Work, Rest, Control, Pigs

Friends of ours did this cool thing when they had a baby: they took pictures of their child each month with the same stuffed animal. That way you could see how much they'd grown each month.

Davis loved this pink pig. Sometimes when Davis was fussing, I would pick up his stuffed pink pig (other kids have teddy bears, Davis loved his pig) and I would animate it—voices, hand motions, break-dancing, whatever.

Davis, of course, was enthralled. His response was to reach out and grab the pink pig. Of course, once the pig was in his hands, the "life" that was in it was gone. It went back to being an ordinary stuffed pink pig. Not a bad thing, but not what had enthralled him with the pig to begin with, not what he was looking for. As soon as Davis had control of the pig, the very life that he had enjoyed about it was gone.

The same thing is true for us when it comes to our work and the bigger purposes behind our lives. The only way for our lives to have real meaning, to have real life, is for Someone Else to be in control of them. Our control is an illusion. It is something to be released and repented of again and again, any time it rears its' ugly head.

Rest re-aligns our souls with the fundamental realities of the universe. It cuts against the lie spoken to our first parents that "we might be like God." Rest reminds us that there is only one God. And we are not Him.

What Work Doesn't Do

Last week I started to post a series on work, then got distracted by the State Fair. I want to pick that back up again because the thoughts keep rolling around in my head, and that's what this blog thing is for!

Work: to co-operate with God in using our gifts and abilities to tend to the world he has given us in order to provide for our own needs, bless those around us, and bring forth beauty and life to the glory of God the Creator.

Work can only bless us under the under the umbrella and in its proper place of this co-operative relationship with God in order to point back to the power and goodness of him.

And then of course, sin enters the picture. Sin is broken relationship, first with God, then with one another, and of course with the rest of the created order. So instead of work being a joyful derivative good, a joyful good that we experience under the umbrella of a bigger and better good of a relationship with God, all of the sudden we’ve got thorns and toil and sweat and ultimately death.

Our relationship with work is way more complicated because our relationship with God is broken and as a consequence all of our relationships are messed up, including how we relate to the tasks that we’ve been given to do.

And so we’re confused. We don’t understand that work is good but it’s a derivative good.

And what happens with our broken relationship with work is that for many of us, myself included here, work becomes a place where we find our identity. It becomes our place where we try to find life. I gave you a definition of what work IS supposed to be earlier, here’s what work or your GPA or your major or your future career is NOT intended to do.

Your work/GPA/major/career is NOT intended to:

give you ultimate life

give you meaning

give you purpose

give you your identity

become your name

be the thing that defines you

be the thing that validates your existence or makes you a worthwhile human being.

But our world doesn’t know any better, and many of us get so wrapped up in our work or GPA’s or resumes or achievement . And so we become obsessed with doing as the thing that validates us, makes us important or significant in the world.

And here at UNC, we’ve even invented our own name for all of this: The Carolina way

Basically “the Carolina way” is a way of nicely saying that your significance as a human being is primarily wrapped up in how much you do: “The Carolina Way” runs on and is fueled by anxiety and grasping and ambition and fear, but the Scriptures say that life lived in step with God is fueled by faith, hope, and love.

Because here’s the deal: ultimately you cannot serve both Jesus and the Carolina Way.If you refuse to take up your cross and follow Jesus into both faithful work and faithful rest, the Carolina Way will gladly take your life and give you nothing in exchange and to draw from a warning from Jesus: you just might gain the whole world and forfeit your soul.

AFY NGT

So this past weekend I traveled to Denver, Colorado. I was invited to speak at InterVarsity's Board meeting on "Christian Students Today." I had thirty minutes to present and then an hour of Q&A. Little old me. Speaking to the board. Out of hundreds of IV staff around the country. I was pretty stoked.

Saturday morning I was looking over my talk and trying to keep myself from getting overly-caught up in the moment. I wanted to keep perspective. So the Lord brought to mind a Scripture I read earlier in the week: "Apart from you, I have no good thing." Psalm 16.

So I meditated on that, repeating it over and over again while I was in the shower, shaving, getting dressed. Apart from the Lord, none of what I said or did was a good thing. And not just that moment, not just that presentation. All my husbanding and parenting and meeting with students and speaking and leading and listening and serving are no good apart from the Lord.

