us with a common question, “Where now is the authority?” From the unlikely influences and effects of Copernicus, Darwin, Faraday, Freud, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Marx, to the advent of television, radio, and the automobile, the marginalization of grandma, the role of Rosie the Riveter, Alcoholics Anonymous and the Drug Age, one question always arose, “Was the Church capable of being wrong? Yes. It was that simple and that devastating.”
As the church enters another inevitable period of social/political/economic/intellectual/cultural shift, the overarching question of “Where now is our authority?” is the same now as in previous semi-millennial rummage sales of the Church. Tickle illustrates how four different categories of Christianity will be affected by this current time of upheaval (the Liturgicals, the Social Justice Christians, the Conservatives, and the Renewalists) and how the Emerging Church sprouts out from the middle of all these influences. “The whole progression from distinct corners to a gathering center was precisely and exactly what sociologists and observers of religion had predicted would happen. The fact that the emerging pattern was following a predictable trajectory did not at first seem to inform most established churches and their governing bodies, however. What they saw, by and large and only at first, was a generational issue: the young were leaving as the young always do, as the boomers had done and the Gen-Xers after them.” Tickle continues to say that this dramatic change from the inherited church is perceived as a threat to the status quo, primarily because it is, and the backlash to this movement will help to form the shape of the Emerging Church.
In answer then to the overarching question that is asked whenever the authority of the church is questioned, the emergent Christian will sometimes choose to say, “…either ‘in Scripture’ or ‘in the Community.’ More often though, he or she will run the two together and respond, ‘in Scripture and the Community.’” “…The end result of this understanding of dynamic structure is the realization that no one of the member parts or connecting networks has the whole or entire ‘truth’ of anything, either as such and/or when independent of the others. Each is only a single working piece of what is evolving and is sustainable so long as the interconnectivity of the whole remains intact.”
This is a beautiful illustration of what is to come from a more holistic Christianity. She concludes that Christianity will evolve into “something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical than anything the Church has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years.” As for her saying that it will evolve into something more Jewish, I think she means coming into a clearer realization of the Judaism in which Jesus lived, focusing on the context of the narrative that we find in the New Testament. In a recent interview, Andrew Perriman draws this conclusion, “It seems to me that most of the change that we see taking place is driven not by theological reflection but by something much more instinctual, much more pragmatic, which then dresses itself in whatever theological categories are to hand.” Tickle’s focus with this book was pointing out the natural, instinctual, and pragmatic changes taking place but the changes through theological reflection that Perriman points out in his books are equally important, I feel. Personally, my first conflict with the inherited church came through reading about how preterism impacts the debate on Genesis and Revelation in Tim Martin (our neighbor and friend in Whitehall, MT) and Jeffrey Vaughn’s Beyond Creation Science. Various forms of preterism seem to be a common thread in the teachings of many of the leading teachers in the Great Emergence and I feel that preterism will be synonymous with this movement and this may have been something that Phyllis Tickle has overlooked in this book.
Tickle has done Christendom a great service with “The Great Emergence.” I like how she makes things make sense. I have agreed with some of the emerging Church’s critics in the past that it is like trying to nail jello to the wall in figuring out what emerging Christians actually believe. What we are left with from Tickle’s book is a complete awareness of the conversation, the wrestling, the journey, or the transformation that is taking place right before our eyes. What blows my mind is that I (or we) have found myself here in this conversation having no idea how I got here (a victim of circumstance perhaps), but Tickle shows exactly how this happened from her top-down perspective.
“The duty, the challenge, the joy and excitement of the Church and for the Christians who compose her, then, is in discovering what it means to believe that the kingdom of God is within one and in understanding that one is thereby a pulsating, vibrating bit in a much grander network. Neither established human authority nor scholarly or priestly discernment alone can lead, because, being human, both are trapped in space/time and thereby prevented from a perspective of total understanding. Rather, it is how the message runs back and forth, over and about, the hubs of the network that it is tried and amended and tempered into wisdom and right action for effecting the Father’s will.”
Grace…
I spent yesterday in bed. Why? Really I am not sure. I just felt empty and uninspired. Yet, in that moment where I slept more than thought I sensed that I was fighting something bigger than myself. Why in this moment did I want to shut down and not face the “whatever” I sensed was bugging me. Oh, and I hate to confess this so openly, it was the first day I tried to stop smoking cigars. Yep… addicted again to the devil’s weed. Arrgh.
