Emerging With Focus

Amen, brother.

Interesting--certainly the church needs change, certainly we cannot throw away every tradition we've inherited.

I'd like to hear more about your thoughts, though, on knowing God. There's an inconsistency (politely, "tension") between your introduction and conclusion. You start out with authentic doubt "I don't know God. I'm an idiot if I think I know God," that makes your later assertion "God has let us know a few things about himself. Those things are written in stone" problematic--precisely because I don't see much about God observably written in stone like the way something like gravity or facial hair is.

What separates God's truth from man's? How do we know? What does it mean to wrestle with that problem? Pointedly, if the resurrection is true, what part of Jesus life before that can seem implausible?

"I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." ~ one of Paul's epistemological prayers, Ephesians 3

I agree with the opening of your essay. We think we know God, and we have tailored our God to fit our minds. The problem is that non of us comprehend God.

There is a danger in trying to experience God in our culture. Each culture has different ways of experiencing truth, and the church has to listen to those forms. The problem happens when Christian faith is diluted by cultural norms. Into culture Jesus spoke of Kingdom, and I pray that the emerging church is trying to speak that same message afresh.

Your perspective reminds me of my own; especially after reading "Your God is Too Small" by JB Phillips.
The fact is that only the facts matter and Christianity is more of a religion based on speculative faith than transformational facts.
The only fact that matters to me personally is that, once I gave complete control of my life to my Creator, I found that it resonated down to my very soul and made me want to finally find out all I could about my Creator. So I devoured Scripture like my life depended on it and found endless life-giving thought in what Christians call the "Word of God".
But now, ten years later, I find that I might know more than most about the Scriptures, but the more I know, the less significant I feel compared to the Almighty. Sure, I'm part of 'the family', but my illegitimacy still screams at me daily in this "hell-on earth" as I fail to do even the most basic and foundational task which Yeshua said summed up the entire Bible, that of loving my enemies.
Interesting that you would post a picture of Benny Hinn. I have, in the past, considered him an enemy because his message seems more self-serving than serving the cause of Christ. But now I just pray that people find the truth, regardless of the messenger; and I am sure they are.
You bring up several interesting points that could, if believers would allow it, help define the faith; but that cause most believers to question your faith and therefore negate your thinking. For instance, your question, ?Is there really no room in a biblical worldview for some aspects of evolution? Do we have to blind ourselves to the fact that the earth and the universe appear extremely old?? might cause many to discount your worldview just because you question a basic tenent of Christianity.
I might even say that we need to discuss one of your basic assumptions that "Jesus is the only way to God. Apart from him we have no chance." Is that true? If so, what happens to the millions who have never heard of Yeshua yet still live according to His teaching?
Has Christianity made abortion and homosexuality so horrible that they are the unpardonable sins?
Your comment: "Questions like these are questions the church hasn?t been brave enough to ask because they fear that if anything outside their worldview ends up being true, then that puts their whole belief system in trauma. It might all come tumbling down."
is very revealing about the fallen human nature that still remains in the believer after conversion. Maybe what needs to happen IS the collapse of all organized religion so that we can then get to the heart of what Yahweh intended in the Incarnation.
Yes, I also believe that "our beliefs are, for a lack of a better word, insane. (See I Corinthians 2:18-28)" But God's wisdom is so far above humankind's that we need to enter into a kind of insanity to begin comprehending it. An insanity that says to die in order to live...to be a slave in order to be free...to be a servant in order to be a prince.
Hating is murder; lusting is adultery; living, yet fruitless trees are cast into the fire. These all seem insane to the postmodern mind.
I see, for the most part, the church today as ineffective, complacent, self-serving, hypocritical, and blind. Therefore, I agree that "We need a new kind of Reformation. But the new things we pick up need to be much more than just different and interesting. They need to be true. We?ve got to wrestle, examine, bleed sweat and tears, and then find peace in the things that are God?s Truths." But I am convinced that these ever-elusive truths
can only be so if they lead us toward loving God and loving each other.

