Search

Bo Sanders: Public Theology

updating & innovating for today

Open Search
Category

Theology

>Who Gets In ?

>They say to never judge a book by it’s cover. And this is true. Sometimes the cover is completely underwhelming for the quality of what is inside. Other times the cover is seemingly the best part. I have read two book in the last 5 years that were both wonderful and I think that their titles are the best two subtitles of any books I have heard of.

The First is Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party).

The second is a Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN

It also happens that both of these books touch on something that I want to touch on here: phenomenon and attitude.

Crunchy Cons came at a perfect time in my life. My wife and I had been trying to live a different way for a couple years. We had tried to get away from the cycle of credit card debt, eating factory farmed meat and things like that. It turns out that we weren’t the only ones! In fact this book is about how people all across North America had been making some of the same adjustments and coming to some of the same convictions that we had. The interesting part is that there was no manual, no spokesperson, no school that was preaching or teaching how to do it. It was a phenomenon- a spontaneous movement of like minded people all seemingly making the same changes at about the same time. It was amazing to read and to learn that we weren’t the only ones. It was a unique migration — if you will.

A Generous Orthodoxy was a similar story.

Two years ago I made a list of some groups and Christian schools of thought that I hoped to have a conversation with and dialogue about the direction that the church could go. I had grown tired of the partisan arguing between denominations and dogmas of my youth. I knew I wanted to go a different direction. I made this list and said somehow we need to frame the conversation in a way that both Pentecostals who believe that every one who is filled with the Spirit can speak in tongues – and Dispensationalist who think that speaking in tongues died at the end of the apostolic age (when the apostles died) can both be in the conversation.

I’m tired of one group saying that the other group aren’t Christians
or real Christians.

I wanted to have a dialogue between those whose roots go back to the 18th century and John Wesley in England who believe in free will – and of those whose roots go back to the 17th century and John Calvin’s Dutch and Swiss context who don’t believe in free will.

It was a long list.

Six months ago I was part of a conversation between a group that believed not just in the virgin birth but in the immaculate conception (which, for those of you who don’t know isn’t about Jesus Conception but Mary’s conception because later it was thought that she also needed to be conceived this way in order to be without sin otherwise she would have passed it on to Jesus) and another group who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and was sinless but did not believe in a virgin birth for him – that is something that was added quite a bit later. It was added they said because of the belief in that day that sin came through the father’s seed in the sex act and so there needed to be no semen in order for Jesus to have been sinless. There was a third group that was saying it didn’t matter either way – that the virgin birth was not essential for what happened on the cross and in eternity. The first group said it was essential for it was in the Bible and if you don’t believe it then you don’t believe the Bible – that you can not just pick and choose what to believe and what not to. the second group pointed out that the Prodigal Son of Luke 15 was in the Bible and that it was not literal. It was a parable too.

SO you can see that this is a real pickle. I think that the conversation about the virgin birth is a really good conversation. But it’s not going to work if it causes one group to say that the other group isn’t Christians and for the other group to say that the first group are not real Christians but mindless sheep following blindly superstitions of the past.

Part of the problem is that, for so many of us, we no longer have the structures of the past to decide who’s right. We don’t live in an age of the state sponsored church and the church sponsored state. It was easier (in one sense) when to be German was to be Lutheran, or to be English enrolled to in the church of England, were being Dutch meant you were part of the Dutch Reformed Church or for Russians the Russian Orthodox Church. That list could go on and on but you get my point.

So who is going to decide who’s in? The optimist in me hopes that this post-denominational era give us the opportunity to erase some of the old battle lines. The pessimists in me is afraid that we are more fractured than ever before and there is no venue to have this conversation and no unifying authority. Obviously I believe in the power and presence of Holy Spirit. Only the gentle dove is not coercive but invitational, not dominating but participatory and relational. I don’t know what that means to the conversation.

And that is scary. Because there are some big things on horizon!

