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The Shift to Postmodern Christianity

Down through the centuries, Christianity has been very good at adapting to various changes and shifts in worldview and culture. At the hinge-era of what we usually call the modern/post-modern area, we are in the sometimes volatile thinking-phase of this adaption.

Eddie Bibbs and Ryan Bolger, in their extensive examination of emerging churches have written:

“Because of this essential dismantling work, some outside the (emergent/emerging) movement have said that those in emerging churches do not love the church or that they are full of negativity because of their propensity for dismantling church structures. This is to misread the movement entirely. What to some may appear to be pointless complaining is a part of a larger process of dismantling ideas of church that simply are not viable in postmodern culture. Neither the gospel nor the culture demands these expressions of the faith. Emerging churches remove modern practices of Christianity, not the faith itself. Western Christianity has wed itself to a culture, the modern culture, which is now in decline. Many of us do not know what a postmodern or post-Christendom expression of faith looks like. Perhaps nobody does. But we need to give these leaders space to have this conversation, for this dismantling needs to occur if we are to see the gospel translated for and embodied in twenty-first-century Western culture…” (Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 28-29)

George Hunter III has said, more than once, that many churches are poised to be effective if 1952 ever rolls around again. Surely we don’t want North American Christianity in the 21st Century to end up having been “islands filled with modernist Christians while surrounded by a sea of postmodern people”, do we?  I am indebted to Dustin Metcalf (Akkerman, Oord & Peterson, Postmodern and Wesleyan? 63) for this picturesque image.

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World Vision, gay folk, Cedarville University and women

This past week two Christian institutions both made the news in regards to some interesting decisions.

World Vision, the huge Christian aid and development charity (huge as in, a one billion dollar budget – the country budget for Somalia alone this year was around $40 million), decided it would not refuse to hire people who were involved in same-sex marriages. (With 1,100 employees at headquarters, they figured they had some who were gay, and this, among other things allows for their partners to have health benefits). They claimed they were trying to do three things: “First, to focus on the aspects of the biblical mandate that are non-negotiable: caring for the poor, victims of injustice, and especially children,” said Dearborn. “Second, to contribute to the unity of the church around those things, at a time when the church is fractured. And third, to contribute as a result of that to the credibility of the gospel and the church in the eyes of American society.”[1]

But wait. A firestorm of response (and cancelled child sponsorships) from evangelicals caused WV to reverse course, publicly apologize, and withdraw the provision. My college age son asked me what I thought, and it’s this: To be sure, I certainly desire legal rights for all people. I like living in a free country. I cherish our freedoms as precious. (Leave my guns alone, by the way). In this free country, someone doesn’t have to share the sexual ethics of my religion for me to want legal protections and rights for them. Alongside this, in this free country, religious organizations are allowed to follow their conscience about ethical issues, including sexual ethics.

Christian organizations are in a tough spot here, potentially balancing health benefits to a few handfuls (or even a few hundred) employees vs. say, feeding tens of thousands of children. Even those organizations who really want to grant access to excellent health benefits regardless of someone’s sexual orientation, have to balance that with accomplishing their larger mission. I think if I were a gay person working for them, I might say “feed the children; I don’t want hundreds of thousands of kids potentially losing the sponsorships by which they survive so that I can get my partner health benefits… I’ll get insurance some other way.” Or I’d work for someone else, but that’s just me.

During this same week, Cedarville (Baptist) University in Ohio seems to have abolished co-ed theology courses. I say “seems” because alumni are reporting this, but official statements from the school don’t say it explicitly. What IS clear in school documents is that all but one of CBU’s female theology profs have left, women are not allowed to take the pastor track major, and they have officially banned men from taking classes on women’s ministry taught by a woman. Alumni are claiming that, since women shouldn’t teach men according to the Bible, male theology students can now only be taught theology by male professors. Many of us evangelicals will roll our eyes, shake our heads and laugh saying What next – the burkha? We will say things like “How can they stick with these views of women – this is crazy. What are they afraid of?”

