No Doubt or Know Doubt? pt 2

Rachel is still fond of saying that,“without doubt it isn’t faith, its fact.” And before you think that makes faith less valuable or true, remember that one of the very fundamental fallacies of modern/enlightenment thought is that empirically verifiable fact is the only thing which is right or true. Translation - for the last five hundred years we’ve heard that only things which can be seen, touched, smelled, tasted or heard can be proven or trusted. The whole world, including the non-religious, are waking up from the stupor brought on by this thinking and in a loud voice are calling out for something more. We must stop expending so much energy labeling the New Age, Eastern mysticism and spiritualist movements as something evil and recognize that the world is tired of waiting for Christians to tell them what they need to hear.

There is something real and deep and true beyond the world that the senses currently detect. And sadly, Christians are often too busy attacking spirituality which fails to match our own to be able to say, “Yes! Your impulses are good! Let us journey together.” Having a commitment to the Lordship of Christ does not mean that we must attack and destroy or ridicule and ignore anyone with another commitment.

Unfortunately when we have engaged in this conversation it has often been with a Platonic and Cartesian dualism than from Biblical spirituality. The Platonic way of viewing the universe says that not only are the senses not where all truth resides, but the senses cannot be trusted AT ALL. For Plato everything we see and experience is merely a “shadow” of that which is Real. So we have developed this belief that matter and physicality are not real and are essentially evil. And this is something which the Bible does not affirm.

The certainty of the Enlightenment was based on science and human progress - and we, along with much of the world, say, “Not so much.” Much of the Christian community of last few hundred years jumped on the progress bandwagon. However, what spirituality we experienced has often gone to the other extreme and placed all our eggs in a disembodied spiritual existence. And to this, the Bible says, “Not so much.”

What does all this have to do with doubt and certainty?

When our existence involves both the seen and unseen, physical and spiritual (though I utterly disdain that distinction), faith and reason...it is more difficult to develop and defend rigid systems with black and white boundaries. There are variables. There is mystery.

That doesn’t mean that there is no truth or that we should not hold convictions. It does suggest that we should hold our convictions with humility. It does suggest that we can, in good conscience and good faith, admit struggles and doubt; we can have a sense of solidarity with the skeptical seeker. It does mean that we can question assumptions, and challenge beliefs.

I wonder what that looks like? It can look like secular humanism. It can look like individual cafeteria-style spirituality. It can look like a lot of things which have already been shown to be ineffective.

However, if part of the process of challenging is giving serious consideration to how Christians and Jews throughout history have been formed; if part of the process is remaining connected to community - even in the midst of differing perspectives; if part of the process is listening to the voices (present and past) who with faith in God have asked similar questions...this process can healthy and life affirming.

Is Dr. Beck right when he suggests that injecting doubt into our churches will probably kill them? My guess is that typically it would be pretty difficult to accomplish without viciously pulling the rug out from under folks. And yet we who are engaging in the ministry of planting new churches are often doing precisely this at some level. At least some of us are saying to those we encounter, “I’ve got a lot of questions and doubts too, and my goal is not to eliminate your doubt. I want to invite you into community with other people who are wrestling and also to introduce you to Jesus, the One who is more interested is healing your wounds (and sending you to heal others) than giving you a list of answers (and sending you to convince others).”

Make no mistake, left unchecked, doubt can be crippling. And yet, when a community of disciples is willing to openly and honestly deal with their doubt; to struggle with difficult issues instead of hiding behind platitudes, such a community is poised to experience faith that is never touched by those who refuse to fully engage.

No Doubt or Know Doubt? pt 1

A large part of college education is to take a group of people who feel that they know everything (college freshmen) and get them to the point where they feel that they don't know anything. That takes a lot of work in the classroom. The goal is to instill a curious bent to the student's intellectual character. To get them to see each new experience (ideological and interpersonal) as an opportunity for learning.

Higher education is good at this. But I wonder how good the church is at this process. Churches, it seems to me, move in the opposite direction: They try to instill certainty. A similar thing happens in political affiliation. You don't see circumspection when Democrats and Republicans square off. I think this is why we live with the rule to never discuss religion or politics in polite conversation. The "feeling of knowing" infuses those discussions, making them very intense but also very unproductive.