I was part of a conversation between a group who says that homosexuality is a biblical sin. The other group was saying that those six verses sprinkled throughout the Bible are not about sexual orientation but about an act that we would all still be against.* There was a third group saying that as we explore the human genome, if it turns out that sexual orientation is genetic we are going to have to change how we be those six verses.

Now my only point in all of this is that we can’t afford to have one group saying that the other group, because of this belief, is not Christians and are “out” of the conversation. I am hoping for a construct and a framework so that all three groups get to be “in” the conversation.

This would be the case for those who believe that the world was created 6-10,000 years ago in 6 – 24 hour periods. It would also include those who believe that every ancient tribe had its own origin stories that were told as these epic poems and that what we have recorded in Genesis is simply the Hebrew’s version of it. We would also include those who are agnostics on the issue and say that it isn’t one of the criteria for a relationship with Christ and his Church.

This would be the same for those who believe that we live in the End Times and that Jesus is coming back soon. It would also include those who think that apocalyptic writing was part of a lost genre and that it was a political view of the Roman empire and it has nothing to do with our time – that there is no end of the world. We would also include those who say that there’s no way we can know so let’s not make it an issue.

This would enable people who think that the Bread and the Wine actually become the body and blood of the Lord to take communion with those say that it remains Bread and Wine but that we take it by faith to be those things – as well as – those who say that the Bread and the Wine are symbols that remind us of the broken body and spilled blood. Then Jesus’ prayer in John 17 could be heard and all three groups could be ‘one’ at the Table of the Lord.

My hope is that like “Crunchy Cons” that I am not the only one and this is instead a global desire to move in a direction and that like “a Generous Orthodoxy” we find this attitude.

to listen to the Podcast of this click here

* If you study household codes of the time, you will see that it is what we would call ‘statutory rape’ or something similar that we have legal words for. Remember that things are often lost in translation and that homosexuality is the English word that comes with it’s own baggage. The Hebrew and Greek words are different.

0

>God isn’t who we thought

>God isn’t who we thought- 3 problems with the Big 5 God:

1.When we make God too big and too pure and too heavenly – the Incarnation becomes impossible. It just doesn’t make sense how God could have bridged that gap. Maybe it’s not that we’ve made good too big but that we have over emphasized the gap between Spirit & Matter, Heaven and Earth, God & the Creation.

2.If that God is all powerful then he is not all loving. And if he is all loving then he is not all powerful – and no amount talk bout ‘mystery’ or ‘tension’ is going to cut it. Sunday school answers about just ‘trusting that He knows what is best’ don’t work in the face of the atrocities that we saw in the 20th century. Either we outgrew that god, or he died or he isn’t who we thought he was.

3.Even if we do believe in that old concept of God (and keep in mind – I am not talking bout the God of the Bible. I am talking about the God that emerged in the first three centuries around Christ and continued to evolve throughout church history). If we do stick with that God then we have to address the the obvious question: where did he go? He hasn’t done much in a while. Maybe after Jesus and the writing of the Bible his work was done and now it is up to us to figure it out. Maybe technology, education and civilization steal his powers and he can only work where those things are not.

Now of course – and I hope that this is obvious – I don’t believe that. I believe in God and God’s present work in the world. But this concept of God is incoherent and irrational as well as impractical in the modern world. I don’t mind taking things by faith. I am a person of faith. But I am not going to use the ‘Faith’ card on something that is nothing more that a poorly conceived construct.

The thing that I want tell you, in the way of good news, is that Deconstruction is not Destruction or Demolition. It is simple admitting that we need a new model and getting about the business at hand.

And I think that maybe a good place to start is making sure that the one we call ‘God’ is that one that Jesus called ‘Abba’.

Next time… we go for it: let’s just have it out and tackle the question – is God strong or weak? and then we get on with it.

OK – so there it is in the new format. Short and sweet. I jammed it into a couple of short paragraphs!