But my point is the way we treat Bible verses about women and homosexuality. The irony of Cedarville’s woman question and the gay question at WV during the same week is not lost on me. My friends to both the right and the left of me theologically will both say to us evangelicals, “You’ve exegeted your way around the verses that say no women teaching men or speaking in church, what’s stopping you from exegeting your way around the 5 verses in the Bible about homosexuality?” My more conservative friends will mean that women should sit down and shut up in church. My more liberal friends will mean we need to drop our prejudice against homosexuals just like we have against women. Both will accuse us of speaking out of both sides of our mouths.

And it’s easy to see why they would say this. They’re right: we have a handful of verses against women in ministry leadership, and we’ve successfully built exegetical and Scriptural arguments against and around them. We have a handful of verses about homosexuality and some Christians have built similar exegetical arguments against them, saying they don’t refer to the kind of monogamous same-sex marriages we see today. They will also remind us that 150 years ago people used the Bible to defend slavery, and had very strong, reasonable arguments that the Bible never condemns slavery, accepts it as normative, and instructs masters how to act – explicitly endorsing it! So it’s not hard to see why some of our friends will accuse us of not being consistent with how we handle these two issues.

I will watch with great interest to see how this discussion of the exegesis of bible verses regarding homosexuality unfolds for evangelicalism in general, and the Church of the Nazarene in particular, in the coming decades. What happened at World Vision is not going to go away. Hopefully what happened at Cedarville will, but religious freedom should, and does, give them the right to make those decisions. I just find it curious that anyone wants to be part of that.

 

[1] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/march-web-only/world-vision-reverses-decision-gay-same-sex-marriage.html

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Honest Conversations about the Bible

I’ve written a few posts about biblical inspiration, and some of the conundrums we face in trying to understand the human and divine interface in the Scriptures, and what that means for interpreting and applying  the Bible. Someone might ask, Why talk about this at all? Just believe!

Quite a few reasons, compelling ones for many people. (In no particular order), first, with widespread exposure to other cultures and the world religions today, many people ask “How is the Christian Bible different than any other religion’s Scriptures? Why would I consider it more authoritative than any other one?”  As hard as this may be for some Christians to comprehend, circular arguments that basically boil down to “because we say so” or “because the Bible claims that God says so” do not convince people. I’ve watched many young people walk away from church because no one would offer them better answers than “just believe what we tell you.”

Secondly, people know that the Bible has been used by Christians to promote some pretty terrible things: slavery, Crusade, racial prejudice, hatred, to name a few. This makes them wonder if the problem is in the Bible or Christianity itself and if there is anything good and life-giving to be found in either. They also know Christians have used the Bible to disagree with science, (for example: Galileo, Copernicus, and the earth revolving around the sun), and latter realized  science was actually right.

Third, people have enough information today about history, archeology, the human input to the Bible, and how the Scriptures were gathered together, they wonder how to reconcile the human aspects of this Book with the claim that it is Divinely inspired. As I’ve mentioned before, when they read Paul saying things like “I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else” or “now this isn’t a word from the Lord, it’s from me…” they wonder how many other places like this reflect the human element in Scripture, and in what sense it is Divinely-inspired. Psalms about bashing infants’ heads on the rocks in revenge cause them to wonder the same thing.

Fourth, people have figured out that certain parts of the Bible are true-er than others, and we are to treat certain parts of the Bible differently than others. For example, look at the book of Job. Throughout the book Job’s friends make theological arguments they insist are true. But at the end of the book God Himself declares that they were wrong and so were their statements. So, throughout the book of Job, we have theological statements about God that God later says are incorrect. We clearly would be mistaken to assume that the speeches of Job’s friends are to be understood as revealing the truth about God. If we are to learn the lesson from the Book of Job, we have to see the larger picture painted by the whole book, and not assume every verse is equally true about God. God Himself says they aren’t. We would mis-understand the clear intention of the book of Job if we treat each verse as equally, literally true.

