A "Third Way", or a New Grid?

Scot McKnight has been an advocate, for some time now, of what we calls “the Third Way” of doing Christianity. In Scot’s words,

The Third Way approach to the orthodox Christian faith is one that gets beyond the fighting, and
between the fighters, in order to carve out a middle way.

The Third Way captures and sustains the good in both the conservative and the liberal. It is the Jesus Creed at work in the church’s theology and praxis. It affirms the great traditions of the Church and seeks to embody those traditions in a new way for a new day. It is not afraid of change but has a deep desire to remain faithful.

While I appreciate Scot’s ecumenical and forward-thinking outlook, I would actually question whether or not talking about a “third way” communicates, perhaps unintentionally, that the grid we’re standing on is valid; that all we need to do is chart a new course over this familiar terrain.

I actually think we need to go further - as opposed to farther. In other words, this is about degree, not distance. We need a new grid. I actually think the so called great emergence we are going through right now is all about this question, this process. And, at the end of the day, so much of the liberal/conservative continuum lives and dies with the assumptions of modernism. So the way forward is not so much a third way, as it is climbing, ascending, reaching for, a different plane - if you will - altogether.

Taking this idea in a slightly different – though I think – complimentary direction, Michael Kruse added this thought:

On of my favorite books is Barry Johnson’s “Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems.” His thesis is that most (not all) of the conflicts we deal with are not problems to be solved but polarities to be managed.

Take the biological function of breathing. Which is more important to you? Inhaling or exhaling? I highly value both. Furthermore, I don’t want to be at a compromise between the two. That is called dead. For that reason I resist language of “centrist” and “middle way.” What is needed is a firm embrace of both.

I think Michael’s thoughts get at what I’m saying as well. We need a new schema to deal with the (sometimes contradictory, and certainly conflicted) data we already have. One way of putting that is as Michael does, saying we need to manage polarities. But I would step back a little more and say that sometimes a complete reorganization is the only way to make sense of data that’s hanging outside the two suitcases of our modernistic conceptions. I think “managing polarities” is the first step in searching for that new paradigm.




The Cart and Horse of Biblical Infallibility

Ever squirm in your seat when reading certain aspects of the biblical narrative? – like this one for instance:

“Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” (Num 31:17-18)

I’ve come across numerous razzle-dazzle ways of getting around the difficulty inherent in such passages, but very few of them sound, to me anyway, anything close to convincing. Some would like to claim that the societies being wiped out were just way to evil to keep around. Really? Including every single individual? Others would claim that maybe there were innocents around – albeit few and far between – but that in killing them the Israelites were mercifully alleviating a painful existence as part of such a clan. I don’t know, that sounds creative, but it stretches the bounds of credulity, don’t you think?

To me, such narratives reveal as much about the underlying worldview of the recipients of God’s message(s), as they do about God himself. I think, like a good postmodernist, that all such “message-events” are a combination of sender - message - and receiver. There is no special crystalline reception that exists - somehow miraculously outside a worldview - merely because it is God who is speaking.

So, all that is to say, I assume that in such passages the people in question heard *something* from God, but they then filtered it through their expectations/presuppositions. And, history suggests that their Ancient Near Eastern expectations told them that the gods who were powerful showed this by wiping out other people groups - thus effectively wiping out other gods. It was always a zero-sum game.

Now, I know this kind of perspective can open up a real Pandora’s box. After all, if this is true, then how do we discern what parts of scripture are more human, or more God? It certainly drives a stake through biblical infallibility - in terms of how it is understood by fundamentalists anyway. So how do we go about interpreting the Bible then- knowing that we too bring our own set of presuppositions to the text? Certainly this is a tough question. I guess the answer is - as inadequate as this may sound - with great fear and trembling, and with an ear always bent towards the Spirit’s leading.

Besides, I don’t know about you, but I much prefer this challenge to having to accept that our God really does condone, and in some instances encourages, even demands, what really amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Speaking of biblical infallibility, I sometimes hear the following argument in defense of holding on to the idea: "Well, if you give up biblical infallibility then the next thing you have is a chaos of subjectivity, where each person makes up his or her own rules as to what's right or wrong". To that I would say, yes, this is one aspect of the logical consequence of such a development - though I think it overstates the reality somewhat. However, this kind of argument, it seems to me, puts the cart before the horse. We cannot hold to a theory of biblical infallibility merely because we're afraid of the consequences if we don't. We should only hold to such a perspective if it can actually, or at least reasonably, be shown to be true. Otherwise we're just opting for traditionalism - the kind that's not really based in reality - but that keeps things unruffled and pleasant solely for the sake of maintaining the status quo.

And, of course, even this is an illusion, because the status quo is dissolving all around us. And our response should not be baseless defensiveness, but the pursuit of a robust, thriving, nuanced, in-tune-with-reality sense of biblical understanding.

Gospel Thoughts: The Pegs and Holes of Modernism

Over at Jesus Creed this morning, Scot McKnight shared an interesting conversation he had with a pastor while awaiting a plane. As the pastor sat down Scot mentioned that he was just jotting down some notes about the meaning of the gospel.

