The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

        In 1988, a book by Alasdair MacIntyre was published under the title, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  Without attempting to summarize the argument of its 400 pages, suffice it to say that MacIntyre demonstrates admirably that Justice (and, by extension, morality) is a word or concept that means different things to different cultures and times.  He traces, as a paradigm case, the change from what people meant by "justice" and "rationality" (two ideas MacIntyre claims are always deeply intertwined) from presocratic Greek thought, through Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, through the Middle Ages to Hume and his heirs.  The change, even within Western history, striking.

         Some would argue that this means that there is no such thing as "absolute" justice, morality, rationality and the rest.  The argument being, if so many different cultures disagree on what these terms mean, how can we possibly say that one of them is right and the rest of them are wrong?  This is amplified when we consider that we have a tendency to assume that the rationality, etc. that we are immersed (or grew up) in is "right."  In such a case, how can a claim to be committed to an "absolute" truth of any kind be anything other than a new form of imperialism, where we go into new cultures and, under the guise of spreading "rationality" or "truth," in fact end up spreading nothing more than our own forms of thought and life?

        I am not entirely convinced that arguments like MacIntyre's (and also, in their own way, of Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others within the philosophy and history of science) lead us to conclude that there is and can be no such thing as absolute truth.  Rather, it means that, if there is such a thing as absolute truth, which is not just a characteristic of Christian faith but also is true of philosophical systems like Plato's (as well, incidentally, of Eastern philosophies which do not so much emphasize what is, but what is not which, ultimately, presuppose their own metaphysical convictions), we do not have access to it in any way that somehow manages to bypass a particular language and conceptual framework.

        There has been a longstanding strategy in modern Christian apologetics which gets an awful lot of mileage out of the idea (which, in my opinion, is suspect if not entirely false) that, because all human beings are created in the image of God, we all share a kind of common moral awareness.  By building on that, along with other related claims to commonality, apologists often try to reason that the "whence" of that moral awareness is God, and therefore, since everyone already believes in moral standards, everyone already believes in God.  It should be noted that, while many contemporary apologists for Christian faith would identify as being theologically (if not politically) conservative, this idea has far more in common with the theology of Schleiermacher, the father of Liberal theology, than the example of Paul the apostle and the other Biblical authors.  It should also be noted that, even if this line of reasoning were valid, it would not be a victory for Christian faith but for classical theism.  Any train of thought that simply does not take the actual life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ is not a distinctly "Christian" argument.

        What is interesting is that, in addition to the fact that this line of argument is not good theology, nor is it good apologetics, it is also fundamentally flawed from a philosophical and sociological point of view.  The irony of this is that anyone who is involved in missionary work can see the flaws.  It does not matter into what culture you enter, there are interesting differences as to what is "just" or "moral" that belie any real confidence in the standard apologetic argument from morality.  The best one could say is that, because every culture has moral standards (though they are often very different from one another), the source of the existence of standards in general (not the standards themselves) is God.  If this line of reasoning is sound, it is no more helpful than the other.  There have been several missionaries in the last twenty years or so who have shared how their experiences in other cultures have called into question their conviction that their own culture was the standard by which to judge the values of others, but this has challenged them to reflect all the more deeply about the nature of justice, morality and truth, rather than abandon them.

        All of this is to say that this line of reasoning (that truth and faith are bound up with moral standards) has become so deeply engrained into our culture that both the theological (and political) left and right believe it.  In fact, it has become something of a basic axiom which people have turned into a means to critique Christian faith from a new angle.  The argument goes something like this.  You are correct that I have a deep moral sense.  It is part of my very identity and I believe it, even when other things seem uncertain.  When I take this moral sense and I read parts of the Bible (or, as often as not, when I hear others tell me what is in the Bible), I find things there that violate my sense of right and wrong and so, therefore, I stand in judgment over what I find there.

        It is significant that, in many ways, this is nothing more than a contemporary, non-Christian (not to say atheistic) appropriation of the apologetical argument from morality.  While Christian apologists attempted to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is true," these new non-Christian apologists are attempting to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is ridiculous, as well as the Bible in which we read about it."  It is deeply ironic that this way or arguing has demonstrated that the apologists have actually won, even if their victory doesn't look like they wanted.  They have finally convinced the American people of their major premise, that our moral sense ought to be judge of everything else.  The only problem is that people took that major premise and concluded, not that they were immoral, but that the gospel is immoral.  If we combine this with a decreased sense of the majesty of the Christian tradition (which may or may not be too bad a thing), we find that people are unwilling to give the gospel the benefit of the doubt and, when their first encounter is bad, simply dismiss the rest.

        The problem with this is that, in the attempt to reveal Christians as naïve and non-Christians as enlightened, the secular world has joined large portions of the church in their naïveté by becoming every bit as imperialistic and paternalistic as the views they condemn.  We don't say that sex-slavery is wrong because it violates our own, culturally conditioned notion of how we ought to treat other people; it is wrong because it violates universal human rights.  In many ways, this is a more arrogant position than a Christian position that says that, because sex-slavery is clearly against what God would will, as revealed in Christ, it is against God and therefore is wrong, which at least recognizes that we need to be informed by God what really is right and wrong and that we cannot trust our feelings to always be right on the topic of morality, because it presupposes that there is something about humanity that should make it clear what is right and wrong and that people who do otherwise are not just in communities that have not yet been shaped by the gospel but are fundamentally evil and must be restrained from maintaining their tradition.

        If we cannot understand that other people have different points of view from ourselves and that we will need to translate and, at a more basic level, learn to listen, we will never rise above name-calling.  Baptizing our own point of view and using it as the standard by which to judge others does not become magically noble when separated from Christian faith.  Secular culture is every bit as biased and full of agenda as religious culture.  What we must do is learn how to work together and acknowledge the fact that, if indeed there is such a thing as absolute truth (which, as a Christian, I believe in wholeheartedly) it very well may stand in every bit as much judgment over me as it does over you.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

03/11/12 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 Grace UMC

What exactly is the church? For some it may be nothing more than a place to go when it is time to get married or buried. Others might see it, additionally, as a place to get their children baptized. I suppose that it is all of those things and, to the degree to which those things get people to think about the grace and mercy of God and the abundant life as promised to us by Jesus, it is not a fundamentally wrong way to look at the church, though it is far from being adequate. Seeing the church as primarily a dealer of spiritual goods and services for people to come and consume is really not very helpful, though it is incredibly common in our world today. It is seen as a place where we can go and receive things that will help us to live our lives. The ministries of the church are understood to be a kind of spiritual marketplace, where we can pick and choose what we think will be relevant to us and, if nothing seems overwhelmingly appealing, we just walk on by and go about our business.

Now, there is probably at least one person here this morning who, when I asked, "What is the church" began to think these words: I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together! All who follow Jesus, all around the world! Yes, we're the church together! The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people. Those words come, of course, from a hymn that, for better or for worse, we are not singing this morning. The point that it makes so clearly is that, at the end of the day, the church is not about the building or the pews, or the pulpit, or even the singing and sermon, but the people. But even according to that hymn, it isn't just any old group of people, is it? No, it is "All who follow Jesus all around the world." Though neither of the Wesley brothers wrote that hymn, it certainly agrees with everything that John Wesley wrote about the nature of the church.

One of the most significant passages in the entire Bible about what the church really is can be found in 1 Corinthians, chapter twelve. Paul begins with this observation. "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." I think that Paul's use of this idea of Christians being bound together as the Body of Christ is incredibly interesting. You have a body and you have the members that make up that body. In spite of the fact that you can't have a body without the members, you really can't say that a body is nothing more than two arms, two legs, a torso and a head. The parts of the body aren't parts of a body unless they are related to one another, joined together in some coherent way. What Paul is saying is that we are not just isolated Christians, we are bound together as the body of Christ, that we might only be part of that body, but we are what we are because we are related to everyone else who is also a Christian. I have said before and I will say again that, as important as it is to get your own personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ settled, there is no such thing as an individual Christian, a Christian who is not bound to other Christians. There are only Christians-in-community. Whatever else a person may be who has isolated themselves from the community of others in the hope of doing things their own way, they are not a Christian, according to the Bible.

So, we are bound together, but what does that really mean? Thankfully, Paul gives us some very helpful guidelines. "Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. if the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?"

