The Systemic Infection- Does Emergent Evangelicalism Give us a More Accurate View of Sin?
Last time, I discussed the Ignatian spiritual discipline of seeing God in all things. This time, I think it would be appropriate to view a modern evangelical perspective regarding the worldly impact of that oft misunderstood word "sin." Of course, the common evangelical view of sin in recent years has had something to do with the evils of our personal behavior. Indeed, it seems that many skeptics think of sin as a horrid provincialization of the interests of the Deity. That we should be inordinately punished because God has a personal grudge against some private infatuation seems obsolete and unenlightened in this world of modernity. But according to the view of one author, we have gotten the message of the "Kingdom of God" completely wrong in this day and age, and for quite some time prior.In the March 2006 issue of the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners, the cover article featured an excerpt entitled "Found in Translation," which was taken from Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren's most recent book The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering The Truth That Could Change Everything. Not much of a fan of the title (it smacks too much of religious enthusiasm, in my opinion), I thought, however, the central thesis of the article to be poignant to the future of evangelicalism in America, and indeed the whole of Christianity throughout the world. McLaren describes how the Lord's Prayer can be paraphrased to make the message give the relevancy it has for this day and age. When we say, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven," we too often ignore the literal meaning of these words: what happens on Earth is as important as what goes on in Heaven. I too often think that the word "Heaven" is more indicative of a place beyond any conceivable place in this cosmos, that is, it is in the sky, beyond the universe, whatever you may wish to say of it. But the question is not about heaven, but about the Kingdom, the reign of God's perfect justice. But of course, there is a problem manifest with the world "will", which as McLareren says, "...can take us down a trail of control, domination, and coercion, and since I don’t believe those ideas are in Jesus’ mind, I have looked for other words." He goes on to describe the literal Greek word for will as "wish". But as McLaren complains, this word "... sounds fairy tale-is and creates other problems. But I have found the idea of “the dream of God for creation” does the job nicely." May Your Dreams come true for Creation- as he puts it? Perhaps this is not a bad way of saying it, but here is a better one, "May Your Love and Justice reign on Earth as it already does in Heaven"- in other words, what is characteristic of the heavenly state, which I don't think has one single physical location, but is a condition of the very abstract of justice, peace, and love, is supposed to manifest itself in the earthly realm. And so I guess it is safe to say that Christians no longer have to remain "heavenly minded", in the sense that the entire life of the Christian person ought to be spent on what I recall one author, a virulent critic of all religion whom I have recently read, describe the goal of benign religion as even a waste of precious time, say, when we write, print, and read thousands of volumes of exegesis on the "disordered thinking of ignorant men," or when we devote our time to building a church or a mosque instead of another school, hospital, or library. Indeed, when theologians gather to debate miniscule points of theology, which all amount to a paucity of hairsplitting when compared to the real problems we are facing in this world, we have every right to be critical of our beliefs, that is, when they are divorced from any real and concrete concerns of the here and now. I could care less, say, if theologians gather to debate whether the other church has a valid Eucharist because they disagree over transubstantiation, or whether justification is a juridical act of God in which you are declared to have Christ's righteousness imputed to you, or whether it is actually infused into you, or whether or not communion should be distributed in the hand or put in the mouth. We could argue day and night over what music to use, what our response will be to pro-choice politicians regarding the Eucharist, and whether we damn those who disagree with our partisanship in the political realm, whether or not gay civil unions should be allowable, on and on and on. All of this legalism is the same as the Pharisees practiced in regards to ignoring the weightier matters of the law. What McLaren gives us in the wake of the bickering is what matters most, and it is not working together in evangelistic efforts to fill the pews on Sunday. Ignore all of that, and ask whether or not it is more important that the church, more than being a refuge on Sunday mornings, is a force for healing and reconciliation in this hurting world. Forget the pulpit, the pews, the organ, the altar, the bell, and the spire. That is not the church. The church is the people of the New Life, the Way. It is community of the Resurrection, the force in the world which attempts to do all that is humanly possible to reverse the tide of life to death to death to life. And so I go on to describe some of the unique metaphors used by McLaren to describe how the healing power of the Gospel can be applied to our modern world.The first instance involves the idea that the world as it is is a "totalitarian regime", in which lust, power, racism, sexism, nationalism, and all the ideological and exclusionary "isms" reign. In the midst of all of this, God is recruiting a "revolutionary movement of change," as McLaren describes it. Now some disgruntled theologians might describe this idea of "revolutionary change" as being akin to liberation theology, that oft hated system in which it was claimed that certain political partisans in Latin America wanted to use Christianity as a cloak