It was a nice evening this past Thursday. A couple of birthday beverages were definitely enjoyed: Pinetop was in the cask, and the Black (Eye)PA was back, and it was *black*. A small crowd made for good conversation.
The topics were all taken from various tweets that came across my twitterfeed:
Topics for tonight via Twitter:
1. #God is all about people, not theology.
2. You don’t have to believe in heaven to find life after death
3. I really enjoy that my OT Teacher is talking about how sometimes we use too much history interpreting our text. i respect that.
4. If misunderstood / used incorrectly, theology can be the handmaiden of Satan… #discernment
5. What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
6. I believe that there is no more important doctrine for the church today than this: _______. If we understand this doctrine correctly, we will avoid many traps
Marx
7. Alienation is at the root of Marxism and theology. The difference is defining the object and subject of the alienation. #marxism #class #god
Given that it’s been a few days, not much on the recap this week… though I do recall the answer for no.6 – any guesses anyone has on what to fill in the blank? Or what you would put there?
Here’s a poem (untitled) from the backside:
On a hill above the days of winter There stands a child as lonely as the snow He is a question looking for an answer If you don’t have it kindly let him go
He is the offspring of an ice-storm fire Brother to the forest and the sea He’s walked the paths of hell; the hills of heaven Looking for the why of what must be
Give him what you freely have to offer Or simply walk beside him for awhile Don’t ask of him that which he cannot answer Or judge him harshly when he does not smile
For he may follow visions you’re not seeing A message that your ears may never know He is a question looking for an answer If you don’t have it kindly let him go
1972
Love to have any thoughts you have on the above – as always feel free to post them here!
A low-key evening at the pub, and some very enjoyable conversation. The Black and Blue Porter was a nice addition on the whiteboard – a roasty porter with some blueberry mixed in (better than it sounds). Speaking of sounds, did I mention Gish was mixed in the soundtrack last night? “And she knows and she knows and she knows…” Excellent.
Topics for the evening:
Does love win?
forgiveness
heroic gestures
free gifts
the future
Topics in detail:
1. Does love win?
2. Is God’s forgiveness unconditional? Is it for everyone?
3. “The ultimate heroic gesture that awaits Christianity is this: in order to save its treasure, it has to sacrifice itself – like Christ, who had to die so that Christianity could emerge.” What might this look like?
4. Is there such a thing as a ‘free’ gift?
5. “Does the future of evangelicalism lie with progressives who can adapt and change or with conservatives who remain faithful to the old paths?”
6. “What is the biggest problem in the church: people can’t stand us or we can’t stand the gospel?”
7. “Conversation works in the foyer, but behind the pulpit clarity is king.”
—
So discussion began with number one. Does love win? What does that mean? Well, after reading the book my understanding was this: if the vast majority of people who have ever lived – billions and billions of human beings, created in God’s image – end up suffering eternal conscious torment and horrible suffering in hell, then love does not win. In other words, God cannot be rightly called good, loving, and all-powerful if this is how things ultimately turn out. He admits that if this is how things go, we can say God is all-powerful, but don’t call him good and loving, or call him good and loving, but clearly not all-powerful. Something like that. He does a much better job, so read the book if you want the straight scoop. Yet it appears that there are many many people who are not Christians, who don’t appear to ‘choose Christ’ or worship the God of the Bible. Will they all be in hell? And what is hell? Is it separation from God? Is it being in God’s presence but not being able to stand it or enjoy it? Is it death and annihilation? Will there be a chance for people to choose God after they die? Is there a statute of limitations on repentance that’s limited to this life? Here’s an excerpt from the book:
From Love Wins, by Rob Bell:
“Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being to them forever. A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony.
If there was an earthly father who was like that, we would call the authorities.
If there was an actual human dad who was that volatile, we would contact child protection services immediately.”
Wait – did he get this off my blog post – An Angry God? 🙂 (which I wrote a week before Love Wins came out).
What do you think? Is this a picture of God you adhere to? Is it accurate?
a powerful symbol
On to topic no.2 – Is God’s forgiveness unconditional? Is it for everyone?
The first response:
“No, it is not unconditional. I grew up in the church hearing that if God forgives you, you’ve got to start living differently, otherwise it obviously didn’t make any difference, and in that case – you’re not really forgiven. There are conditions.”