This tells us a few things. First, it tells us that God has not allowed us to exempt ourselves from the body of Christ. It does not matter who you are, what your gifts are, or what you do in the church, you are fully a part of the Body of Christ. In fact, you are much more dear to the proper functioning of the church than you realize. You should never say, "Well, I only do this. It really isn't that much." Every time you say that, you are saying that, because you are not a hand or an eye, that is, because you aren't doing one of the things that you think is crucial to the life of the church, your ministry does not matter, that you are infinitely replaceable, that anyone could do what you do. Nothing could be further from the truth. The longer I live as a human being and the longer I serve as a pastor, the more I see that it is seldom when two different people share the same gifts, graces and passions. The simple fact of the matter is that, whether you realize it or not, you have gifts that the church, both locally and at large, need. And if you allow yourself to fall into the trap of assuming that, because you don't do certain things, because you aren't a preacher, or because you aren't leading a particular ministry, you aren't doing vitally important work, you have missed Paul's point. Not one of us has the permission of God to excuse ourselves from our calling to participate, in whatever way, in the life of the church.

It also tells us that if a church ever becomes made up of the same kinds of people, people who all value the exact same things, it is something very much other than what the church was meant to be. The church is meant to be made up of all kinds of people, people who have different backgrounds, who have different gifts, who can do things that other people cannot do, or perhaps do not want to do. If everyone was a pastor, who would be in the congregations? If everyone led some ministry or group, who would be participating in them? The church was never meant to be a collection of people who all do the same things. The beauty is that we are called to be in this together.

Paul continues. "As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" If the first part of Paul's argument teaches us that we are not allowed to exempt ourselves from being part of the body of Christ, this part teaches us with equal force that we are not allowed to exempt anyone else from being part of the body of Christ. Unfortunately, this is something that has been all too common in churches throughout the years. It is no secret that there are many different Christian denominations in the world today. Some denominations are closer to being like each other than others are, but it seems as though every group of Christians has at least one other group of Christians that they do not believe are really Christians. It takes several different forms, depending on who we are dealing with, but it is altogether too common.

Our tendency to exempt others from the body of Christ is not less unfortunate within the context of a local church. It is entirely too common that people who are excited about one particular issue or ministry cannot see the forest for the trees and tend to behave as if the ministry that they are doing is the only ministry worth doing or the one that the church should really be focusing on. I cannot tell you how many people I have met over the years who have a great passion for ministry that is helpful and healthy for the church but aren't doing what they feel called by God to do because someone, at some time, told them that they couldn't or that it wasn't important, or that they should be involved in some other, real, ministry. What is this but the eye or the head saying to the hand or the feet, "I have no need of you," or perhaps the even stronger, "The church has no need of you?"

According to Paul, this must not be so. "On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." Paul is making rather a bold implication here. He points out something that is still as true for us as it ever was during his time. We go out of our way working on ways to take the parts of our body that we are less comfortable with and make them more presentable. We try to wear clothes that fit us well, that highlight our best features and downplay our worse ones. If we cannot avoid people seeing our less attractive parts, we do what we can to make them less embarrassing. This desire that we have to highlight our strengths and downplay our weaknesses as far as our bodies are concerned is the basis of the entire makeup and clothing industries, among others.

What Paul is suggesting is that maybe it is not altogether different in the church. The parts are interrelated in a way that is deeper than we might expect. There are, of course, certain parts of the church that we tend to think of as being "more important" than others and those that we think of as "less important" but it would be misleading to think this way. For example, speaking as a pastor, I cannot help but notice that the most faithful people I have ever met in my life have not been pastors but laypeople; the most capable workers and most dedicated people I have ever seen in the church have often been the people that everyone else may have overlooked. Does the church need dedicated leaders in order to be what it has been called to be? Of course, but this does not mean that such leaders are necessarily the most brilliant, most organized, most faithful people around; it simply means that they have been called to do what they do. I sometimes wonder if God called me to be a pastor because I have, in all reality, a fairly narrow skill set and that, because there are relatively few things that the church needs that I can do, I might be able to encourage others to use their skills for the greater health of the whole body.

The point is that, if we take what Paul has to say seriously, we find that our whole sense of "better" and "worse" in ministry is turned upside down. His point is that we are integrated together in the body of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and that this unity is so profound that to cut anyone off in any way is parallel to the amputation of the human body. It is true that the body might be able to live without a particular part, but it isn't how the body was designed to be and if we get too excited about cutting off body parts, there isn't much of a body left.

Let us look at one more part, at the end of Paul's words for us this morning. "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?" Paul asks this series of rhetorical questions, knowing that the answer that we have to give to each one is, "No." Not everyone does any particular ministry, but the important thing is not that everyone does a particular thing but that someone does it and that we rejoice as a body that it is being done, even if it isn't us who are doing it. Not everyone is an apostle, but there are some who are called to be apostles. Not everyone is a prophet, but God does indeed call people to the prophetic ministry. Not everyone is a teacher, but there is still a great need for capable teachers. If everyone did something, it would destroy the church. We need everyone to work together, doing what they are passionate about, making what they care about a reality. If we all simply listen to what God is saying to us and step forward in faith, God will take care of our needs.

Let me put it this way. What good is it for a church to have wonderful outreach into the community if they do not have any way to nurture the people once they become active? What good is it for a church to have brilliant preaching if there are no structures in place to provide follow-up for those who are struggling with how to respond? What good is it if a ministry is excellent at convicting people of their sins and making them aware of their need for God if they have no way of joining them with others to help them grow and be assured of their salvation? What good is it for a church to have a strong ministry to the poor in their community if they are not prepared to welcome them into their midst in the worship service?

We need people who are comfortable bringing the love of Christ outside of these walls, but we also need people who are comfortable with making people feel welcome in a church they have visited for the first time, which can be an incredibly nervous experience. We need people who are gifted and passionate about ministry to and with elderly people, people who are excited about ministry to and with young people and with every age in between. What we need more than anything else are people who are listening to the prodding of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is indeed prodding you, and taking what the Spirit says and turning it into a reality. Your pastors have gifts and graces, just like you do, but we don't have every gift and every grace. There are some things we get more excited about than other things and if a Church has to wait until the pastors can get through all the pressing concerns that face them on a daily basis before we can make ministries a reality, there is much ministry that we could and should be about that will simply be left undone.

So, if you have given of your time, talents, and energy for many years now, thank you for your service; keep it up, we need you. If you have never acted on what God has called you to do, do it now, even if it is for the first time. If you have criticized the ministry of others because it doesn't fit in with what you think are the most important things for the church to focus on, I ask that you would stop doing so. If there are aspects of the ministry of this church that you don't think are as important or as respectable as others, consider treating them with even more honor, as Paul suggests. And finally, if you used to be active in ministry in whatever form but you have been told that your ministry wasn't important or were discouraged from doing what God called you to do, I beg you to forgive whoever discouraged you and give it another try. God loves us and the world too much to let little hurdles get in the way of being joined together in passionate ministry in the world. Remember, everyone you meet is someone for whom Christ has died. Let us join together, in whatever way we can, and be the church, for as different as we may each be from each other, we are all part of that same body of Christ. Let us pray.

AMEN

Ephesians 4:1-16

02/12/12 Ephesians 4:1-16 Grace UMC

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I must admit that it feels as though I have been continually pestered by a theme over the last few months. Throughout the whole month of December, we were celebrating the season of Advent, culminating in Christmas. During that time, we were celebrating that the very Son of God has entered into our world of space and time, that when we say that God loves us, we do not only mean that God loves our souls or loves our spirits but loves our entire selves, body and soul. We saw that God did not leave us trapped in a body of sin but rather entered into our physicality and transformed it, offering us physical salvation every bit as much as spiritual salvation.

More recently, we had a Celebration Sunday, where we were reminded that when we talk about celebrating and being joyful in the Lord, we don't simply mean that we should have some kind of disembodied, spiritual joy, but that the joy should overflow and make a difference in absolutely every area of our lives. I feel like I have been reminded, over and over again recently, about the intense physicality of our spiritual lives and the intense spirituality of our physical lives. We cannot separate the things we do for our bodies and the things we do for our souls into different compartments that have nothing, or very little, to do with one another. Our bodies are always bodies-of-our-souls and our souls are always souls-of-our-bodies.

It is with that in mind that I wanted to spend some time talking about something we hear about every so often in the church but that we seldom really dig deep in: the role and importance of community in our Christian lives. It is interesting that it seems as though we live in a world that emphasizes faith as a personal thing, that it is something that each individual has entirely on their own and the faith one person has is so personal to themselves that it does not, or at least it should not, have an impact on anyone else. This last point is so strong that it has, at least in a way, been woven into the fabric of our American constitution. The reason that this is so interesting is that we find absolutely no model, anywhere in the Bible, for being an individual Christian. We hear about disciples (in the plural) and apostles (also in the plural), we hear about churches (groups of Christians) and we hear about the body of Christ (a term used for all Christians taken together), but we hear nothing about a person having such an isolated faith that it is theirs and theirs alone that they can either nurture or neglect based only on their own whims and desires and nobody can ever have a problem with it because it is their faith and their faith alone.