for their neo-Marxist agenda. Never mind that they faced the horror of genocidal and repressive regimes that the whole church should have been in opposition to. I think that while it is safe to criticize various aspects of liberation theology that have a worldly and partisan political agenda, one must also recognize that the church's mission is not to be a refuge from the fears of this world, and neither is it to be an accommodation to the power structures of this world. The church must understand itself as a counterculture against the prevailing tides of evil and sin in this world, whether it be personal or social. McLaren also uses the conception of the Gospel as a medicine meant to cure the evil in each person and in all of society, and he also uses the analogy of a party, in which people leave behind all the troubles of this fallen world to join in the eternal celebration of the love and goodness of God. What I think describes the kingdom of God most philosophically is the account McLaren gives of the eternal dance of the Trinity, which was used in the early church. As he describes it,
"In the early church, one of the most powerful images used for the Trinity was the image of a dance of mutual indwelling. The Father, Son, and Spirit live in an eternal, joyful, vibrant dance of love and honor, rhythm and harmony, grace and beauty, giving and receiving. The universe was created to be an expression and extension of the dance of God—so all creatures share in the dynamic joy of movement, love, vitality, harmony, and celebration. But we humans broke with the dance. We stamped on the toes of other dancers, ignored the rhythm, rejected the grace, and generally made a mess of things. But God sent Jesus into the world to model for us a way of living in the rhythm of God’s music of love, and ever since, people have been attracted to the beauty of his steps and have begun rejoining the dance."
As far as I can tell, this rich symbolism indicates a sense of Christianity being a force for good in the world, rather than how many critics have underscored it as a force for evil, misery, and ignorance. It is true that there has always existed a form of apostasy within Christendom, but nothing else really matters than those "red letters" in the New Testament, the words of Christ. What others may say is only of use insofar as they agree with those red letters. This is way in which we rid the church of hypocrisy and superstition, because Christ did not come to establish a church full of hypocrites and sorcerers. Indeed, for the church to become as its Lord is, it must be a force of moral progress in the world, which means that it must speak against and offer alternatives to the prevailing evils of poverty, greed, war, abortion, and sexual immorality by offering conversion to change hearts and minds, and not a simple political program on how to change the world. We are simply the prelude, the beginning, of things to come which will reveal the splendor and enlightened truth of the Infinite, the One and Living God and the Lamb.
Last time, I discussed the Ignatian spiritual discipline of seeing God in all things. This time, I think it would be appropriate to view a modern evangelical perspective regarding the worldly impact of that oft misunderstood word "sin." Of course, the common evangelical view of sin in recent years has had something to do with the evils of our personal behavior. Indeed, it seems that many skeptics think of sin as a horrid provincialization of the interests of the Deity. That we should be inordinately punished because God has a personal grudge against some private infatuation seems obsolete and unenlightened in this world of modernity. But according to the view of one author, we have gotten the message of the "Kingdom of God" completely wrong in this day and age, and for quite some time prior.In the March 2006 issue of the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners, the cover article featured an excerpt entitled "Found in Translation," which was taken from Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren's most recent book The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering The Truth That Could Change Everything. Not much of a fan of the title (it smacks too much of religious enthusiasm, in my opinion), I thought, however, the central thesis of the article to be poignant to the future of evangelicalism in America, and indeed the whole of Christianity throughout the world. McLaren describes how the Lord's Prayer can be paraphrased to make the message give the relevancy it has for this day and age. When we say, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven," we too often ignore the literal meaning of these words: what happens on Earth is as important as what goes on in Heaven. I too often think that the word "Heaven" is more indicative of a place beyond any conceivable place in this cosmos, that is, it is in the sky, beyond the universe, whatever you may wish to say of it. But the question is not about heaven, but about the Kingdom, the reign of God's perfect justice. But of course, there is a problem manifest with the world "will", which as McLareren says, "...can take us down a trail of control, domination, and coercion, and since I don’t believe those ideas are in Jesus’ mind, I have looked for other words." He goes on to describe the literal Greek word for will as "wish". But as McLaren complains, this word "... sounds fairy tale-is and creates other problems. But I have found the idea of “the dream of God for creation” does the job nicely." May Your Dreams come true for Creation- as he puts it? Perhaps this is not a bad way of saying it, but here is a better one, "May Your Love and Justice reign on Earth as it already does in Heaven"- in other words, what is characteristic of the heavenly state, which I don't think has one single physical location, but is a condition of the very abstract of justice, peace, and love, is supposed to manifest itself in the earthly realm. And so I guess it is safe to say that Christians no longer have to remain "heavenly