The Emergent Church Part III: bones out of joint

Hopefully you recall I’ve made a couple posts concerning the Emergent church movment—particularly based on the books of Brian McLaren (one of the movement’s most prominent thinkers) and D.A. Carson (a brotherly, constructive critic). Now to try to wrap up a sticky critter, what am I making then of McLaren and the Emergent Chruch movement overall?

I would say we have here Christians in the thrall of the progressive spirit, where new ideas are tend to be regarded with hope, and old ones with dissatisfaction. I don’t believe the progressive mindset is inherently superior or inferior to the conservative one, whether in religion or in other matters. There’s a place for both in the body of Christ: for those who are excited to help us adapt to new situations and process, integrate and be appropriately changed by new knowledge and perspectives on the one hand, and on the other for those who are animated to guard us against the sorts of innovations and adaptations that threaten or conflict with our faithfulness to God and who powerfully appreciate the quality and depth of the long-tested thoughts and ways we have inherited.

But being counterbalances to one another, the progressive and conservative types easily become frustrated with one another. For that matter, I expect they’re stirred by different kinds of preaching and prefer different ways of doing church. Whether willingly or by force of its situation, and whether in a competitive or cooperative spirit, the American church makes a market economy of religion; diverse churches compete for members and fill various niches for a variety of clientele. This situation has the advantage of spurring churches to adapt to better fill people’s felt needs (which can, by the way, include the need to give and act and be transformed, not always only to consume and be comforted), and the disadvantage of catalyzing divisions: whether competing factions or disconnected body parts. It’s easiest to connect with people similar to ourselves, to feel most edified by teaching focused on our peculiar situations in life, to listen to people who share or at least understand and respectfully empathize with our basic assumptions, and to open our hearts through the cultures and subcultures that are our homes.

I’m not convinced that the way we segregate on Sundays is entirely a bad thing in every case. But having specialized niche congregations means we need to be all the more vigilant against forming factions between the various niches or losing the ligaments that keep Jesus’ bones in order. When some Christians stop thinking and behaving like other different Christians are important parts of the Body of Christ, with unique helpful contributions, the Body of Christ out of joint.

There’s a phenomenon in social psychology called group polarization. Essentially, it means if you put a bunch of moderate environmentalists together in a pot, stir them around and let them simmer, you’ll tend to find in time you have a pot of radical environmentalists.  Groups of risk takers will become riskier, groups of cautious people will become more risk-adverse. Part of the reason for this seems to be that each person pursues greater acceptance and perhaps leadership by embracing a slightly stronger version of the group identity (“we’re progressive; it’s good to be progressive; I’ll be cooler if I’m especially progressive”). Perhaps an even more important reason for group polarization is informational influence (“I think heavily taxing the rich is a bad idea. Gee, she has a good argument for why such taxes are bad that I hadn’t thought of. Ever more clearly, those taxes are really bad.”) Nobody’s sharing the good arguments favoring substantial taxes on the rich; it’s not just that members might not feel encouraged to do so (though that may be true); maybe nobody in the group even knows about those arguments).

So what I’ve been insinuating is this: I believe group polarization forces are harming the development of the Emergent Chruch situation, and doing so on both sides. Minds close (even minds that boast of openness), faction mentality grows (even among those who are trying to transcend factions), conservative thinkers, having formed a herd, may conserve too much, and risk-taking thinkers, having formed a herd, take too reckless of risks.

While the older books I’ve read of McLaren’s seemed like pretty good stuff, more recent writings by McLaren & company (for example, A New Kind of Christianity) have seemed to me to be slipping in a more reckless direction in their project to instigate helpful bold theological shifts. I feel like progressive values and the problems we progressive types tend to face with Christian theology have grown in power more or less unchecked (despite, or even sometimes by means of vocal opposition from more conservative folks). As the foundations for theology are brought into question, I think the desire of Emergent folks to develop something fresh that resonates with their current values is threatening the integrity of their listening and reading, and question-solving.

Nevertheless, I do believe that key elements of the Emergent project are fundamentally worthwhile: as our knowledge and our culture develop, many of us start generating new questions (some of which have positive potential), and I think the church profits from having a think tank / beta testing contingent for new ideas. Not everybody needs to be a beta tester, and in fact it’s probably best if most people aren’t.

The work comes with extra responsibility. By the same token that bold questioning allows us to identify legitimate problems with our traditions, it also opens the door wider to changing whatever we don’t like and spinning it up to both ourselves and others that that’s what God wants (or at least that he’s cool with it).

So for the time being, I’m settling on a flashing yellow (and sometimes red) light of “proceed with caution” regarding the movement. Despite all the headache and insecurity that may come with controversy and possible heresy, I still want to be in on the conversation, because their questions are my questions too, their needs seem like my needs, and I’m hopeful that with careful work and perseverance we just might help one another discover and welcome in the solutions we need.

The Emergent Church Part II: knowledge anemia, scripture slips and the ideological itch

Last post was “the one hand” about McLaren and the Emergent church—why I’ve appreciated and resonated with such people. Now what about the other paw?