What we find is that the Bible is incredibly consistent about the importance of our interpersonal relationships together as Christians. In fact, the Bible is much more clearly consistent on this topic than on many others. The reason for this is rooted in the very most basic nature of our Christian lives. As much as some would like to convince us otherwise, we are not just isolated individuals on some kind of nebulous "personal faith journey" that has nothing to do with anyone else's nebulous "personal faith journey." Rather, as Christians, we believe in a very concrete spiritual experience. We believe not so much in the importance of faith, but the importance of the object of our faith. We believe that we are forgiven and reconciled to God, not through wishful thinking, not by being "good people," not even because we go to church, but because in Christ, God has met with us, has taken our broken condition upon himself, and has utterly transformed our situation. We as Christians are each made partakers of the ministry of Christ, again not by wishful thinking, but because we are actually taken and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, grafted into Christ himself like branches on a vine and are therefore joined to each other at the same time.

It is because we are joined together that the writers of the New Testament encourage us so often to pray for one another, to support one another through difficult times, to take on one another's burdens, to rejoice together and to grieve together. It isn't just because that's what good people do, but because those other people, in a crucial sense, make up part of who we are. There is a sense in which there are no such things as "individuals" in the fullest sense. To speak only of myself, I could call myself a father, but to do so is already to name my son; I could call myself a husband, but to do so is already to name my wife; I could call myself a son, but to do so is already to name my parents; I can call myself a pastor, but to do so is already to name all of you. Even to call me by my name is to tie me up with my whole family. There really is no way to consider a person in complete isolation from all other persons. We are bound together and cannot be isolated, even if we might want to be.

This idea, that things are only what they are because of the relations in which they are found is something that science has had to deal with. Ever since James Clerk Maxwell wrote about electromagnetic theory and, in doing so, pointed out that what we used to think of as individual particles or atoms are actually significant points in a continuous field of force, we have had to deal with the fact that we cannot isolate something without, in some sense, damaging it. The same is true for us. If we try to isolate someone, either ourselves or someone else, we have changed who they are, torn them out of the relationships that make up who they are.

This should come as no surprise to us as Christians. After all, we believe that God himself is Triune, that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that these three are one. The Persons of the Trinity are so completely united that everything we say about the Father we say about the Son except "Father," and everything we say about the Son we say about the Father except "Son," and so on. We cannot consider Jesus in isolation from his Father without destroying his identity, we cannot consider the Father except as the one who has sent his Son, and we cannot understand the Holy Spirit except as the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. This deep connection with others is not something that we invented one day but something that is part even of the nature of God.

All of this brings me to one of the most wonderful and, unfortunately, most forgotten aspects of early Methodism that contributed greatly to the revival and helped to shape generations of Christians both in England and in America. One of the most amazing things about early Methodism was the significance of their small group ministry. If you wanted to become a Methodist, you were asked only one question. Just one. "Do you desire to flee from the wrath to come?" If you could look into the depths of your heart and recognize that you were someone who needed saving by God, you were welcomed with open arms among the Methodists. You didn't need to pass a doctrinal exam, you didn't need to prove that you were reformed from sin, you didn't need to do anything to be accepted other than answer "yes" to that one question. If you did, you were enrolled in the society (remember, in its earliest days, Methodism was a movement of renewal, not a separate church) and, at the very same time, enrolled into what was called a "class."

Now, a Methodist class is not the same thing as a Sunday School class. It isn't a place where you go to learn, at least not in the sense that you have one person who has prepared and teaches the rest of the people. Instead, it is a place for people to gather every week and support each other as they grow in their faith. It is important to notice a significant difference between how small groups were approached in early Methodism and how they are often approached today. Today, most people in any given local church do not participate in a small group that is geared toward sharing life with one another. If someone feels that they desire to go above and beyond their experience on Sunday mornings, they might join a class where they can study a book of the Bible or one written by some significant contemporary Christian leader. Sometimes, such groups spill over from being just a study group to becoming a place where people can share their lives of faith, but this is usually not the primary goal of the group.

By contrast, in early Methodism, everyone was in a small group. And by everyone, I mean everyone. Absolutely nobody was exempt. The only thing that was asked was whether they desired to flee from the wrath to come, which meant that they weren't even asked if they were a Christian. In fact it was, in general, assumed that new Methodists weren't Christians, that they needed to learn how to be Christians, that simply joining a church or even a renewal movement did not imply that one already had saving faith but very likely needed to live in a new way in order to really believe the gospel. In doing so, they were building on the key insight of people such as Athanasius who argued that, if you really want to understand what the apostles have to tell us about Jesus, you have to live in a way consistent with how they lived, that you may have to live like a Christian before you can believe like a Christian.

For those early Methodists, participation in the small group ministry was not something extra that could be tacked on to "normal" Christian commitment, it was understood as an absolutely vital part of Christian life. If someone were to say, "I really love the Methodists. I really look forward to meeting with the larger congregation every week. I love everything about Methodism except those small group meetings. I will do anything you say except be a part of a small group," you were dropped from the rolls of the society. Whatever else you may have been, if you were not part of a small group that was actively helping you to live as a Christian in every aspect of your life, you were not a Methodist. It was taken that seriously.

It is important to understand, however, that the Methodists realized that not everyone was in the same place in their relationship with God, that different people who were in different places spiritually had different needs. If you were not yet a Christian, if you could only bear witness to your need to be forgiven but could not yet testify that you had been assured of your salvation by grace, you were part of a class. You met with between eight and twelve other people in similar life situations led by someone who was more mature in their faith as a guide and facilitator. After you became aware of God's saving grace in your own life and were able to bear witness to God's salvation and its impact in transforming your life, you became a member of what was called a "band." Now a band was intended for those who were confident in the grace of God, who could look back on their life and point to a time when they were not a Christian and a time when they were a Christian and share in concrete ways how God had saved them and delivered them from their sins.

When you joined a band, you were asked the following eleven questions, to which the answer "yes" was expected to each. 1. Have you the forgiveness of your sins?  2. Have you peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ?  3. Have you the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit, that you are a child of God?  4. Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart?  5. Has no sin, inward or outward, dominion over you?  6. Do you desire to be told your faults?  7. Do you desire to be told all your faults, and that plain and home?  8. Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever is in his heart concerning you?  9. Consider! Do you desire we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear, concerning you?  10. Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?  11. Is it your desire and design to be on this, and all other occasions, entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?

Now, because we live in a different time and because this dynamic small group structure has been conspicuously absent from the mainstream of Methodism since the beginning of the twentieth century, we have a tendency to hear those questions and see them in a very much negative way. We start to wonder why we should allow someone else to ask us questions like this, we start to have serious doubts about whether we actually want to be told what is wrong with us. We might not actually want to let other people into the deep, dark secrets of our lives because, you know, sometimes we have sins that we like committing, that we have convinced ourselves don't hurt anyone but ourselves and that they might not even hurt us, either. If we answer "yes" to those questions, we realize that we might have to be a Christian full-time, that we can't really get away from people who will hold us accountable.

And yet, if we see those questions as being in any way negative, we have missed the whole point and the beauty of early Methodism. We were meant to have those with whom we can be open, honest, and transparent. In a crucial moment in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who fathered the child that marked Hester Prynne with her badge of adultery while he remained unsuspected, had this to say. "Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for what I am! Had I one friend—or were it my worst enemy!—to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me! But now, it is all falsehood!—all emptiness!—all death!" He realized that being vulnerable and honest with at least a few people, is much to be preferred to being loved and respected with guilt on his heart.

The beauty of the classes and bands is that it provided an opportunity to really put faith into practice, to allow our relationship with God and the salvation we have in grace to be made manifest in every area of life and to take seriously the fact that we were made to live in a community that shapes who we are and to live consistently with that rather than fighting it. It was a structure that professed that it was better to be known truly as a sinner by those who love us and who want to help the victory of grace over sin be realized in our lives than to continue to live tormented by our shortcomings and our falsehoods.

