As a Christian, should you give according to your abilities? Consider Jesus's parable of the widow who gave her last two mites to the church and was considered a bigger contributor than all the rich men. Think of His words in Luke 12 that remind us, "To whom much is given, of him much is required." Remember all those parables about stewards who were entrusted with their masters' investments. It's reasonable to say that we would do well to give or contribute our finances, time, and efforts in accordance with our abilities.
As a Christian, should you take according your needs? Jesus spoke often about how a preoccupation with personal wealth and possessions could distract a person from enjoying the riches of a relationship with God. Paul set an example of working for his daily sustenance and living simply. Our central story is about the Son of God who forwent his rightful place in heaven for a lower-class existence on earth. It seems reasonable to say that with the eternal inheritances of heaven on our minds, we shouldn't be preoccupied with excesses here in this temporal life, but yes, should take according to our basic needs.
The above two conclusions seem pretty logical, but also neatly affirm the classical definition of communism: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." And with the patriotic people I work with, the label of communism changes everything. Complaints and fears about the prospect of Obama's ever-expanding bailout, about taking everyone's hard-earned money and redistributing it to the poor, lazy, and undeserving. Re-affirmations of capitalism and self-reliance as bastions of American society, hallmarks of the American way. Apparently, there are things that we would agree with on principle about communism, but with the introduction of the label and in light of how the ideology has played out in practice, nobody wants to be a communist. Which is not unlike how I feel about the emerging church and whether I want to call myself a member.
I am usually behind the curve on the nuances and variations of Christian denominations and factions, so most people are probably more aware of the term "emerging church" than I am. A very simple definition would be the segment of Christians whose theology and vision of the church is more adapted to 20th and 21st century postmodern culture. The Wikipedia article for "emerging church" is helpful in outlining its main characteristics, but highlighted with multitudinous caveats about subsections prone to "weasel words," "biased or unverifiable information," and "clarification needed," which seems entirely appropriate for an ideology adapted to postmodernism. A lot of my friends hate the subjectivity of postmodernism, but I have never been a pomophobe, at least as far as literature and abstract ideas are concerned. Where does true meaning lie in a piece of media or text: in the intent of a usually-long-dead author, in the sensory perception and experience of the reader, or somewhere in between? It seems like an important question to ask about the nature of literature, and it seems like an important question to consider theologically. If there is a God trying to send an important message to me through a 2000-year-old book of historical chronicles, poetry, and epistles, how should I go about interpreting it? And clearly people have answered that question because they do choose to go about interpreting it in various ways that have manifested into a thousand different denominations, but few stop to think about the process by which they decide how to answer the question.
But to return to the other question of how to respond to the emerging church, it's intriguing to observe that some of its elements have caught on like wildfire, becoming as universal as the emerging church's best-known dare-I-say-manifesto Blue Like Jazz. During my time at Campus Crusade for Christ, a lot of brochures and ministry literature showed a lot of artistic and aesthetic emphasis: there were a lot of colorful, over-exposed images as backdrops and crazy trendy music videos inviting you to "encounter" God at the Fall Retreat. The new tool "Soularium" evangelism tool offered a few dozen over- or under-saturated photographs that were supposed to prompt an experiential discussion or dialogue about what truth, love, and God were all about. Words like "authentic," "organic," "not-prepackaged," and "holistic" began to replace the suddenly clunky, traditional "Christian-ese" in describing our faith. And these changes aren't simply cosmetic: a lot of the emphasis on social justice, third world concerns, sincere spiritual dialoguing in lieu of evangelistic presentations, and narrative theology has really burgeoned in the last decade or so, and these changes are great changes that have done a lot of great things to distill Christianity down from its hierarchical systems and legalisms to the central (yet decentralized) precepts of unconditional grace, love, and forgiveness. I love the concept of a decentralized, grassroots sort of Christianity because it seems more Jesus-like to me. I believe in all these things, and I believe that Jesus does too.
So in light of these significant positive aspects, why wouldn't I identify completely with the emerging church? The answer lies in my initial reaction to Blue Like Jazz. I hated it because I felt like it was a petulant response to conservative Christianity. As the Wikipedia article articulates, "Christian scholar, D. A. Carson, has characterized the emerging church movement as primarily a movement of protest in which participants are reacting against their more conservative heritage. Carson has pointed out that emergent books and blogs are more preoccupied with this protest than they are with any genuinely constructive agenda." In a certain sense, D. A. Carson has a point. There is sometimes a definite underlying push to set Jesus up as some sort of heroic everyman opponent of the religious establishment, which I don't think was the point of Jesus's time on earth. Also, a lot of newly "authentic" Christians seem like they're simply exchanging their hymnals for baseless, trendy pluralistic mysticism. Catechism for coffee shops, gospel tracts for grainy film clips. And one noticeable feature about reading literature in a postmodern way is that it emphasizes the reader's experience at the expense of devaluing the text itself. Sure, you can read Hamlet a thousand different ways and even turn it into The Lion King, but does the same hold true for Scripture, words that we have always taken to be divinely inspired by God? I wonder ambivalently about the limits of postmodern narrative interpretation because I like translations from King James to more culturally relevant language, but I don't like the idea of someone grasping the retelling of Old Testament from the NBC show Kings as reliable theology. Maybe it's possible that God preserved His meaning across the errata of different English translations, but it's a pretty extreme postmodern stretch to suppose He would grant the same legitimacy for our narrative re-imaginings. It seems to me that in a postmodern sense, we partially become the Authors of our faith, conform God to our image, and in that sense make ourselves gods.