We turn to D.A. Carson’s book Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church. It’s mostly a critical book, but he does give some attention to what they’re doing right. That’s part of why I listen to him; spending time thinking about two sides of a matter helps a person be accurate, so Carson gets credibility points. Similarly, I believe there’s a place for both critical and empathetic engagement with people’s perspectives, a skill often neglected, and I felt like Carson’s relatively good at giving appropriate space to each.

Here’s what Carson appreciates as the emergent church’s strengths: They attend to reading the times, trying to go about being God’s people in a way that fits what’s happening now. They push for authenticity, for a church that’s filled not with comfortable clichés, facades and shallowness, but with encounters with a living God. They recognize our own social location as part of the culture we swim in, always having biases like everyone else that slant our perceptions of the truth, rather than as if Bible-believing Christians sat pristinely apart from ‘The Culture’, able to judge all things with divine impartiality. The movement is deeply concerned with evangelizing outsiders, such as artists or others shaped by postmodern assumptions: people who would find traditional evangelical culture alien and perhaps offensive or suffocating. And finally, emergent church types are probing links with tradition, seeking refreshing changes from recent practice while pursuing solidarity with historic Christianity through adopting practices learned from Christians in other eras and branches of the tree.

Great stuff, this. Where’s the catch? I think the following lively rant excerpted from Becoming Conversant nicely covers Carson’s sticking points. He’s critiquing McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy, but the criticisms extend beyond that book:

Every chapter of this book succumbs to the same elementary analysis. Every chapter has some useful insights, and every chapter overstates arguments, distorts history, attaches exclusively negative terms to all the things with which McLaren disagrees (even when they have been part of the heritage of confessional Christianity for two thousand years), and almost never engages the Scriptures except occasionally in prooftexting ways. Even the closing chapter, “Why I Am Unfinished,” manages in brief compass to express attractive humility, misrepresent what “orthodoxy” has meant in the past, give a new definition of “orthodoxy”, cite a couple of biblical passages that have nothing to do with what he is talking about, and very seriously understate what believers ought to know, should know and can know, if we are to judge such matters not by postmodern epistemological preferences but by what scripture actually says. (180-181)

To boil it down, the main problems as Carson sees them seem to be:

1. An anemic take on Christian knowledge

2. Imbalanced, distorted, reactionary arguments

3. A loose and convenient handling of scripture

Knowledge anemia

I’m only half-way there with Carson on the subject of Christian knowledge. I believe the problem at hand is that the Emergent Church identifies to some degree with postmodern philosophy, which (at least in its stronger forms) in turn wages war on the notion of objective truth (and knowledge thereof), notions that (in some form at least) permeate the Bible and its reasoning. From what Carson says, emergent writers generally seem pretty happy to tone down the objective smack-you-in-the-face truth language. Many seem to think it’s a good idea to slip away from thinking in that sort of category, and don’t talk much about how far is too far a slip. Some of this sensibility seems to have to do with a desire to reach postmodern people with the Way of Jesus, but I get the sense that they really agree with the postmodern philosophy to some extent, and see changing our notions of truth as being on the ball, not as an act of marketing (Emergent folks tend to take issue with evangelistic methods that smack of sales and marketing).

Why do I say I’m only half-way there with Carson? Partly due to the respect for ambiguity I share with people like McLaren (see my last post). And in fact I find a lot of stuff in life ambiguous, especially when it comes to theological questions. Some of that is probably obtainable knowledge that I haven’t obtained just yet (or even that I’ve been reluctant to accept). But it also seems to me that folks tend to think they know all sorts of things that they don’t actually know—that they haven’t come to believe by as trustworthy means as they think. This becomes clearer in a pluralistic context, where many different people become confident of many different things, and often for reasons with which most of us can sympathize. In this context, I find it really refreshing when a group of Christians can go public about their uncertainties and intellectual fallibilities and get on with following Jesus anyway, providing a warm place where us doubters aren’t so inclined to fear that we’re second-rate Christians on account of our persistent questions and vigilance against certain forms of deception. Not only can such an environment help many of us get past our insecurities, it can also rightly draw folks who have these sensibilities about ambiguity I’ve mentioned who thirst for spiritual depth. So I’m actually attracted to the way that Emergent types are trying to be wary about flinging around lots of Truth language without careful attentive reflection or culturing overconfidence in our persuasions. I’d say we could benefit from more of this sensibility (if well-balanced).