Next response:
“What about God removing our sins as far as the east is from the west? And what about Jesus saying that we need to forgive people seventy times seven? Doesn’t that imply that forgiveness is unlimited, and therefore unconditional?”
Other examples came up: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son (all Luke 15, btw) – which all seem to note that forgiveness happens before repentance. That forgiveness happens regardless of our response or of our deserving it. So in that case, forgiveness appears to be unconditional.
So does God forgive everyone? If we are called to ‘love our enemies’ and forgive ‘seventy times seven’, and if while we were enemies, Christ died for us – doesn’t that imply that forgiveness is not based on response? Or at the least it seems unconditional. But does this apply to *all* of God’s enemies? Which would include everyone, right? It seems that there is a case to be made for this. That God forgives everyone, but not everyone chooses to accept that forgiveness, or live in the reality of that forgiveness. (There’s a nice chapter on this issue in Love Wins, by the way). Also, if we are called to forgive seventy-times seven (i.e. infinitely) and to love our enemies – doesn’t that also apply to God? Or does that not apply once you die? And someone asked, “How are we going to love our enemies when we’re in heaven and they’re in hell? That puts us in an awfully difficult spot. Or aren’t we supposed to love them anymore – which would make us held to a higher standard here on earth than in heaven, which is supposedly perfect.”
Other tangents that came out of this: was Jesus’ death necessary for God to forgive us? If so, then it wasn’t unconditional. It was dependent on a certain condition happening, i.e. someone dying in our place. *Or* was it the case that God unconditionally forgives – that is his nature – and the cross was the outworking of that reality – the expression of the love and forgiveness that God already extends (because clearly we see God forgiving in the OT, or was that just ‘provisional forgiveness’ but not the real thing? Or somehow backwards dependent on a future event?)
Another tangent: if Jesus ‘became sin for us’ and took on ‘the sin of the world’ – why would anyone be punished anymore? The theological way around this is that actually Jesus didn’t die for everyone, which again, isn’t really that good of news. Not to mention that it seems to deny the cross the fullness which it is due. But we have to explain why not everyone gets in, and also that God is all-powerful, so then we say that actually Jesus only died for those who actually respond to him. But then the offer of salvation to all people isn’t actually a genuine offer, and the whole thing unravels (or is given a fancy theological name).
Or could it be the case, that Jesus *did* die for everyone, and God *does* forgive everyone, but not everyone chooses to live in the reality of that forgiveness (see the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son). He’s standing right there at the celebration (heaven), but doesn’t join in the party (hell), despite the reality that the father says, ‘all that I have is yours’. (again, great chapter on this in Love Wins).
a free gift?
We skipped no.3, and went on to no.4 – is there such a thing as a free gift?
First response: ‘I was trying to buy something the other day, but there was a minimal debit card purchase amount, and I didn’t have any cash. The clerk decided to buy it for me. I was amazed. A free gift!’
Second response: ‘Was it actually free? He still had to pay for it.’
Here’s where the question came from:
Excerpt from The Puppet and the Dwarf, by Slavoj Zizek:
“Is there such a thing as a ‘free’ gift?
Or does such an offer aim at putting you in a position of
permanent debt? When the message is: “I don’t want
anything from you!,” we can be sure that this statement
conceals a qualification:
“…except your very soul.”
On a more anecdotal level, is it
not clear that when, in a lovers’ quarrel, the woman
answers the man’s desperate “But what do you want
from me?” with “Nothing!,” this means its exact
opposite?”
What do you think?
And a bonus post from the backside, from a blogger who has issues with some of the theology in Love Wins, as it seems many do, most especially over theories of atonement (relates to above discussion):
Posted on a blog:
“Any Christian worth listening to loves the cross and is
loath to see it robbed of its glory. To ridicule what the
cross accomplished is to make war with the heart of the
gospel and the comfort of God’s people.
J. Gresham Machen understood this well: They [liberal preachers] speak with disgust of those who believe ‘that
the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an
alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner.’
It never seems to occur to modern liberals that in deriding the
Christian doctrine of the cross, they are trampling upon human hearts.
No doubt, some Christians get worked up over the
smallest controversies, making a forest fire out of a
Yankee Candle. But there is an opposite danger–and that
is to be so calm, so middle-of-the-road, so above-the-fray
that you no longer feel the danger of false doctrine. You
always sound analytical, never alarmed. Always crying for
much-neglected conversation, never crying over a much-
maligned cross. There is something worse than hurting
feelings, and that is trampling upon human hearts.”