“That’s not hard,” this pastor said firmly. “The gospel is that Jesus died for our sins. He took upon himself our penalty. The gospel is the cross. It ends God’s wrath.”

Scot, in his kind, yet subversive way, asked some follow up questions to get this pastor to reconsider the narrowness of his position. Asking whether there was room for Kingdom, for resurrection, for the Holy Spirit, aspects like that, in this pastor’s understanding of gospel. But the pastor stuck to his guns, saying that these other aspects of the Christian life come after salvation, and as such, don’t belong in the category of gospel.

What was amazing to me, and apparently to Scot, was the degree to which this guy was so sure of himself. If wasn’t like he was caught off guard by Scot’s questions. He was ready to drop each peg in its nice round hole – so long as you kept it outside the hole associated with “gospel”. Not surprisingly, some of his other holes included categories such as “justification” and “sanctification”.

I think the biggest problem I have with this pastor’s approach to the gospel - and many like him in evangelical circles - is the assumption that all this can be boiled down to neat little formulas. “This goes here in box A. And this goes here in box B. Oh, and clearly this goes over in this tidy file cabinet we call box C.”

Doesn’t this strike anyone as odd? Not just that this pastor held to a truncated gospel, but that he had a neat little box for every question Scot asked him.

This just seems ridiculous to me. Where’s reading scripture with a sense of flow in this approach? Where’s the plot-line of the story that we can join in with? Needless to say, I see things MUCH less categorically. I think we are meant to know the story and then live our lives in such a way as to become part of its future. This is as opposed to merely slicing it up into a thousand composite parts; like we do in some 9th grade frog dissection experiment.

And furthermore, I would add that it’s only when we look in hindsight (which is always 20-20, as they say) that something can appear so cut and dry anyway. And this is a problem for those who would want to mix historical study with theological study - especially with a modern, as opposed to postmodern, hermeneutic. Add to this fact the idea that the very term “gospel” has gone from meaning “good news” in the original context – which is, by definition, a pretty general phrase, to, in our modern usage of the term, a specific announcement of one event, and you can see where additional confusion arises.




Truth and Lies in Being Too Political

I often find it an interesting exercise to step back in time by picturing myself in a certain place, in a certain setting, from years past. When I do this I can sometimes remember what my thought process was then, what my expectations were, even get a glimpse into an earlier incarnation of my worldview. And then there are other times when I remember something, from some time long ago, that stands out to me because it’s so different from a position I now hold. It’s like my brain goes: “Check this out, major cognitive shift here!”

I recently experienced this in light of my intense interest in the recent presidential election. Of course a major reason I was interested, as was the case for millions no doubt, was that there was finally a truly compelling figure (Obama) in the running. And someone who was not only compelling, but different. Different in the sense that his postmodern sensibility led him to approach the whole enterprise differently. And in so doing, he helped redeem the term “politician”, just a little bit, over the last six months.

This interest in the political process stands in stark contrast to the kind of teaching that was sometimes explicitly and almost always implicitly taught in my evangelical upbringing. Here the focus seemed to be on changing lives, one at a time, by reaching out to people in our community. And this is a good start! But it assumes this is where our responsibility stops. And I think that’s a mistake. Of course, another facet of this issue relates to the idea that a Christian’s role is to get people “saved” (for heavenly, disembodied bliss, that is), as opposed to trying to redeem our societal structures, so that they too more closely resemble the values of the Kingdom. More on that in a moment…

One aside: Considering I grew up in Canada before moving to the U.S., I was happily inoculated from this American evangelical perspective that says Christian worldview = Republican worldview. There never was that kind of siding with one party in Canada; largely because all the political parties in Canada are much more postmodern than their U.S. counterparts to begin with, as are its churches.

Now, besides the fact that I have paid attention because of Obama this time around, I also pay more attention these days because I now feel it is my duty as a Christian. I think it was G.K. Chesteron who said that a Christian should hold the Bible in the one hand, and a newspaper in the other – or something similar to that. I think there’s real truth to that. It is our task, inspired and equipped by the Holy Spirit, to help connect the dots between these two realities: Kingdom and world.

In my view we cannot claim to be about reconciliation in the world if we are not engaged in the political process. Now, is it a dirty enterprise? You bet. Often it is. Does it stain us to some degree, just being connected to it? Absolutely. And we should make sure to cleanse ourselves – through prayer and confession - from that staining, lest it change us in some fundamental way. But that doesn’t permit us to insulate ourselves from involvement. For those of us who especially believe the gospel is good news for this world, and not just the next, we really need to take this seriously and get involved. We can no more ignore it than we can ignore our child’s dirty diaper. When a change (pun intended) is needed, we are responsible for it.

And as is often pointed out, it makes no sense to work on the local level, dealing with the manifestation of problems in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, without addressing the systemic issues that plague our socio/political/economic structures. To do so would be as futile as continuing to apply ointment to a rash, day after day, week after week, without ever addressing the internal disease that gives rise to the symptoms.



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