To put it in other terms, here is another excerpt from the Wikipedia article:
"The movement appropriates set theory as a means of understanding a basic change in the way the Christian church thinks about itself as a group. Set theory is a concept in mathematics that allows an understanding of what numbers belong to a group, or set. A bounded set would describe a group with clear "in" and "out" definitions of membership. The Christian church has largely organized itself as a bounded set, those who share the same beliefs and values are in the set and those who disagree are outside. The centered set does not limit membership to pre-conceived boundaries. Instead a centered set is conditioned on a centered point. Membership is contingent on those who are moving toward that point. Elements moving toward a particular point are part of the set, but elements moving away from that point are not. As a centered-set Christian membership would be dependent on moving toward the central point of Jesus. A Christian is then defined by their focus and movement toward Christ rather than a limited set of shared beliefs and values."
The idea of Jesus as the singular epicenter of the paradigm is a true and compelling vision, but if Jesus is the center, unfettered by tradition and belief sets, how do we find and point to Jesus? Through experiential means or through Scripture? Does Scripture validate our experiences that lead us to Christ, or do our experiences validate the Scriptures that tell about Christ?
"O Timothy!" urges Paul at the end of his first letter to his beloved disciple, "Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge -- by professing it, some have strayed concerning the faith." I identify with the sentiment: in the uncertainty of the world and mysteries of ontology, Scripture serves as the definitive lifeline and basis for truth. Of course, a significant contingent of the emerging church discredits the writings of Paul as errant third-party interpretations of the message Jesus really meant to present.
I think a short way to put it would be that I love some of the progressive aspects of the emerging church: the promotion of dialogue, the re-discovery of the poetic and aesthetic aspects of our Scripture, the emphases on social justice and applied grace, the decentralized grassroots style. And I love some of the harder questions raised by the postmodernist perspective. But I don't like the departure from solid Scriptural teaching coupled with a more syncretistic interpretation of the Christian faith: its effect does too much to make us the authors. I can't stand this indecision, married with a lack of vision: everybody wants to rule the world. I realize that Christmas and Easter are inherently syncretistic, but maybe we should question Christmas and Easter too. Sometimes when you mix too many colors, you don't get a jazz-like blue; you get a big, brown mess.
It's certainly worth appending, though, that I really liked Blue Like Jazz on the second read-through, and if there were one branch of Christianity I would identify myself with, it would decidedly be the emerging church.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
as a mathematician, I don't think that wikipedia article has any idea what its talking about concerning set theory.
as a Christian who naturally tends towards the emergent church and many of its views (not necessarily a good thing!), however, this was really interesting (I didn't know that the emergent church didn't like Paul. i wonder why...).
I tried an emergent-like church for a semester, and I do see a lot of the protest side in there. I recall wondering why there would be discussion questions pointedly asking for the difference between previous church experiences and this, as if there was progress made in switching.
I do see the good parts of it too (it got me involved in volunteering), and that it has made a large impact on Austin, but I do like your point about retellings of the gospel story not capturing the whole picture.
I see a lot of issues with both traditional evangelical/emergent churches, and I wish I had a solution (right now, I'm looking at churches - specifically Anglican - with more history, to see how they've lasted and changed throughout the years, so maybe that'll lend some insight), but I think any answers we might get are probably more complicated than we'd expect.
ok, short summary of comment: i liked the post. thanks matt
Great post, and some good insight into something I'm not too familiar with.
As for me, I think the title of my blog may be somewhat a reaction to emergent churchiness. Their emphasis is pushing forward, and casting out the old. But I don't think we need anything new. I think we need to get past the old...to the oldest. Primitive Godliness, as some of my friends here in Boston say.
Yes, that involves being socially active and getting back to the roots of the Gospel. But not because it's something new and emerging, but because it's, well, the original. That's why I kind of shudder with the labels like emergent, or when Piper writes "The Christian Hedonist does X." Why not just, "The Christian does X?" Why not the simple words of Gospel and Church and Christ rather than emergent and postmodern? I see the importance in distinguishing oneself from other forms of Christianity that you might not think are completely correct, but the problem with these alternate labels is that, eventually, because people consider themselves emergent, they end up asking "what next step should we take that's emergent?" rather than "what can we do to further the Kingdom of God?"
End rant.
Post a Comment