So I wonder, can a church survive if it actually tried to undermine the "feeling of knowing" the way higher education does? Probably not. But I think some persons can make this shift. As a consequence, these person seed the church with question-raisers. The presence of these people infuse the faith community with flexibility and curiosity which prevents ossification and stagnation. A healthy church would be a mix of those who feel they know along with people who feel they don't know. The real trick is getting these people to get along with each other and to mutually affirm the gifts each brings to the communal setting.

What a great thought from one of my former professors, Dr. Richard Beck. His blog, Experimental Theology is quite challenging for several reasons. First of all, those who think that the content of my blog is too heavy and serious should not even click on his link (though his sarcasm and humor ensure that even his scholarly work is often light-hearted and enjoyable for nerds like me). However the real challenge of Experimental Theology is that Beck is quite comfortable living into the role he suggests in the extended quote above. Challenging not only assumptions but assumptions which entire systems of thought are often built upon.

While I will not cover this topic in any way like Dr. Beck and his very well researched article, I would like to talk a little about the usefulness of doubt and willingness to question assumptions. And since this post is over a thousand words, I’ll post the rest tomorrow.

The Conversation

A few years ago I sat in a room with about 30 youth ministers/pastors/workers/whatevers that represented quite a few different denominations and faith traditions. We met about once a month and at this gathering we had a specific conversation topic in mind. The question was, "what does your faith tradition bring to the table that is of great value to the larger Christian conversation?" This could easily have been the start of the next holy war, but there was a decent level of trust in the room. This was the first time I'd really thought about what churches from the Stone-Campbell Restoration movement had to offer in an actual give-and-take with other Christian groups. What followed was a tremendously encouraging discussion.

That got me thinking about the need for more dialogue. The need for more unity under the name of Jesus the Christ. We have become incredibly efficient at recognizing and exposing the flaws in someone else's theology - and incredibly efficient at ignoring our own.

Recently Matt Tapie (www.twocitiesblog.blogspot.com) and received a comment on his blog that got him to thinking about the interaction between the Church (and even more specifically Churches of Christ) and postmodern culture. He asked me if I would write a little about the interaction between Churches of Christ and Emergent/emerging churches. The following is the post that I wrote for Two Cities, I've reposted it here because...well, I haven't written anything in a while and my brother is sick of looking at the Sabbath logo...

I don’t claim to be an expert on Emergent or emerging church. About the only area I do consider myself somewhat of an expert in is cooking fajitas…and consuming them. However, this discussion is very near to my heart. For several years I have struggled with our identity in Churches of Christ and have desired very much to determine ways that we can add to the larger Christian conversation – and what we can take from it.

We live in a time unlike any other in history in that ideas and words can gain household usage with unbelievable speed. The downside of this is that these buzzwords become popular faster than their definitions – hence they develop a myriad of different definitions put forth by the different individuals and communities using them.

When you add to that the ability for rants, polemics, critiques and demonizations to be batted back and forth instantaneously via blogs, websites, chat rooms and bulletin boards it is becoming increasingly difficult to have a reasonable discussion on nearly any topic without somebody claiming that it supports terrorism.

Matt has asked me to discuss the relationship between Churches of Christ and Emergent/emerging church. I think, with all the hullabaloo surrounding this particular topic, that it might be helpful to make a distinction between Emergent and emerging church. Often when people speak of Emergent they are referring to Emergent Village (EV) – a network of Christians with a national director (Tony Jones) that owes some of its popularity to charismatic leaders such as Brian McLaren. EV and McLaren can be polarizing entities in that many of the theologies they espouse (or allow for) can be described as a bit radical.

On the other hand the emerging church conversation – in which EV and Brian McLaren definitely have a large voice – is much more diverse. While McLaren’s more liberal theology finds much agreement in the emerging conversation it is by no means the defining theological viewpoint – a point that I believe he himself would defend vehemently. There are many Christians and gatherings of disciples that would characterize themselves as emerging – who may even use EV as a networking tool – who would not espouse some of the radical theological positions found in the writings of McLaren and EV.