We didn’t actually get very far discussing this post, but it isn’t exactly clear what is meant by ‘trampling upon human hearts.’ It seems it’s just a fancy way to sound theologically adept and serious, while making people afraid. It attempts to create fear when alternative ways of reading the story are presented, more than actually living in the delight of the story, which at its heart is a bit of mystery, after all.
Do you have a thought on any of the above?Post your comments below!
We had about a dozen people at Pub Theology last night over at Right Brain Brewery in the Warehouse district.
There’s nothing like coming in from the cold in Northern Michigan to a good brew and good conversation with friends and strangers!
On tap last night:
time
eternity
reason
ghosts
Here were the topics and quotes to get conversation rolling:
1. What about time? Does eternity exist?
From Introducing Radical Orthodoxy by James K.A. Smith:
“Modernity eternalizes the present. A modern ontology is characterized by a flatness and materialism that ultimately lead to nihilism – a loss of the real squandered into nothing. When the world is so flattened that all we have is the immanent, the immanent implodes upon itself.”
“Only a participatory ontology – in which the immanent and material is suspended from the transcendent and immaterial – can grant the world meaning.” 2.Is reason reliable? Immanuel Kant in the introduction to Critique of Pure Reason: “Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.”
More from Introducing RO: “The myth of secularity relies upon the modern dualism of faith and reason.”
and
“We must protest equally against assertions of ‘pure reason’ and ‘pure faith’ as against theology as an internal autistic idiolect, and against theology as an adaptation to unquestioned secular assumptions… The apparently opposite poles are in secret collusion: the pursuit of pure faith is as much a modern quest as the pursuit of pure reason.” We must seek a via media in which the theoretical foundations of secularity are dismantled – whence the spaces for public discourse will provide new opportunities for the expression of a properly theological account of reality
3. What about ghosts?
——-
I don’t have time to give a full recap here, but there was some good debate about modernity/pre-modernity and conceptions of time. About what does it mean to be fully present in the here and now, and does this present awareness become overbearing when approached from a materialist perspective? There was no consensus on that, though one person, referencing Eckhart Tolle, noted that ‘all we really have is the present moment’.
Is reason reliable? Again, some good discussion, and general agreement that it is. No consensus on faith/reason as a false or appropriate division.
There were also some ghost stories shared.
Have a thought about the above topics? Post a comment below.
Many people have questions about terms like the ‘emergent church’ or the ‘emerging church’, and wonder, well what exactly does that mean?
The Re-Emergence Conference I attended in Belfast recently helped clear up some of that for me. Phyllis Tickle, one of the featured speakers, noted that there is a shift happening in Christianity, and it’s something that happens every 500 years or so. Most recently was the (Great) Reformation in the 1500’s, before that was the Great Schism between the East and West portions of the church, before that was the Great decline and fall of the Roman Empire, with Christianity recently becoming the official religion of the empire, and before that was the life of Jesus, called by some the Great Transformation. (And if we want to go back further, 500 years before Jesus was the Babylonian exile, the end of 1st Temple Judaism and the beginnings of second temple Judaism, and 500 years before that was the beginning of the monarchy in Israel with David. Note that all of these dates are approximations, nobody is suggesting it is 500 years to the day.)
Tickle and other experts assert that today we are entering a similar time of broad change. When these changes happen, certain things are brought under question and examination – in the Reformation one major issue was ‘who or what is our authority?’, and the answer shifted from ‘the church’, to ‘the Bible’, or sola Scriptura. That was one major aspect of the shift at that time and helped spark the birth of Protestant Christianity (noting there were many other factors as well).
Today similar questions are being asked:
1) What is a human being? (Tickle: “For the first time in human history we do not know what a human being is.” She noted the shift from Descartes to Freud to Jung among others.)
2) How do we relate to other faiths and religions? (We live in a ‘glocalized’ world, where global and local concerns, realities, traditions, religions intersect, and the old imperial/colonial mentality of Christianity (‘the need to convince everyone’) perhaps needs to be rethought or reunderstood.)
3) What is our understanding of the doctrine of the atonement? (In other words, what did Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection accomplish? What was he about? Our understanding of that typically comes from a medieval development stemming from Augustine and more fully articulated by Anselm of Canterbury in Cur Deus Homo, or ‘Why God Became Man.’)