I want to keep this short, so I will come around to this subject again later. But suffice it to say, 21st century people have many, and sometimes new, questions about the Bible’s true-ness, and working through a doctrine of Inspiration that makes sense of everything we know is important for those who don’t want to “check their brains at the door and just believe” whatever we tell them.

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The Hallmark Card Theory of Inspiration

Once a brilliant friend of mine who works for Compassion International told me about a theory of biblical inspiration he had heard about in graduate school. He had never been able to find any information on it, and neither have I, but both of us were intrigued by the potential movement forward that could possibly be in, near, or around this idea. He had heard it called The Hallmark Card Theory of Inspiration.

“It’s like a Hallmark card,” he said. “You pick one up and read it and say ‘that’s a good card! That’s exactly how I feel about my wife.’ And you buy it.” In a similar manner, this theory says, God did not inspire human authors proactively while they were writing, but He looked at what some people who loved him/ were sensitive to His Spirit,  were saying about Him and started picking things. “That’s a good letter, I’ll take that. That’s a great story, it describes exactly what I’m like, I’ll take that too. I’ll take these four gospels about Jesus – they got it right…” etc. etc.  In this view, God is picking the best, the truest things that have been written about Him and pulling it together into what we have today – the Bible.

A theologian friend of ours, Dr. Eric Flett of Eastern University, commented, “Ah, like the adoption theory of the atonement, except for Scripture.” Well, yes.

This reverses the order in which we typically imagine Inspiration occurring in. We tend to think top-down. This is bottom-up. One thing for sure, bottom up is how the books of the Bible were collected. The people of God agreed that this letter, this gospel, these psalms, etc.  are life-giving and spark and nurture our relationship with God when illumined by His Spirit. Even in cases where a portion of Scripture is given (the Mosiac Law Code), the people of God still decided, generation after generation, to keep it.

I suppose that the assumption of the Hallmark idea is that it isn’t that every word of the Scripture is the absolute truth about God, but that the book/letter/collection of psalms/etc. as a whole reveals important things about God, the best available at that time. This Hallmark idea, though it certainly doesn’t solve all our questions about Inspiration, (and in fact raises plenty of its own), brings several things to my mind.

1) Brevard Childs’ thought on canonical exegesis.

2) C S Lewis once commented on what he figured was the relative nature of inspiration, or inspiration by degrees. He said something along the lines that he assumed that the prophet Isaiah felt a much stronger thrust of inspiration from the Spirit than, say, the writer of 1 Chronicles. Upon hearing it, this seems common-sensical to me. Did the court historian of 1 & 2 Chronicles even have any idea he was writing Scripture? I’m going to go with “probably not.” Did Isaiah know he had a message from the Lord? Absolutely.

3) I have also heard something similar described as an “incarnational” model of Scripture, in which God accommodates inspiration to the limitations of the world-view, such as the historical and scientific knowledge, of the writers.

So, if there is anything helpful in the Hallmark Card Theory of Inspiration, where do we go from there?

Next time: Why talk about this at all?

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Christian Mysticism? Calvin, Wesley and Spurgeon say ‘Yes’

A couple days ago I stumbled onto YET ANOTHER blog warning of the terrible dangers of mysticism.  Typically these sites warn of the mysticism in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and the new emergent churches. The world is a fascinating place, and I find it ironic in the extreme that Fundamentalism, in order to protect Christianity from the modern scientific worldview, adopted the modern scientific worldview toward the Bible and the faith! Somehow these good folks are convinced that the Christian religion is a head-oriented, logical, rational set of beliefs devoid of mysticism.

No mysticism in Christianity? How about the Holy Spirit being present INSIDE believers? How about prayer? How about  communion and baptism? How about the Spirit testifying to our spirit that we are children of God? How about dreams and visions? How about the Creation itself yearning for the sons of God to be revealed? How about the Inspiration of Scripture? How about “You will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you”? Can you call all that something other than mysticism?

No, no – they say –  mysticism is part of Eastern religions.

