Becoming before Belonging

Although I think the Emergent/Emerging Church Movement (or network of missional churches) has raised some excellent points in its critique of the modern, mega-church movement and has several praiseworthy features, I do have a few serious concerns. Since what it means to be emergent is expressed in a variety of local ways, I realize my comments may not apply across the spectrum. My intent over the next few posts, then, is not to make blanket condemnations, rather I hope to provide a few general words of caution about some troubling trends. The first trend I wish to address is the recent denigration of the need to become a Christian in order to belong to the church.

Let me say it bluntly, it is detrimental to the spiritual health of the church to distort what it means to belong to the community of faith. By definition, the church is the assembly (ekklesia) of believers; therefore, one must become a Christian to truly belong. It is absurd to think a nonbeliever can legitimately belong to a community whose essential nature or defining feature is faith. I think it is also important to ask ourselves, Why would a nonbeliever even want to belong to a church without becoming a Christian? (Note: visiting and attending are not the same as belonging – the latter entails identification).

First and foremost, the church is an organic entity (the Body of Christ); it is not a building or a nonprofit organization. This does not mean that we should spend our time sorting the tares from the wheat (Matthew 13:28-30). The true church is not identical with the visible church. This also does not mean that genuine seekers are not welcome. They are. However, this does mean that the primary purpose of the church is for believers to gather together to worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. This also means that a profession of faith and evidence of maturity are requirements for leadership and service within the church (John 14:15; Acts 6:3; 1 Timothy 3:1-10; Titus 1:6-9). The church is to be a community identified and distinguished by its love for God and one another, a counter-cultural witness to the redeeming work of Christ on the cross. We should never underestimate the attractiveness to the watching world of a mature fellowship of Christ-followers loving and caring for one another in unity (John 13:34-35; 17:23).

Of course, one of the main goals in gathering together as believers is to train and equip each other in order to become more effective evangelists, apologists, and witnesses of the gospel to those who have yet to join our fellowship (see Ephesians 4:1-16). Here is the crux of the issue: by incorporating nonbelievers into our congregations as full participants we are giving them the misguided impression that they can commune with God prior to repentance and faith. The truth is they have a sin problem that needs to be dealt with. Furthermore, without some way of ensuring those who belong to the church believe and seek to live the gospel message of Jesus, nonbelievers who hang around long enough wind up in positions of influence (e.g., voting partners, teachers, board members, etc.) with the ability to alter the mission of the church. Erasing the requirement that those who belong to the church must be believers likewise eliminates the distinction between the church and any other social club. It seems to me that being missional is antithetical to cavalierly dismissing the need to rightly discern whether or not individuals really seek to follow Christ’s teaching and example and therefore whether they truly belong to His Body as contributing members or whether they are actually parasites depleting their host.

Emergent/Emerging Church Movement

My intent here is simply to provide a rough description or sketch of the Emergent/Emerging Church Movement. Thus, without further ado, the following are what I take to be the main traits or characteristic features that create a distinct emergent family resemblance (of course, if you think I have overlooked any essential elements, please post a comment):

• Emphasizes the need to rise above (or move beyond) the sectarian terminology and jargon that has divided Christians for so long in order to recover the simple, humble way of Jesus.
• Eschews the type of thinking that distinguishes who is “in” or “out” (i.e., drawing definitive borders), especially when it comes to evaluating the eternal destinies of those who do not explicitly profess faith in Jesus.
• Embraces the multidimensional perspectives of historical Christianity in an effort to emerge or to move forward in a strong, realigned religious stream that brings health to the church as well as to those who are not affiliated with it.
• Identifies the church as a missional community charged with carrying out God’s purpose in the world: serving as witnesses to the good news of Jesus.
• Downplays potentially divisive, doctrinal-denominational distinctives, while affirming the core creeds that all Christians hold in common.
• Encourages dialogue and collaboration with adherents of neighboring religions and nonreligions.
• Seeks to be relevant to postmodern culture (including constructively engaging with postmodern philosophies and appropriating new technologies) in order to contextualize the gospel.
• Believes the Christian life ought to be characterized by humility and authenticity.
• Focuses on the narrative dimension of Scripture.
• Promotes an awareness of one’s own social location and limited hermeneutical perspective (typically) derived from an antifoundational epistemology that views knowledge as being shaped by human finitude and situatedness.
• Practices theology as an ongoing, open-ended conversation influenced by experience.
• Cares about community and views the spiritual life as a quest or a journey to be taken together.
• Values social concern and engagement on behalf of the marginalized (e.g., the widow, the orphan, and the alien).
• Strives as a community of counter-cultural conservation (i.e., stewards of creation) to protect and preserve the environment.