Apart From You, I have No Good Thing. AFY NGT. I wrote those letters in pen on the inside of my wrist. I tried to meditate on it, to think on it, to pray it, all day long.

I wanted what I said to bless and inform the board. I had a job to do, I had been called to serve, not advance myself. This was a cool opportunity, but done apart from the Lord it was no longer a good thing--at least not for me, anyway. I could say good things that the Lord might use, but in terms of who I am becoming and what kind of character I'm developing and the intent of the Lord to bless me with this experience, it could be possible to miss it. I didn't want to do that.

"AFY NGT."

And so I presented. 1:30 Mountain Time to a warm and friendly crowd of about 25 people who all love the Lord and want to see InterVarsity grow in our ministry to students. It went extremely well. The questions they asked were wise and thoughtful. I had a ton of fun.

I just got back a couple of hours ago. I think I did what I was supposed to do there, especially the work of not missing the blessing of doing it in and through and with the Lord.

"Apart from you, I have no good thing."

State Fair Report

Yesterday afternoon we took our long-awaited trip to the State Fair. A couple of observations:

*As if I needed any more reasons to be annoyed by NC State football, there was a Thursday night game last night against Florida State. The Fair Grounds and the NCSU football stadium are roughly 200 yards apart. Ergo, it took us an hour to get to the fair.

*If the State Fair is any indication, North Carolina's definitely going McCain's way. McCain's folks had the place covered--buttons, pins, dirigibles...okay, no dirigibles, but lots of McCain-Palin stickers and buttons. But then again, I do spend most of my days in Chapel Hill, which is slightly to the left of Stalin, so my perspective might be a bit skewed. To see anyone supporting McCain is a bit of a shock to my system.

*Our night was filled with kids riding great rides (floating bumper cars?!? what'll they think of next?) and seeing what there is to see. The sheep were a big hit, as were the baby pigs fighting to nurse on the mama pig--Davis is sitting here, he's saying that was his favorite.

*We packed it up and headed back home around 8:30. It's funny how it felt like it was midnight, I think that once you have kids long enough you see everything through their eyes.

*If we headed home an hour after bed time, you can imagine how much later past bed time it was for the kiddos. Could be a long day managing the little ones for my wife who's bearing that burden today!

Grab Bag

*I've added some things over the right, if you'll take a look. First, there's a picture of me for those of you who read this thing and have never met me. Hello! Secondly, I finally got around to updating my Blog Roll (my wife's got a fun mommy blog she posts on occasionally) and I've made it easier to over there to get my posts delivered fresh & easy to you!

I've also added the "Blog Follower" gadget. I have no idea what that means, but Esther Linnartz, one of my students, signed up to be one, so I figured I'd put her up there. Jump on the bandwagon! Everyone's doin' it!

*Try as I might, I just can't get into playoff baseball. I really want to want to watch it. I just can't get excited about it. Maybe when the World Series rolls around I'll watch some of that.

*I didn't watch much of the debates last night. But from what I saw, McCain looked like a nearly-beaten man. I think Obama is the best leader between the two and the right choice for now. I just shudder to think about the Supreme Court justices that we'll be saddled with after his term(s) end, given how incredibly far-left his stance on abortion is.

*This weekend I'm getting to give a presentation to a group of really important people in my little fish pond. I've got half an hour to talk about "Christian Students Today." Not just Christian students in the South. All of them. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Fall Break & The State Fair

Ah, it's mid-October. Time to send all the students off to the greater Charlotte metro area (1 in 3 UNC students is from the Charlotte area) for a long weekend.

And time for the Kirk family to engage in a time-honored tradition: the annual trip to the State Fair. Opens tomorrow, fifteen minutes down the road in Raleigh. As I type on State Fair opening day eve, there are thousands of pigs and horses and chickens and rabbits and antique John Deer tractors their associated owners driving in from all across the state to display their wares.

Last year the surprise of the trip was Davis discovering rides...at $3 a pop, it wasn't the most pleasant surprise. This year, we're playing it smart: advance ticket sales at the local mall.