But Carson does have a very important point that Emergent people may be going too far with this, and that there is serious danger there. The story of the Jesus followers as I’ve encountered it in the Bible seems very tightly tangled up with important actual facts, facts that people everywhere needed (and presumably still need) to understand correctly and believe. It involves truth that stays true for everybody, truth that often offends people, turns them away, and makes life more difficult and uncomfortable for all of us. Jesus got himself in trouble through his habit of telling that kind of truth like it is. For my part, I do believe that I have a chronic tendency to tiptoe around saying things that might rub people wrong about Christianity, without considering whether said possible wrong-rubbing would not so much be because they wouldn’t understand, but rather because on an important level they would. I also don’t like the notion that anyone would be judged for fancying the wrong ideas; I don’t want dogmatism to cramp anyone’s free and comfortable exercise of their minds, and I’m sympathetic that likeable people with decent motivations can make all sorts of mistakes in their reasoning and judgment. But as I read scripture (Galatians 1 or 1 Corinthians 15, for example), it does look as if there’s serious danger in theological mistakes – even mistakes that don’t result in obvious immorality. Are we trying to take the easy way out on this? That would be a lot like us, now wouldn’t it?

Imbalanced, distorted, reactionary arguments

Have you ever had an ideological itch? Like, there’s something about certain notions and ways of thinking that really bug you. Sometimes exactly what that something is is hard to put your finger on. You want to scratch it, and scratch it good, and make the itchy thing go away. If only itchy things were so easily dispensed with.

I think McLaren has an itch, an itch that has to do with conservative thinking and theology. I think I have the itch too. I bet a lot of emergent types do. There’s a certain satisfaction in scratching your bug bites, in scratching the whole vicinity nice and hard. But doing so can make matters worse. In reading McLaren’s works, I had a lot of itch-scratching moments, where part of me said “Yea! Yea! You’re nailing it!” but another part muttered “But isn’t this kind of unfair?” Here’s an example from pages 129-130 of A New Kind of Christian:

     The preoccupation with being saved sometimes strikes me as strangely selfish. I think we’ve talked about this before: Do you think that God would want a heaven filled with people who cared more about being saved from hell than saved from sin? Who cared more about getting their butts into heaven than being good? Who cared more about having their sins forgiven than being good neighbors? Who in fact became worse neighbors precisely because they became so religious in their concern about their own personal souls?

     I think our definition of “saved” is shrunken and freeze-dried by modernity… this all strikes me as Christianity diced through the modern Veg-o-matic… The way conservative Christians talk about “personal salvation” seems to try to persuade by exclusion. In other words, the argument says, “You, the ‘unsaved’, are on the outside and I’m on the inside. I’ll tell you now to get inside if you want.”

Proselytism and conversion that center on fears surrounding the afterlife scare me. I think they scare me because A) I see a real case for that sort of thinking, B) I fear that this sort of thinking will make me a slave to fear, where my lifestyle is controlled by fear for others and I must scare them and work to get them into the same sort of slavery, though it will alienate many who I love, and C) that sort of fear might encourage us to value the regenerating, reforming, renewing side of the gospel less (except insofar as it helps convert people, but not for its own sake). So it feels good when McLaren scratches our collective itch.

But at the same time, I know that generally the people I’ve known who focus on the gospel of eternal salvation and who fear for their unsaved friends are not mere slaves to fear, that they are often very good neighbors, that they are driven by love for others rather than club spirit, and that the ultimate focus of this sort of conversion is generally on a commitment of humility and trust toward God, laced with sincere repentance from sin, rather than selfish consumerism concerned with fire insurance or jumping through the hoops to get the candy in the sky. Whatever his intentions, and in spite of his warm style, when McLaren scratches our itch by writing things like the quote above, his words risk unfairly insulting and alienating a broad swath of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Arguably, such words may also encourage us to forget about (or at least back-burner) the John 3:16 part of the gospel. Thus, we stir up reactionary infighting in the church, we risk getting seriously off track with key doctrine, and if we think too much in caricatures, we risk skewing our worldviews so we recognize truth even less when we see it. Not good!

Carson sees people like McLaren as carrying on an “angry young man” routine, where disgust with one extreme leads to over-compensation, swinging recklessly toward the opposite extreme. I’m not convinced we can boil down the Emergent Church phenomenon to merely one big party of reactionary angry young man swinging (maybe Carson doesn’t either), but I think he’s right that there’s a lot of that going on.

Loose and convenient handling of scripture

This one’s big and sticky. Consider D.A. Carson’s most alarming sight-bite of the book: “I have to say, as kindly but as forcefully as I can, that to my mind, if words mean anything, both McLaren and Chalke have largely abandoned the Gospel” (186). Gee golly! Reactionary is one thing, but what’s this all about?

Steve Chalke, A key emergent leader from the British side of the pond, is quoted saying the following:

The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. (The Lost Message of Jesus, 182-183)

Chalke is attacking what’s formally known as “the theory of penal substitutionary atonement” (I’ll call it the TPSA): the idea that Jesus died to pay the penalty we justly owe for our sins so that God’s wrath would justly be satisfied and we could be saved. Most of us Bible-believing Protestants were taught it by another name: the gospel (more or less). McLaren also takes issue with the TPSA; from what I can tell he wants to conceptualize the gospel differently (primarily as the message Jesus proclaimed, that the kingdom of God is at hand), and to take the TPSA off of its current pedestal. I’m not sure whether he still has space something along the lines of the TPSA figuring significantly in his understanding of the gospel. I’m not sure he knows either, being the theological explorer/adventurer/wanderer/architect that he is.

