“I can’t help but thinking that at this level, it’s not really the priority.  I mean, I’d gladly trade my Lotus developed suspension for some Toyota developed door trim.” – James May, reviewing an inexpensive Malaysian car.

Let’s be honest. There is an element of any corporate worship service that boils down to performance. This isn’t meant to be a criticism per se, but simply to state what I take to be a clear reality that the way things are done in contemporary worship settings (and by this I mean contemporary as in current, not any particular style of worship), execution of the specific elements matters. Anyone who has been to a church where the worship band was awful or the preacher put you to sleep is keenly aware of this. Some level of execution is important. Most people, given a choice and all other things being equal, would choose a service with a high production value over one with generally poor execution.

One disturbing trend in many churches, though, is a preference for execution over thoughtfulness. There are many reasons for this, I think, and many of them have their roots in the more widespread emergence of what Lindbeck would call “experiential expressivism” in recent years. Whatever the cause, most worship pastors, and to a large extent most parishioners prefer well executed services to meaningful ones, or, perhaps to put it differently, the “meaningfulness” of a service is a function primarily of its execution, rather than its content.

This actually leads to some pretty interesting consequences, at least in practice. Consider, for instance, the abundance of new worship songs which sound fun, have a good beat, and can move people to a different emotive state, but whose content is either remarkably thin, or worse borders on theological garbage. Think about whether, at a typical worship service, the songs are chosen because they sound good together (or have a particular emotional movement to them), or because they harmonize theologically. My sense is that if many of us were honest we find ourselves in services where, if there is planning, that planning is primarily centered around emotional content rather than theological content, which suggests that the primary aim of our execution of worship services is to make us feel good, rather than to actually encounter God in some sort of meaningful way.

Which brings me to my opening quote. What, really, is the priority in what we’re doing in corporate worship? It seems to me, unfortunately, as if we’ve traded our foundational beliefs and theology for a more emotional product that makes us feel good, at the expense of some pretty serious theological incoherence and inconsistency. I want to be very clear that this is not a question of worship *style*, at least in the sense that many of us think of it, nor is it a function of the amount of pure effort or thought – I’ve been in thoughtful an coherent services ranging the gamut of multiple dimensions in the traditional / progressive divide. What it is a question of, I think, is the *types* of thought we put into our services:

• Do our words, welcomes, prayers and songs speak with a unified theological voice? Do they suggest a common eschatology, soteriology, etc? If so, what is that voice? If not, what message are we sending?
• Do we spend more time thinking about the flow of the service, especially the emotional flow of the service, than we do the voice of the service? For example, when we consider movement, are we thinking primarily along the dimension of how a particular sequence of elements will people will feel, or about the progression of the message and proclamation of the sequence (e.g. fast song, fast song, slow song; or song about Jesus’s life, song about Jesus’s death, song about Jesus as risen Lord)?
• What metric do we use to evaluate whether a particular service was “effective” or “well executed”? Do we look at performance criteria (i.e. how well everything came off), emotive criteria (i.e. how well everyone felt at the end), or transformative criteria (i.e. did anybody actually change as a result of what we did here)?

Unfortunately it’s not hard to find examples of services which are, by and large, both poorly planned and poorly executed, but it’s probably even easier to find services which are poorly planned and well executed. Perhaps it’s too much to ask for a well planned, well thought-out, well executed service on a consistent basis. But if we have to choose between the three, it seems to me the priority shouldn’t be on execution.

It seems to me that most Pro-Life people I know really aren’t Pro-Life at all. They are, rather, Anti-Sex. That is, the abortion debate is often just a cover to wage war on the sexual revolution and the Dawn of the Pill. What many Pro-Life people are angry about is the casual sexuality of our age, an era of “abortion on demand.” Pro-Life advocacy, then, is often (consciously or unconsciously) really a way to get sexually promiscuous people to face the “consequences” of sexual activity. The focus on life is often cover for Puritanical worries about sexuality in modern America.

Why do I draw this conclusion? Because most Pro-Life people I know are only Pro-Life in this one area, and only in this one area. They are not, generally speaking, consistently Pro-Life. For example, most Pro-Life people are…

…not Pro-Life when it comes to gun control.

…not Pro-Life when it comes to preemptive war.

…not Pro-Life when it comes to capital punishment.

…not Pro-Life when it comes to global malnourishment.

…not Pro-Life when it comes to universal health care.

…not Pro-Life when it comes to entitlement programs for the women and children of the working poor (to remove the economic incentives for abortion).

…not Pro-Life in promoting condom usage to prevent teenage pregnancy or AIDS in developing nations.

In short, the only thing many conservatives are Pro-Life about is, well, abortion. Which, incidentally, is the only thing on the list that’s about regulating sexual behavior.

Which kind of makes you wonder…

Springsteen’s words have been on my mind in the past few days with the current hot button issue in the church I currently worship at, at least for the next few months. The issue itself isn’t really my concern – frankly I could completely care less, and I suspect most of the people in my general area probably agree. I’ve been well beyond where the progressive group is wanting to go, and I think they’re going to be highly disappointed when they get there and realize it’s no different from where they are now, but for the moment let’s set that aside. The larger issue here, in my view, is the one raised by Bruce: What if what you do to “survive” kills the things you love?

The core motivation for the push, in my view, is for the “next generation” – our kids, if you will. I think this is, on the surface, wholly commendable. Certainly when you talk about a tradition, one of the questions that isn’t asked enough is how we can change and adapt the tradition to make it relevant to the next generation – how we as the current generation can excite and enable the generation below us to continue practicing that which we have found to be true and important, even if the specifics of that practice looks slightly different than the ones we embraced. I think in this particular case there is sincerity in the motive of those who would move things forward – they are genuinely fearful of the state of worship that will be handed to their children, and I think with good reason.  Personally I would have a whole different list of concerns when it comes to worship if I were making the list, but I can certainly understand their dissatisfaction and desire to pass to their children something better than what they experience themselves.

But here’s the issue: what if what you endure to bring change ends up being more destructive than the status quo – in other words, again, if what you do to survive ends up killing the things you love. Put in the context of this specific discussion, if the transition becomes a fight, and the fight becomes nasty (which isn’t, you know, entirely out of the question when you’re dealing with things that have marked traditional social boundaries for 150 years), do your kids inherit a legacy of different worship, or do they inherit a legacy of their friend’s parents – people who called themselves Christians – saying really mean-spirited, hurtful things about their parents? In college ministry we deal often with kids who’ve come from churches which have endured painful splits, and the fallout from the deeply personal attacks that result can be dramatic, having powerful and destructive consequences for the children of those involved in the actual arguments years after the fact. If what you do to pass your children a legacy you think they’ll appreciate (which, in fact, they might not) results in driving them away from the tradition of Christianity altogether – fear is a dangerous thing.

My personal opinion is that given the current climate, it is going to be difficult for either side to come away with a victory worth having. Neither group stands to gain enough to offset the incredible level of damage that might result should either side start taking things personally. I think there may be solutions which are acceptable to both sides, but crafting something that diffuses the situation – let alone making everyone come away feeling good about it – is going to take divine guidance to say the least.

