Multi-Jesi

Or is that multi-Jesuses? My Latin really suffered after the second declension.

After a long quiet month on the blog, Jon and I both make our return on the same day! (I actually decided to post before I even realized that Jon had put up his own entry.) I believe that it is well timed.

I am moving on to chapter 1, but I hope that I will be able to engage our posts on the intro and chapter 0 as I go.

As I started reading chapter 1, “The Seven Jesuses I Have Known,” I hadn’t really even gotten through the first two paragraphs on the first page when I began pondering what Jesus it is that I had met. How would I describe him? Do I know more about him now than I did then? Nearly two years into marriage, I know that my relationship with my wife has to change every day – it has to grow and improve, or it our marriage will grow stagnant and die like a garden plant left without water during a very dry August. I have been what conservative Protestants call “saved” for over twenty years now, and what does that mean? How have I changed since the day I declared my faith? Is my knowledge and relationship to Jesus deeper now than it was? Or is it like the plants outside our back porch – withered and dry?

The scary thing is, I really cannot say that I know. I think the same thoughts during the day, while I plan services of worship or Sunday School lessons for a new class I want to teach. So I used to be able to translate Hebrew sentences, and I could argue successfully that it was supposed to be a genitive of object, not a genitive of source. Yet my faith feels shallow. Like Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring – thin, butter spread over too much bread. My faith is supposed to be a shining example to those in the congregation, yet I am sometimes appalled by it, admiring those who look up to me. Perhaps that is healthy and a challenge. Perhaps it is something else entirely.

Anyway, I read the rest of the chapter for the second time tonight – the first was a long time ago, after I first bought the book. I have, like McLaren, come to the conclusion that each of these traditions offers some truth about God. And I agree that none of us gets it all right – indeed, I would venture that we do not even get a majority of it right. I look at the table at the end of the chapter, and I find myself immediately attracted to a few of the traditions and repulsed by the others. I have positive thoughts about Roman Catholicism, but the thoughts on the liberation tradition are immediately critical.

In some way, I think it is like the Psalms. There are days when Psalm 150 reigns, and that is the kind of Psalm that I need. There are days when Psalm 42 echoes the deepest groans of my soul – sheer strength of will keeps me in the faith. And rarely could the two fit into the same circumstance of my life. Perhaps each tradition will speak to me in its own course, as it did for McLaren. Perhaps I never reach them all – and do not need to.

Jesus is who he is, and I believe that he reveals us to himself precisely as much as we need to know. And there are aspects of his character that do not make sense to me, and I do not need to know them. These are the unfathomable riches of his grace, the depths of his love that we can never reach.

I like Jesus that way. True to himself, and exactly what I need. True to himself, and exactly what you need.

Enough nonsensical rambling.

A Generous Orthodoxy – Intro and Chapter 0

Just in case you thought I wasn’t reading…

I’m of two minds in some ways about Orthodoxy. In one way, I’m captivated by McLaren’s idea that orthodoxy – which is translated “right belief,” but has actually come to mean a list of doctrines that defines a group – should not be a “least common denominator.” This is a stingy orthodoxy, keeping to itself and keeping out those who don’t believe correctly. A generous orthodoxy, however, seeks understanding and inclusion – the admission that none of us has the answer, and that we rely on the Spirit speaking to us through each other in order to gain a larger picture of God.

 

On the other hand, I’m inclined to throw out orthodoxy all together. It has been the cause of arguments, disagreements, persecution and killing… all because someone doesn’t “believe right.” And it leads me more and more to think that we’ve made a god out of doctrine so that we can ignore “right practice,” (which some had called Orthopraxis). How else can we explain the fact that we Christians argue ceaselessly about things like biblical inerrancy and homosexuality (which are only referenced in Scripture a handful of times), while completely ignoring the needs of the poor in our own towns, the alien in our lands, the oppressed around the world (which are mentioned ceaselessly and directly in the Bible)?

 

These, as McLaren points out, have become “weapons of mass distraction” used to divert our attentions from the things that – according to the Prophets, anyway – God REALLY cares about. At some point, we decided that Christianity was about “believing” just the right things, and that believing and acting were somehow in different realms.

 

Of course, if we threw out doctrine all together, we’d end up in a completely different place – one that would be just as difficult and off-balanced. But how can we find balance between these two things? To me, it’s in the definition of the word we call “faith.” Faith alone is what saves us. Faith is God’s gift to us. Faith is a mysterious thing repeatedly mentioned in the Bible.

 

Faith is not just believing in God and in Jesus as his Son. Faith is not just some theoretical transaction of receiving a gift that God offers us. Faith is “belief in action” – it is both the things we believe, AND the extent to which we let those things transform us and live through us. Can we honestly say we “believe” Jesus is God’s Son if we refuse to follow his teachings?

