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Are You Willing?

November 18, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 3 Comments

If you want change, you have to be willing to give up everything.

Yesterday we had some great conversation at the Newbigin House of Studies’ “Leadership for the Church in Mission” conference. N. T. Wright gave a couple of talks that engaged biblical theology with an eye toward the place of the church in our current culture.

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


During the panel of which I was a part, George Hunsberger made the point that the missional church conversation calls us to be willing to put everything on the table, to be willing to reassess all of our structures, all that we do.

Later in the conversation, Pamela Wilhelms reflected on why it is so difficult for us to speak truth to power: power pays our salaries. The church that is separate from the state is funded by the people who give their money, who are in leadership in the major corporations–the major corporations who account for 1/2 of the world’s top 100 economies.

Are we willing to go about the dangerous business of calling everything to account?

The conversation we had gave me pause.

We were a bunch of church- or seminary-funded religious professionals. We were talking as though the purpose of theological education is to serve the church.

Is that it? Or is the purpose of theological education to serve the world in which the church finds itself? Have we gotten it out of our heads, yet, that the missional calling of the church tells us that our identity is to be sent out into the world even as the son was sent into the world?

Are we willing to allow our rethought theology to call our own power and institutions into question?

Or when we talk about movements such as “Fresh Expressions” in the U.K., are we going to see the fact that they come up with a somewhat standard form of worship as an indication that we’ve been in the right all along and therefore don’t need to rethink anything for a new generation? Or will we be willing to let go of the power and control that comes from being those established in power, perhaps even admitting that we cannot do what we’ve always done and see the church or kingdom thrive in a new generation?

There are lots of great conversations going on, there is lots of good theology being kicked around, and the practitioners are doing good, faithful work.

But are we willing to change everything for the Kingdom, even if it means a loss of power or place or income?

These are the challenges that rumble about in my mind as I reflect on a day of missional conversation.

Go Make Something Happen! Or, Stop…

September 24, 2011 in Academia, Church, Culture with 2 Comments

Blogsphere confessional: I love Seth Godin. I have his daily blog sent to my email so that I never miss one. It’s the only thing I read religiously.

The homepage of Seth Godin’s website says, “Go. Make Something Happen.”

Go read a few of Godin’s blog posts. They usually take about 90 seconds to read. Often they are pep rallies: Go change the world, because the old way of doing things will kill us off eventually.

He will say things like this:
Too often, the corporate world pushes talking points onto people, and more often than that, speakers and writers get nervous and they turn into parrots. The only reason to go through the hassle and risk of putting yourself out there is to be out there… you, not a clone.

“Yes,” I will say to myself as I grind my morning coffee beans! Get out there! Don’t be a clone!” And before you know it, the song “That’s what friends are for” has become “That’s what blogs are for,” and I’m singing a new theme song.

Then I remember.

I’m in theology. And academics. And the church.

Three realms that don’t like change very much.

If I may pick on a fellow NT Scholar blogger friend, the disposition of our world was captured perfectly in a blog post calling out to pastors to stop tweeting.

I think everyone who thinks that what they have to say is important should be tweeting. And that includes most pastors. Yes, people say dumb things on twitter. But the concern that dumb things get picked up by the media, and aren’t the sort of careful statement one should make to the press seems to be disconnected from the experience of everyone who has ever spoken to a reporter: reporters never pick up on the careful, nuanced thing you say and express it fully in their article. They glean sound-bites that often represent the least careful, least substantive thing you have to say.

Reporters want soundbites. Twitter is a place to create your own. Do I wish certain uncharitable or otherwise disagreeable (or disagreeing with me) people would be less in the press? Yes, of course.

But part of the reality of the world that most people interact with is that they are more likely to read a Tweet than a blog; they are more likely to read a blog than a magazine; they are more likely to read a magazine than a novel; they are more likely to read a novel than a popular Christian book; they are more likely to read a popular christian book than an academic crossover book; they are more likely to read a crossover book than an article of serious scholarship; and they are more likely to read an article of serious scholarship than a scholarly monograph.

In other words, the likelihood of someone being affected by what we write is inversely proportional to the value it has on an academic CV. And, the likelihood of someone being affected by a piece of writing is inversely proportional to the care that must be taken to craft it in an air-tight, compelling manner.