Now I really do resonate with Chalke’s core sentiment: my intuitions and the TPSA disagree in a number of ways, and I’d rather not swallow it if I don’t have to. For example, intuitively it doesn’t seem to me like punishing the innocent in place of the guilty actually satisfies justice – not even if it’s a volunteer. And it’s encouraging in a way to have people questioning the unquestionable; it makes me feel less afraid of revealing and thinking through my own misgivings. Chalke’s scratching our itch. But his alarming language seems to ignore prominent facets of the Biblical story that are broadly understood by Christians and that counteract the “divine child abuse” picture, and that make it difficult to stray too far from the TPSA while being receptive to the direction of the Bible. Conservatives read things like this and feel the core of our faith has been brutally libeled; the strong language seems to distort matters (consistent with the reckless angry young man routine) in order to rationalize denying key doctrine.

I still want to dig a bit before I have a firm opinion of what’s going on here. Chalke, McLaren, and respected Bible scholar NT Wright (who I’m told doesn’t distance himself as much as Chalke from the TPSA and yet identifies Chalk’s view with his own) all have more to say on the debate that I haven’t read. As far as “abandoning the gospel” is concerned, I’m inclined to believe that anyone who trusts in Jesus as their Savior and Lord will be accepted by him, whether their theology about just how Jesus saves is rock solid or deeply distorted. I don’t see evidence that these men have up and stopped trusting in Jesus, nor that they no longer encourage others to do so. Nevertheless, bad theology can still be disastrous whether or not it ends up being fatal—especially in the mouths of teachers.

But back to the issue of handling scripture in general. I do feel like McLaren is a bit loose with the Bible sometimes (especially around the subject of God’s wrath). The issue tends to be a sort of slipping past scripture, where he makes an attractive case but important objections from the Bible come to mind, and he just doesn't seem to go there. The critical thinker is then left uncertain whether he has a good answer to those objections or not. This is particularly worrisome given that he has his sights set on reinterpreting those scriptures in bold new ways. I really like the idea of bold new ways and bold new thoughts, but boldness can quickly turn into folly if one isn’t careful.

It’s kind of annoying. I want teachers with whom I resonate, who can seriously sympathize with my reactions and predispositions, and who I can trust to faithfully and reliably dish out truth with wisdom and balance, bearing in mind the whole picture in scripture. McLaren’s about the best person I’ve found in the former two but currently strikes me as rather patchy on that last requirement. Despite the fact that I rarely get around to reading book recommendations, I'd like to find more authors who will let me have my cake (reliable truth) and eat it too (resonance etc). Any suggestions?

And what are your reactions to all this business?

Bibliography

Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001).

D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Chruch: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005).

Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003).

The Emergent Church Part I: On being a human stewpot for 'Emergence'

I recently finished Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church by D.A. Carson, a theologian I appreciate and respect. It’s a nuanced critique of the Emergent Church movement—Christians who have been rethinking Christian thought and practice over the past ~20 years, seeking to fittingly adapt to the “postmodern context”. As Emergent types use the term, “postmodernity” seems to encompass just about all the changes that have been happening in the western world of late. The bulk of what Carson says toward the Emergent Church amounts to informed, mature, constructive criticism (with some acknowledgement of positive facets of the movement). I appreciated his book.

Brian McLaren is one of the leading thinkers of the Emergent movement. I’ve read two or three of his books (A New Kind of Christian, A Search for What Makes Sense, about half of The Story We Find Ourselves In, and maybe some of A Search for What is Real), and really appreciated what he had to say. They provided encouragement and refreshment to me on my journey of faith and doubt. Sometimes I disagreed with McLaren, or thought he seemed a bit too impressed with himself (in his own self-deprecatory sort of way) or simplistic in his caricature of conservative Christianity. But I nevertheless felt understood and joined on my journey by a kindred spirit in a way I hadn’t experienced before to that degree.  And so I developed hope that if I can find a church full of people of a similar stripe, it may be a very good home for me.

Some of McLaren’s writings are a main target of Carson’s critique. Reading Becoming Conversant (among other factors that got me to read such a book in the first place) led me to wonder how much I should trust McLaren and the movement he’s a part of for spiritual guidance. I expect I’ll end up taking some and leaving some. So I have some sorting to do. And I wanted to include you in the process, and invite you to cross-check, affirm or add complimentary perspectives to what I say.

I want to share my sorting with you in three posts:

1.       This post: What I liked so much when I read McLaren (and by implication, what I like about the Emergent Church)

2.       A consideration of Carson’s informed critiques of McLaren and his movement

3.       Putting it all together, where does that leave us?

Why I resonate with McLaren

Please keep in mind that in what follows, I’m trying to put my finger on what I liked so much in McLaren’s books, whether or not they’re things God likes. Being myself, I will have a bias to paint things in a Tom-affirming sort of way, but I’m hoping to go light on the defensiveness here.