Ummm…  Judaism and Christianity were born in the Near EAST. They ARE  Eastern religions! They aren’t French or German. Christianity actually predates Calvin and Luther.

The blog I stumbled onto traced the etymology of mysticism to ‘mystery’ – aha! The mystery cults! Uh, box canyon. Blind alley. Circular go-cart track. Etymologies don’t really prove a point in this context.

Words, you may have noticed, are like bright-eyed toddlers who refuse to sit still where you tell them to. They run all over the house – and the pandemonium gets even livelier when they collide with their Latin cousins.[1] The word ‘mystical’ has been used by Christians to describe the mystical, spiritual experiences  of Christians throughout our history. Even many of the fundamentalists’ favorites!

John Calvin speaks of “the residence of Christ in our hearts, in fine, the mystical union…”; refers to Jesus’ words at The Last Supper as “a mystical benediction” and calls our incorporation into Christ’s church “a mystical marriage” throughout his sermons and Institutes.

Charles Spurgeon uses the word these same ways, and calls both the prophet Daniel’s visions and dreams “mystic,” as well as the Apostle Paul’s experiences.

John Wesley called Psalms which pointed forward to Christ  ‘mystical references to Christ’;  any reference in Scripture to Jerusalem that he took to indicate the church he said mystically refers to the church; throughout his sermons and commentary he refers to the church as Christ’s ‘mystical’ body and believers as “members of Christ’s mystical body”;  he refers to the Mystics of his day and the Middle Ages “those pious men who are usually styled Mystics” and calls the prophetic allusions in the Old Testament “mystical promises of abundant grace poured forth in gospel-days.”

The long and short of it is this. Somehow our fundamentalist brothers and sisters have gotten the idea that mysticism is something foreign to biblical faith and Christian experience. Whatever twists and turns of history resulted in them earnestly believing this, the fact is that mysticism – mystical experiences – have always been a part of both Jewish and Christian faith, starting in the Bible.

[1] Thank you Tom Wright for this delightful illustration.

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Paul didn’t have a BACKSPACE button

I went down to Hagerstown, MD yesterday to have lunch with a blisteringly smart and gifted colleague who also used to happen to be one of my protégées. We were riffing back and forth on the subject of inspiration and how evangelicalism has a strong feel for the ‘divine’ part in Biblical inspiration, but we don’t have a very robust sense of what it means that the human writers were involved. As a result, many folks end up with an operationally Qur’anic view of Scripture (the words falling directly from God’s lips – the human hardly involved at all except as a typewriter). In contrast to this, my friend says “It’s not like Paul had a backspace button.”

In fact, it appears Paul didn’t have his laptop with him a lot of the time – he can’t even look up (nor remember) who all he baptized. And that faulty memory… is part… of Holy Scripture (1 Corinthians 1: 14-16).

And so here’s Paul, pacing back and forth, ripping off a letter (with his secretary writing as fast as he can to keep up), dealing  with whatever church issue he was responding to, ranting at times, and he makes a side comment to further illustrate the point he’s making. He makes it on the fly, not sitting around wordsmithing at a computer screen. We preachers  do this all the time in sermons. Add a line or two spontaneously that we think helps further illuminate what we are saying from a different angle. But after the sermon, if pushed, we might say “Wait, no – that one comment wasn’t the point of the sermon – I was just adding that – don’t try to make that one example carry too much water – it only works if you look at it this way…”

If this is the case, we have a problem when we get a Qur’anic view of Scripture lodged in our heads, (all divine – virtually no human influence) and as a result start acting like all verses are equal. So you end up with Luther grabbing a sentence or two from Paul (made on the fly?) and concluding that the Mosaic law was a bad thing. Later you have Calvin come along, take a much broader look at what the whole New Testament  –including Paul – has to say on the subject, and conclude that the Law was a good thing.