It was not that facing the prospect of not smoking though that was bothering me. It was in a sense the idea of having lunch with a friend I had not spent time with for a while. Again, I was not sure of the “why” I was feeling as I was. I slept instead of facing the strange desire to call him and make up some excuse. “I am just too busy today.” “I have too much homework today.” “I don’t feel well today.” All excuses… to not face this strange feeling of dread…
Now, I finally got up. I had stayed up way to late as it seems I do too often and am doing now as I write this. I stayed up until 4:30 am Sunday. I know that is part of the reason I slept so much Monday. Yet, when I woke a noon, I just did not feel like getting up and out to face the day. I did check my blood sugar which was much too high again and took the dose of insulin. I also took care of some bodily functions that need attending…. Yet instead of going out and seeing what type of day God gave me today… I went back under the covers and hid. Sleep gave me the comfort and grace to face the day I dared not face.
My friend is a good guy though he is a bit messed up. He smokes, which I can’t hold it against him as I seem also to have this unhealthy fixation with tobacco, yet also he is stuck in a hold that seems to in able him to get a job and live his life more fully. He medicates himself with what is illegal in many states as he has horrendous back pains he says has kept him from working. We have prayed for healing and yet it seems that it does not come. He believes that this substance should be legal and is one of the best ways to help people like him. I agree that some people who have cancer or other issues may need this, yet I wonder for him if it is his “staying in bed all day” remedy. I try not to judge him about this as I know he loves Jesus as much as I do… maybe more. I also wonder though if I have the right to tell him that this may not be the remedy he truly needs. By the way, I do not indulge in his remedy if you were wondering.
No, I have my own that I face. Not “illegal in some states” types maybe, rather I tend towards things like eating, or in the case of Monday, shutting down.
It seems though as I woke up at 1:30 this morning that Grace is on my mind. Not at first, as I took a walk to buy a cigar and cursed my failings. I took a drive and listened to a recent book on tape about grace and found that just maybe that is what I was hiding from. You see, I believe I am grace to my friend. I am that safe space where he can be himself with all his flaws and find acceptance. I also realized my friend is grace to me. This was a bit of a shock as I thought about it. God’s grace covers our shortcomings. I am not saying that we should pursue our short comings as most often those are unhealthy ways of dealing with life. I see my friend in a bit of a different light tonight as I write this. I desire to fix him, yet also see I cannot fix myself so how could I fix anyone else. I sometimes wonder if God cares about fixing us… as I see that God seems more intent on making New Things out of the old. Is this the same? I do not think so as I ponder this idea.
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The Kingdom of Heaven/God is…
Ephesians 1: 3.Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
4. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5. he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- 6. to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8. that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10. to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment--to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. 11. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12. in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.
13. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14. who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession--to the praise of his glory.
The word “Logos” used in John 1:1 which is often interpreted as “Word”. We use it today in the word “logic” which has part of the meaning as when God created all things it was out of a chaos that existed. Both Genesis 1 and John 1 start with “in the beginning”. This should show us that we exist outside of the eternal and in a different dimension called time. The word “logos” is very much misunderstood and is really watered down in our English translations and understanding. God spoke “let there be…” and though it was not it was. Yet, we see in Ephesians, that there was a mystery that was before all things began. In the eternals (if there be a way to grasp this idea outside of Plato’s dualism) we see that we were chosen to be in Christ before creation. That means that before God created he had a plan that was that all things dwell in Christ.
Logos lost some of its meaning in our translations and understandings as we grasp that John was playing a trick on the Gnostics. John uses the Platonic concept to show that this is even greater than Plato’s ideas of dualism. In a simplified understanding it means a conversation. In a fuller meaning it is an ongoing conversation that started in the Godhead with the Father and Son and their unity or the Holy Spirit. Now I do believe the Holy Spirit is a Person, so don’t get me wrong on that. Yet this eternal conversation was of a Kingdom in the form of a Person being Jesus.
Jesus is not only the savior of me and my kingdom, which in the end is that of death; rather he is also the King of all Creation. I see that just as David desired the Temple to be built; it was his son Solomon who finished the Temple in which God filled with His Glory. This is the idea that God the Father desired for us in His Son Jesus. Instead of temples made by man, we are now the Temples of God in which He dwells and also we dwell in Christ Jesus for he is the New Jerusalem.