]]> http://blog.wisch.org/random-thoughts/if-what-you-do-to-survive/feed/ 0 http://blog.wisch.org/random-thoughts/on-how-we-see-god-working/ http://blog.wisch.org/random-thoughts/on-how-we-see-god-working/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:17:21 +0000 Jeff http://blog.wisch.org/?p=1494 A couple of days ago a friend posted a status update on Facebook about his personal experience of searching for God working on that particular day. His final sentence ended as follows: “Even if we do not see God working we need to have faith that he is still working in us Even if we do not see God working we need to have faith that he is still working in us.”  That status update raised a few personal questions for me regarding how we perceive God to be working in the world, and some deeper issues associated with that.

The core of the issue, really, comes down to this question: “When we look for evidence of God ‘working’ in the world, what criteria do we use to judge whether God is actually working in the world?” While there may be some objective truth about whether God is working in the world around us, the way we interpret events around us as either being part of God’s plan or not seems to be much more subjective and open to personal interpretation.  Our tendency, I suspect, is to judge what God is doing in the world based on our perception about the relative success of particular things we think God should be doing in the world – in other words our perception of how God is working in the world is intimately colored by our own values and agenda, and in a very subtle way, we’ve changed the question from, “How is God working in the world?” to, “How is God working in the world around me to increase my wealth/happiness/satisfaction?”

It may seem like a narrow distinction, but there is a huge gulf between believing that God is working toward my happiness, wealth, and satisfaction and simply believing that God is working. Even though most people say they don’t believe in a prosperity Gospel, most of us have an implicit assumption in our theological foundation that God should reward those who are good and punish those who are evil. As someone who is good, then, I should be able to see evidence of God working around me to make my life better – I should get the new job, or the raise at work, and my kids should never act up, always get good grades in school, and be the star of their respective soccer teams. We wouldn’t be so naive as to publicly say we believe this, of course, but let’s examine the core question again: what criteria do we use to determine whether God is working in the world? Do we really believe that God is working (at the time) when our 401k takes a 40% hit, or we suddenly have termites eating up our house? Insurance companies and lawyers seem to find God working in tragedy (always nice to see they aren’t liable for “acts of God”), but we seldom take that view ourselves when the ball comes up double zero. No, if God is working, he must be working *for* me.

The danger then, as I see it, is this: if God is in the business of looking out for my personal interests (as I define them), then everything is fine, so long as things are going the way I want them to. But when your father dies of cancer, or you lose a child to a miscarriage, or your husband leaves you after three months of marriage, it becomes rather difficult to write those events into the narrative “God is working for good” if by “God is working for good” we really mean “God is working to improve the personal satisfaction, happiness, and wealth of all those who are called according to his purpose.”

If God is ultimately, primarily interested in improving the lives of those who are faithful to Him, then the conclusion one is forced to draw in the above conclusions is that a) God isn’t doing a very good job of “working for the good” or b) the people in the above situations more or less deserve what they got. It’s also possible to conclude that c) the situations above really aren’t that bad, and that the people in them stood to suffer far more unless these situations happened, but I think this argument cheapens the very real pain and suffering people go through in times of crisis. If we accept conclusion a), then God is impotent or tyrannical, and if we accept conclusion b) we move quickly to a place of pride and arrogance or guilt and shame, depending on which side of the crisis we’re on.

One of the major underlying issues in this process is our common practice of using analogies that point from man to God, as opposed to the other way around.  In the ensuing discussion, my friend compared how his father treated him (not letting him steal candy from a store) to how God treats and sometimes disciplines us.  Both my friend’s analogy and our tendency to apply our personal thought process to God fall under this category of analogy. The problem is that the analogy between God and man turns out to be rather tenuous.

Let’s consider the example of comparing God the Father to an earthly father. When we invoke this analogy in the incorrect direction, we are saying that we can infer how God the Father treats us by observing how earthly father’s treat their children.  Thus just as earthly fathers may know much better than their young children which actions are beneficial and which ones are not, God the Father knows better than us and influences things around us so that we will make better choices.  The problem with applying this logic is that we are in some sense creating God in our image, rather than the other way around.  Furthermore, every analogy breaks down at some point – so exactly how far do we carry this particular one? Can we also infer that God the Father abandons his children, as earthly fathers often do? Does he disappoint them with no good reason, as earthly fathers often do? What of fathers who treat their children with indifference or neglect? Are these qualities we can ascribe to God as well? Just how strong is this analogy?

Obviously I think there is something to the analogy – we do not call the first person of the Trinity “God the Father” for no reason, and the Bible itself clearly speaks in these terms (see also Matthew 7).  But I believe the analogy should generally run from God to man, rather than the other way around.  In other words, we should infer how to treat our children based on how God treats us, rather than inferring how God treats us (especially on a topic as diverse and intricate as theodicy) based on how we treat our children.  When we start to run the analogy backward, there are some pretty serious issues that come up.

These issues seem small, but they manifest themselves in devious ways when we make inferences about how God thinks/acts based on how we think/act.  It shows up when we superimpose our will on God’s will, when we take our interests and judge God’s actions on how well he promotes them, while ignoring or overlooking the possibility that God might be interested in, or doing, something else in the world (think Isaiah 55).  It happens when we write our stories in such a way that God is on “our side” to the exclusion of other people.  Do we really think that God chooses sides?

The functional upshot of all of this is that we don’t always know what God is doing, and we have to accept the idea that he isn’t always doing what we think he should be.  As God promises to usher in “a new heaven and a new earth”, we need to be aware of the fact that God’s work might mean we lose the privileged position we occupy in the current world. Unfortunately, we often find it easy to write our view of God’s agenda as if it is pretty much identical to our own, limited, personal agenda. When we do this, we begin to measure God’s faithfulness in terms of whether or not he is serving our own interests, rather than by looking at events in the world and engaging in the process of discerning what God is doing, and how we can participate in that.

The first view prays for God to “bless us”, while the second view asks for God to reveal to us where is working, believing that God’s work is blessed already.

So in a practical sense, we return to the question, “What criteria do I use to judge whether God is working?” If my standard amounts to me getting a raise at work, the kids doing great in school, my 401k not losing value, attendance at my church generally trending upward, and Republican candidates winning political races, I would suggest that I’m thinking in terms of the first view rather than the second, and that I’m making “God’s agenda” into my agenda, rather than the other way around.

The problems involved in thinking about evangelism as a practice, therefore, are not only strategic but ultimately theological. The argument of this book is that the prevailing model of practical reasoning employed to a great extent by contemporary evangelism is inadequate to the Christian faith, ecclesiologically bankrupt, morally vacuous, and tyrannized by a means-end causality that is eschatologically hopeless insofar as it externalizes the means from the end. The way this usually works is that once the aim of evangelism is asserted in terms of converting, initiating, recruiting, or persuading, strategies are developed and implemented, typically on the basis of their strictly utilitarian value in reaching that end.  Both the “end” and the “means” then tyrannize the church as it is forced to forget itself and the One whom it follows in the name of both the end and the means. In the process, the church’s fundamental calling to bear faithful witness is edged out in favor of what “works.” Moreover, we who have been made witnesses by the Holy Spirit fail to be guided in our practice by Spirit-formed virtues such as love, hope, faith, presence, patience, humility and courage, for “witness” has now been hijacked by an evangelism that turns it into a tool employed as a means to something else – namely the converting or initiating of other persons. Evangelism finds it all too easy to jump ahead to some imagined result and then to adjust the meaning of witness in accordance with what will “work” to achieve that result.  It forgets that Christian witnesses engage in the practice of evangelism for no other reason than that they have been made witnesses.