You see, nobody likes being corrected; nobody likes being reminded that they have done wrong but if I can be convinced that when you ask me if you can tell me everything that is on your heart concerning me, that whatever I may hear, it is coming not from a source of hostile criticism, but of genuine concern and care, that I should be prepared, not to be nitpicked but to be supported and assisted, it will help me to be open to positive change, the change the gospel teaches about, a change away from sin and toward God. If I know that, when you point out my sin, it is because you realize that my sin affects you just as your sin affects me and, because of that, you are willing to participate and give of yourself to help me be transformed by the gospel, and if I know that you say this, not from a position of superiority, but as another sinner, just as broken and in need of support and accountability as I am, I am far more likely to hear you and to hear you with joy.

The point of those questions is not to set up a bunch of rules to beat you with when you make a mistake, but to cultivate a community that is so marked by love and compassion between brothers and sisters in Christ that grace can rule the day, can make us into the people we were meant to be, to truly be God's people. Though we cannot pretend that we can import eighteenth century British Methodism into twenty-first century America without making adjustments for the change in time and place, do we not find ourselves in need of this kind of radical community, a community of people that makes sacrifices for the well being of others? Let us pray that God might bring about such a community in our midst and nurture it so that radical love and support can become the dominant characteristic of Christians in this town. Let us pray.

AMEN

Celebration Sunday

01/29/12 Celebration Sunday Grace UMC

As you all know, the topic of celebration has been in the forefront of some of our conversations in the church over the last month or so. One of the things I have noticed in the time that I have been a Christian is that we, as people of faith, tend to develop a specialized vocabulary that we use when we talk about things. As we get more and more involved in our community of faith, as we spend time reflecting on what we believe in the company of other believers, we begin to assimilate this vocabulary into our lives and begin to use it for ourselves. What we don't always realize is that there are times when we use words and we don't necessarily notice that we are using them in a way that is not quite how the rest of the world uses them. As we have talked about in the theology class, the English word for love has a huge range of meanings but when we talk about God's love, we don't mean the same thing as if we were to say, "I love pizza" or, "I love this movie." But if someone didn't know that Christians mean something very specific when they say "love," there might be quite a bit of confusion.

I wonder if the same might be true, at least sometimes, with our word "celebration." After all, there aren't all that many churches that make a point of making celebration a regular part of their life together. In fact, if you look throughout history, you will find that celebration has not tended to play a major role in our Protestant heritage. How can this be, especially since we find celebrations and festivals all throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament? Do we think that, somehow, God used to be excited about celebration with the people of Israel but, now that Jesus has come, isn't so interested in it anymore? I think it is far more likely that God has never stopped being interested in our celebration but we have pushed it to the side for one reason or another.

Why would we have done this? This trend started so long ago that we might not even be able to understand how it started. I wonder if this might be at least a partial explanation. It doesn't take much for most of us to notice that there are some ways that people in our world celebrate which, when compared with what we are taught in the Bible, are not exactly completely compatible with the gospel. For example, there are those in our world who cannot comprehend the idea that one could have a good time, or that one could celebrate, without consuming their weight in alcohol. I met people like that when I was in college and you may have also. For all I know, you may have been one of those people once upon a time; that isn't my point. My point is that if we take that kind of view of celebration and use it as the way we understand the whole idea of celebration, we might feel that we have to reject celebration altogether as Christians. It hasn't been all that long since many churches included statements in their constitutions that outlawed their members from drinking of any kind, dancing of any kind, or even card games of any kind.

But there seems to be a sense in which we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Just because there are some people in the world who do not feel they can celebrate without simultaneously engaging in sinful behavior, that doesn't mean that it has to be that way. The Bible teaches a lot about joy and celebration. The Psalms are absolutely full of whole songs dedicated to calling the people of God to celebrate and to rejoice in their God. In fact, the New Testament, far from reducing the importance of celebration, actually increases it. Paul writes to the Christians in Philippi, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice." He is saying, "It is so important that you rejoice in the Lord that I am going to repeat it. I don't want there to be any chance that you could possibly miss this." The joy that the apostles wrote about wasn't like standing around with a smile, real or otherwise, pasted to our faces. It was a joy that was not stoppable, a joy that endured, even in the midst of tragedy. It is a joy that abides in your heart, even while you are weeping, a joy that enables you to celebrate in the midst of grief. Paul rejoiced in the prisons, Stephen rejoiced even while he was being executed. This is in no way a lesser understanding of celebration but one that is so strong that nothing in all of creation can overcome it.

I want to draw your attention to a book that has gotten something of a bad name among Christians, the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is the book that people talk about when they want to talk about how the Bible can get boring, though usually people say that, even if they have never read it for themselves. In chapter twenty-three of Leviticus, we have all the festivals that God had instituted for his people listed together to remind them to celebrate what God has done. We have the Sabbath, a day of celebration and rest that happens every single week, we have the Passover, the festival of Unleavened Bread, which takes place in the Spring, the same week as Easter, where the people rejoice that God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. We have the offering of the first fruits, which takes place at the very beginning of the harvest season, where the people were commanded to rejoice that they had another crop that year.

We also read about what is called the Festival of Weeks, which was also known as Shauv'ot, which corresponds to our Christian celebration of Pentecost. Seven weeks after the Israelites celebrate their exodus from Egypt, they celebrate the fact that God did not just deliver them and then leave them to their own devices, but gave them a law to live by, a law that set them apart from the other nations as the people set apart by God. We read about the festival of trumpets, a joyful and musical celebration. We read about the Day of Atonement, which isn't a celebration in the sense of a day of dancing and partying, but it is the day where the people remembered, in a very concrete way, that God did not simply leave them in their sins, but provided a way to atone, both for the sins they knew they committed and also those they were unaware of.

The last festival we read about in this chapter in Leviticus is the festival of Booths, called Sukkot, which was a time to celebrate the years the Israelites spent in the wilderness. Everyone constructs and lives in temporary shelters outside where the rain can get to them, all to remember that God has given them shelter and safety when their ancestors did not have it. It is a time for feasting and hospitality and a wonderful time of celebration. In subsequent history, Israel has added even more celebrations, perhaps the most well-known of which is Hannukah, which celebrates God's deliverance of his people from the rule of the Greeks.

The point is that there is major festival after major festival in the Jewish calendar and they aren't just holidays that human beings just decided were going to be special, like so many of ours in America are, but they are meant to reflect what God has actually done in the life of his people. Every time God moves decisively, every time God, in his interaction with his people, does something that shapes the very identity of those people, he institutes a celebration, a festival through which to remember who God is and what God has done.

What I think is amazing is the way in which celebration forms not only a key part of the Israelites' life together but that they are commanded to celebrate. God doesn't say, "Here is a holiday, take it or leave it; its up to you, but don't complain to me if you don't take advantage of it." Rather he says, "Here is a celebration, a festival; keep it." In some cases, failure to keep the festivals was to result in expulsion from the community. Clearly God took the celebration of his people incredibly seriously.

Sometimes we in America like to think that there is a big split through the middle of the human person, dividing body from soul or spirit. We like to think that our bodies don't have all that much to do with our spirits and that our spirits don't have all that much to do with our bodies. This is reflected in how we often approach the issue of faith. When we start to think about how we might grow in our faith, how we are to be more of who God has called us to be, often times we don't ask the question, "What should I do and how should I live that will make a difference." We tend to think in terms of reading books or attending classes, and while these things certainly are helpful, they only go so far.

The point is this kind of separation between our bodies and our souls is not something we find in the Bible. Whenever we see God doing something of spiritual importance, it always is corollated with a particular way of life. God doesn't just mark his people out for some kind of spiritual devotion to him, he gives them a law and a form of life in which to embody that devotion. The Israelites were not just a nation like all other nations, they were a people set apart ad God would never let them forget that distinction. Their spiritual lives and their physical lives were deeply and profoundly intertwined. You could not be a part of the people of God in a religious sense unless you also participated in the life and celebrations of the Israelite people. That is to say, you could not worship God unless you celebrated; it was a very command of God that was not to be ignored.

I think it is truly amazing to realize that God not only allowed celebration among his people, he not only commanded it, but that it was woven into the very fabric of their existence. Whatever else you might have been, if you did not celebrate, you were not an Israelite, you were not a person of the covenant. If this is the case, if to be a member of the community of the faithful, to be part of the people of God is to celebrate, to allow the spiritual aspects of your life to spill over into every area of your life, including your physical life and your celebratory life, then it challenges any attitude toward celebration where we relax and we celebrate so we can get back to work because we need to rest from time to time if we are going to be able to really work hard.

It is because of all of this that I want to encourage you to participate as fully as you can in the events and activities today on this Celebration Sunday. It is a moment, perhaps one we should have more often, where we affirm the physicality of our spiritual lives and the spirituality of our physical lives, where we bring our gifts and talents into relation with our faith and we bring our faith into relation with our gifts and talents. We should not think to ourselves, "Why do we feel the need to celebrate at church?" Rather, we should be asking, "Why doesn't celebration play an even larger role in our lives of faith?