Paul didn’t have a backspace button. And it looks very much like he was ranting in some of his letters – moving fast, making his point, falling into poor grammar and mile-long sentences. In everyday human life we give people the benefit of the doubt and say “Well, he didn’t mean that the way you are taking it. He was just making his point. Don’t take that with the same level of seriousness as when he is calmly, carefully stating his point…”

Is there a way for us to accommodate the human factor in Scripture as well? Paul’s memory in 1 Corinthians 1 isn’t the only place we come across indications there is more to the human aspect of inspiration than simply being flesh-and-blood keyboards. Luke states unapologetically that he did a bunch of research  in order to get the story straight about Jesus (Luke 1: 1-4). The Psalms express a range of very human emotions, including the desire to kill an enemy nations’  infants by smashing them on rocks (Psalm 137:9). Anyone ever heard of the phrase ‘noncombatants’ ? Whatever we are going to do, it seems we ought to be thinking carefully  how to deal with the very human aspect of what we mean by ‘Divine Inspiration.’ What sort of metric can we use to factor this in?

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Brian McLaren on Choosing a Church

A week or so ago  I saw on a blog where someone asked Brian McLaren what church or denomination  he would recommend. (Yes, that Brian McLaren, whom our fundamentalist and hard-core Calvinist friends consider the Anti-Christ). Brian responded with a list of 5 issues important to him in choosing a church. I think this is one fantastic list.  I wish I had written it myself. I am copying it from his blog at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/brianmclaren/2014/01/qr-which-denomination/

A List for Choosing a Church/Denomination:

1. Hand/Mission: Is this denomination more oriented toward maintenance, self-benefit, or the common good of the world? In what ways is this denomination practically expressing its commitment to join God in bringing blessing to the world? Is the denomination more dominated by tradition/the past than by mission/the present and future.

2. Heart/Spirituality: Does this denomination promote personal and communal encounter with God, the neighbor, and the other and enemy, or is it preoccupied with correctness, numbers, politics, and institutional maintenance or aggrandizement?

3. Head/Theology: Does this denomination create space for vibrant theological reflection, imagination, and investigation? Or does it suppress theological curiosity in order to unquestioningly support a predetermined set of conclusions? Does it expect the Spirit to continue to guide us into truth?

4. Backbone/Structure: What kind of support and accountability does this denomination provide to support its staff and members in mission? How nimble and flexible is the structure?

5. Open arms/Ecumenism: Does this denomination wall itself off from other Christian communities, and other faith communities – or does it use its structure as a bridge to facilitate collaborative relationships? And is this denomination interested in welcoming me?

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The Paradox of Invoking Jesus’ Name on Acts of Kindness

During our recent  snowpocalypse one of our neighbors had just had a knee replacement and the other is pregnant and the storms at times hit when her husband was not home. As a result I had three houses, driveway entrances and curbs to deal with. No big. That’s what good neighbors are for. I was thankful for the hours logged in at PlanetFitness.  And hot coffee. My neighbors were effusive in their expressions of thanks.

It got me thinking about ‘good deeds’ and ‘acts of kindness’. Many evangelicals feel that they should dutifully invoke Jesus’ name over acts of kindness. As in, “I’m doing this in Jesus’ name” or “well, it’s what Jesus would want me to do” or “Well, I’m a Christian” or “it’s what Jesus would do” aka WWJD. All that is well and good, and true to boot. I have enormous respect for what I am told is Samaritan’s Purse’s forthright tag-line: “We are doing this in Jesus’ name.”

However, there seems a paradoxical, counter-productive downside to me in everyday  life.  If we invoke Jesus’ name over some of these acts, what are we implying? Do people hear us saying “Well, I wouldn’t do this for you, except it’s my religious duty as a Christian” or “I’m doing this because I feel pressure that Jesus wants me to” or “I don’t care about you enough to do this on my own, my religion prescribes it” or “I have ulterior motives in helping you: I’m hoping that by doing this, you will see that Christianity is a good thing and maybe come over to our side”? And how does that make people feel about our help?