Tweets and blogs are not typical forums for academics. They’re not the stuff of rigorous, careful, enduring work. The academic world says, “Please stop before you hurt someone with that thing.”

But they are the means for reaching masses both inside and outside the church and, as importantly, inside and outside the academy. Tweets and blogs cry out, “Go. Make something happen.”

So, if you think you have something to say, and especially if you’re right about that, please keep tweeting, please keep blogging.

But watch your proverbial tongue…

Redeeming Grace

September 22, 2011 in Church, Culture with 8 Comments

Over the past fifteen years or so, the Evangelical churches in the U.S. have been waking up to the fact that for far too long its gospel has been far too small. Consumed with that part of its identity that demands personal encounter with and rescue by God, it had forgotten that it was supposed to be an alternative to the inward-turned fundamentalism of the early 20th century. It had forgotten that it was created to be a world-engaging, world-transforming presence–ambassadors for the Christ who claims every corner of this world for his own.

As evangelicals experience a resurgence in this core part of our identity, and as we get more creative with how we express what the gospel itself is, we can only hope that our agitation for laws that express the life-giving love of God will take on new expression.

We have always known that our God is a God of life, and so we stood with the unborn children whose lives would be terminated by abortion, and declared ourselves “pro-life.” In this, in fact, we stood with the feminists who saw early on that abortion was a way of invading their bodies to keep them producing for the labor force.

But we have not been so quick to recognize that the redeeming grace of God makes such a broad claim on restoring the cosmos that we should renounce the life-taking powers of capital punishment and war.

The Troy Davis case created a world-wide astonishment at the barbarity of the U.S.’s criminal “justice” system–and I was heartened to see my Twitter stream abuzz with the protestations of Christians about this taking of life. We need to be consistently pro-life–even when that means that someone is not “innocent.” If we are to be agents and extensions of the life-giving gospel that was given to us, we need to reimagine what justice looks like under the kingdom umbrella of the grace of God.

Will evangelicals become consistently pro-life, demanding not only that the infinite possibilities of life be opened up to the unborn child, but also that the more finite yet expansive possibilities of life be opened up to “the vilest offender”?

As important as our voice has become in politics, especially the politics of the political right, we should be using those powers to influence law that will reflect our call to love our neighbors as ourselves and to do unto others as we would want done to us.

By the same measures that I would oppose abortion, by the same measures that I would provide greater support to women who have unplanned pregnancies, by the same measures that I would demand fair trails, by the same measure that I would provide civil marriage equality, by the same measures that I would resist the call to instigate war–by that same measure of loving my neighbor as myself precisely by doing unto my neighbor what I would have done to me–by the same measure we should demand an end to death.

This is what faith looks like in the public sphere: not exerting our powers to the point of death, but trusting in the God who gives life to the dead–even the dead that is the murderer’s still-beating heart (if, in fact, he even be a murderer).

Community Is Crucial

September 21, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 8 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted about friendship, claiming that “who you are when nobody’s looking” isn’t necessarily the truest testimony to who you are.

I want to riff on that a bit today, in conversation with my Open Letter to New Testament Intro Students. In short, community is crucial for keeping hold of your faith when your faith is challenged.

The context within which a dearly held conviction is challenged, and the way that faith is depicted in relationship to that challenge, can make all the difference in whether that challenge leads to a lost faith or a reconfigured and strengthened faith.

Image: Photography by BJWOK / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In response to my open letter, several commenters voiced their concern that critical reconfiguration of what the Bible is and what it says do not happen more in the church. And I think there is something tremendously important about this call. Yes, we have to handle the issues carefully and not unduly disturb the faithful.

But here’s the problem with pretending that the Bible is something it is not: if the context of faith depicts the Bible, or science, or belief in one way, and then a student enters a non-faith environment and discovers that the Bible or science or belief are entirely different it creates an apparently clear choice. Either stay with the faith and reject the learning or hold fast to the learning and reject the faith.

The reason why NT Intro destroys people’s faith in college is because the community of faith has not been forthright about what the Bible actually is, and so the student is confronted with a choice between belief or knowledge.