Remember that our celebrations as Christians are not just free-floating expressions of joy. Rather, they are a testimony that the miracle that God has worked deep in our souls is not confined in our souls as if they were a separate compartment from the rest of our lives, but that the good news of Jesus Christ has overflowed into every aspect of who we are, that because our souls are glad, we as entire people are glad and that, through our celebrating, we give praise and glory to the God who has done so much for us. Let us pray.

AMEN

Toleration

Toleration
 
Recently, I have been thinking about the issue of toleration.  It is very interesting being a Christian thinking about this topic because the church, it seems, has been on every conceivable side of this issue over the years.  At the very beginning, the church was a persecuted minority.  Occasionally, Christian thinkers wrote treatises about the practices of the church to show authorities that they were not downright evil people as some were saying (there were some rather disturbing rumors going around about what happened during the Eucharist, for example).
 
Later in Western history, you had the Protestant Reformation, where various secular leaders aligned themselves with different religious leadership, effectively choosing what brand of Christianity their domain would practice.  Those who dissented from the majority made appeals for toleration, that they might be able to continue practicing the religion they chose.
 
Now we find ourselves in the modern day, in a country that, in so many ways, was founded on the idea of religious toleration (or at least, such an idea was close to the main few ideas included in the Bill of Rights).  And yet, it feels like there is just as little toleration as there has ever been.  Sometimes, it is the church that persecutes people of other religions or people of no religion at all.  Sometimes, even, the persecution goes the other way.  What is fascinating to me as a Christian leader is to see that Christianity can be seen simultaneously as the dominant religio-cultural influence in America and yet also be a persecuted body, perhaps in some instances, as a persecuted minority, depending on the context.
 
When one glances back over Western history, the cry for toleration has been nearly ever-present.  Somebody always wants to be tolerated by someone else and does not feel like they are being so tolerated.  However, it has not always been the same groups.  What that means is that, as persecuted minorities become tolerated and eventually become more and more dominant, there seems to be a trend that they then deny other groups the toleration they battled so hard for.  Why should that be?  Should not those who have yearned for tolerance be that much quicker to show it?  Or perhaps, to be somewhat cynical, do those who have more acutely felt the need for toleration withhold it precisely because they were denied it in the past, a kind of “I’ll do unto you as they did unto me,” attitude?
 
There is much that could be said on this topic, and I do not pretend to have studied this particular issue as deeply as I might, but I have a few thoughts to share.  It seems that, when people refuse to tolerate others, it is because, to their mind, those others are wrong.  To tolerate people who are wrong, it would seem, is a disintegrating force in our society at its most basic level.  When people are tolerated, it is as if we are saying, “We don’t agree with you, but you might possibly be right.”  This is, of course, perhaps part of the reason why many people do not want to tolerate others in the first place.  Toleration can easily be read as tacit approval, and, if the opposing group is wrong, they ought not to be approved.
 
I think that this has done tremendous disservice to the idea of toleration.  It seems that to tolerate someone is precisely to tolerate them as someone who is wrong, at least from your point of view.  If I think that you might be right, it would seem that it is best to say that I conditionally accept you rather than say that I tolerate you.  But once I have conditionally accepted you, toleration is really not the issue.
 
It might seem that I am asking for people to be more harsh with one another, since I am not necessarily advocating “conditional acceptance” for all, but rather “toleration.”  The reason for this is because to insist that we all “conditionally accept” one another is, in practical terms, to superimpose a kind of uniformity (or at least a meta-uniformity) that just does not exist in everyday experience.  I think that, in order to really find unity among people, we need to allow the differences to be what they are so that those differences can be in dialogue with one another as differences.
 
What this means is that I still reserve for myself the right to think that someone else is wrong, but it also means that I reserve for others the right to think that I am wrong.  What it also means is that I will tolerate you, not because I secretly think that you are more right than I am, or that I, deep down inside, wish I could think like you do, but because you are another human being for whom Christ died.  It means that I don’t want you to tolerate me because you think that I have some secret key to happiness that you have missed, but simply because I am another human being, even if, from your point of view, I am completely wrong.
 
It is simply foolish that Party A should persecute Party B, then tolerate Party B so that it can gain a foothold in the culture and even rise to prominence or dominance, only for Party B to deny toleration to Party A because they are “wrong.”  Since when did “right” and “wrong” enter into the rules of toleration?  A toleration that says, “I will tolerate you so long as you fit into my definition of ‘right,’” is not toleration at all.

Let us strive for genuine toleration, that we might join together to seek genuine truth.

Some Reflections on Understanding People

Some Reflections on Understanding People
 
Something that has driven me crazy for some time within the church is the way we treat the Pharisees in the Gospel narratives.  I would hear sermons and other messages that would talk about how hypocritical the Pharisees were and that they were people who spent all their time trying to earn their way into heaven while, at the same time, imposing unbearable requirements on the people, seeking to eliminate the people who got in their way rather than give up their power.
 
What particularly bothered me is that it seemed clear to me that the problems that we see in the Pharisees have not gone away.  They are everywhere, perhaps more in the church than anywhere else.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these were not two isolated facts, but were deeply related to one another.  The prevalence of Pharisaic problems in the church makes perfect sense because they are problems that religious leaders are more likely to have than anyone else, precisely because of their status as religious leaders.  If this was indeed true, it seemed that our tendency to demonize the Pharisees did nothing but blind our eyes to seeing how we are just like they are.
 
After that, I felt I could no longer treat the Pharisees that way.  I began to realize that, just like most people who act like the Pharisees in our own day don’t realize they are doing it (and I can give you many examples from my own life where the same has been true of me), it is entirely possible that the Pharisees themselves did not understand the sinfulness of their behavior.  In fact, the more I got inside their heads, the more I realized that they weren’t being evil for evil’s sake, but were trying to act with integrity within their tradition as best they could.
 
This does not, however, mean that the Pharisees were any less wrong.  What it did, though, was help me to understand not only what they were saying and doing but why they were saying and doing it.  More than ever, it has taught me to see where I do exactly the same things, where I wasn’t able to see it before when I behaved as if there was no similarity between them and myself.
 
This has taught me the evils of demonizing people.  It has become more and more clear to me that a large part of our problem today is that we cannot have honest conversations with people and a large part of why we cannot do that is because we tend to demonize the people with whom we disagree.  So long as we refuse to understand why someone might come to a different conclusion than we do, we will never be able to take them seriously.  We will develop a caricature, a straw man, and then ruthlessly cut it down, without taking account of the fact that it bears no relation to reality, or, at least, not much of one.
 
Let me use as an example the issue of abortion, as the opposing sides, as I see it, are rather clearly expressed.  Those who think that abortion is always wrong call themselves “pro-life.”  Those who think that abortions are acceptable in one form or another call themselves “pro-choice.”  Now, pro-lifers will say that pro-choicers are “anti-baby” or something along those lines as, the argument goes, such people advocate the killing of babies (It must be noted that those who are pro-life often work with an understanding of embryonic and fetal life as equal to life outside of the womb, an understanding that is not shared by everyone else).  Pro-choicers, on their part, tend to say that pro-lifers are “anti-women” or something along those lines as, the argument goes, the forcing women to have their baby forces women to give up their dreams and is a financial burden (It must be noted here that the battle often rages the hardest over the issue of pregnancies that result from rape or incest, where the mother had no real choice in the preventing of the pregnancy).
 
The problem with this way of thinking is that it does not reflect the truth, or at least only a partial rendering of the truth.  It is entirely possible that some pro-life people are truly anti-women and some pro-choice people are anti-baby.  However, I have serious doubts that people lay awake at night thinking, “I really hate babies.  How can I act on this intense hatred of babies?  I know, I’ll support abortion!”  Or, conversely, “I really hate women.  How can I oppress women as best as I can?  I know, I will refuse to let them get abortions!”
 
This way of thinking emphasizes only the positive aspects of each view (that life and/or choice is good) and attacks only the negative aspects of the other (that there are bad side-effects that can arise from these views).  In practice, this completely eliminates any hope of real conversation and dealing with issues.  If a pro-lifer calls a pro-choicer a “baby killer,” how likely is that pro-choicer going to want to have real dialogue?  Indeed, how likely is that pro-lifer to want to have real dialogue?  After all, they have resorted to a caricature.
 