Looking back at what I marked in McLaren’s books, three related themes stand out:

A respect for ambiguity

Empathy

A love for freedom of thought

Much of what follows takes the form of generalizations and reflections on my own end of things. But I do have page numbers with examples of stuff that I can show you if you ask.

A respect for ambiguity

Both McLaren and I have a respect ambiguity. By that I don’t mean we think it’s better to be confused than to understand. Rather, we believe that there is much that is not clear, and we should learn to live well with that fact. Human beings work with simplified pictures of the world so we can handle its complexity. But over-simplification is tempting, dangerous, and very common.  So some of us take it upon ourselves to be habitual “devil’s advocates”, highlighting the “maybes” and “maybe nots” of life.

Both McLaren and I seem to get annoyed with people’s orderly, “just-so story” worldviews and have a hankering sometimes to smear things around a bit. Admittedly, sometimes the issue may be others’ convictions that we don’t like. Convictions can be powerful, scary things. If some Christian believes the Bible is clear on something when it actually isn’t, and they condemn other viable takes on that passage with the confidence that God backs their judgment, that’s a big problem. Likewise, if we preach as the gospel truth that which is really just an interpretive quirk or cultural sensibility of ours, we can distort God’s message, tying up unnecessary burdens made up of human teachings that weigh down our listeners, just as the Pharisees did. This isn’t just theoretical; Christian missionaries have been known to do this, and I hear the outcome has been ugly. And yes, I admit the opposite is also true: blurring the clear revelation of God is also dangerous. But some of us like to fix more attention on one side of the coin than the other.

Appreciating ambiguity doesn’t mean never speaking of truth or believing in knowledge. But it does (or at least should) encourage intellectual humility: being cautious of speaking or acting like we know more than we do, and expecting to be wrong on a regular basis. Those of us who appreciate ambiguity most likely have a special tendency not be certain we’re right on big questions of faith and theology. In such cases, we want to talk that way—honesty compels us to. For example, people like McLaren and I feel better about evangelizing with language that sounds like “here’s something wonderful I’ve discovered; you really should take a look” rather than “here’s the way things are (and why you’re wrong)”.

Empathy

In a recent post I brought up the issue of listening with an empathetic versus a critical orientation. I think McLaren feels his conservative protestant upbringing was overly dominated by a critical orientation toward outside ideas and perspectives. So he turns things around, listening empathetically to those who were considered outsiders and seeking to take their perspectives seriously, while in turn casting a critical eye toward the establishment from which he came.

Far as I can tell, my past did not leave me with a sour taste about religious conservatives. However, intellectual empathy is very important to me. I’m not sure why. I have a conviction that people need to be respectfully and carefully listened to and understood on their own terms. As I see it, that’s part of showing love.

Another deep-seated belief I have is that observing something for yourself, and being able to go back and verify that your memory serves you correctly brings a quality of knowledge and safeguard against error that mere acceptance on authority (taken alone) does not generally provide. For instance, those of us who read and accept the truth about quarks don’t know about quarks in as full or reliable a way as the physicists who study them do.

I imagine most of you also believe these two things (perhaps with some important qualifications). But for each of us, certain beliefs take particularly prominent roles in the physiology of our hearts; they exercise special influence in how we think and what we care about. That’s how these two beliefs are for me.

Brian McLaren is interested in listening to folks. He promotes listening unpresumptuously to people of other religious persuasions, and considering whether perhaps there is wisdom there we can learn from and honor (whether out of their religious traditions or from other parts of their thought).

Sometimes when you stand in other people’s shoes, you really want to question whether the negative judgments you were taught about them are true. If the Bible appears to judge or dismiss them too harshly, you may be motivated to look for ways to understand those passages that aren’t so harsh and that feel like they fit better with what you’ve seen of those people.

A love for freedom of thought

I’m a ponderer and an asker of questions. Some of those questions are questions about whether the Sunday school answers I was taught and accepted in the past are really true—or even whether the foundational basics of my religion are true. This has to do with the values I’ve mentioned:  taking challenging perspectives seriously and wanting to double-check the truth of my commitments through investigation (and feeling that to be a strength rather than a weakness).  But Christianity tends to emphasize the importance of believing certain things. Whether appropriately or not, one of the consequences of that emphasis has been that I don’t always feel safe or welcome asking my questions or seriously considering unorthodox alternatives. But I’ve longed for space to learn, for a sense that it’s okay for me to play around with ideas while seeking to better understand what’s true and risk making a few mistakes along the way.

McLaren affirmed this longing of mine. He helped me feel more comfortable as a big question asker. We’re both inclined to emphasize process and method in how we seek truth, rather than whether whatever method gets the predetermined “right answer”.  And we ask similar questions. For example, we both wonder about the nature and extent of the authority of scripture (one of those questions that I feel sometimes I’m not welcome to ask). Why? I want to take precautions against having to believe and teach harmful mistaken ideas pulled from the Bible that aren’t really what God says or commands. And that does mean I’m biased to look for ways around many of the more controversial traditional doctrines.