Tomorrow night at this time, I'll be un-pleasantly over-stuffed with fried State Fair goodness, I will have most likely been exposed to any number of farm-animal-induced bacteria, our kids will be psycho-over-stimulated-wired-up from lights and sounds and rides, and I'll be glad to participate once again in this particular slice of Americana...even amidst the craziness and anxiety of all that's going on on Wall Street.

Honoring Tyler: A Retraction

So in an earlier post I was talking about how often "justice" has come up in our large group meetings, how we've been surprised by that, and how I think that's one reason why some of our freshmen have run away.

As an easy (and lazy) point of reference, I talked about a speaker who we asked to talk about hope and who ended up talking about justice. That pastor was Tyler Jones, pastor of Vintage 21 in Raleigh. He and I went to school together. He's one of our students favorite speakers. He's one of my favorite speakers. He very graciously e-mailed me today, saying that he wanted to honor IV and asked if I was talking about him in that post.

I was, and I need to post an apology. Both to honor Tyler and make sure that my students who read the blog don't think ill about him.

My intention behind the post was to say that any one of the nights that we've had at large group where we've talked about justice in and of itself would have been fine. But together, it's felt like a lot. And my process has led me to asking what does it mean to shepherd people into issues of justice and race and ethnicity when for many of them it is new?

Tyler's talk about hope wasn't soft and fuzzy. He challenged Christian students to become agents of hope in the world--exactly as he should have. If we had done our work around Tyler's talk to invite students into a welcoming and deeply gospel-centered community, students could have received his talk or any number of things that we've challenged them with much better.

But as it is, we didn't do our work of building trust before and after he came to help shepherd students into the good challenges that we've put before them. Tyler did not dishonor us in his talk. He spoke the truth. We haven't done as faithful a job gathering and building trust. And so some have left--obviously not all, and clearly large group is not the only reason why they've left.

But I chose my example poorly in my post the other day. I should not have used the example that I did. It came across as someone not honoring our request to speak about a specific topic, when in actuality he spoke exactly as he should have and did nothing wrong.

And I want to make sure to clear things up so that I'm not dishonoring a friend who has faithfully blessed our community year in and year out with his gift for teaching and his heart for the Lord.

Work and Rest

A couple weeks ago I gave a talk at large group entitled "Why We Rest." My goal was to try to encourage over-caffeinated UNC students to slow down and consider resting as a serious spiritual discipline.

Once I started working on the talk, I realized that not getting rest was only a small part of the problem. If we have a distorted view of work then it will be impossible for us to rest.

So I started by talking about work and then moved to rest. It was one of my classic two-talks-for-the-price-of-one moments. I've continued to think about work and rest since then, so I thought I'd share some of that talk here with my lovely blogger audience:

First, hear this: work is good

In the Biblical story of creation and Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve are created and before anything bad happens, before they eat the forbidden fruit, they are told to work –to work the garden, to eat the fruit and enjoy the place where God has put them.

Work is a good thing. But it is only a good thing in the right context. I’m going to propose a working definition of work for our purposes tonight.

Work: to co-operate with God in using our gifts and abilities to tend to the world he has given us in order to provide for our own needs, bless those around us, and bring forth beauty and life, to the glory of God the Creator.

Okay, so the point of this definition is that work is intended to bless us and those around us as a derivative good. Work is a derivative good, a secondary good.

It can only bless us under the under the umbrella and in its proper place of this co-operative relationship with God in order to point back to the power and goodness of him.

Justice

So as we’re evaluating our first several weeks on campus, one piece of what’s gone “wrong” is that we’ve talked about justice.  It wasn’t scheduled.  It sort of just happened. 

 

Speakers ended up tying in issues of justice when we asked them to speak on hope.  Students have plugged opportunities to get involved in making a difference in a justice-sort-of-way.  Just about every week we’ve touched on issues of justice. 

 

What happens when you start to talk to southern, churched, eighteen-year-olds about issues of justice (and multi-ethnicity) is that they push back.  Or leave.  These are largely culturally and theologically conservative students who have never had anyone in a church-setting talk about these issues.  And so it sounds like a politically-correct liberal campus agenda.    

 

So I’ve definitely been thinking about how much I wish we’d done things differently.

