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More on Pagan Christianity
I think I need to go back and explain in (more) depth my disagreement with Viola and Barna (V/B) and some of the tone laid out in Pagan Christianity. As I said before, the tone seemed to be one of “Unless things are like they were in the Early Church, they should not be in practice today.” While in some cases, our lost “sight” of “the way things were” has indeed hurt us, so will doing things simply because they “were.”
I’m reminded of the story that Pete Rollins tells in one of his books (I think it’s Fidelity of Betrayal, but it could be How (not) to Speak of God), about the Rabbi who ties the cat to the tree because the cat screeches while the Rabbi is trying to teach. After the Rabbi dies the community continues to tie the cat to the tree, as the act has now become habit. That cat dies and the community, now having moved habit into tradition finds another cat to replace the original, and the line continues until the tying of a cat to a tree becomes orthodoxical for services. What was once done out of the expediency of the moment has become a cumbersome system complete with it’s own rituals and requirements.
In this same way, if we were to do certain things simply because they Early Church did them that way (I guess I should state I’m speaking only in regards to how we conduct our assemblies services) then we fill ourselves with cumbersome material which actually inhibits our understanding. For example, the practice of only meeting in the homes of other members is nowhere mandated by the Bible, yet it was a practice committed (According to V/B) during the Early Church years. (On a side note, I have heard it also stated that early assemblies met in catacombs and in synagogues, so I’m not sure about V/B’s historical account here). If we were to only hold our assemblies in the homes of members today, when other space is available more suiting to the needs of the community, then we encumber ourselves with needless ritual.
On the other hand, with a practice such as the Lords Supper, an embrace of Early Church forms and rituals would be most beneficial. As V/B state, the historical Lords Supper, or at least during the Early Church years, was actually a feast in which the poor and the rich would dine together in a common bond of Christ. Having forgotten that the Bible is in fact a book written for the oppressed and (**mostly) by the oppressed, the insistence that the Lords Feast be shared by all would likely do the Church a fair amount of good.
The largest issue we’re presented with is a cultural chage from the first several centuries AD (or CE if you’d prefer) to the current age. While practices committed in the Early Church indeed made sense for them, in many cases blindly clinging to such practices today would be detrimental to the health of the Church. The key is not in simply doing things the way the Early Church did them, but instead understanding why the Early Church did them in such ways.
This same understanding should in turn be applied to each incarnation of the church throughout the centuries. A fundamentalist would do well in understanding why (s)he does things the way (s)he does, instead of simply doing them because that is how they have been done. In that same way, those who would state that we must do things the way the Early Church did them should take a look at the whys, lest they practice a form of fundamentalism themselves. A decent heaping of deconstruction would do us all a fair load of good when it comes to the way we do things, as well as a cultural understanding of how things need to be tweaked in order to better affect the world in which we find ourselves.
The understanding of cultural shifts, and the need to adjust in order to best work (both) within (and without) those shifts is imperative to the effectiveness of the Church. It is this same thought process in which Emergent (and to a larger extent the emerging church) must operate. So, again, I am lead to disagree with the underlying statement in Pagan Christianity which would lead us to this quasi-fundamentalism.
Letters from the future (pt-1)
Hey Matt, have you read this new letter from Focus on the Family? It’s a fictionalized letter from a Christian in the year 2012. Normally when one thinks of 2012 they remember all the talk of the end of the world, with the way this letter is written one might think that the world did indeed end, or at least for one portion of the population of the US.
You see, right now there’s a race going on, a race in which many evangelicals are becoming disheartened with the political party that has held their sway for decades. This sway is certainly scaring those in charge of both the party, and those with whom the party has place “in charge” of the evangelicals. With little over a week left until the election, both the party and the evangelical leaders are fearful losing this election.
These evangelical “leaders” decided that the best way to win an election was to continue the fear mongering that the party they are aligned with has begun. This letter is a “fictionalized” account of what may come should the Muslim Obama win the election.
What do you think, Matt?
An Evangelical Mind
Oh and the steeple people
Oh they’re so happy not knowing you.