While it may be true that some people would not shovel a neighbor out if they weren’t a Christian (some people are certainly kinder than others by temperament), I suspect it’s often counter-productive to talk this way. It would be hard for me to sort out why I am the kind of person happy to help someone out;  I became a Christian when I was 12 and it has certainly been the primary influence on my development. However, the fact is: I didn’t shovel my neighbors out as a sense of religious duty, nor with ulterior motives, nor out of guilt, nor because I thought God was breathing down my neck, nor because I felt bad Jesus died for my sins, nor because I thought it would earn me points in heaven, (now points on an elk tag draw would be another story), nor because I wanted the label ‘Christian’ to look good, nor because I asked myself WWJD. No, I shoveled them out because they needed help and I was there. It needed done. These are people I care about. No big.

The paradoxical, counter-productive part of invoking Jesus’ name is when we do so and people think  something like “wow, they wouldn’t have helped me because they care about me, or out of the goodness of their heart, they did it as a religious obligation.” And what does it say when a person who is NOT a believer in Jesus is willing and happy to shovel someone out? How about when a Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, or NASCAR fan shovels them out, without any faith in Jesus? If you ask me, it makes it look like they are good enough to do it on their own, and I need Jesus to raise me to a Hindu, Muslim or NASCAR level of goodness.  Invoking Jesus’ name, often done in attempt to communicate something good, may well communicate something else.  I would hate for my neighbors to say to themselves,  “Gosh, I would have shoveled Todd out just out of the goodness of my own heart and because he’s my neighbor, but he only does it because of his religion.” An act of religious zeal or duty, not genuine goodness or authentic compassion.

Ironically, there are times, I think, when the better witness for Jesus, is to not invoke His name. To make it out as if Jesus made you do it may send the message that you are less morally developed as a Christian, rather than more.

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The Rabbit Trails of Revival and Anointing

A friend of mine recently described to me the experience of attending a church which was obviously losing its grip on its members. Week after week, year after year, the congregation was exhorted to “keep coming or you will miss God’s anointing! It’s right around the corner, we can feel it! God’s going to do something big! If you leave and go somewhere else, you’ll miss it!” This was accompanied by long prayers begging for God’s anointing.

I could relate. I grew up in an atmosphere where ‘revival’ was described and looked for in the exact same way. It was always felt that it was ‘just around the corner.’ “God’s going to do something big soon – I can feel it! We’re about to have revival!” This too was accompanied by lots of prayers for revival, eventually books and prescriptions were written for how to get God to pour out revival.  Previous revivals in history were studied to find the common elements – the key to unleash the power. Translation: if we would just get a little more earnestness, more committed, repent more, or develop some other spiritual attribute, God would finally relent of his chintzy, cheapskate tight-fistedness with his revival coin.

Sorry, I’m not buying.

The assumptions behind all of this are full of holes. It reminds me of the phrase used by Nazarene theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop forty years ago: “Credibility Gap”. First, what’s wrong with what happens in the faithful gathering for worship, week after week, year after year? For thousands of years God’s people have been sustained, nurtured, strengthened and empowered through gathering together for the reading of the Word, the celebration of the sacraments, the worship of God in song, praying together, and – not least – the community of togetherness in Jesus’ name. What’s lacking in that? The frantic pleas for revival and anointing imply that that’s not enough;  there’s a lack, a deficiency. All that happens in weekly worship: the lives changed, the attitudes transformed, the newness of life poured out, the life trajectories re-directed, the joy imparted, the welcome of new people with authentic love, the strengthening, encouraging, purpose, mission, community – nope –  apparently not good enough. Second, all this begging for revival and anointing  acts like God is really hard to convince, doesn’t like to part with his revival stash, or is bound by a notebook full of addendums and legal restrictions regarding when and when not He can do His thing.

Seriously?

In the sophisticated modern church of the second millenium, here’s what this tends to look like: pastors running around always working things up for the next push, the next event, the next program, the next Big Thing that will finally be the magic button to get their church to be whatever it isn’t, and flood their doors with urgent seekers. As soon as they finish the current  Big Deal, they start running toward the next one, rounding up (tired) ‘volunteers’ and urging people to give their spare time to this next big event they imagine will be the equivalent of rubbing the Genie’s Lamp of Church Growth.

