The Obligatory Year End Look Back

2009 was a routine year, with two exceptions. One was the death of my mother in February. Christmas seemed strange without her, because as she grew older she increasingly became the center of the holiday, in some ways taking the place of children. That may have influenced our decision to go out of town for Christmas this year. The other exception was our cruise to the Lesser Antilles in June—just about as perfect a vacation as possible. I’ll be continuing to place pictures from the islands on my entries.

I turned 66 in ’09, and am a bit obsessed with getting older—actually with the unexpected twists my life has taken over those years. My desire to be a world-famous humble country Episcopal priest fizzled. God had other plans. The biblical pattern for older guys suggests that there may be a burning bush in my future, but I wonder about hoping for it—some days I consider such a hope to be neurotic—and try to focus on what is important today. As corny as it sounds, those foci are worship and love. I go out on my deck every morning and “awaken the dawn” with praise, and I try consciously to open my mind and heart to the lost and confused people I see every day. Anything beyond that is God’s business.

It’s obvious this past year that I’ve become intrigued with the “emergent church,” though my fascination is a bit abstract and comes more through reading than through experience. Sometimes I laugh, because the unbelievers described by emergents are 20 something intellectuals with a bent towards spirituality. The Appalachian-American kids I see every day are definitely not going to sit in Starbucks and talk about Jesus over a latte. The traditional country Baptists pastors speak the language and still have an impact. Anyway, this past year included a re-read of Bruce McLaren and the discovery of Phyllis Tickle. Rosenstock and Jim Jordan have provided a historic structure for understanding the cultural changes behind emergence.

This week I was part of a conversation with some other believers. The first half consisted of rehearsing the horrors perpetrated by Christians upon each other in the name of truth—experiences each one of us had been through (“the Church is the only army that shoots its own wounded….”--I have been both shooter and shootee), and how common pain, division, and rejection are among Evangelicals. We played a great game of Ain’t It Awful. The second half of the conversation moved to emergence. Most of the comments were negative or suspicious. I of course kept my timid mouth shut. But the inability or unwillingness to see a connection between the two topics was an eye-opener to me.

I’ll probably continue reading in the same vein in 2010. My lighter reading is leaning to military topics: Michael Shaara's WW II trilogy, also Band of Brothers (DVD), and a new book called Generation Kill, etc. Plan to go to Lee-Jackson celebration in Lexington next month in uniform! Also plan to keep working as long as my body tolerates it. Every year I go to bed 10 minutes earlier.

Speaking of getting older: I have a history, and too much of it is fallen and foolish to continue to believe that I have bought off God with good behavior. I believe he loves me because he created and redeemed me, and that his plan for me absorbs the bad stuff. His purposes are amazing for all of us. I echo Luther's statement in his commentary on Romans: "The only thing that makes you different from your pagan neighbor is Grace."

Happy New Year, Everybody!

Decadence and the Word Part IV

I fear that this series on decadence has become repetitive, so this entry will be brief.

In Decadence and the Word Part II I ended by suggesting that the antidote to the Protestant propensity to schism is Paul’s teaching on mutual giftedness in Ephesians chapter 4. Such a view of the church is inclusive rather than exclusive, in fact, the more inclusive the better. The more a Christian opens himself to the gifts and perceptions of others, the broader and deeper is his own experience of Christ. Exclusion implies perpetual immaturity. This is true at the corporate as well as the individual level.

I have written previously that history may be viewed as the succession of God’s three special symbols—sacraments, Word, and man himself. If that pattern is true, we may be transitioning into the time of man as symbol. I do not means humanistic man, but Christian man, filled with the presence of Christ and manifesting him—Christian man who knows how his gifts fit within the church, and how his own needs and weaknesses are met by his fellows.

This means that the church needs to do renewed exegesis of the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit outside traditional Pentecostal/ Charismatic interpretations.

Also, a renewed emphasis on man as symbol opens the door to communicate with post-modern man, who places relationship over abstract thought, inclusiveness over exclusiveness, and connectedness over authority.

Decadence and the Word Part III

This day of Grace 1654; From about half past ten at night, to about half after midnight, Fire.
-Pascal

It struck me after writing two entries on "Decadence and the Word" that I never summarized or attempted to give antidotes for Abstraction and Divisiveness. Of the members of the Christian quadrilateral (see "Let 'em Eat Cake"), the Renewalists could very well have the best answers. This entry deals with Abstraction.