And a few more points

·         * Both McLaren and I really like freshness of thought. We both tend to think, for example, that the traditional spiritualistic language runs a big risk of becoming vacuous; the familiar grandiose words can start making us feel like we’re right by saying them even if we’re not thinking when we say them and hardly know what they mean. In contrast, we regard creative expression and new angles on various subjects as possible stimulants for thinking deeper and applying the core ideas more sincerely. Likewise, McLaren, other Emergent Church people and I are fans of living, worshiping and listening to God in fresh ways (whether new or just new to us), welcoming experiments.

·         * Both McLaren and I seem to be afraid of evangelism degenerating to a form of sales. Further, something turns in our stomachs when the motivation for evangelism, and the nature of the gospel in general are regarded as essentially a matter saving souls from hell to heaven. I’m not denying that these implications for the hereafter are a very important element of the Christian message; Jesus did come to save us from our sins and the wrath they deserve. But I (and McLaren) fear we can reduce the point of Jesus’ message to soul-saving in a way that distorts it and can lead to an anemic conception of what it means to follow Jesus. I’ve felt liable to do that myself, and I don’t like it.

·         * Both McLaren and I are inclined to think that different ways of thinking—and thus, different forms of thinking as a Christian—are appropriate to different cultural and historical contexts. Thus, a person living in a different world from that of the writers of the New Testament perhaps shouldn’t think just like those writers thought, even granting that the thinking found in the Bible was ideal to their situations and is authoritatively relevant to ours.

I think that covers it. It’s possible I’ve seen more of me in McLaren than there is. I welcome your thoughts on all this (as always). Thanks for reading.

The trouble with apologists

 Please excuse the stereotyping in which I'm about to dabble. I'll try and correct it toward the end. It's just more fun to criticize without qualifiers.

Do apologists ever annoy you, or is it just me?

A couple nights ago I was flipping through some apologetics literature (of the conservative Protestant variety). In particular, the apologists were defending the inerrancy of the Bible: the doctrine that the Bible, being God's word, is 100% without error in its original manuscripts whether concerning matters of faith and practice, history or science, and whether in what it teaches or what it merely "touches on". This contrasts with the view that the Bible is "infallible but not inerrant", the school of thought that the Bible is authoritative and absolutely trustworthy in matters of faith and practice, but should not be looked to as the gold standard in matters of, say, history or science, concerning which it might contain errors.

For my part, I'd rather not have to claim allegiance to one label or the other. I affirm that whatever a passage of scripture is meant to communicate must be true (without drawing boundaries as to which academic departments it has permission to speak to). But I'm presently shakier on the subject of secondary inferences (i.e. things arguably "touched on") especially where they seem unrelated to faith and practice. I sometimes feel people try to look to the Bible for authority in ways, matters and details that maybe God isn't actually speaking to. Frankly I get nervous sometimes reading the Bible, sensing legend and myth in some places but wondering if it's okay for me to interpret it that way.

So as I read these apologetics books, the pages glared back at me with a dogmatic tone of convicted orthodoxy.  I sensed an insinuation that Jesus himself stood behind the apologist's litigious shoulder casting his righteous glare upon me in all my free-thinking and intransigent presumptuousness. Why did I refuse to accept their arguments? Surely some sinful sacrilege, some heinous heresy, some fetid faithlessness lurketh within mine heart, callousing it unto the truth!

Well, and for sooth mayhaps some such foulor doth indeed lurk therein. It's both tempting and foolish to laugh off that kind of possibility. It is also quite possible that the apologist I was reading wouldn't mean to project the sort of attitude I sense from the page. But my focus here is the result in the reader, not the intent of the writer.

Recently I watched a TED talk about listening better (http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better.html). Among the fellow's recommendations was to pay attention to different positions you might take in your listening. One of the pairs of stances he mentioned was critical / empathetic.

I often get the sense in reading theological arguments that the writer listens to his or her opponents with a strictly critical stance; when they articulate oposing arguments, they make little effort to show that they can empathize with where their opponents are coming from. I think this can be problematic. To their credit, often the apologists need to favor a critical stance; what they criticize or fight often needs serious fighting. And in the Bible, prophets, apostles, and Jesus all often dispute error sharply without any apparent empathetic concession, and I take it they were right to do so. Maybe they too would have irritated me. Especially if I'm like most of the folks they rebuked.

So what's the problem? The problem is in building trust. If I don't think you really understand where I'm coming from, I'm liable to question whether you really know the solution to where I'm coming from as well as you may think you do. This adds on top of the emotional knee-jerk reaction that if somebody's just flat out attacking me (and attacking my notions can sure feel like attacking me) they must be my enemy, someone to be resisted and (ideally) defeated. And that emotional reaction can be difficult to completely tame. The difficulty in taming it is no excuse for not trying, but mightn't it be preferable in general for the arguer to make it less of a challenge?