If you want to stick around for Overtime -I will unpack it a little bit and flesh it out. But there you have the seed here and the framework.
___________________________

Overtime: the old style big Essay (or just go to post a comment at the bottom)

I know that it is a new year so I hate to start it with a negative but I have some unfinished business from the past year. So…

I want to start this year with a confession.
I don’t believe in this configuration of God: Omni-potent, Omni-present, Omniscient, Impassable, Immovable.
It doesn’t matter whether you call him the God of the Creeds, the God of Church History, the God of Orthodoxy or of ‘Classic Christianity’. It’s just not who I pray to, who I sing about or who I participate with… not when it’s configured like that.
And here is why. Here are my 3 big problems with the Big 5 God.

The Incarnation becomes an Impossibility.
When we focus too much on God’s transcendence, try to make God too big and too ‘Other’ we paint ourselves into a corner and it actually become logistically impossible for Jesus to have come in the flesh! When we talk about God in too grandiose terms we often borrow for Gnostic language and say that ‘God can nothing to do with this sinful world’ and then someone says ‘what about jesus ? If he was fully God and fully man, how did he bridge this massive gap that you have set up?’ And the answer that is given rings hollow. “It is a Mystery.” Now listen , I am ALL about mystery and the mystical and the supernatural… but I object to using ‘mystery’ to defend our illogical and incongruent conceptions of God.

Which brings me to my second point…

Theodicy – “a response to the problem of evil in the world that attempts logically, relevantly and consistently to defend God as simultaneously omnipotent, all loving and just despite the reality of evil.”
In the past this has been a real problem. If God is all powerful and God is loving and he’s just then why is he evil allowed to persist? And this IS a real problem. I just have two quick thoughts about this:
The 20th century was brutal for God. Not only did he take a beating in the classroom (and sometimes in the courtroom) but he was often nowhere to be found outside of evangelical and Pentecostal worship services. But in a very real sense we saw a what evils people were capable of in the name of God. In movements like the the Nazis of Germany, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia ( Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia) and the god-soaked language of African atrocities in Darfure a(not to mention the cults of Jonestown and the Brach Davidians among countless others) we saw little difference from the godless regimes of Communist Russia, the Fascist, the Totalitarians and the Utopians. God was seemed to make little difference is how we treated enemies, combatants
We have much better ways to think about this now! Ya know – we are not limited to the way is that they thought about God in the second and third centuries. We are not limited to the constructs of the plagues any crusades of the 1100’s. we aren’t not limited to the constraints in thought of the 16th and 17th century. This is a new day. And there are much better options now for thinking about how the universe is constructed and how reality functions, how history progresses and where humanity participates.

Theodicy is a problem of constructs and conceptions of the past. when you beef God up too much and over-inflate your portrayal of your conception, you have to come back and defendant at construct when things don’t go well. We have concepts and frameworks now that incorporate the evils of things like the second world war and the atrocities of the 20th century into a working configuration that integrates the presence of evil with the way of the world actually works and the belief in a loving God. We are not limited by the way people have thought about and talked about God in the past. There is a progressive, emerging, innovative and thoughtful way to approach this.

The old God is nowhere to be found.
This is perhaps my biggest problem with the old big 5 God. He hasn’t done anything in a while. Either he did some really cool stuff in the Bible and then he retired, or he is a regional deity that can do cool things with the weather and some miraculous things in a very small locations with small groups of people.
People who voraciously defend the literalness of the Bible run into a problem if they do not have those kind of experiences to detail of biblical proportion. If you want to say that the kind of things that we read about in the Bible literally happen, that’s fine. But there had better be a self validating expression and experience that coincides with it. It does no one any good to have a passionate defense of the literalness of the biblical account if there are no self validating evidences in the community. Some people split history into dispensations and say well that was then and this is now, and that really happened then but it’s not going to happen now. So that’s kind of a dead-end. Apparently the big five God changed. After he did his big impressive stuff he retired into some recess of the universe — having written a bestseller with the Bible he had enough to live on for the rest of history. but these people usually come back and say “God never changes – he is the same yesterday today and forever” so that gets confusing. because while God never changes apparently his interaction with the world does. He doesn’t change but the times do. So the fact is hard to figure out.
Other people say that everything we read about in the book of acts is available to us today. But the really awkward question quickly surfaces. Why do so many of this god’s miracles seem to happen in places of poverty, no electricity and little education. Is it that he prefers these out-of-the-way places where people haven’t figured out not to believe in God yet or is it that way electricity & education show up his power diminishes.

