Careful Thought

One of the best things to happen to me in the past several years was getting the boot from our last church.  Our views on creation and the age of the earth were too heretical for the fundamentalist church to which we had belonged for eight years.  In the time since then, God has been doing some amazing, and often painful, things in my life.  One of the biggest things is the understanding that the church building we go to on Sunday is not as important as the God we profess.  We tend to get wrapped up in churchy things and pretend that churchiness equates to living a Christ-like life.

So I’ve been trying to understand just who I am as a believer and what that belief means.

Along comes Julie Burchill, a columnist for the UK Guardian.  She describes herself as “a former teen atheist who is now a Christian tryer.”  A turning point in her life came when both parents died within a year of each other.  She recognized that both (presumably believers) were now in a better place and that she should be celebrating their lives, not mourning their death.  Her excellent article takes atheists, muslims, catholics and other traditionalists to task for their hidebound adherence to form over substance.  (Muslims, not surprisingly, have launched the expected bitter verbal attacks.)

As a recovering fundamentalist, I would caution that we shouldn’t out-of-hand discard anything simply because it’s come down to us through the years, but our focus absolutely must be outward.  We need to meet people at their point of need, as Christ did, not where it’s comfortable for us.  Churches tend to organize programs and write checks to handle the uncomfy business of broken lives, rather than getting involved.  That’s a hard thing to learn, and harder to do.

Julie wraps up her article this way:

My favourite vicar, the Reverend Gavin Ashenden of Sussex University, never says, “I am a Christian,” but rather “I’m trying to be a Christian”.  Me too.  Between the darkness that faces me from within and the darkness that faces me from without, it may just prove to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I love it.

Saying, “I am a Christian,” is the same as saying, “I have arrived and am all I need to be.”  Christ knows better.  I hope I do, too.  Meanwhile, I keep trying.

Technorati Tags: atheism, faith, fundamentalism, islam

Tags: atheism, faith, fundamentalism, islam

In no particular order…  Here is a definition from the Theological Word of the Day from the good folks at Reclaiming the Mind:

UNIVERSALISM:  This is the doctrine that states all people of all time will be saved by being reconciled to God and go to heaven, whether or not faith is professed in Jesus Christ in this life. There are a few variations of this teaching that accept “hell” as a real place, but all Universalists unequivocally agree that no person will ever go there.

My question - if this is a valid description of universalist belief, why bother with faith at all?  Why bother with good works, reading Scripture, or even getting out of bed in the morning?  If all are saved and there is no hell, then God’s word can’t be trusted and He obviously is not who He says He is.  There are a slew of passages from both the Old and New Testaments that speak to God’s righteousness and his judgment.  What do universalists do with these?  Ignore them?  What use is Scripture if you can pick and choose which parts you want to believe and which to ignore? 

Evangelicals, and especially fundamentalists, tend to dwell on the righteous anger of God at the expense of His love and His calls for social justice, while universalists take the opposite extreme, emphasizing social justice while minimizing His righteousness and judgment.  The more I come to know God, the more I see that God is complete in Himself: He contains all these traits, and more.  We trivialize Him and recreate Him in our own image when we emphasize one trait over all the rest.
 

Technorati Tags: faith, fundamentalism, judgment, righteousness, social justice, universalism

Tags: faith, fundamentalism, judgment, righteousness, social justice, universalism

(HT: ASBO Jesus)

Technorati Tags: faith, fundamentalism, recovery

Tags: faith, fundamentalism, recovery

Excerpts from Tim Keller at the 2007 Evangelical Ministry Assembly on the current state of evangelicalism in western society.

Evangelicalism used to occupy the middle ground between fundamentalism and liberalism. It was orthodox, pro-scholarship, and facing the world. Recently, evangelicalism has become more hostile and condemning of culture. A younger generation has given up on evangelicalism as a middle ground and are looking for a new consensus. This group goes by a number of names, such as post-evangelicals or the emerging church.

Basically evangelicalism is this: The liberals are not orthodox in their theology, but are engaged with culture and scholarship. Fundamentalists are orthodox in their theology, but are separatist and anti-intellectual. Evangelicalism aimed to be orthodox but engaged, concerned with scholarship, and facing the world. And actually, it worked. This middle ground has been the most vital - until recently.

The rise of the Christian right has made many evangelicals more hostile and condemning to culture. Then you have the charismatic movement, which has been good in many ways but is sometimes anti-intellectual.

A younger generation - sometimes called the emerging church, sometimes post-conservatives or post-evangelicals, are saying, “The old consensus isn’t going to work anymore.” They are responding to the anti-intellectualism of the charismatic movement, and to the rigidity, self-righteousness, and political narrowness of the Christian right. And they are blaming it on classical evangelical doctrine.

(HT:  DashHouse by way of JollyBlogger by way of Blogotional.  You want to hit all those links.  Each has something great to add to the discussion.)

This is an excellent summary.  I consider myself a recovering evangelical, but that’s just a label.  I’m looking for that ‘orthodox (i.e., Scripturally sound) theology’ that is ‘engaged with the world,’ just as Christ called us to be.

Technorati Tags: evangelicalism, faith, fundamentalism, Tim Keller

Tags: evangelicalism, faith, fundamentalism, Tim Keller

I found an article at Christianity Today that gives a great summary of the weaknesses of the four primary branches of evangelicalism (Calvinists, Arminians, dispensationalists and Pentecostals).  Author Ben Witherington “appreciates what each tradition brings to the table-from a fresh appreciation of God’s sovereignty to holiness, eschatology, and gifts of the Spirit-but he argues in his latest book that in their distinctives, all four branches are least faithful to the Bible.”

The article points out something that has bothered me for some time - the focus on defense of an interpretation of Scripture, rather than Scripture itself.  This lends weight to the distinctive, at the cost of the essentials.

Witherington says,

The issue is not really with Christology, the Trinity, the virginal conception, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, or the Bible as the Word of God. The issues I’m concerned about are the distinctives of Calvinist, Arminian, dispensational, or Pentecostal theology. When they try to go some particular direction that’s specific to their theological system, that’s precisely the point in their argument at which they are exegetically weakest.

The Calvinist system links the ideas of predestination, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. Each of those has its own exegetical weaknesses, especially perseverance of the saints.

But the same can be said about the distinctives of Arminian theology, especially when you start talking about having an experience of perfection in this lifetime. There are problems matching that up with what the New Testament says about perfection.

The same can be said about Pentecostal theology, with its teaching about a second, definitive work of grace, and about dispensationalism, with its teaching on pre-tribulation or mid-tribulation rapture. I show in my book that all of these evangelical theological systems are exegetically vulnerable precisely in their distinctives.

Read the whole article here for more specifics.

The thing that concerns me was voiced in the mantra “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity,” often attributed, possibly wrongly, to Augustine.  The second clause is the troubling part.  Should we truly encourage liberty in doubtful matters?  Each branch of evangelicalism holds firm to the interpretation of Scripture that supports their own ‘doubtful matter.’

The defense, whether it be of pre-destination, a particular view of eschatology, the age of the earth, or what have you, always starts, “But Scripture says that…”

I’m no theologian, but I think our approach to Scripture should be the same thing that got the Rockies through the NLCS championships and into the World Series - focus on the essentials.  Be solid in the basics and let the rest take care of itself.

Technorati Tags: evangelicalism, Ben Witherington, Arminianism, Calvinism, Pentacostalism, dispensationalism, Rockies

Technorati Tags: Ben Witherington, evangelicalism, faith, fundamentalism, religion, theology

Tags: Ben Witherington, evangelicalism, faith, fundamentalism, religion, theology