On Writing

About a month ago I read On Writing by Stephen King. A large portion of the book consists of King’s memoirs, tracing his formation as a writer. There are more reflections at the end too. Those parts were a great read. They’re also the type of art that I think I would destroy if I tried to summarize it. What follows is my synopsis of the stuff in the middle: his actual advice on writing. Note that the question format is a Doucean innovation. King writes in flowing prose.

Philosophical matters

Can I become a legendary figure in the history of English literature?

King believes in a pyramid of writers with 4 basic classes: the great, the good, the competent and the bad. He maintains that competent writers can become good. He doesn’t believe in good writers becoming great or the bad ones becoming competent. The book is written only with the competent in mind. King seems to place himself in the “good” category, but finds writers from all classes publishing successfully. I find this philosophy strangely refreshing, if not clearly true.

Where do you get your ideas?

Do not ask authors this question. It is hackneyed and useless. There is no pot of gold from whence good writers mine their ideas. “Good story ideas seem to come sailing at you right out of the empty sky… your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.” (37) Despite lacking an idea-finding place, King does regard stories as found objects, like fossils the author must excavate with hand picks and brushes.

Okay then fancy pants, how ought one to recognize and handle good ideas?

King would have you remember that writing is telepathy: the author’s thoughts pass into the heads of readers years later and miles away. So don’t approach it lightly.

The well-worn wisdom is that you write what you know. But isn’t imaginative fiction focused on what one doesn’t know? King endorses a broader interpretation of “what you know”: write according to your interests. Draw on your literary background.

Write with honesty. I am not accustomed to applying the concept of honesty to art, but for King it seems to mean this: map out the vision you have as it is, unadulterated by pretension. Describe people and events and the working of the world as you experience them, not as you wish them to be or as would fit with your plan, or as your readers (or censors) would want them. If one of your characters seems like a bigoted cusser who mutilates puppies, let that character behave like what they are. Stephen King is not a fan of plotting and moralizing, nor of pre-planned themes that don’t emerge organically from the writing process. He pursues resonance above all else. The fire of a story needs to be free to roam as it will. Formulas quench that wild fire.

Lifestyle

Teacher, what must I do to become a good writer?

“If you want to be a good writer, you must do two things above all else: read a lot and write a lot.” (145) Also critical to King are physical health, a good marital relationship and a serene environment free of distractions for the writing process. Have your own place for writing, and make sure it has a door you can close when you mean business. Because you need to mean business.

How much reading and writing must I do?

King recommends the would-be writer spend 4-6 hours of reading and writing per day. And they should like it. Practicing an art ought to be a joy, not a burden. If the practice is a drag stop trying to be a writer and find something else that gives you joy. How much ink to spill depends on who you are and how you write. Personally, King tries to write 2000 words (10 pages) per day in the mornings. Discipline is important. To start, he suggests you commit to writing at least 1000 words per day, 6 days a week.  The exercise will enable you to write freely and fluidly.

What am I supposed to be reading all the time? And why is it important?

Read all sorts of stuff—especially stuff that appeals to you. Reading helps you distinguish what’s new, fresh and functional from what’s not. It keeps you from looking stupid in your own writing. And it can get you in the frame of mind to write.

Reading is part of the process of refining your style. “Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing – of being flattened, in fact – is part of every writer’s necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.” (146) But even the lousily written books can encourage you as a point of comparison and teach you what not to do. 

The process of writing

Suppose I wanted to write a novel. What do you recommend my timeline should look like?

Try to write a 1^st draft within 3 months. Otherwise, things may go stale. Don’t share your 1^st draft in progress. Keep momentum going in order to outrun self-doubt. In turn, admiration could encourage you to slack off. It may nevertheless be helpful to write with an ideal reader in mind (perhaps a real person like your husband or wife), so that as you write you can ask “What would she think of this part?” ”Would he understand what’s going on here?”

After finishing a 1^st draft, stay away from it for at least 6 weeks, and get involved in something other writing project before reviewing it again. There are at least 3 reasons to do this:

1       1. It will be more fun to see your work freshly after that wait.

2       2. It will also be easier to ‘kill your darlings’. Generally one writes great passages that nevertheless need to be deleted because they don’t fit or are unnecessary. It’s easier to do that if you haven’t just written them. 

3        3. It will be easier to spot holes in the plot and such.