I’m not trying to be a jerk here. I believe in God. I believe in the miraculous. I believe in Jesus and the Gospel of grace. I am a believer. What I am saying is that our conceptions of God from the third century the 11th century and the 16th century may not work for us in the modern era. We live in “ a world come of age” and our conception of God has to grow up too. we live in a world that is progressing and changing and evolving into something that it has never been before. Our faith has the capacity to speak to, interact with and to learn from that world in a way that is mutually edifying and empowering. But that will not happen if we insist on remaining and reinforcing these constructs and conceptions of God of centuries past.

Here’s my bottom line: it hasn’t worked to bring about either the world we hope for or the one that we promised in our message. We have, up with lots of ways to explain it away – most of these focus on human sinfulness,the fallenness of mankind or the work of the devil.

The only thing that I can tell you in the way of good news is that Deconstruction is not Destruction or Demolition. It is simple admitting that we need a new model and getting about the business at hand.

And I think that maybe a good place to start is making sure that the one we call ‘God’ is that one that Jesus called ‘Abba’.

OK – I just needed to get that off my chest. and now I can move on and get down to the task at hand!!

Next time we go for it: let’s just have it out and tackle the question – is God strong or weak? and then we get on with it.

0

>God’s Weakness in Haiti

>This is a conversation that I was having at the Website with Dan

Dan:
I find the conversation here at Everyday Theology very helpful and incredibly interesting.  Before I ask my questions though, let me say, as gently as possible:  God is not the author of death.  He is not sending anyone a message through the earthquake in Haiti.  If there is a spiritual component to this horrible event it originated in Hell, not Heaven.  Don’t worry, the Pat Robertson’s of the world will continue to marginalize themselves by saying anti-Christian things like his latest, until no one is listening to him anymore.

I do however have a couple of unresolved questions.  ET says that this disaster was caused by shifting tectonic plates and unresolved poverty.  Yes, this is the vehicle through which death was delivered.  But I do believe that there is a spiritual component to this event.  I am not sure what it is, but I suspect it has something to do with Satan’s desire to kill, steal and destroy and my failure as a follower of Jesus to bring redemption to the people of Haiti.  Is there a spiritual component to this disaster?

Second question:  While Jesus displayed a glaring lack of human power he did display an incredible amount of heaven’s power (healing sick, feeding the hungry, raising the dead and so forth).  While the weakness of Jesus has got me thinking about what the Gospel really is and how it is totally and utterly opposed to empire, I still see a power offered to his disciples that inserted the impossible into human tragedy.  Where does this authority over sickness and death fit in this emerging theology?

Me: – wow. you have quickly gotten to the heart of the matter. I really like what you said in your first paragraph. Powerful statements.

First question: I can only tell you what I think. I think that the tectonic plates are ‘natural’ in origin. I think that the systemic poverty is ‘human’ in origin. and I think that IF there is anything ‘spiritual’ that it is people’s response to tragedy and hurt. Christ’s body reaching out, holding the hurting, healing wounds and reaching into the wound.

second question – this is a tough one. I want to believe. I do not want to be a cynic. If we have the power to raise people from the dead and heal the sick, why are we not flying ‘miracle teams’ over there to raise the dead and heal the sick? IF EVER we were going to step up into an ACTS like authority and take ‘dominion’ (as someone else has said) then THIS would certainly be the time do that!! The world is watching – it would be publicized on GLOBAL TV. The world would SEE and BELIEVE.

please understand me. I have seen miracles. I believe. I just don’t know that it is predictable enough to ‘go public’ with it. I think that we:
1) show up
2) love without condition or judgment
3) serve
4) pray and see what happens.
That really is the best I have right now. I mean, if you feel called to get on an airplane and fly down … or better yet – just pray from where you are that the dead in Haiti will get up and start to tell of God and his power, you can do that right now.