minded", in the sense that the entire life of the Christian person ought to be spent on what I recall one author, a virulent critic of all religion whom I have recently read, describe the goal of benign religion as even a waste of precious time, say, when we write, print, and read thousands of volumes of exegesis on the "disordered thinking of ignorant men," or when we devote our time to building a church or a mosque instead of another school, hospital, or library. Indeed, when theologians gather to debate miniscule points of theology, which all amount to a paucity of hairsplitting when compared to the real problems we are facing in this world, we have every right to be critical of our beliefs, that is, when they are divorced from any real and concrete concerns of the here and now. I could care less, say, if theologians gather to debate whether the other church has a valid Eucharist because they disagree over transubstantiation, or whether justification is a juridical act of God in which you are declared to have Christ's righteousness imputed to you, or whether it is actually infused into you, or whether or not communion should be distributed in the hand or put in the mouth. We could argue day and night over what music to use, what our response will be to pro-choice politicians regarding the Eucharist, and whether we damn those who disagree with our partisanship in the political realm, whether or not gay civil unions should be allowable, on and on and on. All of this legalism is the same as the Pharisees practiced in regards to ignoring the weightier matters of the law. What McLaren gives us in the wake of the bickering is what matters most, and it is not working together in evangelistic efforts to fill the pews on Sunday. Ignore all of that, and ask whether or not it is more important that the church, more than being a refuge on Sunday mornings, is a force for healing and reconciliation in this hurting world. Forget the pulpit, the pews, the organ, the altar, the bell, and the spire. That is not the church. The church is the people of the New Life, the Way. It is community of the Resurrection, the force in the world which attempts to do all that is humanly possible to reverse the tide of life to death to death to life. And so I go on to describe some of the unique metaphors used by McLaren to describe how the healing power of the Gospel can be applied to our modern world.The first instance involves the idea that the world as it is is a "totalitarian regime", in which lust, power, racism, sexism, nationalism, and all the ideological and exclusionary "isms" reign. In the midst of all of this, God is recruiting a "revolutionary movement of change," as McLaren describes it. Now some disgruntled theologians might describe this idea of "revolutionary change" as being akin to liberation theology, that oft hated system in which it was claimed that certain political partisans in Latin America wanted to use Christianity as a cloak for their neo-Marxist agenda. Never mind that they faced the horror of genocidal and repressive regimes that the whole church should have been in opposition to. I think that while it is safe to criticize various aspects of liberation theology that have a worldly and partisan political agenda, one must also recognize that the church's mission is not to be a refuge from the fears of this world, and neither is it to be an accommodation to the power structures of this world. The church must understand itself as a counterculture against the prevailing tides of evil and sin in this world, whether it be personal or social. McLaren also uses the conception of the Gospel as a medicine meant to cure the evil in each person and in all of society, and he also uses the analogy of a party, in which people leave behind all the troubles of this fallen world to join in the eternal celebration of the love and goodness of God. What I think describes the kingdom of God most philosophically is the account McLaren gives of the eternal dance of the Trinity, which was used in the early church. As he describes it,
"In the early church, one of the most powerful images used for the Trinity was the image of a dance of mutual indwelling. The Father, Son, and Spirit live in an eternal, joyful, vibrant dance of love and honor, rhythm and harmony, grace and beauty, giving and receiving. The universe was created to be an expression and extension of the dance of God—so all creatures share in the dynamic joy of movement, love, vitality, harmony, and celebration. But we humans broke with the dance. We stamped on the toes of other dancers, ignored the rhythm, rejected the grace, and generally made a mess of things. But God sent Jesus into the world to model for us a way of living in the rhythm of God’s music of love, and ever since, people have been attracted to the beauty of his steps and have begun rejoining the dance."
As far as I can tell, this rich symbolism indicates a sense of Christianity being a force for good in the world, rather than how many critics have underscored it as a force for evil, misery, and ignorance. It is true that there has always existed a form of apostasy within Christendom, but nothing else really matters than those "red letters" in the New Testament, the words of Christ. What others may say is only of use insofar as they agree with those red letters. This is way in which we rid the church of hypocrisy and superstition, because Christ did not come to establish a church full of hypocrites and sorcerers. Indeed, for the church to become as its Lord is, it must be a force of moral progress in the world, which means that it must speak against and offer alternatives to the prevailing evils of poverty, greed, war, abortion, and sexual immorality by offering conversion to change hearts and minds, and not a simple political program on how to change the world. We are simply the prelude, the beginning, of things to come which will reveal the splendor and enlightened truth of the Infinite, the One and Living God and the Lamb.
posted by Bob at 11:31 AM
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