In general, communities help create and perpetuate systems of plausibility. This can be a bad thing or a good thing, depending on the truth and benefits of how the group is perceiving and articulating reality.

If Christianity is true, then the calling of the church is to articulate, and demonstrate, a coming reality that is often not visible to human eyes: Jesus is the enthroned and coming Lord. We need community to keep making that reality real, to help us be renewed by the transforming of our minds, by the conversion of our imaginations.

This means that when we’re struggling, we need the community. If we leave it, we are placing ourselves on an interpretive grid where this true reality is not accounted for in the interpretation of the world. And its unbelievability can quickly become unplausibility, and the faith withers.

It is precisely because context is crucial for wrestling with faith-challenging issues that I think it is a seminary professor’s duty to deal with all the difficult issues in class. The fact that Christians, in a Christian setting, while confessing Christ as Lord, can acknowledge these things is, itself, tonic against the notion that certain realities about the Bible or history tear apart the very fabric of Christian faith.

In the film Gods and Generals, Stonewall Jackson utters this provocative line to a dying man who confesses to unbelief: “Well then, I will believe for the both of us.”

When we’re struggling, we need people to believe for us. We need people to carry our belief when it cannot carry itself. We need ourselves to be infused with the gift of faith that comes from the participation in the body of Christ. And we need to know that our struggles can be Christian struggles, modes of living and doubting that honor the Christ whose faith saves us.

Leadership for the Church in Mission

September 14, 2011 in Church with 0 Comments

If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, or are coming to town for SBL, you need to be aware of a fantastic opportunity on Nov 17-18.

The Newbigin House of Studies is hosting a conference entitled, “Leadership for the Church in Mission,” with N. T. Wright as the keynote speaker.

But the slate of speakers and participants extends beyond Wright to encompass pastors and church planters as well as theologians of various flavors.

Check out the website, register, and I’ll see you there!

Not the Rule of Faith: Why I Care

September 14, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 26 Comments

On this blog I am frequently doing my best to drive a wedge between the Bible (and good biblical interpretation) and systematic theology, the rule of faith, and the like. Several times I have revisited the question of why the story of Jesus, rather than the church’s doctrine of the Trinity, should be our interpretive grid–and what defines our identity as Christians.

Why do I care?

There are a number of ways to approach that question, but part of it has to do with a combination of personality and past experience.

Personality

Do you know the Enneagram?

I regret to inform you that I am an Eight. In brief, this means that I’m a controlling jerk. Well, that’s the worst of it.

Eights tend to be passionate about truth and justice. Of course, we’re always right, so this can be self-serving, but the redemptive edge of this passion is that we care about those who don’t have power. We care about the injustice and control that can dominate people’s lives when the wrong people use their power in the wrong ways.

The redemptive moves for 8 include becoming agents of mercy and justice, and inspiring others to follow along this path.

Experience

I have experienced that the theology of the church is a way to control people, and that this control often comes at the expense of honest readings of the Bible and honest articulations of what people actually believe.

I was in a denomination that had an 85+ page Confession of Faith, and any ordination candidate had to delineate every place he disagreed with it. And the list of disagreements had better be close to zero.

I discovered that this sort of Confessional magisterium (ask me to sing my “paperback pope” song for you sometime): (1) created disingenuous theologians, who affirmed things they disagreed with; (2) controlled biblical interpretation in ways that were distracting and just plain bad; and (3) served as a strong means for controlling the “insiders club” for the good ol’ boys (and they were all boys, no girls allowed) who had the power and only wanted to share it with those who were happy to help them build what was theirs.

Theology as the defining marker of the church creates systems of control that look nothing like the Jesus who said, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.”

The Rule of Faith, while quantitatively shorter, is qualitatively the same if it is functioning as rule. Trinitarian theology, similarly, can play this role of church control. It requires us to frame our reading, our gospel, our understanding of Jesus, in a way that binds us to the church rather than freeing us to follow Jesus–though going through that guarded church door might lead us into the company of Jesus as well.

But I rebel against the Creedal control because I don’t want you to think you have to experience what I did: that the only way into the fullness of participation in the body of Christ is through strange and foreign structures that often have little to do with the Bible through which God has chosen to make the Word of life known to the world.