The antidote to legalism or the abstraction of Scripture is a deep relationship with the Person of God himself. Any use of the Scripture outside relationship is misleading. Scripture reveals a Person, calls us to a Person, and is often a conduit through which He speaks and we speak back. The Person of the Trinity that indwells human beings and reveals the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. Therefore a major antidote to the abstraction of Holy Scripture is the Baptism and habitual filling of the Holy Spirit.

How strongly I wish that other portions of the church would not react to that last sentence. In fact, the reaction seems to be a recent thing, perhaps brought on by an arrogant attitude among Renewalists themselves, who often seem to believe they have some kind of special hold on the Holy Ghost. The fact is that there have been Charismatic-Liturgicals in history, from the Catholic Apostolic Church (Irvinites) of the 1800's to the Charismatic Episcopal church of today. There is also a renewed interest in social justice among younger Charismatics.

Conservatives (Evangelicals) would perhaps react the most strongly to my statement. I believe this is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the Charismatic bath water. Evangelicals had among them leaders who stressed being filled with the Spirit before there were any such thing as modern Renewalists: Torrey, Murray, Oswald Chambers, and more recently, Martin Lloyd-Jones (see Joy Unspeakable). Lloyd-Jones tells great stories about (would you believe?) Puritans who had subjective experiences with the Holy Spirit (including Jonathan Edwards). Church history would bear out that such experiences have been common. Evangelicals need to get over their fear of being thought "one of them" and embrace their own history. Renewalists need to recognize the place of the Holy Spirit outside their own traditions. One can hope that at the center of emergence the divisions get hazy anyway.

The church of the coming decades will go through a struggle over the nature of authority. At present our best guess is a combination of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and the consensus of the local believing community. This is not possible without an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the individuals involved.

(Picture: Antigua, Atlantic coast, 2009)

Let'em Eat Cake

"Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her,rejoice greatly with her, you who mourn over her."

Phyllis Tickle, in The Great Emergence, divided American Christianity into four groups: Liturgists, Social Action Christians, Conservatives (Evangelicals), and Renewalists (Pentecostals and Charismatics). It has not been unusual to find "bleed-over" between any random two of these groups-- conservative Charismatics, liturgical social activists, etc. What is unusual is that at the center where the four points meet there is a melting of these four that makes the lines indistinct and even meaningless-- much like the swirl created in a mixing bowl as new ingredients are added. Folks caught in this whirlpool of delight simply define themselves as "cake," as opposed to seeing themselves, let's say, as good old fashioned powdered batter that doesn't really like milk and thinks that all eggs are heretics.

That doesn't mean that a given ingredient doesn't know its name or history. It does means that it submits itself to the mixer and both yields and adds its tastiness to the final product. Charismatics have something to contribute at this point. For years they have stressed "body life" and the Pauline notion that the church matures as each individual member finds his calling and gifts for the common good, as well as submitting to the calling and gifts of others. What is happening at the meeting point of Tickle's four divisions is "body life" on a grander scale.

(The picture: this is Anne's Mom Alma on her 96th!)

Decadence and the Word Part II

In my own quest, I am not ready to jettison the Scriptures as revelation. I feel that way, not primarily because of a doctrinal commitment, but because through the years I have found the Bible packed with meaning, comfort, power, mystery, and direction. I find that the power within it transcends arguments over redaction, editing, and transmission. The issue with the traditional Protestant approach to the Bible is not that it exalts it too highly, but that it has placed restricting walls that have made it more difficult for the seeker or unbeliever to see its worth. My last blog can be summarized: “the Word without the Spirit is dead.” In this blog I want to continue the theme of decadence and make a plea for a deeper humility when approaching the Bible.

When we approach the Scriptures from a Protestant point of view, we claim we are dealing with ultimate truth. Post-modern man does not have a problem with absolute truth, but denies that anyone can know absolute truth absolutely. We need to hear that, because decadence arises when the Christian confuses his interpretation of Scripture with Scripture itself. Consider that within a short time the Reformation went to war with itself over the “correct” interpretation of Scripture, the rationale being that if the Scriptures contain matters of life and death, then my interpretation (and yours) is also a matter of life and death. That means that from the beginning of the Reformation Christianity became exclusive rather than inclusive. The result is the decadence of incessant division.

I was struck recently how much the life of Christ affects our perception of Scripture (McLaren). To begin with the Incarnation forms a perception of Scripture. To focus on the life and teachings of Jesus creates another perception. The same is true of the passion, the resurrection, the ascension and session, and the second coming. (Grossly oversimplified, in order: Orthodoxy, liberalism, evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, the Reformed, and dispensationalism.) Humility demands that we look through the eyes of another long enough to have our perception readjusted.