The emerging church conversation in general deals, in part, with issues surrounding the postmodern tendency to prefer narrative over proposition, ancient rather than Modern, unity rather division, conversation rather than debate. It is not a rejection of reason, truth or Biblical faith. The concept of emerging church is the belief that the Church is still in the process of maturing and growing – of emerging. We Christians are still in the process of working out our salvation with fear and trembling.

I generally use the terms Emergent and emerging church interchangeably, however I believe that it is important for those who are not familiar with the conversation to recognize the vast diversity of thought contained within those words. I realize that I have not really cited any sources in the stating of these differentiations – if you challenge these distinctions contact me and we can talk about it.

Emerging churches often focus on the unity of believers and desire to find common ground in Christ rather than drawing lines in the sand over countless points of doctrine. This is not to say that emerging churches don’t believe you can draw lines in the sand, make distinctions or hold people accountable for the implications of their belief. Some who oppose emerging church thinking have characterized it as simply New Age spirituality, theological liberalism leading to nihilism, or a wholesale rejection of orthodox Christianity.

I won’t say that there haven’t been people in the conversation with an agenda for these things – just as there have been people with the same agendas in all threads of Christian thought.

There are some serious dangers associated with emerging church with which those from the Stone-Campbell heritage can readily identify and regarding which can perhaps offer counsel to the conversation.

While at this time many emergent gatherings show an affinity for ancient practices, there is also an inherent desire to avoid doing things just because they were done in the past. This desire for relevancy to postmodern culture can lead to a-historical or even anti-historical ecclesiology.

We in the Churches of Christ are (hopefully) beginning to realize just how damaging that can be. A rejection of our past begins to erode the foundation of our theology because over time the collective consciousness of the community (how’s that for alliteration) begins to forget the dialogue and study that led to certain conclusions. This can set the stage for a later rejection of central tenets of faith and/or a cementing of practices that previously had been held as matters of opinion.

There is also the old danger of throwing the baby of reason out with the bathwater of Enlightenment. I do not think that this a necessary part of what it means to be in this conversation as some opponents have suggested. But there is always the tendency to develop extreme positions in response to perceived abuses. Emerging churches must realize that while it is indeed vital to reclaim the importance of narrative, relationship and patient journeying, it is also true that some people have been wrestling with the desire to follow Christ and they really just want someone to shoot straight and tell them “what they must do to be saved.”

However, with all this said, I think there are some similarities between emergent church and our roots in the Restoration heritage. The desire to see Christians set aside denominational loyalties and instead unite under the banner of Christ was an issue of primacy for the early Restorationist leaders. Our movement tended to speak of this in terms of reclaiming the ideal of the first century, whereas in calling for the same thing, emergent churches speak in terms of moving forward into a more fully developed expression of Church.

Emerging churches emphasize community and relationship. There is a great emphasis put on each gathering of Christians to be accountable to one another and to the Lord rather than to what some organizational or denominational board somewhere else has dictated. For emergents this is often driven by the desire to be able to speak authentically into the culture where they live rather than conform to a mold cast in some other place or at some other time. I believe that this is very similar to our own treatment of congregational autonomy.

There is increasing evidence that baptism and the Lord’s supper are taking a central role in the worship life of emerging churches – while I see this as an obvious similarity to our own practice, I think that even more so it is an opportunity for us to reclaim the vitality and benefit of these practices (as opposed to treating them as battlegrounds over which we’ve fought or as simply requirements for proper worship.)

I have no delusions that I’ve done justice to this topic. I think that the relationship between emergent and the restoration movement will continue to be not only an interesting, but an important topic for discussion. For now, I’ll end these thoughts with a quote from Doug Foster and Gary Holloway’s book Renewing God’s People (ACU Press, 2006). I think that this statement – directed specifically at Churches of Christ – would resonate with amazing strength and clarity in the emerging conversation.

[We] stand at a crossroads. We can be a church that is very much at home in our culture, a church of powerful and successful people who seek to please other powerful and successful people. We can be a church that refuses to change because we have a corner on the truth, believing we are the fully restored church. Or we can be a movement of refugees. We can flee our success and materialism for refuge in the Prince of Peace. Refugees travel lightly. They are willing to change. They are on the journey of restoration, knowing that the church will never completely be what it should be, the spotless bride of Christ, until that day when Christ presents her to the Father. pg 137.

Amen and amen.