Your essay left me feeling a little sad.
I started to point by point pick apart the things I didnt agree with but then that never really helps the conversation.
So I began to think about what bothered me and it was the idea that we are mislead or misguided about God and I respectfully disagree with that. Sure the writers of the gospels made no effort to accomodate our misunderstanding of their culture, but that doesnt mean we will misunderstand all of it. We do have the Holy Spirit to teach us all truth and that seems to be the quest in your writing; the search for truth. Are televangelists true, will God truly send unbelievers to hell? That sort of stuff.

We all search for truth, when it is uncomfortable we water it down or justify our poor behavior as culturally acceptable.

Here is truth that has helped set me free from trying to know everything.

Jesus told us to love God with everything we have, heart, soul, and mind. Then as we do that we will naturally love other people.

Dont wait to love God until you understand Him because He is inhuman and you cant, totally. You can only experience Him as you give yourself away to Him. Then things like portions of evolution will cease to matter because they dont help you love anyone they just give you more things to argue about.

As we experience God we understand that His word is truth. All of it, and God is ultimately just. I'm not saying to stop thinking, I'm saying to stop thinking about things that dont help other people.

Most of the stuff you seem worried over really is just distraction. So get your love on and begin to care for folks, dont talk them into the kingdom love them in.

And remember Jesus let the rich young ruler walk away.

I really appreciate you writing on this topic, Stephen. I feel like the conflict between traditional and emerging views is taking place not just within the Church, but within my own head.

I was raised in a very conservative, Southern Baptist church. Sometimes I feel like my faith was handed to me like a pill to swallow, and questioning anything about it was unacceptable. Because of problems I had relating to people who disagreed with me, I began to vigourously question every aspect of my faith. In many ways, my parents indicated that I shouldn't associate with anyone who wasn't conservatively Christian, even though there is no clear indication to me that one end of the spectrum has everything figured out any better than the other end. In asking questions, I discovered that isolating myself from others wasn't loving them at all, but instead was rapidly turning me into a hypocrite.

I believe wholeheartedly that truth matters, and I believe that God gave us the ability to discern some truth for ourselves using our minds and our senses. But it is frustrating when it seems that our understanding of the Bible is hampered by so many obstacles, evidenced by the reality that Christians from different denominational backgrounds can disagree so vehemently on what scripture teaches.

I think it helps to remind ourselves to examine the life of Jesus, look to His example when relating to one another, listen to and apply his teachings to our own lives, and let His love flow out of us abundantly onto everyone we encounter, even if we disagree with one another on some things. I think someday we will know a much larger portion of truth than we now understand, but we don't any one of us know everything about God. So it would probably help if we stopped acting like it.

I am always going back and forth on various issues, because I am not sure if what I believe is actually the truth, how Jesus would respond to the situation. I've heard Christians provide persuasive reasons for and against the war. I have also come to discover a Christian who I admire greatly is pro-choice, I guess it isn't as black and white of an issue as I thought.

I'm skeptical on what the right thing to do is because I am not sure I know God enough to determine what is true. That said, I don't think the answer is to stay in the middle with everything, because the truth is the truth. My question is when do we draw the line between standing up for what we (and we think God) believes in, or being skeptical and not fully going either way?