I am just saying that I do not think that is that way it works. I think that God is weak. I think that God loves weakness. I think that God works in our weakness. That is why I think we go (in weakness) and serve (in our weakness) and embrace others weakness and that is how God is made manifest, in our weakness.

1

>3 ways to think of God

>The Simple Way to talk of God

Some things are complicated. Admittedly, this is not always fun or desirable. It is so nice sometimes when things are simple: like There is one God. Some like to say “there is no name under heaven or earth by which men can be saved” .Or as our ancestors said “Hear oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one”. Or like our religious cousins say “There is no God but one and this is his prophet”.
And we see that even amongst the Abrahamic faiths, this one simple confession has already made things unimaginably complicated.

I have to admit, I think that it is better if things are realistically reflective of how complicated and complex things really are! I don’t think that it serves anyone when we overly simplify something that is, by necessity, complex. Like when we say ‘pray this little prayer and you will go to heaven’ or that “grace is the free gift of God” without mentioning that the free gift will cost you everything – like a free download that once downloaded unzips itself and re-formats your entire hard drive, replaces your operating system and deletes all your favorite files. ( That, by the way, is what most people refer to as a virus – but that is for another day)

But today is about the Name of God, or should I say the Names of God. This is one of those areas that you do not want to over simplify and that we do a great disservice to by boiling it down to a bare minimum. There is such richness is a study of the multiplicity of Names for God – even just those that are found in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

Three quick groupings of these:

First, there a number of lists and resources that will show you a whole array of these names. Some will catalogue the Hebrew names for God is Scripture – Jehovah, Elohim, Adoni, Ancient of Days, Jehovah Jireh, etc. Some will detail names for Jesus or titles he inherited in our ‘old’ Testament. These a great photo albums of different snapshots of God’s story.
The only thing to be mindful of is that they are lifted out of a narrative and are thus missing their context that so often gives them their meaning.

Second grouping is Titles that we know well but may not know where they come from. For instance, many people know that Jesus is called both the Son of God and the Son of Man. But it is helpful to ask ‘Is Jesus the only person called the Son of God” and the answer is ‘No’. Many people in the Bible are called Son of God. It was a political term and it turns out that Israel may have borrowed it from Egypt, Babylon or Rome – all of which had it in their records before it shows up in Israel and we know that Israel had contact with these places.
The Son of Man, though is interesting because it is a prophetic title that Jesus borrows from the book of Daniel and other Hebrew writings that are not in our canon. Jesus uses it so many different ways and if you only did a study that focused on that phrase, you would probably learn so much and have such a developed picture of how Christ embraces it’s many facets.

The third grouping is phrases or ideas that are lost in translation. They are concepts that did not come over when the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic transitioned to English. It’s like how there are seven Greek words in the New Testament for love , but in the KJV, New American and NIV they all come out simply as ‘love’.

Well, there are all sorts of interesting words left back in the pre-translation texts like for instance ‘Wisdom’ words like Hokma in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek, or how Spirit in Hebrew is Ruach. The interesting thing in these examples, as in many other places, is that these words of feminine. The fact that in the original language used in the texts of scripture has both Spirit and Wisdom not just with feminine words but contain feminine word pictures and concepts.

It may be helpful to recognize that other things have been lost in translation too and some of them contain gender issues. The phrase ‘help mate’ is often used of the relationship of Eve to Adam or of a wife to her husband. The word is ‘paraclete’. This phrase though only occurs one other time in scripture. The other time, it is about God. Holy Spirit is promised to us as a ‘Helper’. That word is a God word and reflects God’s relationship to us: Helper.

So, no – things are not simple. But, if you embrace that complexity, you can actually emerge into a place where there is great clarity and perspective. It won’t be any simpler , but it will more accurately reflective the complicated nature of the reality that we are dealing with.


Say God three times

I got permission to pick out two clips of a conversation between Elizabeth Johnson (author of “She Who Is”) and Tripp Fuller (of Homebrewed Christianity) to help us really appreciate the classic formulation of the Triune God .

