Book #4: A New Kind of Christian (part 1)

We're reading this book in the home-church Chris and I are involved with. We're not finished with this book yet, but I'm being SO challenged and encouraged by it that I wanted to process as I went. I keep feeling really frustrated as I read, because there are all these new and crazy concepts that I don't have time to process! So, I've decided I'm just going to re-read and discuss and re-read and journal and test against scripture...and ultimately be patient.

The over-arching suggestion is that we are "modern" people. We are modern students, modern teachers, modern parents, modern children, modern friends. Because of when we were born, our mindset is modern, our lifestyle is modern - our entire framework of comprehension is modern. We therefore, have to consider the fact that our Christianity is also modern. Consider these medieval beliefs...

- The world is the center of the universe. This belief was driven by the church (we are made by God, and therefore of ultimate importance), and therefore it was extremely heretical to say this was untrue.

- Witches must be eradicated. We never look for "witches" now, and would certainly never consider burning someone at the stake or trying to drown them to see if they were actually an evil being. However, this was common practice in the medieval church.

- Infidels must be converted or eradicated. This is SO far from modern Christianity (and sounds a bit like a different fundamentalist religion that we're all so quick to fear?), but there were hundreds of crusades where people were forced to convert at the tip of a blade, or die.

There are many more examples of this, but here is the most important concept: at some point we had to break with these traditions in order to get to where we are today.

***According to "A New Kind of Christian", we are on the verge of another "break".***

This next "evolution" of understanding is called post-modernism. The rest of the world is already considered to be in the "post-modern" age. The church, however, is still very modern. Hence: we see a Christianity that seems as though it is non-applicable to every day life. I often felt this in college. I would bring my non-Christian friends to church or to college ministry, and then spend the next few weeks doing "damage control for Christ". To them, it was a different world that they could never fit into. Shouldn't Christ, though, be applicable to lives as they are NOW?!?!

Do you ever feel like you put on your "Christian" face for God-things? Your Christian language, your Christian words, your Christian prayers. Do you have an "every other event" face for the rest? I did (and sometimes still do)...and I HATED it.

I'm years away from forming any solid conclusions about most of the concepts in this book...but I LOVE the way it's challenging my thoughts, and look forward to many hours of contemplation and struggle with beliefs I've always accepted as "absolute."

__________________________________________

ME: I had a period of "falling away" toward the end of college, and as soon as I read this I understood why. I never lost my faith, but I DID lose the "framework" for my faith. I read this and felt "understood".

I feel like a fundamentalist who's losing his grip - whose fundamentals are cracking and fraying and falling apart and slipping through my fingers. It's like I thought I was building my house on rock, but it turned out to be ice, and now global warming has hit, and the ice is melting and everything is crumbling. That's scary, you know? I went to seminary right out of college, and I thought I was getting the truth, you know, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Now I've been a pastor for fourteen years, and for this last year or so I feel like I'm running out of gas. It's not just burnout. It's more like I'm losing my faith -- well, not exactly that, but I feel that I'm losing the whole framework for my faith. You know, I keep pushing everything into these little cubbyholes, these little boxes, the little systems I got in seminary and even before that - in Sunday school and summer camp and from my parents. But life is too messy to fit. The only thing I'm confident about is that I don't have all the answers anymore. (pg. 18)

_____________________________________________

ME: The pastor in this book is struggling with HUGE questions, but has no place to discuss/debate/discourse. I have often felt this way, but am driven by fears of being thought a "heretic" or "lacking faith". I wonder...how many more of us are out there?
Are you afraid to tell your people what you're really thinking? Yes, I feel that all the time.

Do you feel trapped by your profession, like you have to choose between your own personal pursuit of truth and the requirement to give an orthodox sermon every Sunday? Yes, yes, exactly.

Do you sometimes feel that your seminary professors are looking over your shoulder and scolding you? Every day.
Are you struggling with some specific doctrines or theological positions? Yes, several.

Do you have any one to talk to about all this? No. Nobody. (pg. 18-19)

___________________________________________

ME: This quote felt like a huge turning point for me. Up until this point in the book, I was yearning to do exactly what this quote says we can't do. Our "modern" mindset is FILLED with neat, organized boxes to put the world's toughest concepts into. My biggest issue, though, has always been - I don't want to serve a God that's small enough to fit into one of my boxes! Without knowing it, I was at war with my own mindset. What if I could get to a point where the process was more important than the product?! What if I could get to a point where I was content in the knowledge that I will never "know"?!?!

"The need to put everything into neat categories is part of the problem. Modern people believed that they could create a nice framework that would pigeonhole everything. So if you succeed in creating a postmodern framework, I think you've just sabotaged it. Remember that the Pharisees were the great pigeonholers and that Jesus told them that many who came out last in their framework would come out first in his. So you'd better doubt and deconstruct your boxes as fast as you construct them." (pg. 67)

___________________________________________

ME: This is one of the passages that I will need to sit and chew on (particularly the parts about scripture). Mostly though, I love how he pinpoints the "comfort zones" of both liberals and conservatives. WHAT IF we started really listening to each other. Could we actually learn from "the other side"?

"What if the real issue is not the authority of the text (scripture)...but rather the authority of God? What if the issue isn't a book that we can misinterpret with amazing creativity, but rather the will of God, the intent of God, the desire of God, the wisdom of God? Iif that's the case, both sides have to wake up and take notice. Conservatives may have gotten terribly comfortable perpetuating slavery or the extermination of the Indians or the subjugation of women or the marginalization of minorities or the exploitation of the environment because they can use the text to justify it, and liberals may have become terribly complacent because they've kind of dispensed with any clear word from God other than 'Be nice modern American consumers and citizens of liberal democracies.' But if there is a real, living, active, relevant desire of God and wisdom from God that needs to be brought to bear on our concrete life situation, then both sides had better move to the edge of their seats, start praying, start listening to each other, and start reading the Bible in fresh ways for all the new wisdom they can mine from it, don't you think?" (pg. 73)

____________________________________________

ME: I loved this quote (written in a Jamaican accent!), and know it will encourage me on days where we feel drained and confused.

"When I was young, my grandmother used to point to the mountain ranges that stretched from east to west just inland from Port Maria. She would say, 'If you find you-self on one mountain peak and you wanna get to anodda higher one, den dey is only one way up, and dat is to go down fust.' " (pg. 116-117)

**Please know: I love Jesus with all my heart. :)
I've just decided to believe that He's big enough to handle my questions.