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Is Heaven a Place… or is it more?
A while back there was some controversy over Doug Pagitt asking Todd Friel if Heaven was a place. In essence he asked, “If heaven is a place, where is it?” Todd was very indignant yet seemed unwilling or unable to answer… Many overlooked that as it is more acceptable to just “believe” in a “place” called Heaven. Even theologian N.T. Wright seemed to indicate in his recent interviews that Heaven is more than a place…
The issue is deeper than whether Heaven is a literal place. Jesus stated it was “at hand”, “Near” and “within you”… this seems to indicate that Heaven is more than a place if it is a literal place.
In a sense I agree with Doug Paggit yet in a sense I disagree.
Heaven is often thought of as the end place where we as believers in Jesus spend eternity. I agree, yet there is something missing in many people’s understanding as the “Heaven” now will not be as it is after the regeneration of all things. In that age, there is a renewed Heaven and Earth… meaning that this heaven and earth now will one day be restored to its original glory yet even more glorious than it was originally. We will move from “It is good.” to It is perfect in Christ Jesus.
One major issue is that many think of time in a linear fashion. We have all seen time lines where time is laid out in a line so we can see history in an overview. We see in a biblical view, Creation, Noah, Abraham, King David, Jesus, and the New Creation in its fullness. Yet if one notices time lines also have parallel history, Columbus discovering the Americas and Naval expeditions of the Ming Dynasty happened in the same timeline yet never interacted. (Though there is some indication Columbus may have used the knowledge that the Chinese gained in their expedition but that is a huge sideline) They paralleled each other in history. If we go off the map a bit, there is a separate history for Earth and Mars for meteorites have hit Mars that never hit Earth. If one can start seeing that history and time is brought into other dimensions one might start beginning to understand that when we bring in eternal things time begins to even take on a deeper and broad perspective.
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The Power of the Gospel
The Power of The Gospel
There are many who preach about the Power of the Gospel yet often the gospel they preach about is not The Gospel. It seems to me often the gospel that is preached is that of a superficiality that promotes a certain powerlessness instead of offering people the Power of salvation.
Most often when I hear this other "gospel" I hear it taught as "getting saved from hell." This is not the same gospel that Jesus taught. In fact it demeans the True Gospel.
Jesus spoke of a Gospel... and taught a Gospel that seems almost lost in many churches today. This Gospel is "the gospel of the Kingdom." (Matt 4:23, 9: 35, Mat 24:14; Luke 4:24, 8:1,) This Gospel of the Kingdom is so much more than about my own personal salvation. It is bigger than my little kingdom.
If we do not look at the Gospel as more than about me, then we miss the overall glory. This Gospel is not "just" about "me". It is the gospel of the glory of Christ. It encompasses all that God is doing... meaning the regeneration or "renewal" of all things. (Matt 19:28)
Often I have heard some teach that the gospel is all about "getting saved from hell and then you get to go to heaven"... if that is all there is, then it does not seem to have that much power.
The Power is in the understanding of the magnitude that Salvation is in Christ Jesus. God has come in the Person of Jesus to set all things right... for God alone is Righteous.
The Power to save is the Power that God has to redeem and set all things right. To take back this lost world and reform it into His Son's image.
We need to turn from our little kingdoms and come the The Kingdom of God. It is that we live "in Christ" the King that we come to live in the Kingdom. We exchange out life for His and become dependant on Jesus for all things.
We have been given the keys to this Kingdom... We have been given all we need for Godliness in the Person of Jesus Christ. It is in the coming to understand how huge the Kingdom is and that all God has accomplished through Jesus that the Power of the Gospel can truly be seen. Once we see the bigger picture, we are free from the bondage of our own little kingdoms. The Power is in the surrender of our kingdom for His in all its glory.
Be blessed,
iggy
Revolution or Humility?
Dogma number one: There is to be no Dogma. The first delicious contradiction is of course nearly identical to the elitist double speak which has become a tactic of non-debate for the masses. It goes something like this: you are old fashioned, and fearfully cling to your dogma whilst we ethereally float above such definitions in an unbound theoretical conversation. For the moment the securing of such a utopia, requires this squelching of all debate for our ideas are simply superior. Yet in time, when all are assimilated true peace and unity will be achieved. We as Christians certainly don't want to be viewed as 'dogmatic' or 'unloving' or 'intolerant' or whatever other names they might hurl at us. So, we put on a pensive face and attempt to sell out our ideals until common ground is reached, until we are again welcomed declawed into their 'conversation.'