Why are do we do this to each other (and here I have stepped away from the specific issue of abortion)?  I think it is because we are desperately afraid.  In our increasingly polarized culture, to take a position that is not on one extreme or the other is to be seen as a traitor to both sides.  To take the opposing side seriously means to treat the people as if they may truly be human and, thus, may have some things in common with well-grounded, sensible people like us, which makes it much harder to take a hard line against them.  To really listen always carries with it the possibility, no matter how small, that we may be convinced by what we hear, or at least that we may begin to see varying shades of grey where we used to see nothing but black and white.  
 
It is difficult to toe the middle line when all around seem to be running as far from that middle as possible.  And yet, though I surely try to live in this tension and I certainly advocate that others do so as well, I do not think we should pursue moderation as if it were a kind of replacement ideology, as if an ideology of the middle is any better than an ideology of the left or the right.  I think that the reason that the extreme positions are destructive is because they are not true, because they distort the facts and then use power to try and enforce conformity to that particular distortion.  I think that we should see shades of grey, not just because I wish we could stop the bitter fighting but because I am convinced that the shades of grey are real and that thinking in terms of black and white forces us away from what really is.  I think that we need to stop demonizing people because it prevents us from experiencing them as they really are.

Strong Feelings in Our Contemporary Culture

Strong Feelings in Our Contemporary Culture:

We live in a culture today where many people have extremely strong feelings about various topics.  That’s fine.  Not only do I believe that people should have strong feelings about things, I myself have very strong feelings about certain issues.  However, what inevitably happens is that a person comes into contact with another person, or especially another organization, that disagrees strongly on the same issue.  This is where the problems come in.

Let’s say we have a person, let us call them “Person A” who has strong feelings in favor of an issue, let’s say, “Issue B.”  Eventually, Person A meets someone or reads an article or even just hears through the grapevine that some organization, “Organization C” is very much Anti-Issue B (Whatever issue B happens to be), ostensibly because of their own deeply held, strong feelings about the issue.  What is Person A to do?  They are now faced with something or someone who disagrees with their strong feelings.  Surely, they cannot simply remain silent about it.

So they write an article, or post a link to an article that someone else (who agrees with them) or just even a strongly worded status update on Facebook denouncing Organization C for taking a stance that deviates from the opinions of Person A.  However, this seems to seldom take the form, “I do not think that you should support Organization C because they are against something that I am in favor of or because they are in favor of something I am against.”  Rather, they are usually much more pointed than that.  Often, the strong feelings underlying the position of Organization C are acknowledged simply to be dismissed or, what is more often the case, demonized.  Words like “hate” and “evil” are thrown around with alarming frequency.  The impression one gets after reading something like this is that, if I find myself either agreeing with Organization C or even simply deviating slightly from the rigid position of Person A, then I must be equally hated by Person A and therefore am equally dismissed or condemned by them.  The other potential conclusion is that I may find myself completely in agreement with Person A and the writing has further empowered me to continue to hold my own strong feelings and condemn those of others without feeling the need to understand the other person.  This particular point is deeply related to the content of my previous note (Some Reflections On Understanding People).

It is important to point out that there are both liberal and conservative forms of this situation.  I have seen countless appeals from one group to completely boycott or fight against another group because of the views they hold.  I say this because, though it might seem that I am particularly picking on one side or the other, I am fully aware that this is a widespread issue and cannot be pinned only on one side of the political spectrum.

The question that I believe needs to be raised is, “How can we, in good conscience, do these kinds of things?”  I cannot express how many times I have seen someone write words to the effect of, “This person/organization supports/is against this particular issue.  They are so arrogant, closed-minded and exclusive.  You should avoid them or write letters of protest against them.”  How is this tactic any less arrogant, closed-minded and exclusive?  How is it that I can, on the basis of my own strong feelings, condemn someone else who, on the basis of their own strong feelings, acts accordingly?  Does that not seem as though I am doing precisely the same thing that I am condemning them for?  How are my own exclusive actions and words more noble than those I condemn?  Is it because the other group or person is wrong while I am right?  If so, how am I so sure that I am right?  I fear that, all too often, the determining factor of whether I am “right” or not is simply because I choose to believe that I am right.

This leads me to say a few words about what has developed in Western culture, particular in America, which I like to call the ideology of inclusivity or the ideology of pluralism, as the two ideas are deeply interrelated (There is some overlap here with a previous note on pluralism).

Inclusivity is something that is prized very highly within the various mainline denominations in America, not least the United Methodist Church, of which I am a minister.  There is a deep conviction that the church ought to be inclusive.  The rationale for this is that Jesus was remarkably inclusive, eating with sinners and Gentiles, ministering to women and the poor.  So far as we remain rooted in Christ, I have no problem with being inclusive.  However, when we take the statement, “Jesus was inclusive and we are called to be like Jesus, so let us be inclusive like Jesus was,” and transform it into, “Jesus was inclusive so inclusivity is a goal in and of itself,” insurmountable problems arise.

What does it mean to be inclusive in an ideological sense, that is, being inclusive for the sake of being inclusive?  Perhaps this can be best expressed by taking a look at the cognate idea of “pluralism” that has developed.  I am a Christian.  Someone who is a pluralist in the popular sense would say to me, “It is fine that you are a Christian.  However, you must not make any claims that Christianity is true, unless you limit it and say, ‘Christianity is true for me.’”  The reason for this is because it is clear that not everyone in the world is a Christian and to say that “Christianity is true,” is to say to the non-Christian, “Your religious convictions are wrong.”  This implication, that someone else might have a wrong opinion, is deemed as “not loving” and “exclusive,” and must therefore be eliminated.

This seems to be a consistent view at first, because it advocates and actually insists upon making room for other views.  However, it is, in practice, almost never consistent.  What does the ideological pluralist do, for example, with the neo-nazi or the member of the KKK?  If we are to make room for everyone’s convictions, religious or otherwise, on what grounds can we say that some people are wrong?  Those who advocate pluralism or inclusivity as an end in itself, find themselves condemning people, in spite of their own philosophy.  What began as a view that allowed everyone to have their own opinions and lifestyles transitions into a view that says that at least some opinions and lifestyles, are not allowable.

Why are some lifestyles allowable and others not?  It cannot be on any pretence to “truth” because the ideological pluralist or inclusivist is too postmodern to think that any community can have a monopoly on truth and that we must allow for those who disagree with us.  However, radically intolerant groups, if left unchecked, will tear society apart.  They must be opposed.  But on what grounds?  What seems to be put forward most often is an ideal that is stated with such confidence that it must not be questioned, “Ideas and lifestyles are alright if they do not hurt other people.  If they do, they are not acceptable.”  This is so widely believed, but on what is it based?  At best, purely Western values such as are enshrined in the American constitution; more often, simply on the whim of the speaker, who does not want to be hurt by others.”

The problem with this is that, once you have said that something is wrong and it is always wrong, regardless of the community to which a person belongs, a standard has been made by which every other view is judged to be acceptable or not acceptable.  In spite of the alleged “humility” that presses someone into a radically pluralist or inclusivist view, it actually becomes very paternalistic and judgmental because it claims that the radically pluralist or inclusivist view is “right” and any group that is exclusivist is “wrong.”

Let us put this into its clearest form.  Those who wish to be radically inclusive realize they must take a stand against those who are radically exclusive, so they take the stand, “Everything is relative, but pluralism is true!”  This solves their moral problem by condemning any person or group who is exclusive in their eyes.  However, this statement has shown that the radical inclusivist is indeed exclusive of exclusivists and therefore must be excluded by their own ideology.  If one must be exclusive of those who are exclusive, that same person is automatically excluded.

Professor Alan Torrance at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, has written a profoundly insightful essay called “Toward Inclusive Ministry:  The Logical Impossibility of Religious and Theological Inclusivism, Pluralism and Relativism.”  Torrance, a committed Christian, begins by explaining the famous threefold typology of “Inclusive, Exclusive, and Pluralistic” popularized by Gavin D’Costa.  However, in the years following the publication of his book, D’Costa has completely changed his mind on this issue and now contends that it is only possible for human beings to have an exclusive stance, inasmuch as it is logically impossible to truly follow the implications of an inclusive or pluralist ideology.

Without going into all the details of this excellent essay, what is important for this discussion is that Torrance questions what we mean when we say that we should be “inclusive.”  Do we mean that we must be inclusive of ideas or that we must be inclusive of persons?  This is a significant distinction.  If we wish to be inclusive of all persons, we must consider certain ideas to be out of line, such as genocide and all forms of abuse.  However, if we wish to be inclusive of ideas, we cannot be inclusive of persons, as some ideas are defined by their stance against certain persons.  Torrance concludes by upholding this understanding of inclusivity, which is markedly different than the word is popularly understood, but as, he believes, is much more consistent with the gospel and much more productive of actual conversation with people of differing opinions.