4) What is our authority and what exactly is the Bible? (Given scientific discoveries, biblical criticism, etc.)
These shifts are happening throughout Christianity, and there are various aspects of it under a variety of names: the emerging church, missional church, the emergent church, fresh expression, de-church, faith collectives, the house church movement, the new monasticism, hyphenateds (meaning a combination of a specific tradition with emerging church aspects, such as Anglican-Emergent, Reformed-Emergent, Presby-Emergent). No aspect of Christianity will remain unaffected by this shift.
Some hear the word ‘emergent’, and say we should run away from it. Those are usually people who don’t know very much about it, or only have ‘second-hand’ knowledge of it – in other words, they’ve only read what other people have written about it (usually condemning it), without reading authors who are a part of the movement itself. Some criticisms are that it ‘doesn’t take the Bible seriously’, or ‘isn’t faithful to Jesus’, or has ‘weak theology’, for example. Tickle noted that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
She says there is a profound depth to the theology of those who are a part of this shift, and I would totally agree. Authors like NT Wright, Walter Brueggemann, Marcus Borg, Brian McLaren, Scot McKnight, Dallas Willard, and Walter Wink, to name just a few, have done some incredible studying, thinking and writing about who Jesus was and how we are to understand the gospel and Christianity today. My own sense is that these individuals have such incredible respect and love for the Bible and for Jesus that they are willing to ask the hard questions, questions that might cause us to rethink what we thought we knew about exactly who Jesus was and what his message was/is. Those opposed to change are often ironically a product of major changes that have already happened in the faith (e.g., the Reformation or the invention of the printing press).
The questions many of these authors in the emerging world are asking are: how does the culture of the authors of the Bible affect what they are saying, how does the broader political, geographical and cultural context help us frame certain events and writings, how did the original readers of a text understand it, and how have our own modern, post-Enlightenment, post-Reformation biases affected our understandings of the text? Some are opposed to doing any rethinking about any of this, and think we’ve already arrived at all the answers (Thank you, John Calvin and Martin Luther. Of course we forget that even Calvin and Luther had a religious and political milieu within which they were living and reacting against). If you ask me, a faith that refuses to ask questions, refuses to engage with the text and take it on its own terms (as much as possible), a faith that thinks it has already arrived, is a faith that is not living but dead.
The wonderful thing to me is that many in the emerging church are finding that the gospel is bigger, broader, and more beautiful than we’ve thought. Jesus wasn’t just about helping individuals escape punishment in the hereafter, he was articulating a new way to be human, not just individually, but in community, as it relates to a local community of people (of varying beliefs/backgrounds) as well as to the various political and social realities we find ourselves in. Jesus did not come to start a new religion but to announce and embody the kingdom of God. This embraces and includes all of life, all people (not just Christians), and the entire universe. It is truly good news.
I hope this is somewhat helpful, as many are asking these questions and wondering what this whole emergent or emerging church thing is. It is not something to be scared of, and the reality is – you are in the midst of it, whether you know it or not. Phyllis Tickle noted that emergents are people who are skeptical of denominations and mega-churches, are allergic to owning a church building, are interested in exploring and developing their faith in community and conversation, are eager to draw on some of the other great Christian traditions other than their own, and are interested in how art, faith and justice connect and interweave. Perhaps some of that resonates with you. Above all, it is a conversation – one you are invited to join.
______
Tickle has a great book on this whole shift, called, aptly, “The Great Emergence”. I cannot do justice to the whole conference, or even one lecture, let alone a book in a short posting, but feel free to leave a comment or send me a note if you want to discuss it further.
If you haven’t listened to the BBC audio of the conference (a 5 min clip), check it out, there you can hear Phyllis Tickle, Dave Tomlinson, Peter Rollins, and myself, among others.
Every once in a while, it’s good to ask yourself, “When was the last time I had a real conversation with someone who doesn’t believe in God? Do I even know anyone like that?”
The reality is that people of no religious belief are one of the fastest-growing segments of the population. They’re also just the sort of people Jesus engaged.
With this in mind, our church began to contemplate how we could connect with people who would never set foot in a church on Sunday morning. We decided we had to go where people were already hanging out. So a year and a half ago, on an October Thursday evening, we started a conversation group called “Pub Theology.”
We had cleared the plan with the owner of a local brewery and put up a few posters, but we weren’t really sure what to expect. More than 15 people showed up that first night, and we’ve rarely missed a Thursday since.