Forgetful

Sometimes our world seems very surreal.

I read philosophy and theology and get swept away by all of the thoughts and ideas, the “big picture.” I forget that there is a reality out there. I forget that there are parents mourning their children, men frustrated by another dead-end job lead, college students scared about the future, citizens wondering if the next drunk driver is going to hit them, families trying to decide what to have for dinner, communities seeking to figure out how to best use their resources to benefit everyone, cronies in politics and business grabbing everything they can for themselves, the poor trying to get a share of the pie – whether or not that share is “fair,” children trying to remember their multiplication tables, immigrants wondering if their dreams are going to be dashed, fanatics plotting their next show, artists struggling to get their ideas out. In short, there really is life out there.  There is a point to our ideas, our theologizing, our work. And the point is to help people to live, and to live well – to the fullest.

Everything else is vanity and a chasing after the wind.

But sometimes I just get caught up in the ideas for the sake of the ideas, with no respect of the point: people living. I tend to like to think seemingly just for the sake of thinking. But there is more than that, particularly as a minister (or maybe that really makes no difference). People are in the crossfires of everything we do. People are the point. To help people live well – live fully.

Sometimes I forget.

Holy

After a long break from it, I picked up Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours today and started with the mid-day office. This is a reflection I hand wrote after completing the office.

God is holy. Set apart. Sacred. Undefiled. Perfectly good.

And yet he calls me to approach him. He wants me in his presence. He delights in our conversation. He wishes for me the best of his creation – all that he created me to be and to do.  And even as much as I seek to ignor or thwart or pervert or defame, his desire soes not waken or lessen.

For he is holy. It matters not that I am not holy. That what I am – a sinner and blasphemer – cannot stand to live or live ot stand in the presence of a holy one such as God. For I, as Isaiah, know what is due me when I approach God. He is holy, so for my profane self to approach demands death. I know this at the core of my being.

But God still wishes an audience. He still desires the conversation. ANd the holy Creator will work to make the fallen created something that can endure his holiness. He works to make us holy. He has no more desire to see us succumb to the tragedy of death than we have the desire to succumb to it.

Holiness does not rejoice in vengeance or vindication. Holiness seeks restoration and completion, not death and decay.

Thank you, Lord, for your holiness and for not giving up on us – on me.

one plus one equals ten?

Upon rereading this post, I found that I had made a gross error. The post was originally called “One plus one equals eleven?” I referenced the binary system and did some incorrect additions. All is now corrected below.

Now begins the original post, with the correction to my binary addition.

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I must admit that I have already read a pretty good portion of McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy.  I picked up a copy of the book shortly after it came out and immediately dove in. It left such an impression that that part of my brain died, and I remember nothing of what I read. Very sad.

I hope to do much better this time around, and it is starting with the very title of the book. I appreciated John Frame’s foreward much more this time around than I did the first time I read it. I have matured some and read more broadly, giving myself a firmer foundation (is that okay to say in a postmodern conversation?) for understanding the background of the book. So as I was reading the foreward to the book, I really started to ponder the title, A Generous Orthodoxy - as I said, something that I had not done before. And it struck me.

Orthodoxy can be generous. And generosity in belief can be orthodox. And everyone CAN live together and sing Kum Ba Ya. Okay, so I’m a cynic, too. But that does not change the magnitude of my reflection on generous orthdoxy. Hans Frei’s term really is groundbreaking.

I grew up Southern Baptist, and of what I know of foundationalism (which is to say enough to know that if I thought about using it in a philosophical conversation, it would be better for me just to assume that my thought is wrong, silly, or completely in an alternate unverse), that’s pretty foundational. And Southern Baptists have a way of not being very generous in their orthodoxy, especially in the last couple of decades. If you happen to believe wrong (differently) on a particular point of minutiae – say that perhaps Paul had a wife (or not) - that could be grounds for accusing one of being liberal and clearly NOT saved.

So the idea of allowing orthodox faith to be flexible, to be a 2-d defined area instaed of a 1-d line of thought, is new. And I am not quite sure whether I like it or not. I certainly like the IDEA of it. But it is so ingrained in me that orthodoxy is believing the right thing, and that there can only be one right thing. 1+1=2, and that is always true. And then we learn about binary system where 1+1=10, which really isn’t different mathematically, but it sure looks different from our decimal point of view.

I guess I am saying that the idea of generous orthodoxy is refreshing and frightening, and I am not so sure that it really is safe ground. I am not sure that salvation is found there. I WANT Christian faith to be more than intellectual assent to all the right things. But it is so different that it might as well be saying that one plus one equals ten.