Another barrier to trust has to do with assumptions. Apologists tend to assume some conviction a priori and then look for arguments in their favor to use for persuading others. They may be justified in doing so, but in principle this approach makes me trust them less. I've encountered apologist types not only of the conservative Protestant fold, but also of Catholic, Mormon, and Islamic varieties, and more often than not, I've come away impressed. It's my sense that skilled debaters can generate fine-sounding arguments for all sorts of conflicting views, even arguments that are difficult to debunk or see through. Now suppose I assume neither that the apologist's conviction is correct or incorrect, but would like to learn the truth of things. Their arguments don't carry as much weight with me as the reasoning of somebody who confronted the issue with an open mind would: in the event that the apologist's assumption is wrong,  they're highly biased to be blind to their fault, and probably capable of doing a fine job defending it. They're much more like lawyers or politicians than witnesses or scientists.

It helps if I can have arguments presented by both sides and see them interact with each other. It also helps if the arguers admit victories for the other side, things they don't understand, and mistakes of their own. Though that might count against them in front of a shallow audience, it is evidence that they are humble people who realize their thinking is fallible and who value honesty and learning. And those values are cause for trust. I'm more inclined to put energy into open-mindedly working through arguments from that sort of person than to bother listening hard to someone who exudes proud confidence but seems presumptuous in their understanding of others (except maybe for the questionable pleasure of trying to show why they're wrong).

Now, stepping back, I should acknowledge that not all apologists fit the negative portrait I've drawn. Take for instance my friend Peter Payne (whose website may be found at www.crediblechristianity.org), who has worked for years as a professional Christian apologist. He tends to show an understanding of various sides of a given controversy. He comes across as respectful, and though he is very knowledgeable and credentialed, he doesn't intimidate or belittle. He admits to finding some questions people use to poke at Christianity personally challenging, the sorts of things he has some answers to offer, but admits to not being completely satisfied with the answers he has. If he persuades, it is through things like careful reasoning and evidence, not his own charisma. I really appreciate and respect all that. I've also read apologetics books by Brian McLaren (A Search for What Makes Sense) and Timothy Keller (The Reason for God) that lacked the annoying aura I've been clawing at. I bet McLaren dislikes it even more than I do, but that's a subject for another blog.

 Before wrapping up, I want to make clear what I'm saying, and what I'm not saying. Assuming the audience is unconvinced of the apologist's claim, and would like to learn the truth of the matter...

* A lack of empathetic consideration of opposing arguments and perspectives reduces an audience's trust, and it should.
* That same lack encourages a spirit of close-minded animosity in an audience (whether it should or not).
* Producing arguments to support a priori commitments reduces an audience's trust, and it should.
* Note, however, that neither of these factors serve to dispute an apologist's argument itself; arguing that someone's argument is wrong because you don't trust the messenger is a fallacy.
* Note also that I am not saying an empathetic consideration is always necessary,
* I am also not saying that people should be perpetually open-minded to all controversial suggestions (though personally I'm not a big fan of dogmatism).

So what are your reactions? Does anyone resonate? Or want to share a contrasting point of view? If you resonate with the annoyance over apologists, did my clawings scratch the nail on the head, or are there other factors in the trouble with apologists?

Bringing 'Psychology' to a Christian near you

I think I want to write a book some day to the effect of "Psychology for Christians". It would explore findings in psychology relevant to religion, particularly those that are either useful for making wise choices and reducing problematic bias, helpful for understanding situations, or just downright interesting, and explain them in a way normal people will get, illustrated explicitly with religious situations.

It's not as if I think I know enough to write such a thing now.  But I'd love to learn this stuff. The book would be a useful, fantastic excuse. It also seems like an excellent way to sniff out what research needs doing, research that someone other than researchers might find helpful.

I get the impression psychology can scare some Christians because it might offer compelling alternative explanations about what goes on inside people, explanations that might challenge their spiritualistic notions. Perhaps the evidence will seem to conflict with what they read in the Bible. Perhaps it will shake their faith, or destroy the faith of their weaker brothers and sisters. Maybe somebody will use the research as a weapon against them and their faith. Maybe somebody already has.

For my part, I get excited about the challenge of getting into the research and figuring out what a Christian's to make of it. There's so much potential for learning and growth. And why should we fear struggling with the light that evidence brings? Unless, of course, we really are wrong, and the truth will bring only trouble. But good faith doesn't admit making allowances for that worry from what I can tell.

For similar reasons, I'd also like to write a similar book for religious doubters and those who deal with them (us). Part of me fears this amounts to making a life project of navel-gazing. I do tend to take myself pretty seriously. It's sort of embarrassing. Hopefully God gets a kick out of it. But a bigger part of me says "Why not? You have the motivation and the experience, and there seems to be a need; go for it."

Then there's the question of how to get there. Will the academic establishment of psychology smile on one with such aspirations? Will "they" question my ability to do good science given my religious biases? And if so, can I count on a fair trial at least? Will grant money run especially dry for research related to the interests stated above, for ideological reasons? "Maybe", a voice in my head says, "maybe you're shooting yourself in the foot right now by posting your notions online where 'they' can dig 'em up someday, and deny you tenure or something. You shouldn't be so open, especially when you're still so ignorant and could really regret what you wrote some day-- like stupid facebook pictures or something". But I don't want to feel like I need to hide stuff. I don't think I could pull it off very well anyway. I think I'll just have to deal with the consequences of being an open person.