We listen to Elizabeth Johnson and take the opportunity and say God’s name 3 times in 3 different ways.

God beyond us
God with us and
God within us

John 14:16-18
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth … you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Dancing with God

One of my favorite pictures of the relationship of the Trinity ( the Triunes Godhead if you prefer) – is found in a word picture that pre-dates the formulation of our New Testament. It is called the Perichoresis (it is popular in the Eastern tradition and dates back before the 4th century but it was not the preferred picture of the Three Fold nature of God for the Roman West and thats why so many of us Protestants have never heard of it) and I have to tell you – it has revolutionized my prayer life, my Bible reading and my view of society.

The term Perechoresis comes from two words: Peri (where we get our word perimeter) and from the same word that we get Choreograph from. So Perichoresis means that dance of God or the movement of God and it is a picture of the relationship that is a little different than the Father sitting on the throne, the Son at his right side and the Holy Spirit doing all of the work. It is not static – it is dynamic and full of motion.

One of things you will run into in early church history is that there are hundreds of ways to picture the Trinity incorrectly. There were so many councils and creeds that tried to address all of the wrong ways to picture this and talk about. It you read a theological dictionary you will find names and titles for all sorts of errors and heresies regarding these formulations. You are not allowed to say that the Son proceeded from the Father or that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and Son. They all have to be equal. The Son was begotten but not made and comes from the same substance as the Father but is not the same person. You can not say that they are 3 substances in one person but you have to be careful with them being one substance in 3 persons. On could go on and on about how complicated and complex this is, but suffice to say that when you are done with the whole exercise… you want to be left with more than a Organizational chart detailing the hierarchy of the Godhead.

That is why I love Perichoresis. It has movement – is sees God as a divine Community – as Relationship in it’s purest and best and that for which all other relationships are but shadows and reflections. It is the fountain from which all our expectations for community flow and the source of our relational expectations.

Here then is how it works:

It is coordinated dance (choreography) around the perimeter. It is each member taking it’s turn to move into that central place and then deferring of defaulting to the others. It is the Father saying “this is my son” then the son saying “I do only that which I receive from my father” and of the spirit “I will send you another who will teach you all things” and Spirit calling back to our memory “everything that Jesus said”.

It is the humility and patience of God to not occupy that central place and to rotate and turn around the others, moving to allow the other a place to come and be central. It is a chance to prefer and find importance in other. I love this picture. It speaks to me. It moves my soul. It inspires me to community and relationship.

It want to take it further, you can go ahead and ask the question. If they are moving around the outside (the perimeter) then what is in the middle?
And that is the question. What is in the middle? If you know me and how I construct these essays – you can probably guess.
It is Sophia. The wisdom of God for humanity is that place. But here is the thing: It is not an empty space. It is actually a pregnant place, for it is the womb. It is Mary saying “may it be unto me as you have said” in daring response to the initiation of God. It is place that the Bride is held. It is not an empty space but a place of possibility and potential. The womb is where the knowledge of God is born. Sophia.

Isn’t that an amazing picture? It is such a gorgeous metaphor for the moving of God. For humble community and dynamic relationship.

So, In closing. I just want encourage you to try something new. That might be researching the Names of God, or the background of just one of the Names.

Or, you might trying what Elizabeth Johnson suggested and try saying God three times each time you invoke the Name in prayer : God who is beyond us – God who is with us – God who is within us.

Or, you might close your eyes and let images of God dance in your head and in your heart as they move and turn and dip and recede in coordinated humility and preference. You may even want to go that extra step and incorporate the picture of the womb, the ministry of Spirit as ‘Helpmate’ , Jesus’ mother heart or God as She.

We end where we began: this is not simple and trying to make it so is dangerous. It is messy and necessarily complicated – just like life and exactly like faith

0

>Opening Thoughts

>

Analogy

Every Spring I use to take an extended backwoods Canoe trip in a remote part of the Adirondack mountains. We would start on one body of water and navigate through several connectors over the next few days. One night we would stay on this big island and the next morning we would cross our biggest lake of the trip. We had a saying ‘ the wind always blows against you on Lowes lake” which of course was really saying two things: the wind always blows on Lowes lake and secondly, it is always against you.