I�d like to say that I�m very happy about all the responses this essay has generated. It has been a conversation I�ve been having with myself and SomeOne Else for a long time, and I�m glad to see that others are beginning to join in. So thank you for both your positive feedback and your thoughtful criticism.
I don�t want to make this too long, but I wanted to respond to a few of the questions that some of you brought up.
Amy, I think you and I have had very similar backgrounds. I spent the first 25 years of my life growing up in The Tar Heel State. All of my education from kindergarten through middle school was in a strictly fundamental Southern Baptist private school. Then I earned my degree at Columbia International University, which is a traditional mega-center. After graduation I spent 2 years as a youth pastor at an E. Free Church less than � hour from where I grew up. My spiritual upbringing has been traditional, and hasn�t strayed far beyond it.
Being in the ministry for 2 years gave me an eyes-wide-open education into how the Christian franchise works. It was a shock to the system. But after a while I learned to take certain things at a hair�s breath, while other things I learned to deeply respect.
That education ended in May of this past year when my wife�s sister was shot to death by her husband, leaving my 2 young nephews without parents, and all of us feeling very sad. My wife and I decided the only way to mend ourselves was to dig up our roots and replant in northern Indiana where the rest of her family lived.
That�s where the 2nd education began. We now live in a seminary town where the professors and pastors who are coming out of there are close on the coat-tails of everything new that�s happening in the church. Not quite traditional.
This is where, Mike, the inconsistencies and the tension you brought up come into play. I began having many conversations with pastors in bars, with professors in bookstores, and with seminary students around town. Although I like a lot of the things they are saying, I think what they�re saying are things that really encompass the life and love that Christ wants us to emulate in himself, other things they say really challenge me. They really fly in the face of everything I�ve been taught, and go against doctrines that have been established throughout the centuries for very good reasons. I feel like a lonely link of chain between 2 movements. I�m grabbing a hold of the new emerging movement, which is blazing full speed ahead, while holding onto the traditional movement, which feels fine to stay just where it is. I hold onto them both, because I see such value in both. Needless to say, I feel tension.
What I decided to do with that tension was write an essay. What I realized is that the struggle I presently feel inside myself, is just a small scale version of the struggle that is going on between the traditional and emerging church. So I decided to project the struggle between the movements on myself. Use myself as a screen to show you what is happening. So I honestly wrote about my struggles and my doubts and the ways that I have been growing and the things that I have been doing well along with the things I have been doing poorly so that you can see that the struggle that is taking place is creating a generation of people who feel confused as hell. We just want the Truth. And as unpopular and painful as it may be, we want it unfiltered and pure.
Because we still have faith that the Truth is out there. We still have faith that there�s such a thing as absolute truth. We know that in reality there are only solid lines when it comes to God, and any blurry lines that we see, exist only in our perception.
Emerging with Focus was a cry for help, more than anything, for the two movements to join forces. On one hand it was praise for all the church is doing well. On the other it was a goad for the traditional church to stop feeling like it�s already arrived, and a brake for the emerging church to slow down so that it can be steered a little easier.
As I said before, none of this is inspired. It could all be wrong. Some of it probably is.

Hm. I feel you Stephen. Like you and Amy, I was raised in an anti-intellectual church--I didn't really come of age in mind and spirit until I attended college and got involved with a para-church ministry there.

The tension between reason and faith has been one of the defining themes of my life, frequently leaving me feeling lost and bewildered because few people who took one seriously seemed to care much for the other. And when I did see a Christian talking about thinking, it was an outmoded modernist mind-can-prove-Jesus-was-God mentality--when I saw an intellectual talking about faith, it was a modernist and dualistic faith about universal truths and the fundamental goodness of humanity.

This past year, however, I was introduced to bishop and historian/theologian N.T. Wright by a friend. Wright is really the first Christian leader I've heard speak about reason in faith that is both intellectually satisfying and spiritually edifying. That's not to say that hearing what he has to say about this or that will solve every problem, but he definitely clears up a lot of the muddy waters that seemed to divide the two.

Just yesterday I worked through an article by him titled "How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?" It is probably the best treatment of the authority of scripture I have ever been exposed to, yet it might be rationally unsatisfying since in his scheme it is ultimately up to the individual to encounter the authoritative truth of the Holy Spirit beyond the text in order to justifiably ascribe any authority to the text itself.

http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Bible_Authoritative.htm

Lately, I've been pondering the phrase John uses, "He who has the Son has the Father also." I don't think Christians take Jesus seriously enough yet. I don't think we believe that God was revealed best in him. John's words comfort me in my epistemological struggle and inability to comprehend the mystery we call "God". I think the point Jesus makes is not that God is a Father, as if he is just like our father, but rather, since Jesus is from God, he has the ability to relate the mystery of God in such a way that God becomes Father. In Christ, God is our Father. In Christ, we learn about the God who came among us, who takes us as children. The God who doesn't become less mysterious, but the God who takes up flesh with us. Emmanuel makes God beautifully simple. Jesus isn't just our starting place with God, he is the point. We aren't going to get any further.