The call away from dogma is, of course, played out in the way we form our public worship. It is no call away from liturgy it is simply a call to a chaotic liturgy. We present a God of spontaneous chaos as if he were the God of scripture. It is almost as if we expect God to each day present us with a different sun. Or perhaps a different Son based on whatever, whim happens to be taking Him in that moment. This of course is nothing new, 'a return to the early church'--that generic club with which most recent 'new' movements fein to beat back whatever issue they happen to dislike--address the same problem.
For God is not a God of disorder but of peace as in all the other churches
I Corinthians 14:33
Dogma number two: Sectarianism is bad so we are starting our own, whatever: A call to unity whilst we readily hop onto the newest ride 'Emergent' and attempt to leave the denominations in our dust, simply another split. Yet this time, we will refrain from using such a term and instead blame the establishment for forcing us out.
This is simply a lack of respect for the recent historical way in which the Holy Spirit directs the Church. Do we think the purest ideal of what the Church is supposed to be was given only to us at this moment? The elderly establishment, faithfully taking their pews each week, deserve our respect. Many of these church bodies are also faithfully pursuing huge missionary efforts in this country and abroad. Whilst we sit and 'debate' on how we can stop offending the post-church fools amongst us.
Or, perhaps we think that our times are so much different that we need something drastically new to meet these times. The arrogance of novelty seems contained within the term 'emergent' itself. While there is of course nothing new under the sun, the embracing of this 'emerge' exemplifies a dangerous trend of our time, our unwillingness to fight for what we believe in. What of holding on to beliefs to the point of death? I can think of nothing more characteristic of the early church. Yet today the enemy convinces us to question ourselves to the point that no fight is necessary. We find a happy medium and float along in our lukewarmness.
"I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don't tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars." -Rev. 2:2
vs.
"I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, I will spit you out of my mouth!" Rev. 3:15,16
What is it that fuels us to feel so left out of the 'establishment' churches of our time? With the creation of every maxim and the presentation of every truth, our evil hearts are at work insidiously corrupting and seeking self glory. There was a time when Christ's call to self sacrifice was a potent weapon against the arrogance of the Pharisee. Yet today we turn our little martyrdoms into a badge of honor, just as they did their prayers and offerings. We have each become a slighted minority of one. Little Hitler, whine about Mein Kampf. Bill Clinton, feel my pain. Obama, down with the struggle? Politicians use their relation to our selfishness to promote their false gospels, we need to be careful lest we do the same.
"Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Thought he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross". -Philippians 2:5-8
Thought the false churches may provide many social services, food, water and shelter, these are not the answers to the ultimate problem here on earth. The only thing that really matter is our hearts and the hearts of those we minister to.
Jesus replied, "The truth is, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you saw the miraculous sign. But you shouldn't be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that I the Son of Man, can give you. For God the Father has sent me for that very purpose." -John 6:26,27
"Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!' " -Matthew 7:22,23
Aside from the fun of pointing out these contradictions there is a problem much more serious. For not only do these contradictions point out your association with the tenants of 'revolution' you have used the very term. A term which, given the mass killings and chaos of Robespierre and Lenin, I will have no part of. Now this is no mere criticism of a few sets of circumstances in which a beautiful ideal failed to be adequately realized. Instead the failure of the revolutionary philosophy is ultimate and fatal. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars it ushered in were responsible for the deaths of over one million people. The Bolshevik Revolution and the successive USSR is responsible for an estimated twenty million deaths. The thirst for chaos which dwelt in the heart of these men was a novelty which we have yet to get over. Though we wouldn't claim to want the overthrow of an entire country, our evil hearts want something of a similar nature. We want just enough evil to be titillated, but it is still evil.
There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. -Proverbs 14:12; 16:25
We are again faced with the age old problem, who is our authority? The word of God, or some amalgam of our evil desires and the philosophy of this world. The word of God gives us the solutions of repentance and sanctification. Perhaps the best agent of our sanctification is the humility of taking our place in the churches with which we find fault. The world offers another solution, one which simply ends in death.