But does it have the power, the authority to demand that we read in accordance with its traditions, its creeds? No, I’m too Reformed to say yes. And, I believe enough in the fidelity of what the creeds say that is true to demand that they control our reading of scripture: if they are right, then a good reading of scripture will generate these affirmations without those affirmations being the prerequisite assumption for reading the Bible rightly.

I want you to be free to discover that the Creeds are right. And, perhaps once every few hundred years, where they aren’t. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.

ed note: I realize after posting this that it leaves unanswered about half a million questions about the place of the church in our christian practice. Please stay tuned for my next Church Dogmatics post for more theologically and ecclesially developed musings

ed. note 2: I think this post is a dud. I need to work on how I actually want to delineate the tensions I feel in different hermeneutics and their relationships to power, freedom, and the Christian story. I might have inadvertently gone Quito (Mtn Goats reference) in true 8 fashion

10 Years After 9/11: Nothing’s the Same?

August 31, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Culture with 6 Comments

September 11, 2001 has left its mark. We refer to the day simply as “9/11″ and everyone knows what we’re talking about.

We’re coming up on the ten year anniversary, and conversation is swirling about the day’s significance. It has become cliché to say, “Nothing’s the same after 9/11.”

But is that true?

An article on ForeignPolicy.com discusses 10 events of the past decade that have made, or will make, a more significant and long-lasting impact on the world than 9/11.

This month’s Christianity Today takes its own shot at assessing the day’s import. Several leaders give their quick run-down.

What has changed for you because of 9/11? How significant do you think the day is?

The day was terrible. And it is a marker as a turning point in the life of our country.

I confess that I found myself drawn to the assessment of the Foreign Policy.com writer who said that more important than 9/11 was the U.S. response to 9/11. Had we gone on a manhunt rather than starting wars on two different countries that have done more than their fair share to bankrupt the U.S. and with it the world’s economy, the world would be a much different place.

It is only appropriate that the 10th year after the attacks brought us a series of dominoes falling in the Arab world, governments whose overthrow came largely from within, and largely powered by Twitter more than guns.

In the terrorist strikes and the foolish response that followed, there was a life-changing lesson for me, one that will never allow my world to be the same. It is beautifully captured by Philip Yancey in his summary of how he has changed since 9/11:

As Christians, we believe in a counter-force of grace. Lewis Smedes and other have identified three stages of forgiveness: first, recognize the worth of the person you are forgiving; second, surrender the right to get even; third, put yourself on the same side as the one who wronged you. Increasingly, I’m convinced that we need more of this attitude toward those who seek to harm us… I am not a pacifist; I believe that we must pursue justice. Yet a Christian history stained by Anti-Semitism… teaches us the terrible consequence of not following Jesus’ way.”

Do we believe that grace is more powerful than works? If so, we should be at the forefront, at points of conflict, summoning up the power of grace, extending the disarming force of forgiveness, believing that the way of Jesus on the cross is, in truth, more powerful than the way of Caesar with his hammer and nails.

I know, I know, bring out the Hitler argument. I get that. I really do. Like Yancey, I’m not a pacifist. But also like Yancey, I do really believe that the upside down economy of the gospel, the weakness of God, is more powerful than the strength of people.

Psalms in the Story

August 13, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 1 Comment

The community we have been worshiping with on Sunday nights, Eucharist, is about to launch a series on the psalms. Here are some slightly modified reflections I put together for the weekly newsletter on reading the psalms as part of the larger story of scripture:

“Let my whole being bless the Lord! Let everything inside me bless his holy name!” (Psalm 103:1, CEB).

This verse captures one of the most crucial dynamics of the psalms. We enter into the presence of God, and with all that we are we join in praise to the God who is worthy of glory and honor.

But if you delve deeper into the psalms, you discover that this is only one section of a much larger canvass.

The psalms are not only about me, they are about us. We come together to sing praises to God as a people with whom God has made covenant. The plurality of our voices is one dynamic that makes our praise acceptable before God. God sees and hears us as a people whose voices come together as one in order to express the oneness that we have as God’s people in Christ.

But even putting our individual praise within the chorus of God’s people does not take in enough of the picture. Because God is the God of all creation. Our songs are embedded in a cosmic drama that includes the harmony of nature and the praise of angelic host as well.