To bring this back to the original point of this writing, our strong feelings are not intrinsically evil.  However, what ends up being destructive is our determined ignorance.  If I criticize someone else for running roughshod over my cherished beliefs and, by doing so, run roughshod over their cherished beliefs, I am just as much to blame as they are.  To complain that a person or organization is being closed-minded and discriminatory in such a way as to use primarily emotionally charged words without actually engaging in the issue in a calm and clear way is to be equally closed-minded and discriminatory.  Nothing will change so long as we continue to insist that we are always right and that any deviation is grounds to brand the other as “evil” or “hateful” or “closed-minded” or similar things.  We have to be the ones who take the lead, who treat others with love, even when we are not treated in a loving manner.  We must be the ones who allow our strong feelings to be what they are but refuse to let them isolate us from others, but put them to the test in dialogue with those who disagree with us.

Why Christians Believe

The following is a response to a friend who has strong ties with pagan thought. He is particularly critical of the tendency of Christians to say, "We need to believe that Jesus is God because the Bible says so. We need to believe the Bible because it is inspired. You need to believe the Bible is inspired because we say so." He specifically asked for Christians to respond. Here was my response.


For right or for wrong, whether you find this convincing or not, here is my response.

I have thought about this issue and ones closely related to it for quite a while and I often find myself in self-conscious disagreement with how many American Christians approach this issue. But first, some history is necessary.

The predominant movement that we know today as "Biblical Innerancy" (with which I disagree, for the record) arose in the second half of the nineteenth century (it existed, in a different form, before that time, but we only get the radically militant form of it that we know today at about that time). It was developed as a response to what was seen as the attack of the "higher criticisms" of the Bible, which argued that we must not treat the Bible as somehow fundamentally different than other books, that is to say, we must be willing to examine the books of the Bible in their historical and cultural contexts, just like we do to other books, and try to understand them at that level as well. For people like me, such a move has only helped me to understand the texts better and to fully take into account the fact that God has moved through human beings, not by bypassing their humanity, history, or culture, but working in and through it (though it does yield some degree of transformation as well).

However, others felt that to do so was to "desacralize" the text and undermine faith as a whole. In order to combat this, conservatives/fundamentalists (they were effectively the same in those days. Fundamentalism was a much less militant movement in its early days) ratcheted up their doctrine of inspiration so that history and context no longer played a role in interpretation. The Bible became nothing more than free-floating oracles, independent of context, that all bear equal weight in interpretation.

Once this move takes place, the Bible becomes the ultimate authority and Jesus becomes a doctrine taught about by the Bible, on the same level as any other thing taught in it. This is precisely where I disagree with such an interpretation. I do not think that a text as a text (that is, as words on a page) can be the ultimate authority, nor do I think it was ever meant to be such. I think that ultimately, the text needs to be a witness to God (to use an idea of Karl Barth) or spectacles through which we look to discern what lies behind them (to use an idea of John Calvin). What matters is not the text as such, but at what the text directs us to.

I don't know how much confidence you have in natural science, but that is precisely the same kind of attitude that has been developing in natural science over the last hundred years or so. There is a tremendous conservative bias in science, when ultimate paradigms are concerned. There was so much support for Newtonian mechanics, both among scientists and laypeople, that Einstein's theories of Relativity had almost no chance of being heard or taken seriously. It was only the fact that, after long and careful scrutiny, it seemed to be a closer and more adequate representation of what really is the case (given concrete expression by its prediction of the change in the perihelion of Mercury) that made it win the day. It was not merely political power (for it certainly did not have that), but fidelity to the truth. If you doubt the hesitancy of scientists to adjust to new ideas, you should read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn, and "Against Method" by Paul Feyerabend.

My point is that, at the end of the day, Christian convictions do not, ultimately, rest on what a particular text says. The ultimate conviction is that God stepped into our world of space and time (which is only incomprehensible if we begin by presupposing a dualistic outlook) as an actual human being. Not that God took human "form" and only "seemed" to be human, nor that it was something less than God who came to earth as Jesus of Nazareth, not that Jesus was just one more prophet, but that the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, was very God of very God. This is a conviction that is proclaimed as truth. I would argue that authentic conversion takes place only when a person becomes convinced of this truth, which I do not think happens by intellectual argument (or the authority of a text), but by a personal encounter with this Jesus who has been raised from the dead and lives even now. Because of this, authentic Christian experience is inherently Trinitarian.

Now, one might argue, "How do you know that someone had a genuine encounter with the risen Christ? How can we be certain that it was not simply an illusion, or wishful thinking, or anything of the kind?" If one means "certainty" as, "absolutely impossible to be doubted," like the kind of truth Descartes was searching for, then we cannot be. But, by that same token, the same can be said of anything, as Foundationalism is widely believed to have completely failed. Absolute certainty of that kind is an unattainable, and thus false, goal. There is always room for doubt.

However, if a person claims to have such an encounter and becomes liberated from destructive habits and lifestyles and their life is utterly transformed by it (which does happen), there is reason to believe that something has happened, call it what you will.

My ultimate answer is that real Christian conviction is reached by personal experience, not by argument from a text. The text of the Bible becomes the source and norm of Christian theology, as there is no other text that can not only present Jesus Christ in his time and place, but also present the whole historico-cultural context that led up to it, as well as the impact that he had on his first followers. That experience is always open to doubt, as every other claim to truth and knowledge is, but the Christian believes that their experience is not merely subjective, that it connects, in some way, to a deeper reality that is true, regardless of whether they believe it and acknowledge it or not. This reality might be only imperfectly understood and need to be revised in some way or another (as Newtonian physics had to be refined by Einsteinian thought), but the reality with which they have made contact is fundamentally reliable.

When done well, it is my conviction that Christian theology bears a much stronger resemblance to science than it does to many forms of philosophy.

To return, in closing, to your example of "Why Jesus and not Thor?" I must say that, on one level, there is no reason. After all, from the point of view of historical evidence, we can only learn about them from sources written by human beings, which might very well be wrong. However, my conviction is that Jesus is indeed alive and meets people, myself included (though that does not mean that I equate my theology with the truth, though I hope it bears some resemblance to the truth), whereas I do not believe the same is true for Thor. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Is it possible that Thor has encountered me and I have just not noticed it? Certainly. I just do not believe it to be so. It can be doubted, but so can any other position, so dubitability as such is not condemning.

Those are just some thoughts. I do not imagine that you will be convinced, but you specifically asked for Christians to respond, so here is my response.

In Christ,
Travis Stevick

Mark 4:1-9,13-20

10/19/11 Mark 4:1-9, 13-20 GUMC Youth

As we start our way through chapter four of Mark's gospel, we are confronted with something that actually shows up quite a few times in Mark and certainly more in Mark than any other book of the New Testament. He will take a story, split it in two, then stick something else in between the two parts. Sometimes, this is called Mark's "Sandwich" technique, because he sandwiches a point between two parts of a story. What we need to know about this is that, when Mark does this, it isn't just for good story-telling purposes, but he is making a very important point. Both the "bread" and the "meat" of the sandwich, to use those terms, are tied together and must be interpreted together.

The reason why I bring this up is because, if you noticed, we simply jumped over three verses out of the middle of our text for tonight. This is not because they are not important, nor is it because we are going to just pass by them, but because this is an example of this sandwich technique. We are going to deal with the story that Mark splits apart this week and with the stuff he stuck between the two parts the next time we get together in two weeks. Now, this might not sound fair, because we've got seventeen verses to look at this week and only three for next time, but it really isn't that odd. Those three verses are so interesting and raise so many problems for so many people, it might even take longer to unpack what they mean than it does for the rest of this passage.
We start out by seeing that Jesus is surrounded by a big crowd, there's that crowd again, so he has to get into a boat in order to teach them. Here we have the first of Jesus' famous parables in the Gospel of Mark, but what exactly are parables? You will hear most people talk about the parables as if they were told to make everything as clear as can be, that anyone can understand the parables if they just take a moment and think about them. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to line up with the facts. You see, the first part of our passage is spoken to the crowd of people who had come to listen, but the second part is spoken just to the disciples, just to those who were close to Jesus.