So boldly do they pervert your truth.Oh did they think we wouldn’t grow up
Did they think we couldn’t throw back up
The sour milk they been pouring down out throats
-Sour Milk by Wild Sweet Orange
If you use Hulu, perhaps you’ve watched the new movie they have up, Crawford. The movie is an interesting look at the effect that W had when he moved into the town. Throughout the movie, there are various interviews with townspeople, one of which is the Pastor of the local Baptist church. In the first interview with the guy, he’s wearing a spongebob squarepants tie which immediately makes you want to give him a hug and smile at him, but, this pastor makes one of the two worst statements in the movie. (I’ll probably delve into the second quote in a later post).
While discussing the end times, the pastor makes the following statement:
There is gonna continue to be wars and rumors of wars, and at some point, I believe, there will be an Armageddon that be will kind of the end, the end to end all ends. So that’s the bad news, the good news is um, most people believe that the second coming of Christ will precede that, and so, scripture says “Those dead in Christ will meet him in the air,” and uh I can’t envision that. Um, I’ve seen artists work where you see all these cars careen off the road because the drivers are now gone because he’s come a second time. You see all of this catalytic stuff going on, cataclysmic, that’s going on and on. There will be a final conflict, but I won’t see it.
Did you catch it? He mentioned the good news. Well… sort of. The good news to him was “Stuff’s gonna happen, real bad stuff, but guess what… it won’t happen to me.” It’s this subtle sense of “I’m going to be vindicated, and boy you’ll be sorry you didn’t listen to me when that happens.”
This travesty goes on in evangelical circles all the time, the idea that, “In the end, we’ll be proven right and others will suffer for not believing so, we’re better than they are,” is possibly one of the most damaging things that goes on in modern Christianity. How can anyone see this sort of elitism (maybe it’s not elitism, elitists normally earn their status, evangelicals simply assume that they have that status) and not be turned off by the ideals behind it? I’m fairly certain that Christ didn’t laugh on the cross and say “Ha- I’m going to be living in glory and paradise in eternity while you are suffering through eternal torment and suffering.” There was not this idea of gloating involved.
I’m not saying that all evangelicals are like this. I can look back on my evangelical days and remember I was never quite thrilled with the idea that anyone would go to hell, nor with the idea of a Pre-Millenial Dispensationalist eschatological world view. These things never quite did it for me, but I can also remember times when I did, in fact, think to myself “I’ll be right in the end, you’ll see,” just not quite with the malice that I feel is evident when someone says “The good news is, there will be suffering but I won’t be part of it.”
Perhaps your worldview involves the idea of a premillenial dispensation, where there will be a literal 7 year torment of all survivors (I would suggest you study Darby and where exactly the idea of PMD came from, maybe you’ll change your mind), I would implore you too look at your approach to how you look at others, and realize that when things are said like “The good news is….” when in fact the news you’re delivering is quite shitty for the rest of the world, you should probably chose a better phrase. Good news should be just that, the idea of reconcilliation, forgiveness, and the like, not eternal suffering, damnation, and anything else that angry fundamentalists tend to get off on.
Book Share: “Rescuing the Bible from Frundamentalism
I had to take a break from all of my reading do focus on school, but some events over the past week have taken that pressure off of me (I may delve into those at a later date, but not now) and I’m again able to spend my free time reading for pleasure.
This new found free time ended up in a trip to Borders where I got a few books for the next few weeks. The first one I am diving into is "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" by John Shelby Spong. While I thought that "Misquoting Jesus" would be the most challenging book I ever read in regards to the way I look at the Bible, this book takes it several steps farther. I’m talking a complete smack in the face on how I think about things.
If you enjoyed “Misquoting Jesus” then I’ll say you certainly need to read through “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism,” and even if you don’t agree with all of it (I certainly don’t even a hundred pages into the book) it’s a needed read.
For now here are a few of my favorite quotes thus far.
"Those whose religious security is rooted in the literal Bible do not want that security distrubed. They are not happy when facts challenge their biblical understanding or when nuances in the text are introduced or when they are forced to deal with either contradictions or changing insights. The bible, as they understand it, shares in the permanence and certainty of God, convinces them that they are right, and justifies the enormous fear and even negativity that lie so close ot the surface in fundamentalistic religion. For biblical literalists, there is always an enemy to be defeated in mortal combat."
