Friday, November 16, 2007
Thinking Fundamentally
I hate it when someone makes a point I agree with, but does so in a fashion that I simply have to take exception with. Consider this post from Al Mohler:
I wish to assert that the answer to this dilemma is not the continual and repetitive teaching of those doctrines over and over and over again, which seems to be the approach of many churches that hold doctrine tightly.
Consider, there are fundamentals in almost any field of study. For example in chemistry, the organization of the periodic table and its columnar association with outer shell electron structure is something you learn in 101. And yet, by your senior year, you are not taught that concept again, rather it has become to you a bit like breathing. Some 25 years past the conclusion of my graduate school studies and still I look at the periodic and cannot help but picture the valence structure of the columns. Clearly my education gave me a grasp of the fundamentals of chemistry.
Here is the difference. In my studies of chemistry, those fundamentals became the tools necessary to work at higher and higher levels. I did not have to be taught the fundamentals again because I USED them every day. They were simply necessary to understand the next step.
And yet, it seems in so many churches we are simply stuck in 101. we teach the fundamentals over and over and over again. What we should be doing is teaching people how to use the fundamentals to advance to the next step. Instead of berating the trend, where is the teaching on the proper perspective of ecological concern from a Christian perspective? Is there anybody out there from a conservative Christian perspective even working that field? (There is by the way)
Goodness, what if we looked at ethics in general. What if we taught people how to think about ethical questions based on these fundamentals, rather than just dogmatize ethics. Yes, that means there will be people that think errantly, but don't we trust God enough to know that the right thinking and truth will win in the end.
How I long for a church that promotes maturity, not uniformity.
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Is saving the earth what remains when liberal churches are no longer concerned for the salvation of souls? Have these churches replaced theology with ecology?Now there is one heck of a good point there. There church has long taken on cultural causes in a search for "relevance" at the cost of the church's central mission. But then comes Mohler's warning:
Frank Furedi is a British sociologist who teaches at the University of Kent. He is also a controversialist and a public intellectual. In a recent article published at Spike, Furedi suggests that some religious institutions are "busy reinventing themselves by promoting ecological virtues and preaching against the eco-sins of polluters." He offers a most interesting argument.
So is Christ the Savior is fast becoming Christ the environmental activist? Furedi's argument is both insightful and troubling. There can be no doubt that his argument is true with respect to many churches and denominations. And there is a clear warning here. When churches abandon or marginalize the central doctrines of the Christian faith, another religion soon takes its place. That religion might be a religion of therapy, social action, or ecology -- or any number of other substitutes for the Gospel.Mohler is both right and wrong in that assertion. IF we forget central doctrines things can go awry. But why do those central doctrine get forgotten, THAT is the question.
I wish to assert that the answer to this dilemma is not the continual and repetitive teaching of those doctrines over and over and over again, which seems to be the approach of many churches that hold doctrine tightly.
Consider, there are fundamentals in almost any field of study. For example in chemistry, the organization of the periodic table and its columnar association with outer shell electron structure is something you learn in 101. And yet, by your senior year, you are not taught that concept again, rather it has become to you a bit like breathing. Some 25 years past the conclusion of my graduate school studies and still I look at the periodic and cannot help but picture the valence structure of the columns. Clearly my education gave me a grasp of the fundamentals of chemistry.
Here is the difference. In my studies of chemistry, those fundamentals became the tools necessary to work at higher and higher levels. I did not have to be taught the fundamentals again because I USED them every day. They were simply necessary to understand the next step.
And yet, it seems in so many churches we are simply stuck in 101. we teach the fundamentals over and over and over again. What we should be doing is teaching people how to use the fundamentals to advance to the next step. Instead of berating the trend, where is the teaching on the proper perspective of ecological concern from a Christian perspective? Is there anybody out there from a conservative Christian perspective even working that field? (There is by the way)
Goodness, what if we looked at ethics in general. What if we taught people how to think about ethical questions based on these fundamentals, rather than just dogmatize ethics. Yes, that means there will be people that think errantly, but don't we trust God enough to know that the right thinking and truth will win in the end.
How I long for a church that promotes maturity, not uniformity.
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