After your 6 week wait, start the 2^nd draft! As you read the work again, think about whether the story’s coherent, how to make that coherence beautiful, and whether there are recurring elements that might be intertwined into themes. Figure out the meaning of your writing, so you can reinforce that meaning with new scenes and delete the irrelevant stuff. Deleting is particularly important in the 2^nd draft. King adheres to the formula “2^nd draft = 1^st draft – 10%”—your main job this round is to remove whatever’s not part of the story. And of course, remember to share your story with your friends and get feedback. 

Hey! Where does my awesome back story and meticulous research come in?

Be graceful with backstory. Make sure your ideal reader can understand what’s going on, but be concise. “The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest.” (227) “Where research belongs: as far in the background and the backstory as you can get it.” (227)

How do you actually start publishing stories?

King gives lots of practical pointers on the process of publishing fiction. It sounds like it takes a lot of work, and involves things like doing marketing, obtaining a good agent, and reading lots of what he calls “little magazines”. I’m not that serious just yet, and doubt you are either. Heck, I’m kinda surprised you’ve even read this far. The post is massive as it stands. So let’s skip the business content. Besides, I rationalize, the internet has probably changed the publishing scene a fair bit since the late 1990’s.

This is hard. I want to quit writing this story. Stephen King, can I quit?

“Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea.” (77) Such difficult writing projects can turn out to be pearls (it happened for King), and they help you grow.

Language

Stephen King feels too few people ask authors like himself about language. He likens one’s linguistic abilities to a toolbox:  “To write to your best abilities, it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.” (114)

Alright then Stephen, tell me about language. What does a good writer’s toolbox consist of?

Vocabulary

Don’t go looking for long words to spruce up your writing. Your pretension may show. King even advises against making a conscious effort to improve your vocabulary. There are excellent writers who employ lots of fancy vocab, but others write great prose using short and simple words.  Attend to the fit of your tools rather than their heft. “Remember the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with other words—of course you will, there’s always another word—but it probably won’t be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean.” (118)

Grammar with style

Sometimes it’s great to ignore the rules of grammar, but be sure you know what you’re doing. 

Avoid passive verbs: Have the guts to say “Suzy ate the leprechaun”, not “the leprechaun was eaten by Suzy”. 

Thoughts often are more accessible in 2 sentences than 1. Always make it easier for the reader.

 “The adverb is not your friend.” (126) Adverbs are the resort of writers who fear the reader doesn’t understand them.  These foes, the Adverbs, modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs.  Examples: “loudly”, “completely”, “awkwardly”, “said with a grimace”. King deems them especially heinous in sentence attribution (“Tom said with a grimace”).  Note with cases like “with a grimace” that one can aid and abet the adverb even if one tries to sneak by without ending any words with “-ly”. King also frowns upon the alternative of jacking up the attribution verb (e.g. “’Grendel!’ Charles gasped” or “’Gendel!’ Charles spat” or “’Grendel!’ Charles chortled”).  Stick with “Charles said”, or if the reader already knows it’s Charles who is speaking, eliminate the attribution phrase altogether. All writers end up using a few adverbs. But always try to fulfill the function of adverbs and their ilk through the context. It’s best if the reader can guess that Tom was making a face and that Charles chortled the name Grendel without having it spelled out in adverb form.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs can be long or short as is fits the purpose. Do remember that short paragraphs and white space signal an easy read. 

Think of paragraphs as giving the beat to your song. The groove should fit the melody.

Don’t feel bound to write neat paragraphs with immaculate punctuation filled out with several complete sentences. “It is possible to overuse the well-tuned fragment…   but frags can also work beautifully to streamline narration, create clear images, and create tension as well as to vary the prose-line.” (133) “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story… to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all. The single-sentence more closely resembles talk than writing, and that’s good.” (134)

I believe King had more partitions than the above in his toolbox, but he wasn’t very explicit about what they were. 

Now that I have an adequate toolbox, how do I construct a decent story?

Story = Narration + Description + Dialogue.

Narration

King doesn’t go into much detail on narration. He reminds us that his philosophy is to avoid plotting. His stories generally center on an interesting situation, and interesting characters start evolving out of that situation. I’ll get back to the subject of characters at the end.