This is not difficult when we consider that our perception of biblical truth changes in our individual lifetimes. Our perceptions of God are always too small, and the Spirit brings us to crisis times when our old perceptions won’t work, and we have to reinvent our image of God. The Scriptures are always large enough to allow for the change. Jim Jordan once wrote an essay on “stage conversions” that stuck with me. A child who “accepts Jesus” will jettison that Jesus in his teens, unless he finds the Jesus for teen-agers; likewise when he is intellectually challenged in the college years. A thirty year old married man with two kids and a job needs a new Jesus, etc. I am in my sixties, and I am finding Him again. He grows with my need. So does the Bible.

My point here is not to introduce some kind of hopeless agnosticism, but to call for a humility based on the limitless vastness of God’s revelation, and our own inability to perceive more that a sliver of it. Humility would also allow us to see a new vision of God through the eyes of those we shut out—inclusive rather than exclusive.

Decadence and the Word Part II

Decadence and the Word, Part I

In Luther's Day the sacraments reached their highest point of decadence. That statement is of course a shortcut; the sacraments have never been decadent. It was man's misuse of them for power, money, and control that sparked Luther's revolt against the Roman hierarchy. It was the system that had become decadent. Luther reached back into pre-sacramental history and pulled the Word forward to create a revolution.

I want to suggest that we are at a similar turning point in history, only instead of the sacraments, it is the Word that has become decadent. Again, a shortcut. The Word in itself is truth and power. But after 500 hundred years of Word-centered Protestantism, it should be obvious that there is decadence in the church's use of the Word. I want to suggest two manifestations of this decadence in this and the next blog.

I want to call the first Legalism (the Word without the Spirit), but I am instead going to use the term Abstraction, defined as the substitution of chosen principles for relationship, or the exaltation of the indicative mood over the imperative (Rosenstock).

Modern, Reformational, Enlightenment man believes the indicative mood is the "normal" mood, the mood of reason, reality, and objectivity. It is detached and dispassionate. The exaltation of the indicative means that all biblical truth can be systematized , and the highest knowledge of God is doctrinal. Those who see the indicative as normal are suspicious of the imperative, which creates demands and immediacy, heat instead of cool abstractions.

But life is simply not lived in the indicative. Life is a response to major imperatives which shape us and define us. We are shaped without our consent before we learn to think abstractly. The doctor slaps us and says, Breathe!" We don't ask for this new world outside the womb; it is thrust upon us. For years we are told, "come and eat", "chew with your mouth shut", "get up and get dressed." We are baptized (or dedicated) and told to renounce the devil and all his works before we offer any consent in the matter. Those imperatives are spoken by persons or a Person, by a Thou opposite us, whose imperatives tell us who we are (Buber). No man becomes who he is in a vacuum, outside relationship to another. No abstract "It" or principle can awaken us at the depth of the call of the Thou.

The imperatives in our lives are the prelude and backdrop to the subjunctive phase--the phase of probability, of possibility, of "maybe", or "can" or "can't" or "will" or "won't." It is the time to be shaped by our imperatives or renounce them. As we get older, we conquer or fail, or both. That means that the longest part of our living is in the uncertainty of the subjunctive, an uncertainty marked by both despair and ecstasy.

After the subjunctive mood comes the perfect tense. Paul concludes his farewell to Timothy with, " I have kept the faith." Note the use of the perfect, the tense of completion. In the perfect mode we sing of victory, weep for losses, and cast all into the lap of a sovereign God.

After the perfect phase, we write our memoirs, which are an analysis of imperatives, subjunctives, and the perfect tense in our lives. Memoirs are in the indicative mood. Note that the indicative occurs at the end of our lives, not at the beginning. The folly of modern man is that he writes his memoirs before he has lived. The notion that a man can sit in an ivory tower and choose what he wants to be is a denial of reality, and a heavy burden. A man is not defined by abstractions, but by a divine call and by his gifting in relation to other men.

Post-modern man questions the abstractions of the indicative. Theological constructs and lists for moral behavior do not meet the need for a Voice, for a Love that stands over against him with an imperative beyond personal choice, with the lyrics of the subjunctive, and with the completeness of the perfect tense. The Christ that the church professes meets the cry of such men. It is time to move beyond abstractions. (See Gen. 3:9, Isa. 40:6, Eph. 4:7.)

The Word and Decadence, Part I

New Blog

Howdy! Welcome to my new blog. Appreciate Dave Keyser letting me piggy-back on Theoreflections, but hated to clog up all his space. I'm still contemplating cultural/church changes and post-modernism through the eyes of Rosenstock, Buber, Jim Jordan, and the Apostle Paul. More to come when I get set up. -Rick