When you reach the far shore of Lowes lake, which takes a while, you get to rest for a minute and collect yourself before you put your canoe up on your shoulders and hike it – an old move called portaging – to the next body of water. We would camp at Big Deer pond and inevitably the conversation that night would invariably turn to how difficult that portage was and how short it was compared to the one that was waiting the next day.

The next day was quite a haul and in the middle of the portage there was this ascent called ‘Heart Break Hill’ where you plateaued and had a relatively flat walk the rest of the way. Fatigue would set in and other members of your group would help you out or rotate in to give your shoulders a break. By the end of the day you were able to set down your canoe and pack on the shores of the Oswegatchie river. This was new fresh water. You would be paddling with the current now and you were now fishing for native Brook Trout instead of Bass. These were legal to keep for dinner and there aren’t many things that taste as good as fire roasted trout after an exhausting day with a group of trusted buddies.

This helps me think of two things about our conversation. The first is that I designed year one of Everyday Theology based on the pace and geography of that canoe trip. I tried to sketch it out – where to push hard, where to camp for awhile and when to pick up our vehicle and portage it up to new water – all in keeping with the layout and topography of that backwoods adventure. This means, of course, that in our little analogy we have finished the trek to the Oswegatchie and this begins the next leg of our journey.

The second thought is that as nice as it is to be in the new water and as thankful as we might be to have the heavy work behind us… we still have our same canoes and paddles. Our vehicle has not changed. But while we will still paddle in roughly the same manner, since we are flowing with the current our pace and technique will change a bit. Our tone is a little more casual. We are still doing the same activity, we are just in a different environment. But with that change in environment comes a new stroke: the backstroke. Out on the big open water you don’t want to lose any forward energy so back strokes are generally less desirable. But over here it is pretty essential. The current will do much of the work for you as long as you navigate and negotiate well. Read the current, watch for obstacles, mind the shore… and it will go well.

This analogy fits here well for me. I see the current direction of the world – globalization, technology & media as well as the information age- heading in a pretty clear direction. This strong current pulls us along and we want to navigate and negotiate it well. Some people of faith want to fight the current in order to preserve or conserve the past. I think that is a losing battle – in fact, I’m not even sure it is the good fight that it is often portrayed to be. No, I don’t want to combat the age we find ourselves in – I am interested in where it leads and if it can deliver us to the place that we are all called to in the end. History only flows in one direction. You can not live in the past. You can live in today only as long as today. The current keeps flowing , always in that one direction : forward. The past is passed and while part of it was great… it is certainly has been a mixed bag. God has been involved in the process of history, but it moves forward.

Theology is our vehicle, conversation is our paddle and culture is our stream.

I’m looking forward to the journey.

______________

Here then are some things that came with us from the first leg

Opening thoughts:

I typed up (over on the main Podcast page) that “Navigating in a liquid culture takes some unique tools.

Narrative Theology pushes us away from bullet points and propositions only.

Developing an every day theology takes an thoughtful addressing of the intersection and integration of modern Biology , Psychology, Philosophy … and even Cosmology.

There is a way to do it, however.

When people say Theology they often mean the History of Theology.

We don’t.

We mean the expression of content in a context. All content happens in a context. Historical expressions will be considered and addressed. Some will be applauded and approved even adopted. Others might be best left in their own day.

We live in a world of massive change. If we approach this exponential situation with a debate about incremental adjustments – or worse yet : classical formulations – it probably won’t result in what we hope it will.

I love that famous Einstein quote:

“ the kind of thinking that will solve the world’s problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place.”

– Albert Einstein

The difference between a tree and a river

“We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the center: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a river but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as the increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.” – C.S. Lewis

So while our allegory is a river our experience is more like a tree and this is why we are humble in our conversation and dialogue about the ‘other’ and their perspective and experience. This propensity toward diversity and multiplicity requires it.