 

But then my read-through-the-Bible-in-4-years plan started me reading in Amos this week.  Holy crap, God’s ticked about issues of injustice.  Friday I talked it over with four of my junior guys who are core leaders in the chapter.  They were all for us being who we are—multi-ethnic worship, doing the justice thing, even as they figure out what it all means.  Then this morning at church we talked about the desire for justice as a “point of contact” and part of what it means for us to be image-bearers.

 

We’ve definitely made mistakes these first weeks.  Our large groups have been too intense.  Our greatest strength (community) is the greatest felt need of your average first-weeks freshmen.  We should have led more strongly with that.  And there’s important questions about how you actually shepherd people into God’s heart for issues that they’ve never seen or heard addressed before.  We haven’t exactly invited new students in, more like beat them over the head.

 

But it’s been good to be reminded of the centrality of justice (and multi-ethnicity as a part of that) in the gospel story.  And it’s been encouraging to have students who are willing to make sacrifices (even have smaller small groups!) to live out our values. 

 

The Lord is good to remind me of what’s important when I’m willing to listen .

Disappointment to Hope

So we're about to head into Fall Break on campus. What that means is that our fall is more than half-way through, and it's always a time to sit back and reflect on the start of the year.

This fall on campus has been about the funkiest that I've ever experienced. I came in with great expectations. We've got fantastic student leaders, I'd been thinking a lot about growth and how we could continue to grow and expand our ministry on campus, we've got a great staff team...all the pieces seemed to be in place for an all-systems-go start to the year.

But it hasn't happened that way. Everything's felt a little off: our New Student Welcome events were good but not fantastic. A few were major disappointments. Our weekly large groups have felt overly-intense and very low energy. Our new room that we moved into thinking that we would continue to grow (we've added about 100 students to our ministry in the past couple of years) has swallowed us whole.

The clearest indicator of our funk came at our New Student Retreat a couple of weekends ago. We had 125 two years ago, 115 last year, 50 two weeks ago. Like I said, off.

So I've spent much of the past several weeks frustrated, and at points trying to figure out what it means to be disappointed faithfully. I'm not sure how I've done. I've been frustrated a lot with the Lord and with myself. I've been mystified by our funk. I've been a little disoriented.

Friends have tried to tell me what I know to be true, but I've resisted their counsel. I've wanted to be mad at the Lord. I've wanted to try to fix it. I've ridden the roller-coaster the past seven weeks of frustration, disappointment, striving, anxiety, anger, questioning, and finally just in the past week or so, I've come to a place of restful resolve.

This past Sunday we gathered our leadership team together and I tried to put words around what's gone on these first six weeks. And then I tried to rally us towards the future. It's only early October. The Lord's not done with us yet.

I called our leaders to be FOR one another (not to quit on the community), to call on the Lord together, and to consider that if we can't just throw a party and have 125 new Christians show up, then maybe God's calling us to throw a party and pray that 125 non-Christians show up. We need to have more fun. We need to "live more playfully and believe more recklessly." We need the Lord to do a miracle to push us forward in a fresh way.

Tonight, we had another large group meeting. It was probably the best large group we've had all year. The Lord's not done with us yet. I have a lot of hope. But I had to work through that disappointment stuff. At points I probably wallowed, and was over-anxious and all that. But the God of all Hope has come. And he's doing something really cool and really unique in our community this year. I can't wait to see what happens

Going Dutch on the Election

So last election season, Oma was talking with the Dutch relatives.  She asked them what the Dutch thought about Bush and Kerry.

 

Their response was striking.  They said that most of Europe just sort of rolls their eyes at American Presidential elections.  That basically, it doesn’t matter who’s president, the policies are more or less the same.  When you’re voting in a European election system that has real-live socialists, communists, democrats, republicans, libertarians and many others, the two-party system looks a little narrow.

 

It struck me how funny it was that from our perspective (on the “inside”) our two parties looked hopelessly worlds apart.  But from the outside, the two parties looked more or less the same.

 

I certainly think that there are some significant differences between the two candidates.  But I wonder if we sometimes get a little lost in those differences, blow them up to the Nth degree in order to give CNN something to talk about 24/7. 

 

My take on the debate the other night: both did fine, but McCain needed to do more to create momentum.  One month out, I’m not sure if Obama can lose, barring some sort of colossal mistake.  But I’m still undecided.     

Wise Turks?

I recently read a great quote by Martin Luther about politicians and faith: "I'd rather by ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian."

Of course, given the way things are going around here with the stock market, perhaps the best idea might be to go ahead and move to Turkey.

But then again, I did just have my "proud to be an American" post yesterday, so maybe I'll just stick it out here and see what happens.

Whichever of the two Turks that we choose from will have his hands full: a messy and unpopular war, an economic mess that no one really knows how to fix, and lots of other potentially explosive issues to deal with as well over the next four years (Supreme Court justices, and all the fun abortion/gay marriage stuff that entails).

At least we have Saturday Night Live skewering politicians recreationally to keep us entertained.

Proud To Be..

A couple of weeks ago our large group speaker for InterVarsity didn't show up. She was supposed to speak to us about God's heart for Justice. So instead, I led us through a time of prayer that God's justice might be lived out in the world.

As a part of that prayer time, I invited folks to pray that God might forgive our country for how we've participated in injustice.

Afterwards, I had someone approach me and ask me about this whole "justice/injustice in America" deal. According to him, if it wasn't for the U.S. all the world would be speaking German or Japanese. If it wasn't for the United States, injustice would be a way of life.

This got me to thinking--how do I think about our country? How do I talk about it?

Okay, so first what I want to say is that clearly the United States has issues. Injustice abounds towards minorities, in our international trade practices, in just about every aspect of our corporate lives.

But there is something from this conversation that has lingered with me. In my part of the world, it's simply cooler, more intellectual, you get more street cred if you diss our country. What I want to inform how I think and talk about and pray for our country is the Spirit, the Scriptures, a heart full of faith, hope and love.

Cynicism, sounding sophisticated, or sounding cool & intellectual is not how I want to live as a child of God in this country. Being grateful for the freedoms that I have is an important spiritual discipline. Being grateful for the ability that I have to sit here and write snarky comments about my own country is an historically rare thing.

So let me say this: I'm glad that I live in this country. There's no where else that I'd rather be.

If that propels me into a smug, self-satisfied apathy, that's a bad thing. But if I'm falling off on the other side of the equation and reveling in country-bashing because it's just cooler or sounds more intellectually elite or I'm just cultivating my own propensity towards cynicism, that's just crap.

There it is.

Catalyst #8: A Multi-Lingual Theology

Catalyst #8: That all our theology is language-based, which is shaped by culture. Can any one language or culture tell the whole story of God? Emergents by and large plead for a multi-lingual approach to telling God's story, which fits with their earlier influences of pluralism and mulit-culturalism.

Huzzah!
This is a great, great stride in western Christendom...and one that will eventually yield much fruit in terms of a fuller, richer understanding of God and the work of Christ.

The Danger
The danger here is a reverse discrimination against the rich heritage and legacy of God's work throughout the centuries in the west. In other words, as we're embracing a more global understanding of God's kingdom and entering into a richer dialogue, let's not chuck a couple thousand years of God's work in Europe and America.

The Verdict
This is good for evangelicalism in particular, as we figure out how to engage a multi-ethnic, pluralistic world. We've got to have a Christ-centered, multi-lingual gospel.

Thus endeth the posts on the Emergent Church...and the pressing issues that I see in my students all the time!

Catalyst #7: Homosexuality

Catalyst #7: Homosexuality. They are convinced that sexuality is complicated, are committed to having relationships with all types of people, and live in a tension with the Bible about what to do about this issue.

Huzzah!
Hooray for a more thoughtful, nuanced, and well-informed engagement with this issue...and for genuine relationships that help us to push past caricatures to engaging with real people.

The Danger
A couple of years ago I had an epic conversation with a number of people over this issue. If you missed it, click here. Scroll down to the post starting on Oct. 5, 2006 and read through the comments and then some of the posts afterwards.

My bro also had a really good post (and a long string of dialogue) over on his blog a couple weeks ago.

The Verdict
I think that the homosexuality issue and the "do all religions lead to God" issue will be the two most fracturing questions in all of Christendom over the next fifty years.

The acceptance of homosexuality and homosexual marriage will move more and more front-and-center in our culture--it is already starting to eclipse the abortion issue as the boundary-line of conservative v. liberal politics. If we're going to hold to historically orthodox thinking on the purpose of sexuality, gender, image-bearing and marriage, we better have clear and solid thinking. And then we need clear and solid pastoral answers to the inevitable questions that will come.

Catalyst #6: Scripture and a Loving God

Catalyst #6: For some the Bible has portrayals of God that does not square with their understanding of God as loving. So often they will mythologize or allegorize some portrayals of God (often in the OT) and say that later pictures are the real thing--i.e. Jesus as the perfect picture of the God who is altogether gracious and loving.

Huzzah!
Hmmm...well, I agree with the "Jesus as the perfect picture of God" part...

The Danger
The danger here is that we are always tempted to make God into our own image. My systematic theology professor called it "going around the circle the wrong way."

Here's how this works: we start our engagement with God with us. We come with our own ideas of what a loving/just/perfect/righteous God "should" look like. We then encounter the God of the Bible and are shocked that somehow God doesn't look like *we* think he should. Who knew that my opinion would not be the perfect arbiter of what a perfect God is?

So we have a decision to make. We can reject this God. We can try to figure out a way around the description of this God. Or we can have our very definitions of what a loving, just, perfect, righteous God looks like re-defined by this God.

My professor exhorted us to think around the circle the other way. We do what we can to come to the God of the Scriptures ready to have that picture and that God inform our understanding of what a just/loving/perfect/merciful God is, rather than with our own agenda of what that God should look like.

This is Christianity, not Unitarianism. You don't get to get a ball of Play-Dough and decide what shape God is. God is mercy and love and justice, and his character and actions are what define what those words mean. There is no such thing as mercy and justice and love as disembodied, ethereal ideas. Love and justice and mercy are found alive and active and perfectly at work in God--yes, fully in Christ but it's the same God at work throughout the Scriptures.

Are we, then, the perfect evaluators of what true love, what true mercy, what true justice, what true judgment and righteousness and redemption are all about? Aren't all our definitions shaped by our own experiences, the cultures we live in, the whims of the times we happen to inhabit and how our digestive tract happens to be responding to the food we just ate a couple of hours ago?


The Verdict
Depending on the severity and the direction of this line of thinking, it's simply a re-mixed version of an old heresy: the Old Testament God is different from the New Testament God.

Post-modernity as a cultural movement is simply an over-reaction of the heart to the previous over-reaction of the head of modernity. In short, post-modernity tends to encourage us to think with our hearts. That's not always bad. But this is a good example of where it can go wrong.

Again, I'm not trying to say that there aren't hard things in the Scriptures that sometimes don't make sense. I'm not trying to flatten out a complex issue--there is some funky stuff in the OT especially that I sometimes just sit before and I say to God, "why?"

But I think that to iron out those tensions by simply writing them off conveniently as allegory or not "really" telling us what God is like at all is to miss the point. It gets us off the hook too easily. I think we're supposed to live in that tension, not erase it by pulling a Thomas Jefferson and whiting-out the passages we don't like.

Catalyst #5: Pluralism

Catalyst #5: The public schools message of multi-culturalism and pluralism conflicted with their church's teachings that those outside of Christ were doomed. "Possessing both a faith that is particular and an intimate knowledge of religious pluralism prodcued a tension that was nearly intolerable." This leads them to a religious pluralism or a much broader interpretation of what it means to be "a Christian."

Huzzah!
The need for Christians to engage with a genuinely pluralistic world with compassion and dialogue and winsomeness is well past.

The Dangers
Oi. This could take a couple of posts. Let me see if I can pitch my case against capitulating to a "all religions (or maybe just most religions) lead to God," even if that feels better.

#1. Most 21st century westerners smugly assume that we're living in the first pluralistic culture, or at least that the first century AD was a fairly and charmingly sweet and simple time. This is patently false. A quick glance through the book of Acts shows a veritable plethora of engagement with all kinds of religious practices: centuries-old religions alongside magic and sorcery alongside sophisticated philosophies.

In every case, in every cross-cultural and cross-religious engagement, the new Christians were adamant: what had happened in the death and resurrection of Christ was a new and final and decisive God-event that had ramifications for all peoples, everywhere.

The early disciples absolutely did not celebrate the religious diversity that they encountered. They were sickened and saddened by it. And they countered it at every turn with the news of the God who had come to live and die and conquer the grave for them.

It was this essential, urgent message that compelled the early Christians through the first centuries to death at the hands of lions and paranoid emperors and dungeons and swords and famines.

#2. If all roads lead to God, then the Christian story makes no sense. If Jesus comes and hijacks a perfectly fine Jewish religious system that leads people to God anyway, why bother? Why not just leave the Jewish people alone if Judaism will lead them to God anyway?

If any and every (or at least most) religions lead to God without all the blood and sweat of Gethsemane and the horror of the cross, what's the point? Is all that just a charade, a giant show, a sham? It would seem that it's not only a nice thing that God comes and dies for our sins. It would seem that if there's any other way, that cup might have passed...in fact, the entire incarnation might have passed.

Here's where the weak understanding of the cross that we discussed in an earlier post really hurts the Emergent movement.

#3. In fact, Jesus is perpetually correcting both Jews and Gentiles. He tells the woman at the well in John 4 that the Samaritans don't know who or what they worship. They're wrong. And a time is coming when they will finally get a chance to get it right. And it's come because of him. That's the point.

#4. Who decides which religions lead to God? The KKK thought of themselves as a religion, do they get to God? What about people flying planes into towers? Clearly most of us think that some religions or at least some religious people don't get there.

So given that almost everyone believes that not everyone seems to know a God who is good and loving, even if they're religious in some sense, we're back to what Christians throughout the centuries have argued throughout the centuries. Not every religion leads to God. In the final analysis, most of us are just discussing which religions lead to God. Christians just argue that what God did in Christ is unique.

Throughout the centuries most of the major religions have held that there are significant, eternal consequences to the decisions we make regarding God. Of course, this has led us to do many stupid things on all sides. We do not have to kill each other to believe deeply that there are eternal consequences to our decisions.

The Verdict
This is more or less all bad. And if this continues to be a central plank of the Emergent church, it'll probably go the way of the mainline churches, which are dying by the boatloads as baby-boomers start to die. Nothing is at stake, so there's no fresh re-engagement with culture as it shifts.

This issue is a huge stumbling block for many, many people. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying that it takes a good bit of mental and theological gymnastics to adhere to historically orthodox Christianity and say that it doesn't really matter what you believe.

For a fantastic, thoughtful, not-angry but very thorough discussion of this stuff, check out The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbiggin. When I'm swimming in the fog of this question and asking the hard, heart questions of how this can possibly be good news, I re-read some Newbiggin and he helps me to re-find my bearings

Catalyst #4: Church Failure

Catalyst #4: Emergents grew up in a time of serious public failings of evangelical leaders (Ted Swaggart and Jim Baker). This amplifies the feelings of cynicism towards the church as a viable institution...and creates the felt need to start over with greater authenticity.

Huzzah!
Yay for a commitment to greater authenticity and integrity within the church. This is clearly not only a problem for people who grew up in the church but also for people who look at the church from the outside.

The Danger
The dangers here are the same as with any new start-up that's attempting to break away or re-form something that they see as antiquated or no longer functioning: it becomes self-righteous (everyone else is doing it wrong and we've got it right) or more reactive (this is what we're NOT) rather than pro-active (this is who we are and what we're doing).

There's also the temptation/desire to make the break so badly that you chuck stuff that's good. This certainly happened to some extent in the Protestant Reformation. It's certainly happening some here in the Emergent church as well, at least in some parts of it.

I also find in my situation that bashing on the church (both to Christians and non-Christians) garners cheap trust. Hey, I'm cool, I think that the church by-and-large is a really screwed up institution that can't be trusted and is pretty much a disaster top to bottom. So we're all on the same side! Most all of my students are cynical towards the church.

So the danger here is that we feed into cynicism (which is a sin) rather than do faithful re-hab that genuinely acknowledges the brokenness of the church and also the beautiful and glorious stuff about the church throughout the centuries: schools built, drinking water purified, hospitals and orphanages and disaster teams. It's not all bad. In other words, we need to be honest about the church as it truly is--and still love it. Christ does.

The Verdict
I think that there's some good stuff here...just depends on how it all plays out in the individual church and in the individual lives.

Back to the Original Program

Catalyst #3: Their educational history and experiences have led emergents to disown the idea that when science and the Bible contradict that science must step aside. They refuse to give the Bible the "trump card." They remain committed to it, but with a different view as to what it actually is and how it works as a piece of literature to describe the workings of the cosmos. They are both left and right wing, committed to the Bible and open to new ideas.

Huzzah!
I believe that this is primarily aimed at the relatively small percentage of evangelicals who hold to a very strict reading of the creation account in the first few chapters of Genesis. Not being one of those myself, and in fact often feeling embarrassed on their behalf, I find this move good.

The Danger
Some of the dangers here are the same as in the earlier posts discussion about moving beyond "Scriptural inerrancy."

But a specific issue to consider in this case has to do with the relationship between science and faith. Forgive me for again going to C.S. Lewis, but he's good here..as he is with so many things!

Lewis argues that we should neither be too quick to proclaim victory when "the sciences" (everything from physics to biology to even archeology) seem to agree with a Biblical account or portrayal of the world. Nor should we be too intimidated when the sciences reach conclusions that appear dismissive of the Christian understanding of the world.

To borrow a phrase from a column I recently read, the general public squints at the world of "science" and considers it to be uniform mass of well-educated, white-coated people who with one voice reach firm conclusions about "the world of facts" and "how things are" that leaves no room for doubt or discussion.

In reality there is a very small slice of the body of scientific knowledge where this is true. The rest of it ebbs and flows like fall and spring fashions. Read journals from fifty years ago and you'll find any number of discoveries that appeared to be certain at the time that have since been disproved or nuanced or corrected or completely overhauled.

The Verdict
So if we're not going to give the Scriptures a literalists "trump card," let us also be slow to turn and give the world of the sciences that same card. And let us walk in humility and wisdom, winsomeness and thoughtfulness as we interact with the ancient wisdom of the Scriptures and twenty-first century understandings of how the world works.

First Day No Oma

Today is the first day of my life without Oma. She died last night.

Oma and Opa are classic U.S. immigrant stories. They came over from Holland after World War 2. They had kids (Steve, Elizabeth, and Wendy--Elizabeth is my mom), got decent jobs, got settled in the Charlotte area.

At age 40, once the kids were off to school, Oma got a job as a teller at a small branch bank. Over the next 30 years, she became one of the most influential international bankers in the bank-saturated Charlotte area as she served as the head of the International banking department for a number of banks.

She served on boards and committees, met heads of state (her favorite was Margaret Thatcher and there are several pictures of her and Thatcher around her house), and traveled the world. She ended up in places of tremendous influence and leadership through the force of her gracious and warm personality. In a business that is driven by number-geeks and cut-throat stock bolstering and greed, Oma thrived and built business through genuine friendships. Long after she retired and into her 70's, she was receiving job offers and invitations to sit on boards.

But to me, she was Oma. She doted on us with unabashed love and affection. She cooked tremendous meals, laughed at our jokes. She was our biggest cheerleader. As my brother and I grew up and we grew to love football, she decided to start watching football, too, so we'd have something to talk about. I was the first grandchild, "born in her house" as she always reminded me--not literally, but my mom did come back to their house to have me.

Oma and Opa's house on Paradise Circle was (and still is) a mythical place. To a military kid who moved every three years, this was stable, the place where we came back for Christmas's and Thanksgivings and summer vacations no matter where we lived.

Oma is gone after a long fight with a number of illnesses that were besetting her aging body. She would have been 85 or 86 this weekend--I'm not entirely sure as her actual birth date was a closely guarded secret. She is survived by Opa, the man who I'm named after, and all three of her kids.

Today is the first day of my life without Oma. I'm tremendously glad to have been blessed with such a tremendous grandparent, it's been a privilege to be in her life for all these years. But still, I can't help but feel like life's a little emptier without her.