I get tired just describing it. And I’m not going to spend my life doing any of that.

I don’t think God is reluctant with His unction. I don’t think He’s bemused watching us scramble trying to find the hidden cheese of revival in His maze.  I don’t think there is ANYTHING wrong with what God does week after week in the regular Sunday morning gathering of His people. New peoples’ lives are being visibly transformed;  longtimers are sustained, helped, encouraged; people are called into ministry; new ministries begin; people hear a call to pastoral leadership, get educated and start churches or join the work here; there is nothing wrong with what goes on.

What I do think is happening is that both Nazarenes and Charismatics can look back within living memory to the beginnings of both of our movements. The enthusiasm, newness, Big Push for the common goal and comradery of a fresh vision that characterize almost any kind of new movement, religious or not, gets longed for again, not to mention idealized. But anyone familiar with the sociological lifespan of movements knows that they don’t stay in that phase. Looking back longingly to the early part of the organization’s developmental phase is to miss out on the benefits of the current part of the lifespan. It’s like a parent looking back so longingly at the toddler phase of their children’s lives that they fail to enjoy them in their 20s.   They miss out on what is in front of them. You may have noticed that the 20-30 somethings that left evangelicalism for the Mainline churches (or started their own), don’t wring their hands week to week for revival or anointing.  They enjoy what the community of faith is and does.

I don’t think we are going to manipulate God into when He does extraordinary acts of revival.  History shows that if we think there’s a formula for that, we’re mis-interpreting those Bible verses. If it were as simple as us pulling the right levers on the heavenly machine, we’d have had God dancing to our tune like a puppet long, long ago.  I’m not going to wring my hands about what God does in church, wishing for something else. What He does with us week after week, just as He has for thousands of years, is a profound good. There’s no deficiency.

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Donald Miller and church

Years ago Donald Miller wrote a book called Blue Like jazz. It’s nothing like the movie. At all. But anyway, it was a seminal look into a generation of evangelical kids tired of evangelicalism. Very valuable book. It had many ah ha moments in it when I said “ahhh, that’s what they were thinking… ok.”

Recently Don blogged something about not going to church and it set the evangelical world on fire. It was all predictable and old news. On the one side Don said, look the way church has evolved in America is a different animal than church in the New Testament, going to church isn’t the same thing as Christian community, and people being paid by today’s church have a vested interest in it staying the same and you coming. The other things he expressed were old news to anyone familiar with his generation. And most all of their feelings are legit. I mean, do you know HOW MANY people out there have had the worst possible experiences AT CHURCH and CHURCH has been their biggest barrier to relationship with God? I wouldn’t expect this to set the blogosphere on fire.

Except.

Something else predictable. The evangelicals, sold hard core on the current mode of church (whichever one they happen to do), brought their usual list of responses. “You’ll go to hell if you don’t go to church; it’s spiritual suicide; the Bible says to; it’s about God, not you, etc etc etc.” Boring.

It’s no wonder the emergent/postmodern  crowd is largely done with the modern evangelical church and started their own stuff or went to the mainline Protestant or Catholic options. It’s the same old lines, and an apparent total disconnect with why people get tired of the modern church. I’ve had really good experiences with church down through the years, and I pastor one of the best ones I’ve ever seen in action, but I’d have to be crazy to not understand the postmodern problem with church. I’m not gonna wax eloquent on all that, but I will just say this. On this whole “it’s about God, not you” thing… GOD is certainly not so co-dependent, insecure and unsure of Himself that He needs us to come together and tell Him how great He is and that He really will be ok, and make Him feel better about Himself on a regular basis. If God WERE that insecure, He wouldn’t be worth following. Church, it turns out, is not for God’s sake – it IS for ours. And the good of the world God loves.

As one good man said, “I don’t believe in organized religion. I believe in religion organizing for the common good.”