Description

It ought to go without saying that writers should avoid cliché similes. Make sure your metaphors lend clarity and hit home with the reader’s experience. Also lacking in class is the practice of giving physical descriptions of characters and their wardrobes. We generally don’t need to know that stuff. Don’t indulge in deep description of things that won’t prove important in the story. Be frugal, leaving space for the reader to make their own world, one that resonates with yours but isn’t . How much is enough? Keep reading fiction and you’ll get a sense of it. 

King thinks it’s a good idea to model off of places and things and (aspects of) people that you know (but beware of throwing real people into your books whole, or you may generate enemies and lawsuits). Clearly envision what you intend to describe and choose a few details of texture that stand out to you. Describe them with simple, clear fresh images. 

Dialogue

“One of the cardinal rules of good fiction is never to tell us a thing if you can show us instead.” (180) Replace narration with dialogue as a source of information. The ability to write excellent interchanges isn’t easily cultured at the writing desk: “Dialogue is a skill best learned by people who enjoy talking and listening to others – particularly listening, picking up the accents, rhythms, dialect, and slang of various groups.” (183) As noted earlier, remember to be honest to how the characters would really talk, even if it’s offensive.

Characters

As with dialogue, craft your characters by paying attention to how people really behave. Let them evolve and they’ll start doing stuff on their own. “The writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader’s.” (77) Also remember each person is a “main character” to themselves. 

Desk Placement

Where should writers place their desks?

“Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” (101)

King, S. (2000). On writing: A memoir of the craft. New York: Scribner.

A buzzing sound in the winter

I would like to share something with you from my recent adventures in navel-gazing. I postulate that my temperament harbors a preoccupation with contrary hypotheses and inconvenient information. The more sacred or personal the object in question, the more fascinating its inquisition becomes. While in the right context such a pattern could render its practitioner useful to the world as a slaughterer of sacred cows, from some angles it seems analogous to a hobby of exploring one’s internal organs via steak knife. 

Sometimes I fear I mostly just harass the livestock (both sacred and profane) without substantially altering the headcount. Agitated cattle don’t do anybody much good.

Nevertheless, the habit does offer incentives. A little over a year ago I read a book by the name of I Told Me So. As stated on the cover, it discusses self-deception and the Christian life. A portion of the dividends delivered by self-critical interests (and readings) come by feeling myself farther along on my pilgrimage to the sagacity of self-knowledge. The other part comes by telling you about it. It feels nice to fancy that I understand my blind spots and recognize my community’s dark back doors. Naturally I planned a blog post reviewing the book to share the joy of exposing hidden things that we might not wish to see—or at least the erotic thrill of almost exposing them. I read an a hypothesis somewhere that the curious human pleasure in rollercoasters, cliff-jumping and spicy foods owes to experiencing stimuli associated with danger while knowing that there is none. Perhaps it’s a cheaply bought sense of victory, processed on the visceral level?

Soon after finishing the book, my focus turned to a new relationship, and the blog languished. Despite the relationship and other life developments worthy of gratitude, for a while I’ve felt a bit stagnant. Even before getting laid off I suspect I was feeling a need to accomplish something beautiful and substantial, or at least get entranced by a New Big Project. And then with the suspension of research at my company, I had my NBP: I needed a job. But unemployment decorated with the occasional failed interview is a deflating existence. Being new doesn’t necessarily help me with buoyancy either. No, dense things sink. A sense of ignorance and dependence doesn't feel very nice.

A New Big Project visited me a few weeks ago. The Principal Investigator of my lab sent out an email to see if anyone would like to help write a scientific review that he’d been invited to submit. The topic statement was infested with jargon; I wasn’t sure I knew what it meant. I volunteered. A few days later as I came into work, I overhead the boss mentioning my name to one of the postdocs. Said postdoc replied that they would talk to Tom soon. The boss gave me a glance on his way out. I had been placed on a team of 3 to write the review, headed by another newbie. 

That fellow, a different postdoc, sent me an article about how to write research articles. He also left on my desk a copy of On Writing by Stephen King and asked if I could either take notes for him or find him a summary online. I responded that I would probably read a few chapters and run out of steam somewhere in the middle.

  

I feel like the book did me good. It stoked my will to write. The advice seemed decidedly more useful than the last writing class I took. I’ll post some basic notes from it soon. Soon I will also be telling you more about that book on self-deception.

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).