"There is always a danger in believing that you and your people are somehow God’s specially chosen. The obvious corollary is that your enemies are God’s specifically “unchosen,” and very soon they are thought of as God’s rejected…. Every nation, including the United States, when it operates under a theory of divine election or manifest destiny, can be especially distorted.”
"Unless theological truth can be separated from pre-scientific understandings and rethought in ways consistent with our understanding of reality, the Christian faith with be reduced to one more ancient mythology that will take its place alongside the religions of Mount Olympus. Those who insist on biblical literalism thus become accomplices in bringing about the death of the Christianity they so deeply love. Ironic though it may seem, the success of fundamentalism in many ways guarantees the death of the very things these Christian folk affirm.”
whose apologetics?
This has been on my mind for a couple weeks now, it was something that Becky and I talked about during one of our somewhat famous Taco Mac conversations (ok, they’re really not that famous, but we love them anyways, if anyone ever wants to join in just tell us, seriously, we’re starved for good conversation at times). We were talking about the upcoming “Truth Project” thing, as well as the previous apologetics lesson we had sat through, and she interposed something that severely bothered me (she has a tendency to do such things).
She stated, essentially, that to grasp a “true” apologetics course, then all sides should be discussed. I think we, at the time, were mostly discussing evolution, so this has some pretty deep ramifications. It would require those hosting said forum on apologetics acknowledge both sides of the argument, at least in their core, legitimate, which either side seems loathe to do.
We were not addressing, by the way, the issue of an atheistic perspective of evolution, but a wholly God inspired vision of evolution.
The question in my mind remains, is it really possible any sort of apologetics forum to host both sides of this particular issue? Would there be any church willing to legitimate both sides of the argument?
** This will seem kind of disjointed, but I began writing this two days ago, and after thinking about it, I’ve picked it back up. **
After giving it some time, I don’t really think it’s possible to really do this sort of things, at least in the normal church setting. I think within a smaller grouping context, IE a cohort, or house church, then such discussion would be possible, but I would seriously doubt both the willingness of any institutionalized church to do so, or the ability even if the desire was there.
So my question is then, would there be any benefit to this sort of thing? I’m really curious as to everyone’s thoughts on apologetics, so lets have it out.
misquoting jesus
**edit** So I completely misspelled misquoting. Wow… that’s just sad, and it took me two days to catch it!
So I finished the book today, it took me three and a half hours at the coffee house to knock out the last half of it (reading intermixed with eavesdropping on other conversations as well as occasionally looking something up online). Anyways, here’s my thoughts.
The book was great, well setup, accessible, and of course very thought provoking. I said thought provoking, which is not necessarily disturbing.
You see, while I have always recited the manta “Inerrant work of God,” I’ve questioned the idea of a perfect error free book. I guess the first contradiction I knew about is the one that made me begin to think about it, How did Judas die? (Hanging or throwing himself off a cliff?) Of course the first time I heard the question, the response was “The rope broke causing him to fall and have his guts gush out.”
Never quite did it for me.
Then of course there was the “apologetics” lesson provided to the college group at my church. That really didn’t solve it either, in fact it made me do a bit more research and question the whole thing even more. (I think it was intended to answer the question for us, and ensure that we wouldn’t have to go through the process of thinking through things on our own.)
Anyways, back onto Ehrman’s book. It’s chock full of information about various reasons the text was changed, various locations where the text was changed, and various ways in which scholars try to ascertain what the original text looks like.
While the information presented could be overwhelming, I’m honestly just not feeling it.
I believe we do have an adequate enough text with which we can understand enough about God and Jesus and essentially the faith. The place where Misquoting Jesus does throw some issues for me is in supplementary issues, like what I should use to teach off of and what I should study off of.
The most interesting part of the book was towards the end, where Ehrman discusses various reasons why scholars are believed to have changed the text due to other forms of Christianity springing up. The changes represented here would, to me, be the most likely to alter many beliefs we hold today.
Forgive me for it must seem like I’m glossing over the book, but I don’t want to get into too much detail because I think that the book should be read by everyone. If you’ve read it and want to talk about it I’m up for it, iChat me, or email me.
And as previously stated, I bought Timothy Paul Jones’ work “Misquoting Truth” today, and I’m looking to start reading it tonight or tomorrow, depending on the distraction level this evening. I’ll post my thoughts on it when I’m done.
As always, let’s hear your questions and thoughts.