_______

Big point:

I hope that people don’t think that I am just being fancy for that sake of being fancy. Or that we are being innovative as an end in itself. Or that we are obsessively updating as a fun little experiment or trivial hobby or out of fear of being shunned as unintelligent troglodytes who believe in superstitions of the past.

If someone misses what I am suggesting here then they will probably not get what we are up to or why we are doing what we are doing. So let me be really clear about this. I am suggesting three things:

– The recent centuries have seen massive innovations in the areas of Biology, Psychology, Philosophy and Meta-physics. Maybe it’s time to update our Theology too. I don’t want to cling to classic formulations of the past for the sake of tradition only or for fear of veering from orthodoxy. If something is right and true and can stand up on it’s own merit, I willing to believe it no matter when it first came into formulation as I am willing to move on from something that doesn’t stand up regardless of who has in the past believed it or for how long it’s been believed. In the Brand New Day ideas either hold water or they don’t – and if we want to take something by faith that is fine. But let’s be clear that is what is happening and not promote the facade that this is reasonable when in fact it is simply historic tradition. Intellectual honesty and humility needs to mark our way forward.

– One of the great advantages to the post-modern framework is that it can handle – more than that , it helps facilitate – the multiplicity of options, perspectives and positions. That means that it is going to be essential that we frame our conversation and label our categories with broad enough boundaries and big enough regions that family members from other ‘camps’ or ‘tribes’ can be included in the territory. There are some people who calls themselves Christians who are seeing modern day miracles (even old style signs and wonders). There are also believers who do not believe in the breaking of physical laws of nature – they do not believe in the miraculous. They think that it is scientifically inviable. There are other believers who think that the miracles did literally happen in the days of the Bible but that those ceased in the change of ages. Here is the thing : they are all Christians. The days of drawing up the boundaries in ways that one group classifies the other as ‘outside’ the faith needs to be over. If we want to have conversation and even disagreements, that is fine. What we can no longer do is ostracize and vilify those in other camps. We are all a part of the same family. The big wacky wooly family of God. There are going to be those in the family that think that the world was created in 6 days Six thousand years ago and others who are going believe that God has superintended a process that has taken Millions of years. They are both part of the family. There are going to be those who think that Homosexuality is a sin and those that think God ordains it and that those 3 passages in the Bible are not about sexual orientation but about a distinct act that we still need to vigilant against. They are both members of the family and as heated as the debate might be, we cannot disqualify or disown each other from what only God is in charge of. We are going to have to change the way that we frame this conversation if we want it to go differently that it has in the past.

– There are parts of our tradition that are rich and wonderful and we want to embrace them, fulfill them and promote them. Not all of church history is admirable but neither is it all antiquated relics and superstitions. We want to honor and adopt those things that draw us forward to living authentically in our day while acknowledging those that have come before us. We obviously want to be careful that we don’t fall into thoughtless rhetoric, mindless obedience and empty ritual. We all kind of agree that religious ceremony that is absent of the power that it is suppose to represent is pretty hollow. We want to do things – not just because they were done in the past – but because they are worth doing today.

To recap:

– We need to update our Theology to incorporate innovations in Biology, Psychology and Philosophy.

– We need to draw bigger boundaries and more inclusive circles because believers who believe very different things can both be Christians. There is not just one way to believe that qualifies as legitimate.

– We need to be wise about integrating the parts of our tradition or heritage that are worth embracing. There are parts of the past that just need to stay in the past.

So that is our initial plunge into the new water.

Feel free to post on the Blog, email me personally or chat in the Facebook discussion room.

Oh, and one last thing: we also have a saying about being on the river “bye all means necessary, stay upright – do whatever it takes – just DO NOT TIP” and I think that applies here. Sometimes the waters are turbulent and the current is scary strong… I understand why people’s faith gets a little tippy (this is an official Canoe word – I think) and they want to get out of the boat. But let’s just remind each other once in a while -especially if we see some danger up ahead or notice someone having a tough go of it – “Stay upright , do whatever it takes – just DoN’T TiP”

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