In many ways we’ve connected with the crowd we set out to meet: people who have left the church but consider themselves “spiritual” individuals who believe in an undefined higher power, atheists, Buddhists, and others. It’s an open environment: there are no presentations or lectures, just good talk over a good brew.
Fertile Ground and a Safe Place
One of Pub Theology’s regular attenders, Steve, is an atheist. He loves coming because it’s the first time he’s met Christians who are willing to admit they don’t know it all. “If more Christians were like this, I would be much more open toward people of faith,” he said to me. Many of the Christians who attended Pub Theology have said the same thing about people of unbelief. That is a healthy development. It opens the door to meaningful relationships that can become fertile ground where the gospel can be seen, experienced, and shared.
Rebecca, a former Christian who openly declares her lack of belief in God, noted that Pub Theology feels like a “safe place” to talk about matters of faith. She also says she never senses a tone of condescension. “So often you try to talk to people about this stuff and it’s clear they feel superior to you and are less than subtle about their underlying agenda to convert you to their position,” she said.
Hanging out at the pub this past year has taught me that I have a lot to learn from people who think differently than I do. One of the unfortunate tendencies of Christians, myself included, is to surround ourselves only with people who think like us. This limits our own ability to think, to learn, to ask questions, to grow. It’s hard to be objective about something when you’ve never heard another perspective. It’s also easy to start thinking that you’ve got all the answers. Or that your answers are the best answers. Or that you need to talk with non-Christians only so you can “tell them how it is.”
Certainly we should be enthusiastic about what we believe and desire to share those beliefs with others, but we are shortsighted and ignorant if we think we’ve got the whole world figured out. Not to mention that few people enjoy talking with someone who thinks he or she has all the answers; the conversation tends to be a bit one-sided.
Persuading by Love
Often in encounters with people of different beliefs, Christians end up using oversimplified arguments in an aggressive way. In other words, we attempt to persuade someone by the cold facts, rather than by love and by reliance on the Holy Spirit.
In opposition to this, consider the apostle Paul: “When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. . . . My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:1-5).
Consider also the approach Jesus took. Rarely do we see him engaging in arguments about God’s existence or even attempting to prove who he was through his miracles. In fact, many times Jesus’ miracles were for a different purpose: to bring healing. And often when someone wanted to tell everyone else about it, Jesus told that person to keep quiet.
Peter Rollins, in his book How (Not) to Speak of God, elaborates: “Instead of offering a scientific explanation that would convince, or publicizing the miracles so as to compel his listeners, Jesus engaged in a poetic discourse that spoke to the heart of those who would listen. In a world where people believe they are not hungry, we must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food that we cannot provide.”
In our gatherings at the pub, we’ve had evenings where some well-intentioned Christians have shown up armed with Bibles, tracts, and pamphlets. Their agendas are written on their sleeves, and the conversations in these instances rarely go well. (Mis)treating people as the objects of evangelism has negative effects on them and on us: others can sense when we aren’t listening or aren’t taking their beliefs seriously. They are repelled by that, and we miss opportunities to learn something or to befriend someone when we open our mouths and not our ears.
Encounters with people of different beliefs will, for many Christians, be eye-opening, difficult, and challenging, perhaps requiring us to critically examine long- and deeply-held beliefs. To participate honestly and lovingly is to open yourself up to sometimes scary doubts. If you choose to do this, prayerful preparation may be required.
Unexpected Blessings
These interactions definitely come with unexpected blessings as well. Sitting at the table with agnostics, atheists, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Muslims, Buddhists, and others has broadened my own perspective in a healthy way. I’ve learned things about other faith traditions, other ways of seeing the world. I’ve been forced to examine the things I believe and the things I take for granted. This is a good and healthy thing.
I’ve also learned that Christians aren’t the only people who want good things to happen in the world. While people of different belief systems may have different motivations for doing good, we can often agree on far more than we think. Even though people of non-belief are one of the fastest-growing elements of the population, we should not fear that statistic. Rather, we should see it as an opportunity to meet someone who sees the world differently yet often cares for it equally.
Today, when believers are portrayed as “delusional” and atheists caricatured as “evil,” we need more than ever to sit at the same table, ready to learn. When that happens, I can’t help but think that a little leaven of God’s kingdom mixes through the dough.
________
This article originally appeared in The Banner entitled How (Not) to Talk about God.
Topics for tonight via Twitter:
