Monday, November 12, 2007
Finding The Middle (Hard!) Way
Fred Sanders writes a devastating critique of the face of the modern church.
Here we are free of our affiliations, and here we can free ourselves of out inclinations. Here there is no reality to risk by the exploration of other traditions. Here there is no need to sort out "them" from "us" because there is no plate to fill, budget to uphold, building to build. Here there is just us, our ideas, our specialties, our traditions.
But we are rapidly turning this virtual place into a place where the divides are driven deeper, the different are insulted and dismissed. Rather than a place of exploration, this has become a place of combat.
Godblogging has the potential to be the best tool in God's arsenal to turn the church universal around, to bring it to a point where His mission and desire is being fulfilled. But like all things He seeks to accomplish, we put ourelves squarely in the way.
Isn't it time, we get out of the way?
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Again and again, modern Christians are asked to choose between two goods which shouldn’t be pitched against each other. We seem to have fallen into a state of decadence, a situation in which things that belong together are instead experienced as irreconcilable opposites. The clearest way to see this is to read old books by Christians from previous times. Look at Calvin’s definition of faith, and see if you can convict him of being overly intellectual or overly emotional: “Faith,” he says, is “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Certain knowledge revealed to our minds: Is that rationalism? God’s benevolence in a promise sealed upon our hearts: is that pietism? It’s neither. Calvin speaks from a place where mind and heart haven’t learned the bad habit of separating.You know what saddens me? It is that those divisions are writ large on the Godblogosphere. Here, in the virtual place, is a place where I can readily and without feeling of "disloyalty" explore all the various traditions of faith. I can interact with the ultra-reformed and the charismatic alike. Here is the place where I can take the advice that Sanders gives on how to cope with the problem:
Zwemer’s sermon, delivered at the Keswick convention in 1915, is a summons to “enter into the boundless heritage of Christianity.” He doesn’t just mean to read old books or sing old hymns, though that is obviously a good place to start. He also isn’t just asserting that every modern Christian has the right to loot, pillage, and lay claim to whatever they find in anybody’s church. The great tradition of Christian teaching and experience is ours, not because we are postmodern bricoleurs or consumers with a credit line that extends to the past, but because of our real union with Christ and his with the Father. Without this real union, all of us are just squatting on the territory of others, or decorating our houses with antiques to make ourselves feel more authentic. But all things really are ours, and we are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. The “all things” of the great Christian hinterland must become our homeland if we are to be in the company of the saints where our fellowship is with the Father and the Son in the Spirit.And yet, increasingly, Godblogging is divided into these self-same camps. WHAT A WASTE!
Here we are free of our affiliations, and here we can free ourselves of out inclinations. Here there is no reality to risk by the exploration of other traditions. Here there is no need to sort out "them" from "us" because there is no plate to fill, budget to uphold, building to build. Here there is just us, our ideas, our specialties, our traditions.
But we are rapidly turning this virtual place into a place where the divides are driven deeper, the different are insulted and dismissed. Rather than a place of exploration, this has become a place of combat.
Godblogging has the potential to be the best tool in God's arsenal to turn the church universal around, to bring it to a point where His mission and desire is being fulfilled. But like all things He seeks to accomplish, we put ourelves squarely in the way.
Isn't it time, we get out of the way?
Technorati Tags:breadth, exploration, godblogging, tradition, unity
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