Perhaps the most surprising part of this cosmic song is that, often, we are given the lead. In our songs we not only praise God, but call one another to sing; we call the other people of the earth to sing with us; and we even call the heavenly host to join in our praise.

We, human beings, are given the role of calling the angelic host to praise the God in whose presence they stand day and night.

Read through the psalms and you’ll see a lot of this cosmic picture. So what happens to this great, majestic chorus when we recognize that all is not right with the world?

In songs of lament, we not only remind the earthly and heavenly creatures to render to God what God is due, but we actually remind God to faithfully care for the world that God has created and to look after the people who bear God’s image.

In the psalms, all the world, in all its facets, is lifted up in song before the face of God. And this includes not only its wonders, but even its brokenness.

Bounded, Centered, Christ

August 9, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 12 Comments

Yesterday’s post about the Rule of Faith is part of a larger project I’m working on (a life project, really) on how we think about our identity as Christians and how this impacts our understanding of Christian ethics.

At a conceptual level, a Rule of Faith or statement of faith as an identity marker has a bounded-set feel.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The idea of a “bounded set” is this: if you are within the bounds, you are officially and “insider,” if you are beyond the bounds, you are officially an “outsider.”

Yesterday’s question was, “Is the Rule of Faith / adherence to the Creeds of the church necessary and sufficient for salvation?” That was asking whether the Creeds provide the boundaries around the set of humanity that is or will be saved.

A common alternative to bounded set thinking is centered set thinking.

Image: chrisroll / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In a centered set, the ideal is in the middle, but no one, in all likelihood, actually exists there. We are either closer or farther away. And, we are usually moving closer or farther from the middle.

I think that the centered set idea is closer to how things work in practice, but still wonder if the idea of the “center” in the “centered set” is too static. Is there one core of doctrines or beliefs we are moving toward or away from? Perhaps. Perhaps we could call it something like “Christianity,” but what would we put there?

I prefer a metaphor in which the whole continues to move. For a long time I used the metaphor of rays or trajectories. If two rays start off half a degree separate from each other (i.e., there is some theological diversity from the very beginning in Christianity) then if they continue on their trajectories they will get farther and farther apart. The result? An increasingly large space between the vectors that constitutes Christianity within the tradition; i.e., an increasingly theologically and culturally diverse Christianity that all can lay claim to orthodoxy.

If that doesn’t work for you, perhaps the metaphor of a river.

Image: prozac1 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


This one I stole from Joel Green. The idea is that a river flows between banks. It is a dynamic thing. It probably gets wider and wider the farther downstream it goes. It is always moving toward its end. Moving together.

It’s that sense of unified motion I like: even as it gets wider, the whole is still in motion in the same direction–toward the eschaton.

Or perhaps there’s a little of all of this. Perhaps there is a “center,” and that would be the Christ in whom we all live, and this Christ is not standing still or defined by or bounded by the creeds of the church, but continuing to march through history, gaining followers, and manifesting all the while an ever richer embodiment of the diversity of God’s creation.

Salvation and the Rule of Faith

August 8, 2011 in Barth Dogmatics Reading, Church with 20 Comments

Over on my Google+ world a little conversation is unfolding around a question I asked regarding the Rule of Faith, and I thought I’d bring it over here as well.

In his landmark work, The Creeds of Christendom, Philip Schaff says the Ecumenical creeds contain articles of Christian faith “necessary and sufficient for salvation.”

Do they contain what’s necessary?

Are they sufficient?

I incline toward “neither.”

Did Christians without Matthew attain salvation without a virgin birth or is that not really necessary to believe in order to follow Jesus?

If a Jesus follower today believed that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he was the exalted Lord over all things, and devoted himself to serving Jesus, loving his destitute neighbors, and the like, but didn’t believe in a virginal conception and birth, would that person be excluded from the kingdom of heaven at the final judgment because he failed to believe this necessary point of the creed?

If we believe all these things but act like nincompoops our whole lives, is that sufficient for salvation or will Jesus say, “Depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of lawlessness,” thereby showing “belief” in these creeds to be insufficient?

I worry that the whole paradigm of points of doctrine that need to be believed for salvation is misguided. What do you think?

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