People will often talk about the parable of the sower as if it were as plain as day to understand, but we forget that, to my knowledge, nobody talks about the parable without talking about the interpretation that Jesus gives. We need to remember that the crowd of people who heard the parable didn't hear the interpretation. All they heard, after traveling a long way, was a story about a man who went out to plant, some of his work bore a lot of fruit, but some of it didn't. You know, if we are honest, we could say the most natural interpretation (if we ignore Jesus' interpretation) is that farming is not an exact science (especially at the time); you win some and you lose some. The important thing is that you keep trying. If you get so worried about wasting some seed, you'll never get the benefits of that seed that lands on good soil. That's an interesting interpretation, but that isn't what Jesus is getting at.

Let's take the different soils one at a time and see what is going on. The seeds fall on a path, "and the birds came and ate it up." When we look at this from the point of view of agriculture, the problem is that the seed is exposed before it has had a chance to grow. Once it grows, it can withstand great forces (as we can see here in Northwest Iowa. All kinds of crazy things can happen before the crops are wasted), but it is in the greatest danger at the beginning. But when Jesus interprets this in terms of human beings, he says, "When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them." If you are a new Christian and you are exposed directly to all kinds of attacks, it is easy to cut and run, or to be so discouraged that you give up. Once you've grown in your faith, you can withstand a lot of those kinds of attacks, but it is dangerous at the beginning.

The next seeds fall onto rocky ground, "where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away." The problem here, looking at it from an agricultural point of view is that, at first glance, the plant is strong, just like a plant ought to be. However, the roots are weak, or nonexistent, which means that it does not take much to destroy the plant. Jesus makes it seem that the plant grew quickly because there was not much soil, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. When we understand his statement in light of his interpretation, it seems to be clear that his point is mainly the difference between the appearance, at first, of real growth, contrasted with the destruction of the plant, because it had no roots.

When Jesus talks about what this means for Christians, he says, "When they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away." There are many people who are intrigued by the gospel, who seem to respond really well, who make all kinds of great professions, but, when the going gets tough, it turns out they aren't really all that different than those around them. I can't tell you how many people I went to high school and college with who were like this. In fact, you could say that this was me at the beginning of high school, and even partly into college. As a bit of a side not, it is interesting that these are the only ones that Jesus says, "they immediately receive it with joy." Appearances can be very deceiving.

The third set of seeds fell onto ground that had a bunch of thorns in it, "and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain." With the plant, the thorns and other plants around suck up all the resources so that there is nothing left to nourish the plant. With only so much food and water to go around, some plants get it and the weak die out.

Interpreting this for his disciples, Jesus says, "These are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing." As far as Christians are concerned, we need to realize that we only have so much time and energy. We have to decide what to spend it on. If we spend all our time, energy, and money on things that do not help us grow in our faith, we won't have much left for that growth. Also, if we spend all our time trying to get more money, we won't grow. We have to prioritize our lives and take the limitations we have seriously, so we can make good choices. For example, we don't have cable and I don't miss it. I have so much to do, so many books I want to read, so much time I want to spend with my family, so much time at the Y trying to be more healthy that, if I sat down and got sucked into a few hours to TV a day, I wouldn't be able to do the things that really mattered.

The last seeds we hear about land in good soil, "and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." When the sower gets the seed where it can be received and nurtured, it grows and brings forth incredible abundance. The difference between the growth that comes from being in good soil and from being in the other kinds of soil is amazing. Biblical Scholar R. T. France makes this comparison. "The first never started, the second started but died, the third survived but could not produce grain. But in the end none is of any value to the farmer, since he is looking for grain, not mere survival."

Interpreting this for his disciples, Jesus says, "They hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundred-fold." It is interesting that, when Jesus describes what it means for someone to receive the word as good soil, he does so in terms of "bearing fruit." This is a term that has a few shades of meaning in the New Testament. Sometimes it means that your Christian faith does not just sit in your heart but makes a difference in your life. However, it often means, and does in this case, the spreading of the gospel and the making of disciples. Jesus talks about a person receiving the good news in faith then going out and making disciples, thirty, sixty or a hundred. To be a Christian is to bear fruit like this. You need to understand that I am not concerned with numbers. I'm not so excited about myself that I feel we need to have a huge number of people here in order to feel good about myself. The reason that we are called to reach out is twofold. First, it is because we have something to share. We have a God who loves us, who is our hope, even in the midst of trials, tribulations, and even death, and there are all too many people who have no hope in the world. Secondly, it is because it is the natural response to hearing in faith. Faith drives us to grow; not out of obligation, not because you're going to disappoint me or anyone else if you don't, but simply because it is what faithful people do, like a plant grows, not because it has to, but because it is simply what it does. This takes many forms (for example, I talk about science with atheists, but that is not isolated from the gospel), but it happens.

So the question that we each need to ask ourselves, and ask ourselves seriously, is, "What kind of soil am I?" Are you someone who has never really received the seed of the Word, that is, are you someone who has never given yourself to Jesus at all? Are you, instead, someone who gave yourself to Jesus once upon a time, but you quickly, whether it was days, weeks, months, or even years down the road, let your faith die, or at least slip into inactivity? Perhaps you are doing your best to grow but are so surrounded by things that drain your time and energy, or are so influenced by destructive relationships that you can't seem to grow, in spite of your best efforts. It is also possible that you have received the seed and are growing, bearing fruit in the way God has called you. I'll tell you what; only you and God know the answer to that question. In fact, it might even be the case that you are not prepared to admit to yourself what kind of soil you have been, so you may not even realize where you fit into this parable. But its something that you should think through, both tonight and in the days to come. Do your best to think back through your life and recent history and see if it looks more like one of these patterns than the others.

A while back, we talked about the fact that the communities in which we find ourselves play a role in who we are and how we even think. I emphasized the fact that we are not imprisoned in the way things are, or the way things have always been, but that, in order to break out of old ways of thinking, sometimes we need to leave behind old ways of living. This is one way in which the parable is an incomplete picture of our situation. You see, the path cannot somehow magically move to become good soil, nor can the rocks and thorns just magically disappear, but you and I do not need to stay the same as we used to be.
Jesus tells this parable and he isn't, first and foremost, talking about us, inasmuch as we are living rather a long time after him, though it still applies to us as we have seen. The fact of the matter is that, God has entered our world of space and time and has met all kinds of people, but not everyone likes him. There were some, like the disciples who, at a word from Jesus' mouth, dropped everything and followed him. There are others, like the scribes from Jerusalem, who seemed to have no place in their hearts and lives for him, and there were people all the way in between. The people who loved Jesus could make no sense of why some people hated him and the people who hated Jesus couldn't understand why anyone would love him.

According to Jesus' parable, the difference between the people is like the difference between different kinds of soils that have seed thrown onto them. The same seed is given to every kind of soil, but only some soils are prepared to do anything with them. The same message of salvation and a transformed life is offered to all, but only some people are prepared to do anything with that. When we look at things through this lens, we see that to expect everyone to jump for joy at the mention of the name of Jesus would be as unrealistic as to have all soil be of the same kind.

So, there is a sense in which there is not much we can do about what kind of soil we are, but we need to be careful not to push this to the extreme. You see, even though there were exceptions to this, there were whole groups who either hated Jesus or loved him. Jesus was consistently loved by the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, the unpopular, the dirty, the smelly, those who had no hope. He was consistently hated by the people who saw themselves as self-sufficient, as those who understood themselves as people who already understood God, by the powerful and the popular. In general, the Pharisees hated Jesus with a fiery passion, but in the Gospel of John, we read about a Pharisee named Nicodemus who accepted Jesus for who he was and was made fun of by the other Pharisees because of it. There was something about being a Pharisee that seemed to keep people from accepting Jesus and if one of them did so, there was tremendous peer pressure to keep them from acting on it.

The fact of the matter is that changing from one type of soil to another is hard work, but it is not impossible. And the reason that it is not impossible is because Jesus has done the impossible, on our behalf and in our place, has responded to God in perfect obedience, long before we ever thought to do so. Remember this. Nobody, not even Jesus' closest disciples, really really got it until after Jesus was not only raised from the dead, but until he poured out the Holy Spirit onto the disciples at Pentecost. Until that happened, nobody really understood what Jesus was doing and teaching. Before all the dust settled, we read that some of Jesus' greatest enemies became great heroes of faith and some of his closest friends turned out to be his enemies. Never give up on your friends or your family. And never give up on yourself. Even if you have never really given yourself to Jesus, or even if you have done it once, or many times, but it never seems to stick, never give up. Jesus died for you. He deeply wants you to know him, which means he also wants you to become the kind of person who can know him, and what is amazing is that there isn't a set, narrow pattern for what that looks like. Keep striving after Jesus, because he has striven after you. The seeds keep getting planted and are just waiting for a chance to be received and grow. Let us pray.

AMEN