Before starting, I think it’s only fair to say that I’m a stakeholder in this debate on multiple levels. I’m a Christian, but more than that I’ve been actively involved in university ministry for over 10 years. In that time I’ve dealt with close to 1,500 students as a speaker, class teacher, and counselor. I’m as concerned about the exodus of teens as much as anyone else, but unlike the New Apologists, I have a very different perspective on why it is occurring, and consequently what the solution should be. I think it’s also important to say that I recognize that the men who are crisscrossing the country on speaking tours do genuinely believe they are doing good, that their work is a “ministry”, and that ultimately they are doing God’s work, saving people from the evils of liberalism. Unfortunately, my own experience suggests that Christian Apologetics – specifically Christian Apologetics as it is currently practiced – misses the mark in several important areas, and indeed causes more harm than good.

The New Christian Apologists read the absence of the 18-35 demographic in our churches to be a symptom of good, biblically based, young Christians from strong families meeting activist, staunchly atheist, liberal professors in their university classrooms, who pervert the truth of God and lie to our children.  The problem, then, is one of information – if we can supply our children (and specifically those in college and those about to be in college) with “good” information about how they can counter the “bad” information they are receiving or are about to receive, then we can really make a difference in the problem of our teens leaving the church in droves. There are a wide variety of takes on what this information should look like, and my purpose here is not to debate any of them head on. I agree, in general, that we could and should do a much better job of inviting our youth into meaningful discussions about faith, and that we should try to get them to engage in the philosophical dialog with the world that Christianity has been involved in since the time of Paul. Where I disagree, however, is in the fundamental premise that this lack of information is the real cause of students rejecting Christianity. There are a lot of kids who leave the church, to be sure, but there is something else – something much more major – going on here, I suggest.

I’ve been doing this for a while, and the students I know personally who’ve walked away from churches numbers probably in the tens-of-dozens.  In that total number of cases, I can think of only a handful – four, perhaps – who cited traditional apologetic questions (“I don’t really believe there is a God / How can there be evil in the world if God is all good and all powerful, etc”) as even a contributing factor in their decision to walk away.  Furthermore those who have talked about apologetic questions as reasons of their rejection of the prototypical Evangelical Christian lifestyle tend to be very well read on the subject – people who’ve done a fairly extensive amount of searching on their own in both Christian and non-Christian apologetic literature, and ultimately find more doubt than faith. This in itself is a powerful topic, and one that I might tackle later, but is somewhat tangential for the purposes of the immediate discussion. I submit that the evidence, at least gathered from an informal survey of people who actually *are* leaving the church, suggests that apologetic questions (and by extension militantly godless, atheist professors) are not really the major reason the college students I’ve talked to are rejecting faith.

Fundamentally I think there are a number of reasons why those in the New Apologetics movement make this mistake, but I’ll take a quick shot at three of them.  First, when you hold a really good hammer, it’s easy to see every problem as a nail. A dozen years ago, decent apologetic literature was genuinely difficult to find, and in general I applaud the apologetic community for a much needed refresh of presentation in the past decade. Today, however, there exists a wealth of apologetic literature, classes, books, cd’s, tapes, videos, and radio shows, all of which have a vested commercial interest in trying to cast apologetics as the solution to as many problems as possible.  As a result, the New Apologetics movement seems to be, as we like to say in the engineering trade, a “solution in search of a problem”, and when you are a solution in search of a problem, almost any problem will do. I feel like in some ways I’m being a little unfair, so let me pause and say that Apologetics does actually do a lot to help some very real problems, and I think that in some sort of academic sense it’s important that it continues. The issue, I think, is when the apologetic movement tries to create problems that don’t really exist, especially when doing so seems to serve its own economic interest.

Second, the majority of people who actually participate in driving the movement are travelling speakers and authors, as opposed to ministers. It’s not terribly difficult to imagine why this is, given that ministers generally have more than enough on their plates without spending time writing apologetic literature. Where this gets us into trouble, I suggest, is that the people who write the literature and give the speeches and drive the movement in general have become disconnected from a day-to-day ministry context in a single place. I take it to be a simple fact of life is that ministry looks very different day in, day out on the ground than it does at 30,000 feet flying over Wichita, KS on the way to your next speaking engagement. This is not to say that speaking engagements can’t be an important part of ministries in a local context, but it is to say that you can never truly understand what the particular problems in a particular ministry in a particular place (say, Wichita) are unless you actually spend time there, and a good bit of time at that. In the same way, to actually understand the needs and problems of campus and youth pastors, in a very real sense you have to be one, rather than just interacting with them.  This disconnect shows up most strongly in that apologists spend most of their time talking *to* students and pastors instead of listening to and dialoging with them.  I’m certain that every apologist worth his or her salt can of course come up with students who they’ve touched, and people who they “listen to” to help change and guide their ministry – and I’m not at all suggesting these people don’t exist.  What I am suggesting is that the majority of contact those on the professional speaking circuit have listening to actual students and ministers is self-selecting at best, and causes them to seriously overstate the prevalence of students rejecting faith due to a lack of apologetic information. This isn’t a criticism of apologetics, per-se, as much as it is the crusader type of Christian ministry that has been prevalent ever since the Great Awakening. Revivals and crusades may draw really large crowds and look really good on paper, but they often leave a lot of wreckage in their wake that pastors on the ground have to deal with months and years after they’re gone. Regardless of their message, whether these revivals and crusades on balance are a greater source of harm or good is certainly up for debate in many circles, and with good reason.

Finally, the new apologetic movement has invested itself heavily in support of a particular, and in my mind problematic soteriology – namely that salvation hinges primarily on the intellectual acceptance of a few key propositions.  In other words, salvation itself is primarily a problem of not having good information, and as a result good apologetics equates to good evangelism, and vice versa. There are a lot of things we could say about this, but I think we’ll save them for a later post. Suffice it to say that this brand of soteriology causes a lot of practical problems when you try to apply it, which lead to some of the disconnects we’ll talk about later on.

So all of that being said, if the apologists really have missed the boat and there really is something else going on here, what is it?  After all, it’s not just enough to say that kids aren’t leaving for apologetic reasons unless you can provide a decent alternative that explains why they’re headed for the door in ever increasing numbers.

For my money, the single factor that I can point to in about 75% of cases when students reject faith is the cognitive dissonance they’ve felt for 18 or more years between the outward message they hear preached at church and the actions of church members, most importantly their parents and youth pastors.  From the time kids are young, they’re told that God should be the most important thing in their lives, but the see their parents place money, work, kids, family, church – almost everything above God. In Bible class they are taught about the fruits of the Spirit, and that a life where Jesus is Lord will have certain characteristics, but they observe the lives of “Christians” around them and note that instead of peace there is worry, instead of patience there is anger, instead of kindness there is bitterness, instead of gentleness there is callousness, and the list goes on.  By the time they are entering college and having to make their own decisions about what they want to do with their lives, they’ve been given so many conflicting messages about what it is supposed to mean to be a Christian and what it seems to mean in actual practice that they’re done with the whole thing, and ready to try something – anything else. The problem, in other words, is not bad apologetics, but bad praxis. It’s easy to find a good book on Christian apologetics, but it’s much harder to find a person in churches today who lives a just, merciful, humble, Christ-centered life – and at the end of the day the problem most college students have with Christianity is the lack of the second, rather than the lack of the first.

I’ve raised a lot of issues in this post that probably merit further discussion, and it’s already extremely long as is, but let me close for now with a final critique. The apologetic movement does try to draw people in and expose them to a brand of Christianity that is, at least on the surface, less anti-intellectual than Evangelical Christianity writ large. However, in practice it often suggests a very simplistic, almost black-and-white approach to answering what are, almost always, very nuanced questions. It doesn’t really seem honest, either in an intellectual or theological context, to provide half-page or 15 minute answers to something as serious and layered as the problem of evil in the world. Indeed, the presentation of such answers seems to represent a clear and present danger to honest discussion. As a result, I think it is absolutely critical to distinguish here between the idea of apologetics practiced well, and the actuality of apologetics practiced poorly – a distinction we will probably get into in subsequent posts.

Every time we visit them, I am challenged by the collision of reform and tradition, new and old. Several times on our most recent visit, Katie’s grandmother would mention, “We’re stuck in our deep ruts and we just keep going along!”, to which Katie’s grandfather would remind her, “Comfortable ruts.  Comfortable ruts.” For many things in their mind, the way things have always been is they way they should continue to be, and for many things that have changed, the best thing that could happen would be for things to go back to the way they were. I am exaggerating things a bit here to be sure (Katie’s grandmother knows more about Photoshop than my father, for instance), but I don’t think it’s terribly unfair to say that they are guardians of orthodoxy – trying as best they can to preserve both in memory and in practice “the way things were”, even though that struggle is becoming more and more difficult as the world sweeps around them.  Those of you who know me would probably agree that I’m someone who, at least for much of my life, has been primarily  disdainful of or subversive to traditions – particularly traditions which seem to serve little or no purpose.

I believe this conflict is particularly relevant as broader society continues to grapple with exactly what it means to be “post-modern”, and how (or if) we will return to some center of meaning. Obviously it has implications beyond the immediate conflict of culture to the constant clash between old and new, established and emerging. But in the end, the question comes down to this: how do we respond to change and tradition?

One option is to embrace and defend traditions at all costs. The problem with this view is that it’s easy to become like the village of Anatevka. As Tevye states:

Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything… how to eat, how to sleep, even, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl… This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I’ll tell you – I don’t know. But it’s a tradition… Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do.

While traditions may help us keep our balance – like a fiddler on the roof – we run the risk of becoming so disconnected from our traditions that we have no idea why we practice them or where they come from. While some traditions may serve a useful purpose, it is essential that we possess at least some measure of understanding of the traditions origins and meaning. As we become more disconnected from traditions, we lose the ability to determine whether a particular tradition makes sense in a modern context. There’s an old story about a girl whose mother was teaching her to cook a ham.  The first step was to cut three inches off the end of the ham. When asked why, her mother responded that it was how she learned it from her mother. When the girl asked her grandmother, she replied, “I cut the ham off because the pan was too short.” I think all of us can think of things that we do “because it’s the way it’s always been done” that have outlived their usefulness. The unquestioned defense of tradition does not distinguish between traditions that are good and bad – it sees all traditions as important, valuable, and necessary to continue.

The other extreme tries to jettison all traditions. It starts with the assumption that all tradition is bad, and wants to throw the whole thing out and start over. That might be nice, assuming you could actually do it, but in reality we can never fully separate ourselves from the traditions we grew up with. Even if we try to throw away all the assumptions and “start fresh”, our perspective is still colored by our former practices. Furthermore, “old” traditions are usually jettisoned only to be replaced by “new” traditions that look suspiciously similar to the old ones, with a few minor changes. When we attempt to divorce ourselves from our traditions and history, the end result looks suspiciously like those who blindly defend tradition – we are disconnected from our traditions even though we still practice them.

My belief is that one of the primary tasks of each generation is to reevaluate and reinterpret traditions in a new context – to see which traditions serve a valuable purpose, and which traditions simply don’t make sense anymore. Above all, we must remain connected to the traditions we practice, instead of blindly continuing a practice we don’t understand. In many ways, this makes the job of the older generation even more difficult, as they are responsible for not only passing on traditions, but allowing things that were of vital importance to them to fade away. Furthermore, the communication of traditions cannot simply be reduced to “That’s the way we’ve always done it”, but requires patience and understanding. Above all, however, it requires open and honest communication between young and old, and a large amount of patience on both sides.

My wife’s grandparents have seen the world change around them, and while I think they mourn the passing of some things, I think they also realize that for the most part progress has been a good thing. There are new practices and new technologies they choose not to embrace, but they also understand that they cannot stop change, and are in many ways determined to be teachers of the things that were. In many ways it makes me wonder: What things will we value and strive to pass on? What novel innovations will become our cherished traditions? What will we cling to while the world changes around us? Can we preserve any of what we’ve learned from our parents and grandparents, or will their stories and experiences die with us? Someday we too will live in a world that looks very different from the one we see now. How will we change, and how will we share our stories with those who come after?

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that this was the 4th time I’ve seen U2 in concert, but the first time I’ve seen them in a stadium, as opposed to an arena. While having a concert in a venue as large as Reliant is great in a lot of ways, it does really tone down the energy level quite a bit. I will never forget the moment they walked on stage the first time I saw them in Austin, as the sound of the crowd drowned out the music. While the stadium was larger with an incredible amount of people, it just didn’t have the same energy as previous shows.

As usual, the technical side of the show was amazing.  The set was over the top, and the video work was some of the best I’ve ever seen. I don’t know who gets to engineer those sets and design them, but if anyone out there happens to read this, I’d be happy to send a resume.  While the technical side of things is cool, the reason you go see a band like U2 isn’t their hardware, but the music. To me, there were really three moments in the concert that stood out in particular, and I won’t be taking them in chronological order.

One of the great things about U2 in general, in my opinion, is their ability to take their songs and reinterpret them in new, but honest contexts. One of the best examples of that, I think, was their performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, a song written over 25 years ago about an incident where the British Army shot and killed 13 civil rights protesters in 1972. As the band played during this tour, the video screens flashed images primarily of the election troubles in Iran, particularly the scenes of violence, where the chilling refrain, “How long, how long must we sing this song?”, seemed to echo more of despair than U2′s generally upbeat and hopeful take on the future being “a better place“.

Mark Love’s comments on the first encore are really better than anything I could say, but none the less the moment was powerful. As a brief recount, the first encore began with a video of Desmond Tutu, then led into “One”, which has been a staple of U2 encores for as long as I’ve seen them. At the end, however, Bono moved smoothly into a single verse of “Amazing Grace”, which was marvelous on many levels. First, it’s perhaps a bit surprising to hear such a classic gospel song at a secular rock concert, but for me it wasn’t just the song – it was the feeling and honesty of Bono’s voice, particularly as he (and most of the crowd) sang the first two lines: “Amazing grace how sweet the sound/ that saved a wretch like me!” To me, it dovetailed perfectly with Bono’s added emphasis during “City of Blinding Lights”: “Blessings not just for the ones who kneel – luckily.” I think there is a wonderful and implicit recognition in the music of U2 that “there but for the grace of God go I”, and that God’s blessings are not the possession of the church, but rather of God, and his to do with as he sees fit.

For me, though, the high point of the concert was without doubt the juxtaposition of two songs in particular. At times it’s been hard for me to pick my “favorite” U2 song, but for quite a while now it’s been “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” There are a variety of reasons, but at the core I think the song perfectly mirrors the current religious discontent of many in my generation – that we’ve heard a message of God that somehow seems to be lacking, and even though there is this massive carrot being held out, there’s still something missing – something unfinished. As Love would say, it is a “properly eschatological” song. Crucially, though, and I am certain intentionally, as the song faded away, a new voice entered in -

When the night has come
and the land is dark
and the moon is the only light we see -
I won’t cry, I won’t cry,
no I won’t shed a tear,
just as long as you stand,
stand by me.

As I mentioned before, in many ways it seemed to me this was a more reflective, less hopeful concert than previous times I’ve seen them. Even though the Vertigo tour’s closing “40″ shares a common refrain with “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, the tone of the songs could not be more different – while “40″ boldly declares the words of Psalm 40 (“I waited patiently for the Lord / He inclined and heard my cry”), “Sunday Bloody Sunday” takes a much more cynical view of progress: “And the battle’s yet begun / this many lost but tell me who has won?” In the middle of this time of reflection, however, was the bold and beautiful pronouncement of belief following one the two most profoundly (and self-described) gospel songs in their canon – that though we walk in the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil.

With most Christian books I’ve read in recent memory, I generally read the first few pages, say, “Oh, I know what this is going to be about”, and then spend the next 300-500 pages discovering the book was, indeed, about exactly what I suspected on page 4.  With this particular read, however, I’m close to 50 pages in and I have absolutely no idea where he’s going to end up, which is an extremely exciting and refreshing feeling.

Stone begins his book with reference to the idea of Christianity in general, and evangelism in particular, as practice.  In doing so, he begins with Alasdair MacIntyre’s (virtue ethics) definition of a practice, which is probably easiest to explain using James McClendon’s analogy of a game.

One of MacIntyre’s core principles of a practice is that if a “means is internal to a given end”, then “the end[s] cannot be characterized independently from a classification of the means”. In other words, it is impossible to separate a practice from the “internal goods” of that practice. What are internal goods? It’s perhaps easiest to start by talking about what they are not.  For starters, internal goods are not merely skills or rules. Consider baseball, for instance.  There are a variety of skills that might be required to play baseball – running, throwing, and catching, for instance.  However, none of these *are* baseball. The practice of baseball is something other than running, throwing, or catching, though all of those skills are required in order to participate in the practice. Whatever skills are required for a particular practice, however, the practice cannot be reduced to any of them, and each skill is judged by how well it serves the practice, not the other way around.

Additionally, Stone  points out that there may be “external goods” which result from a practice – in the case of baseball, money and fame – but that these external goods do not define the practice, and in fact can generally be achieved by other means which have nothing to do with the practice in question (say, being a personal injury lawyer).  Stone also notes that often times our desire for these external goods can distort the practice, and cause us to miss the point of what the practice is ”really” about, if they become our goal.

A practice, then, is about more than the individual skills required for it, and more than the external goods produced by it.  It is also about joining a tradition that self-justifies the practice, and requires participation to fully understand.  More on this in a later post, but for now suffice it to say that a practice is about more than having a certain skillset, or a certain set of rules, or a certain set of results, and even when it is done alone is an inherently social activity that requires a communal agreement on what the practice entails (think about the game of Solitare, for instance).

Let’s stop, then, and consider in our own particular context how these ideas might relate not just to the “practice” of Evangelism, but Christianity as a whole.

There are certainly a number of “skills” (for want of a better word) involved in the practice of Christianity. Prayer, meditation, study, service – each of these forms an important part of the Christian experience, but as a practice, Christianity cannot be reduced to any of them.  Additionally, it’s often tempting for us to think of these skills as the measure of the “Christian-ness” of a person, or of ourselves.  If we’re not careful, our pursuit of quiet time, study, or even service can actually subvert us from the ethos of what it means to live Christianity as a practice. Finally, we find it easy to mistake the external goods of the practice (morality especially) for internal goods.  While these external goods may result from the practice of Christianity, they are not unique to it (i.e. there are moral non-participants in the practice), and when these external goods become our ultimate aim, distract us from the essence of Christianity as practice.

What does it mean to practice Christianity?  What are the “internal goods”? What are the things so central to the practice that they cannot be characterized apart from it?

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls
After some routine tests
No one’s laughing at God
when it’s gotten real late
And their kid’s not back from that party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane
Starts to uncontrollably shake
No one’s laughing at God
When they see the one they love hand in hand
with someone else and they hope that they’re mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door
And they say “We’ve got some bad new, sir,”

No one’s laughing at God
When there’s a famine, fire or flood

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
when they’ve lost all they got
And they don’t know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize
that the last sight they’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re saying their goodbyes

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
When the crazies say he hates us
and they get so red in the head
You think that they’re about to choke
God can be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious
Ha ha, ha ha

No one’s laughing at God.
We’re all “laughing with God”.

Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
Nascetur pro te, Israel!

I think the only way to begin the discussion is with two simple points:

1. The first point, I think, is summed up extraordinarily well by Daniel Gilbert in his book Stumbling on Happiness:
   

   [S]cience is one of those words that means too many things to too many people and is thus often at risk of meaning nothing at all. My father is an eminent biologist who, after pondering the matter for some decades, recently revealed to me that psychology can’t really be a science because science requires the use of electricity. Apparently shocks to your ankles don’t count. My own definition of science is a bit more eclectic, but one thing about which I, my dad, and most other scientists can agree is that if a thing cannot be measured, then it cannot be studied scientifically. It can be studied, and one might even argue that the study of such unquantifiables is more worthwhile than all the sciences laid end to end. But it is not science because science is about measurement, and if a thing cannot be measured – cannot be compared with a clock or a ruler or something other than itself – it is not a potential object of scientific inquiry.

2. In addition to Gilbert’s point, I would also add that science must be repeatable. In 1989, two scientists from the University of Utah reported achieving nuclear fusion at room temperatures. The announcement was met with a great deal of excitement and energy. There was only one catch. Nobody else could get it to work. In order for something to be proven scientifically, it cannot be a one-off event. Science searches for answers to questions that are both empirical and repeatable. If you can’t repeat what happened, it isn’t science.

Taken together, these two prospects do not bode well for connecting God or creation with true science – and not for lack of effort to discover or suppress “evidence” on either side.

The prophet Isaiah writes:

To whom, then, will you compare God?
What image will you compare him to?

The very idea that – if God is all-powerful and “wholly other” like we claim he is – we could somehow observe, measure, or place him in some sort of “test tube” and experiment with him is quite frankly absurd. The problem is not that we haven’t gotten the right tools or haven’t looked in the right places – it’s that the very philosophy of doing so is bankrupt. As Gilbert argues, saying that we shouldn’t look at God scientifically isn’t saying that we shouldn’t study him, or that study of God in some sense isn’t valuable – rather it’s saying we should study “God” in a way that makes sense, and that way is not with lab coats, telescopes and microscopes.

The second point drops the underpinning from creation arguments (on both sides, incidentally) in a similar way because, by definition, they’re not repeatable. We know about star formation because we can observe millions of stars in various stages of their lives. We know about galaxies and black holes and supernovae because we can witness them across the universe. But we can’t roll back the clock and observe the creation of the universe, regardless of which side of the fence we’re on. We can’t see the big bang or ask God to do it over again – this is the one universe we have, and witnessing the creation of a second one isn’t really something that’s going to happen any time soon. As a result, we’ll be left with lots of questions, searching for answers, many of which we’ll never have ironclad answers to.

Finally, with regard to many creationist (including intelligent design) arguments, it is essential, in light of the two bullet points at the top, to consider the claim that is being made, and whether that claim makes any sense in the realm of science. The claim made by any creationist argument is as follows: “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” Regardless of your belief on the validity of that statement, I hope you can see why it is not a scientific statement in any way. I firmly believe that the study of the origin of the universe is a tremendously interesting and important metaphysical question, but not one at all suited for scientific inquiry.

Ultimately, belief in God, as Scripture points out constantly, is about faith, not knowledge. For centuries, philosophers have struggled with philosophically proving and disproving the existence of a higher power, and each attempt ends with the conclusion that the question is “non-falsifiable” – it cannot be proved or disproved by observation or experiment. For generations, Christians glorified what they called “the Mysteries of Christ” – comfortable with a certain amount of “unknown”. While we continue to search for knowledge, my hope is we can become more comfortable with the Mysteries of Christ, and ultimately not feel the need to Q.E.D. prove something beyond our comprehension.

My home base is with the Churches of Christ because that is where God has placed me for now. If I ever sense that God is leading me to a different subdivision on the Christian map, I will not hesitate to move. The truth is that I am at home wherever believers worship God, proclaim Jesus Christ, teach the Bible, live in the Spirit and love each other. The spiritual address is irrelevant.

I also remain in this nondenominational movement of my youth because I have complete freedom of understanding and conscience. I have a congenial home congregation, the Bering Drive Church of Christ in Houston, Texas, in which I have served as a teacher and an elder since 1982. A new generation of Churches of Christ is coming on the scene: one focused on Jesus Christ rather than on a church system, that proclaims justification by grace through faith rather than salvation through human effort or doctrinal conformity, and that enjoys fellowship with other believers based on commitment to Jesus rather than on sectarian allegiance or denominational membership.

I also reside among the Churches of Christ because I appreciate their founding ideals. The 19th-century Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement from which it sprang began with the goal of uniting Christians under the leadership of King Jesus without regard to human traditions or creeds. Its founders’ vision was to be “Christians only, but not the only Christians.” It adopted the more ancient slogan, “In matters of faith, unity; in matters of opinion, liberty; in all things, charity.” It professed to “speak where the Bible speaks and to be silent where the Bible is silent.” It offered freedom of conscience to individuals and autonomy to congregations. I find these ideals to be biblical in origin, refreshing in theory and hospitable for daily living on the ground.

Not everyone in Churches of Christ enjoys the freedom of which I speak, or encouragement in their local fellowship, or healthy gospel preaching from the pulpit. I encourage them to work for such results as God gives opportunity. If the doors are slammed shut in their face, these individuals must sometimes leave the “home-folks,” as the Apostle Paul was required to do, and go where God is leading. When that happens, I confidently commend them to his tender care. I deeply regret that some among these churches have been brainwashed to believe that they have no other spiritual option. Those who are responsible for such nonsense will one day answer to God.

“It is not necessary,” Thomas Campbell wrote, “that persons have a particular knowledge or distinct apprehension of all divinely revealed truths in order to entitle them to a place in the Church; neither should they, for this purpose, be required to make a profession more extensive than their knowledge: but that, on the contrary, their having a due measure of Scriptural self-knowledge respecting their lost and perishing condition by nature and practice; and of the way of salvation thro’ [sic] Jesus Christ accompanied with a profession of their faith in, and obedience to him, in all things according to his word, is all that is absolutely necessary to qualify them for admission into his Church.” In other words, we don’t all have to agree about every issue of doctrine before we can all be one in Christ. What really matters is that we understand our helplessness without God, acknowledge our dependence on Him for salvation, and declare our obedience to Him as Lord of our lives.

The men who founded our fellowship were courageous activists who leave to us not only words, but their priceless example. As ministers of established churches with long and noble histories, they questioned the practice and teachings of their institutions, seeking to make the Gospel more relevant and accessible to their communities. It is often times all too easy for us to take the ideas put forth by our founders and set them up in a system of creeds and dogmas of our own making while ignoring the true spirit and purpose of their actions. We, like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, insist that “because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do,” though, when asked how and why these traditions were started, he can only reply “I don’t know.” In the same way, we enshrine the teachings of our fathers as unimpeachable pillars of a new institution, an institution they likely would have fought just as strongly against.

Our fellowship was born of innovative men in uncertain times questioning the doctrines and dogmas of their day, and asking why they could not set these traditions aside to be, in their words, “Christians only”. Now we who inherit their legacy face our own uncertain times and difficult questions – questions and challenges which they could neither foresee nor imagine. We do not honor our fathers with blind allegiance to their creeds, but by boldly continuing their spirit of innovation, crafting new approaches to changing questions of faith while preserving our heritage to whatever extent we can. As we move to the future, we must look to the past and learn its lessons without seeking to return there, knowing we live in a world different from the one we remember.

Over the next few hours, we ferried around and towed two guys, a girl and their Camaro from College Station to 15 miles the other side of Caldwell. We didn’t charge them for gas, and we gave them a bit of money along the way. After I’d given them $25 and said not to worry about it, one of the guys said, “Man… you must make a lot of money…” Well… no… not really…

“Nobody’s ever done anything nice for us before…” he said, talking more to himself than to me.

The reality was that we didn’t do that much. We bailed them out of a situation their own stupidity had gotten them into. We gave them a little time, a little money, and a little attention, and somehow that was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for them.

I wonder what our world would be like if more of us took the time to be nice to people in small ways. It’s hard for me to believe what we did was literally the nicest thing anyone had ever done for them, but I live in a very different world than they do, and sadly I don’t know that our worlds meet that often. I hope they meet more. I hope we all have more opportunities to “be nice” to people… even – especially – when it costs us something.

Today I pledge myself to you in the sacred bond and covenant of marriage.

Each morning I will remember the blessings you bring to my life, giving thanks to God for drawing us together as one.

I will daily strive to be more Christ-like in my thoughts and my actions, learning to embrace and express the perfect love of Jesus in our marriage.

I will listen to and respect your feelings and desires, valuing your thoughts and opinions as we make decisions through life.

When we disagree, I will look first for my own failures and shortcomings.
When I am wrong, I will admit it quickly.
When I am wronged, I will forgive unconditionally.
In both joy and sorrow, I will support and encourage you.

Today I promise these things to you
before God and in the presence of those we love -
a covenant between us for as long as we both shall live.

“A curse on this place!” said thoe voice. “A curse on all those who nevere listened to the words of Christ and who have transformed his message into a stone building. For Christ said: ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and hare heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ Well I’m heavy laden, and they won’t let me come to him. Today I’ve learned that the Church has changed those words to read: ‘Come unto me all ye who follow our rules, and let the heavy laden go hang!”

“I swear that I will never set foot in a church ever again. Once more, I’ve been abandoned by a family, and this time it has nothing to do with financial difficulties or with the immaturity of those who marry too young. A curse upon all those who slam the door in the face of a mother and her child! You’re just like those people who refused to take in the Holy Family, like those who denied Christ when he most needed a friend!”

With that, she turned and left in tears, her baby in her arms.

As I’ve thought about it on various occasions over the past few weeks, there are two things I keep coming back to. First, it’s interesting to me what people will write when their name isn’t attached to something. I was talking with Seth, who told the story of a preacher who received a letter in the mail with only the word “fool” on it. “I’ve had a lot of people send me letters and forget to write their name,” he quipped, “but this is the first time I’ve ever had someone write their name and forget to write the letter.” A policy I’ve inherited from multiple mentors is that anonymous complaints are best sent straight to the circular file. The sad commentary, I think, is that we are willing to write things without our names attached that we would never write if people knew it was us. One of the challenging things about writing on this space for the past two years has been that everyone out there knows it’s me, and has a direct line of fire this direction.

The more important point of the story, at least for me, is that the person who wrote the email, despite their assertion to the contrary, didn’t really want to solve the problem. While I generally don’t respond to anonymous complaints, I did write a brief note back stating that I would be more than happy to apologize and make the situation right, but I had no idea how to do that. As expected, I have yet to receive a response. There are dozens of ways the situation could have been improved, and almost all of them involve coming to me personally. The real issue, though, is not pointing the finger at my anonymous critic, but myself.

How many times am I exactly this way? Often, I am faced with something I don’t like, and my first instinct is to complain about it, even when an easy solution is at hand. It will be late at night, I won’t have any food in the house that can be made quickly, and, talking to a friend, I’ll say that I’m hungry. “Go get something to eat,” comes the response. “That requires that I get up and get my car keys/walk into the kitchen/expend some effort… I don’t want to do that – I just want to complain about it.”

I just want to complain about it. How true. How often are there situations in my life when my first response is to complain before doing anything to fix the problem? I’m reminded of a story in John 5 where Jesus comes to a man who’s been an invalid for years and asks him this simple question: “Do you want to be healed?” Instead of answering the question, the man quickly starts making excuses, causing me to question whether he really wants to be healed or just wants to complain.

I think the main lesson I’ve taken from this episode is that when confronted with a situation I don’t particularly like or am upset about, I want to make a renewed effort to be a part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. I don’t want to stand there while someone offers to fix the problem, and turn them away, preferring simply to complain.

First, I believe we live in a culture (and especially a Christian culture) that is obsessed with answers. Often we aren’t really interested in understanding the nuances and issues behind someone’s objections and questions, we simply want a talking point, ten word answer to the question so that we can spout it off and move on. When we are faced with charges of being racist, it’s easier to fire back with a quick retort than it is to actually examine and acknowledge the shortcomings of our own positions and actions. Jesus, I think, encountered the same attitude in Scripture, with people wanting checklists of what they needed to do. Jesus responds to a litany of questions regarding specifics of how we should act with two commands: love God with all you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. My hope is not that my answers to the question would become everyone’s answers to the question, but that we would all begin to think about how we will answer the question. Only when we encourage a culture of thinking about questions instead of answering them will we make any progress in finding real answers, as opposed to advertising slogans.

Second, as I mentioned in the first response, I don’t think there are simple or singular answers to any of the questions I posed. In particular, one thing I mean by that is that my response to any of those questions would be heavily influenced by the person asking the question. Are they female? a minority? an atheist? Trying to formulate a response without knowing the audience, especially with questions as richly textured as these is difficult at best, dangerous at worst. If we do not address these questions on a personal level with those who ask them, we are missing the entire point of the issues raised in many of the questions to begin with.

Finally, while the objections I raised are, in some sense, more concrete than the underlying point of my original post, I don’t feel they were really what the first post was about. For many of the questions, the first answer is that we are, at least partially, guilty as charged. I don’t believe it’s fair to say that we are *as* guilty as charged, but there is at least some reality to all of the questions asked. However, the greater issue which I hoped to raise with the original post was not whether we were homophobic and racist or not, but how closely or not our actual practice lines up with our stated theology. Any weak paradigm will manifest itself in dysfunctional practice. I believe that in many ways recent cracks in the “religious right” – excessive Christian divorce rates, highly publicized crises involving influential pastors in large evangelical churches, a perceived lack of compassion related to issues like the death penalty, homosexuality and the war, and a wide variety of other issues point not simply to imperfect individuals within a system, but endemic weakness in the system itself. If Christianity is to contend as a viable paradigm going forward, then we must examine our current system, and reform it into a system that “practices what it preaches”.

very good points. what is you [sic] personal plan of action? what can we do to improve? a change of such substantial size is daunting. does it start with us and how we live our christian lives? do we teach by example to others? when asked these questions, what will you say?

I do not believe there is a simple or singular answer to these challenges, but I do think any substantive change begins on an individual level, and then spreads to groups of individuals.

For many of us, this begins as an open and honest evaluation of our own thoughts, feelings and actions:

• I may not be a racist, but am I the inheritor of racist attitudes which surface occasionally, even if only for a moment? Why is it that I feel just a little bit of tension when a large semi-threatening looking minority walks toward me? Rationally I know nothing is going to happen, and I’m able to suppress that thought very quickly, but the reality is that it’s there, at least on some level. How does that affect my reactions to minorities and my views about their place in the community of faith in which I reside?
• How closely do I tie my political agenda to my religious views, and vice versa? Marriage is a good example of where this can become sticky – there are many male/female couples who don’t have any sort of spiritual union at all. Why do we oppose homosexual marriage because marriage is a bond between a man, a woman and God, yet we don’t oppose millions of heterosexual marriages that have nothing to do with God? And after all, if we’re really interested in protecting marriage, shouldn’t we be spending our time, effort and energy outlawing divorce instead? (thought: Is it because divorce, for most Christians, hits a lot closer to home than homosexual marriage?)
• How consistent am I in the ways I apply scripture in forming my theology? Do I find that I have differing standards for passages of scripture depending on whether they confirm or discourage a particular practice which I support or oppose? If I exclude certain practices due to lack of explicit biblical reference, yet allow others because of “necessity” or “expedience”, am I really being honest and fair in my application of criteria to determine what is “necessary” and what isn’t, and is the practice of deeming certain practices (but not others) “necessary” and thus allowing their continued use really fair and consistent at all?
• etc…

This parade of questions is likely to lead us to some very uncomfortable places – often uncomfortable because the questions and answers challenge both the views we have about ourselves and our own “righteousness-of-sorts” and the religious structures in which we’ve heavily invested. Change in either of those areas can be profoundly disconcerting. While I do think there *are* answers for the questions I posed in the previous post, I think one of the largest problems facing Christendom today is the complete ignorance among the “average Christian” that a) such questions exist at all and b) they’re fairly convicting. It often does not help that when people become aware of these and other “non-traditional” questions, our clergy frequently tend to react violently to stamp out any further thought and questioning, and people who continue to ask questions are often shunted sideways, quarantined, and never heard from again.

If our generation demands that theology be lived out in our lives consistently, then it is my sincere opinion that parts of our theology are in dire need of reform. We must take a hard look at what our religious traditions actually say, how we enact and apply what is said in the actual practice of our daily lives, and any disconnects between the two. I think this begins on a personal level in evaluating our own beliefs and ideals, but I also believe our churches will have to wrestle with their own discrepancies in doctrine and praxis and restructure one or the other (or likely both) if they are to survive. As we all collectively wrestle with these ideas, we must keep in mind not only the abstract minutiae, but the practical implementation of our ultimate decisions – can we consistently apply whatever doctrinal and theological standards at which we arrive, and more importantly, what are the broader (and sometimes very messy) implications implied by said application. Only when we have communicated our theology authentically with our behavior will we have a credible voice in secular or spiritual discourse.

This group of people poses questions significantly unlike the objections our religious structures have traditionally dealt with. Questions like:

• How is it that your religious system claims to treat all people with equal respect, yet appears to foster homophobic, misogynistic, racist attitudes in its members? If your only response is, “We’re not homophobic, misogynistic, and racist,” then a quick look at the segregation and roles of members in your church should quickly sober you up to the merit of the complaint.
• How is it that your religious system claims to be “pro-life”, yet is complicit in the non-survival of millions of born children across the world from malnutrition and disease? Why is it that far more children die of easily preventable diseases and lack of food than abortions every year? Why not take some of the money that goes to funding anti-abortion organizations which seem to make little impact and instead spend it on criminally underfunded organizations making a substantive impact on poverty and hunger?
• How is it that your religious system claims to be a path of peace and justice, yet its members seem to actively promote a hawkish political agenda and are the chief proponents of the death penalty? Is “vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” simply a theoretical construct?
• How is it that your religious system claims that you will “be known by your love”, yet many of its members are angry, bitter, and judgmental, both with insiders and strangers? Is there any reason to be a part of an organization whose members can’t even be nice to each other?
• How is it that your religious system opposes homosexual marriage on the basis of “preserving the sanctity of marriage”, yet over half of your own marriages end in divorce? How can you claim to have any credibility on “family values” when your families disintegrate at a higher rate than secular society?

Many of these people evaluating modern Christian structures and institutions come to this simple conclusion: the product does not deliver on what it promises.

In the past I have, when in the middle of discussions regarding the level of importance of semi-obscure doctrinal issues, pointed out that until a person answers the question “Is Jesus Christ the Son of God”, all other doctrinal questions are, at best, academic. As we evaluate the issues we choose to spend our resources on, it would behoove us to consider that many people in the world – most notably those we are generally trying to reach – often do not consider disputes about worship styles and other doctrinal issues to be as important as the end product of our faith as demonstrated in our lives. We cannot base our outreach on having the right answers to questions no one is asking – we must change our focus to address the well justified questions which non-churched people demand answers to before considering Christianity as an alternative to their current belief system. In order for Christianity to be viewed as a viable paradigm in the 21st century, we can no longer rely only on our theology being “correct” – we must also make sure that it “works”.

Lord, our Father, may Your everlasting strength and resolve help solidify and bring together Your Nation of devoted followers to work towards uplifting the economy. We pray for You to forgive foreclosures, for the Nation’s dollar to be strong in value once again, and for the government to make wise and Godly decisions with the country’s national resources. Let us pray to You, oh Lord, to provide relief to those impoverished and in dire need; and for those of us with wealth and abundance to increase our charity and support as we were taught through Your divine teachings.
Amen

I received an email this evening with this prayer, and couldn’t help but be a bit disturbed regarding the sentiments it expresses.

While we seem to have acquired the view in our country that it’s God’s will for all poor people to become middle class, I think the very first line in this prayer strikes me as a symptom of one of our main problems in America today – the focus on increasing our personal wealth and well being, and promoting said within a Christian framework. The author of the prayer hopes that we will all come together “to work toward the uplifting of the economy…” The working of the Kingdom of God, the deep despair of souls wrecked by greed and pride, and the global mission of the Church seem to take second priority to having a strong, vibrant national economy. Additionally, the author doesn’t *actually* pray for relief to those who are impoverished and in need, or for charity on the part of believers, but asks that God would “let us pray” for such things.

I’m not certain, but I have to think that God’s Kingdom exists on a level that’s a bit different from interest rates and sub-prime mortgages. Somehow we’ve taken the idea that God has always wanted us to have a booming capitalist economy and that if He *really* loves us, he’ll keep the money flowing.

Two things humble me about this assumption.

The first and most scary is that it is often in the times of greatest blessing we find it most difficult to rely on God. When Jesus speaks in the Sermon on the Mount, at least in Luke, he does not say “blessed are the poor in Spirit”, but rather “blessed are the poor.” I think Jesus knew that the poor are desperately aware of their need of a helper, a savior. As one of the richest and most blessed nations on earth, I think we confuse our wealth as a great blessing, when in reality I think it often makes it much harder for us to see God, and to live the lives we’re called to. It’s much more difficult for those of us who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo to be about transforming the structures of this world to allow the lowest and the least among us to be elevated to a position of significance.

Second, do we feel we can honestly ask God to bless us further so we can be charitable when we have been such poor stewards of God’s wealth in the service of other people up to this point? As a nation, we may give more than any other country on earth toward charitable causes, but we still give a tiny fraction of what we have to helping others and solving global problems. How hypocritical can we be to ask God to grant us more money, saying that “then we’ll be able to give more?” Do we not have charity backwards? Can we not let go of what we have first and foremost, allowing God to bless us with more once we have first selflessly given what we have away?

At the end of the day, my hope and prayer is that God is doing a lot more right now than worrying about the valuation of the American Dollar, and that each of us would realize that our 401k’s have very little to do with either our eternal destination, or our present contentment and satisfaction in life.

He will know our sorrow.
He will see our pain.
He will embrace humanity
while retaining divinity.

But he comes into our world,
his world,
not as an observer,
but as a transformer.

He comes to begin the process of healing old wounds,
reconciling broken relationships,
filling emptiness and quenching the fires of despair.
He comes not to watch us suffer,
but to transform our suffering into Glory.

And so we wait,
we watch,
looking forward with eager anticipation
to the arrival of Christ,
the anointed one,
who brings life and hope,
peace and joy,
a reign and kingdom without end.

“If I were to disappear tomorrow, who would notice – who would come to my funeral?”

I was having breakfast with Kelly, I think, when he first brought these questions up. The questions weren’t asked out of a prideful sense of “look at how much we’re doing” or “I’ve got a lot of friends who would come”, but rather a reflection on the impact we make in the world. If we were suddenly to disappear, would it make a difference in the world around us? We talked about it for a while, and our conclusion was deeply disturbing.

Certainly for the second question, there are people around me who would notice. My family and friends would be impacted, and perhaps some of the people who meet in my house on Monday nights. There would be people at work who would notice, of course, as their workload picked up a bit. But other than that, who would really care. How many people in the community know my name. I get coffee, fast food, eat out, buy groceries, get gas – a variety of daily or weekly tasks – and I generally see the same people there every day or week. How many of their names do I know? How many of them know or remember me? Am I that bland and nondescript that the people around me don’t take notice of the life and joy I have (or am supposed to have) in Christ? Is my kindness, love and charity so common and unspectacular that nobody around me feels blessed after I’ve left?

As a church, the answer to me gets even worse. If all the members of our church were suddenly to not exist, again the people closest to them would no doubt notice and feel loss. But would our community be saddened to see us go? Are there programs we are involved in where we are making enough of an active difference that people would even notice? Is there a neighborhood where we minister, or a group of people we work with? Do we do anything at all for the benefit of people outside of our walls? Some churches, perhaps, would have the community breathe a sigh of relief if they disappeared. Why do we think our condition is much better?

Two things trouble me:

1. Too many of our church structures are set up like a country club – for the benefit of people who are on the inside.
2. Too often I can’t be bothered to treat others with the same level of importance as Jesus would.

My vision for our church would be that if we had to close the door, there would be a huge group of non-members and non-believers whose lives would be adversely impacted. My prayer is that we would be so vital and involved in the community that our loss would be lamented by the entire city – young, old, rich, poor. We have so far to go, but so many opportunities.

My hope for my own journey of transformation is that I would take more time – all the time – for those around me. My prayer is that I would do *something* to stand out. My prayer is that my funeral wouldn’t just be filled with people who look a lot like me. My prayer is that I will ultimately be like Jesus, and that I would draw all I encounter to Him.