Do you have any thoughts? Need I fear being indiscreet about things like this? Do Christians fear like I say we fear? Do the incipient book ideas sound promising? Do I sound naive? I suppose I shouldn't count on people posting 'constructive criticism' comments ("Dear Tom, interesting post. Yes; you sound naive. Sorry.") but I do welcome them (though preferably with a little more explanation than the aforementioned example).

A Spiritual Spring: Part IIIC - The other sprouts

I'm going to indulge one of those culture rants (or whatever we should call them) that pastors and Christian authors seem so fond of. At least I feel like I've heard a related rant before. Usually I feel a need to avoid ranting up popular trees, but there's no harm in barking with the pack every now and then.

Americans these days tend to value the therapeutic side of religion. We want to know that our practices will help us be happy and healthy, and we seek out a sense of agreeable wholesomeness. This isn't just the case for the quasi-religious average Joe American; I think it's also true of dedicated Christians.

Now I would say seeking and valuing health, happiness and wholesomeness is good, and I'm not about to stop. But I'm wanting to highlight something helpful I gleaned from that book by the Puritan John Flavel, a non-contemporary Englishman, that might help people like me from getting too skewed.
I'm used to assuming that negative emotions like sadness are understandable problems that ought to be solved in due course. Who would want to be sad? Isn't it obvious that we're meant to pursue happiness? And don't Christians have reason to "be joyful always"?

I would contend that sometimes the critical problem is not that we're sad and when we want to be happy, but that we're happy and carefree when we ought to be sad and sober. Consider James 4:7-10:

⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. (NIV)

It may be true that God's forgiveness is not contingent on just how much sorrow we work up, but maybe working up a good sorrow is nevertheless a helpful idea sometimes. Maybe we should fast sometimes and welcome some sobering sadness because we want to be serious about listening and changing. Maybe because we love God, we should join him in his concerns this way, even at the expense of our pleasure.

I suspect that as a personality trait, I tend to come across as one who takes life a bit too seriously, with my perpetual philosophical quandaries. Nevertheless, I'm not used to thinking quite in the way I've described, and becoming more like this  has been an element of the "fear and humility" sprouts of my new spring. At least it was; I can't say I've had a good long "fasting and sorrow" session lately. But opportunity will likely arise. It also seems tempting to make another therapy practice out of this, which would be bad insofar as it turns seeking God primarily for his sake into something primarily for my sake. But surely I can hope in God to correct me of that too.

Let me know if you have anything to add to this. It can be hard to try and correct your patterns and sensibilities on your own. It's better to do it in community.


Another facet of my "fear and humility sprouts" has been sobritety about doctrine. I've seen (or been reminded) that...
A) God seems to care quite a bit about doctrine in the Bible (maybe more than I might wish)
B) In the Bible, there are stern and serious consequences for adopting and spreading bad doctrine
C) Some of the people and movements I appreciate nevertheless may be making big mistakes in this regard, and I should be wary
D) The answer to the doctrinal problems that make me want to wine is less found in seeking out more agreeable views that could possibly be true, and more in taking on a submissive attitude toward God. (The stuff I wrote about hell and "quietness and trust" in recent earlier blogs are a case in point.)

Does the word "submissive" sound weak, dangerous, shameful and even dehumanizing to your ear?  Sometimes it does to mine. It sounds like choosing to be open to manipulation and maybe other bad things too. But if God is real and trustworthy, submitting to him is wise.


Moving on. Let's throw around some more James:

James 3:¹ Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

James 3: ¹³ Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. (both NIV)

So if I want to be wise and share wisdom, I gather I should watch out about the opinion-sharing I do, judiciously shut up more often, and learn to do more good in a humble spirit.

I've had mixed success with holding my tongue. I've at least been a bit more conscious that I need to be judicious in what I say. On the other hand, an opportunity for the service end of wisdom has arisen and done substantial good in my life. This spring I became a "family mentor" (read: general American friend and assistant) for some Eritrean refugees. It's been a great way for me to grow in brotherly kindness, and in focusing on other people's needs more than on my own. Sometimes it's been taxing, but I don't think that should come as a surprise. I'm hoping this sort of service becomes a sustainable discipline for the rest of my life. So them's the love sprouts.

And I think that's about enough for the Spiritual Spring series. More of a like nature will likely come, but it will come under a different heading. After all, it just turned summer.

Question for you

I have a question (set) for you. When was the last time you were sincerely trying to figure out the  (morally) right thing to do? How did you go about it? What did you take into consideration?

I just watched this TED talk:

Damon Horowitz calls for a "moral operating system"

That made me want to ask.

Don't know whether anybody besides my Mom comments here anymore (thanks Mom), but I hope the rest of you give it a crack, take a risk and post. It will warm my philosophical little heart.