Postmodern, Postmodernity, Postmodernism

I must preface this entry by noting that I derived much of this information from the second chapter, “Contours of the Present: The Culture of Modernity,” of Harold Netland’s insightful book Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith & Mission (InterVarsity Press, 2001).

Postmodern: 1) a way to describe the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society or the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy, which was marked by a dramatic increase in information and communication technology. 2) the architectural, literary, philosophical, and social critique of modern values and assumptions.

Postmodernity: the broad critique of modern culture based primarily on an antifoundational epistemology (theory of knowledge). Minimally, it is an expression of dissatisfaction with at least one aspect of modernity and a challenge to adopt a different approach. In his preface to The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, Kevin Vanhoozer construes it as “an ‘exodus’ from the constraints of modernity.”

Postmodernism: the following three definitions of the term are based on Lawrence Cahoone’s helpful taxonomy in From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

1) historical postmodernism: a descriptive historical distinction that perceives social and cultural changes between the emerging era and the previous period of modernism (distinguishing the transition from modernity to postmodernity).

2) methodological postmodernism: a variety of prescriptive views that share a common rejection of objective truth and knowledge about reality, especially foundationalism in epistemology, in favor of a thoroughgoing perspectivalism. The following thinkers are routinely cited as exemplars.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) – believed that all truth claims are really just assertions of power.

Jacques Derrida (1930- ) – espoused a nonrealist theory of language and meaning that attacked the logocentrism of Western philosophy. In other words, he rejected the prevailing assumption that our words or linguistic concepts refer to objective realities in the external world: “There is nothing outside textuality.” His skeptical hermeneutical method, which allows no privileged point of reference (such as authorial intent), has been dubbed deconstructionism. In its attempt to show that we cannot transcend our own ideas this method seeks to subvert or dismantle metanarratives and objective conceptual frameworks.

Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) – is well-known for his definition of postmodernity as the “incredulity toward metanarratives,” that is, grand, over-arching stories or frameworks that seek to explain the world.

Richard Rorty (1931- ) – rejected the assumption of modern philosophy that our concepts mirror reality (the way things are in themselves). Instead he adopted an entirely pragmatic view of truth and knowledge: since justification, as the criterion for truth, is relative to audiences, truth is simply a social construct that works.

3) positive postmodernism: any attempt to go beyond the negative critiques of methodological postmodernism to construct new and different answers, albeit limited and to some extent perspectival, to the basic questions of life while avoiding the inconsistencies of total relativism. Stanley Grenz, Nancey Murphy, and Kevin Vanhoozer are examples of Christian theologians who might fit this category.

 

Modernity

Modernity: the worldview frequently understood to be rejected by postmodernity. As such, it is characterized by the Enlightenment belief in reason, universal truths, and the progressive potential of science to improve all areas of life as well as the eradication of traditional superstition and religious authority. However, as noted in the previous post, the intellectual heritage of the modern period was actually far more diverse and complex, even containing the seeds of postmodernism itself. Indeed, some thinkers go so far as to view postmodernism simply as modern philosophy taken to its logical conclusions (or the radicalization of modernity). At the very least, I think a more holistic understanding of modernity must include and integrate the broader intellectual, social, cultural, and religious developments of the time in addition to the ideas of “the Enlightenment project.”

The Enlightenment

Since the Enlightenment, Modernity, and Postmodernity/Postmodernism are frequently referred to in contemporary philosophical and theological writings, I think it is important to have a basic grasp of their meaning. Therefore, for your reading pleasure, I will delineate my understanding of these terms in the next few posts.

Age of Reason: refers, in a strict sense, to the rationalist thinkers of the seventeenth century (Rene Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Baruch Spinoza); although the label is often used interchangeably with the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment (c. 1688-1789): designates the intellectual movement characterized by a new-found confidence in reason generated by the Scientific Revolution (particularly the empirical method of Francis Bacon and the physics of Isaac Newton). The most significant effect of this intellectual confidence was the assumption that society and its institutions could be established on certain, rational foundations determined by human reason apart from divine revelation or the alleged tyranny of the church.

However, as I hope the following partial list of thinkers shows (a smattering in no particular order), there was a considerable variety of thought and dramatically different perspectives even within the historical period as a whole. In other words, it is rather reductionistic and historically misleading to caricature the entire era as the Enlightenment. That is, while it was a highly influential intellectual movement, it was by no means the only movement of the time. The age also saw religious revivals and significant skepticism regarding reason itself. Hence, Jurgen Habermas’s moniker “the Enlightenment project” is often used to make a more specific or nuanced reference (although this too is often simply conflated with modernity).

Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet] (1694-1778) – embodied the critical spirit of eighteenth-century rationalism in his attacks on the authority of the church and in his application of scientific rationality to human affairs. Nevertheless, Voltaire’s belief in the progress of reason was more cautious than his predecessors; his confidence was moderated by an awareness of the limitations of the human mind.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) – edited the Encylopedia, which was a seventeen-volume collection of know achievements put together by the French philosophes. He believed that the progression of knowledge would advance human happiness on earth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) – his vision of direct democracy in the Social Contractwas undergirded by his belief in the potential of education to reform individuals. It wasn’t religious authority that ought to govern society, but the “general will,” or what a fully informed, reasonable, male citizen would want if he were abiding by his highest nature.

David Hume (1711-1776) – was a radical skeptic of the human capacity to know. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding raised influential doubts about the reliability of sense data.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) – strongly advocated for equal educational, citizenship, and property rights for women. Her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, directly challenged Rousseau’s denigration of women as inferior beings as well as his corresponding relegation of women to a separate sphere. 

Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) – the founder of the Moravian church and a leader in the Herrnhut community that launched the modern missionary movement. He was deeply influenced by Pietism, a renewal of spiritual experience that began among German Lutherns.

John Wesley (1703-1791) – a prolific preacher and the founder of Methodism. It is estimated that he preached more than 40,000 sermons and traveled on horseback nearly 250,000 miles. His brother Charles (1707-1788) composed several thousand hymns.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) – a significant American theologian and philosopher. He pastored the church in Northampton, Massachusetts during the revival that sparked what has become known as the Great Awakening.

George Whitefield (1714-1770) – an enthusiastic evangelist in England and the U.S. during the spiritual revivals of the time.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – his Critique of Pure Reason undermined belief in metaphysical realities and challenged the notion that the mind conforms to its objects. The epistemology embedded in his transcendetal idealism deemed the noumenal realm (things in themselves) as unknowable.

Perspective

 

my shadow looms large

at close of day

when i don’t look

the other way

to see the brilliant cast

of colors fade away

with the setting sun.

 

Augustine on Ignorance

Since we have been considering what it means to be a reflective Christian, here is a pertinent word of caution from St. Augustine to those who might ignore or minimize the role of reason and experience in interpreting Scripture:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world…and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn…If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.

- Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Trans. John H. Taylor)

Money, money, money…It’s a rich man’s world

In the final chapter of his book Questions to All Your Answers, Roger Olson takes on the unexamined cliche, “Money itself isn’t bad or good but only what people do with it” (172). The question is: What does biblical revelation really teach regarding money? Is money actually spiritually neutral?

In the Old Testament it is evident that God blesses his faithful servants (e.g., Abraham, Joseph). Indeed, in Deuteronomy 11:13-17, God promises the Hebrew people blessings for obedience and curses as a result of unfaithfulness. However, in the wisdom literature there are sayings that clearly condemn the oppression of the poor as well as warn of the seductions of wealth. Wisdom is to be sought above money and riches (Proverbs 16:16) (173). Moreover, the prophets railed against religious corruption and injustice, especially the way the rich were exploiting the poor for dishonest gain (Amos 8:4-5) (175). Thus, although the Old Testament does not explicitly state that money itself is bad, the repeated warnings against the misuse of wealth ought to alert us to its spiritual danger (176).

Olson goes on to argue, “The New Testament deepens the Bible’s overall negative image of wealth” (176). Even though many have tried to mitigate the blow against the rich by offering more “favorable” interpretations of Jesus’ saying in Mark 10:25 – “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for upper middle class Americans to enter the kingdom of God!” (my paraphrase) – the point still stands that “wealth is a hindrance to salvation” (177). Money may not be condemned as bad in and of itself, but the letter of James does present a particularly negative view of the rich. James seems to view all wealth as ill-gotten or the result of exploitation, hoarding, and self-indulgence (2:6; 5:1-6) (179).

In short, the conclusion Olson reaches is that “abundance of money and wealth are spiritually dangerous and to be avoided” (179). Again, in different words he warns, “wealth is spiritually pernicious; it has the tendency to hinder a person’s relationship with God” (179). Obviously, this goes against the recent popularity of prosperity preaching. However, I think Olson is right to assert that many American churches have “succumbed to a materialistic, consumerist culture and abandoned the biblical and historical Christian disdain for wealth and material abundance” (182).

The blunt truth is that wealth is not morally neutral. “The fact is that money has a way of seducing the human soul; there is never enough of it” (184). At this point you might be asking, What is a spiritually healthy fiscal policy? I suggest it contain at least the following three elements: 1) heed the slogan “In God We Trust,” which is printed on U.S. currency, 2) foster contentment by holding material things loosely, and 3) give generously, even sacrificially. In other words, our trust ought to be in God and our riches in heaven. If this is not the case (i.e., if our trust is in our material possessions and our riches are on earth), we have reason to be concerned about our spiritual well-being. Thus, the bottom line is this: if we are blessed with material riches it is so that we can bless others (to physically and spiritually care for “the least, the last, and the lost”).

Habitat for Humanity

I am currently enjoying volunteering at Habitat for Humanity of Colorado’s annual Camp Colorado conference in Estes Park. Consequently, I won’t have much time to post entries until next week. Until then, I hope you can get outside and soak up some nice spring weather.

Blessings, Michael

Biblical Judging

In chapter 9 of his book Questions to All Your Answers, Roger Olson tackles the common tendency among North American Christians to misinterpret and misappropriate Jesus’ message about judging. In particular, Jesus’ words, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” in Matthew 7:1 have been frequently cited out of context and misconstrued. Here is a bit fuller context (verses 1-5):

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

            Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Given this, it is clear that Jesus is primarily warning against ungracious, hypocritical judging. Indeed, Jesus assumes it is beneficial for one’s brother to have the speck removed from his eye.

However, in our contemporary culture, which seems to be progressively embracing moral relativism (i.e., the theory that there are no absolutes of right and wrong, but rather, moral values are relative to particular persons, situations, or cultures), some Christians have unwittingly adopted the prevailing notion that all judging is bad as well as the revised definition of tolerance understood as the virtuous recognition of all behaviors and beliefs as equally acceptable. Olson says it this way, “In this case, tolerance no longer means putting up with bad behavior but refusing to recognize any behavior as bad” (157). The problem is righteous judgment is sometimes required.

We must not forget that Jesus also told the crowd at the Feast of Tabernacles to “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment” (John 7:24). Likewise, the apostle Paul exhorted the church in Corinth, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked man from among you.’” (1 Corinthians 5:12-13). The point is this: although we are not to judge hypocritically or claim to be capable of judging a person’s final destiny (e.g., condemn someone to hell), there is a place for proper judgment within the community of faith. Olson correctly contends that right judging is “following valid biblical criteria in deciding what beliefs and behaviors are Christian and sometimes whether people who claim to be Christian [to follow Christ’s teaching and example] really are” (166). After all, we are to be “shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

Olson ends his chapter by briefly considering the instructions Jesus gave his disciples concerning how to deal with sin among the people of God (Matthew 18:15-20). In so doing he makes the following pertinent and potent point: “Without some form of church discipline, which inevitably involves some kind of judging, the church becomes merely a social club without real meaning or purpose” (168-69).