A Change of Heart and a Change of Mind: Connecting Theology to Life

Last time I spoke about using the tools of ethics and psychology as a means to better read Scripture, and the topic of "head versus heart" came up in the discussion following. This is a really important topic which I felt deserved a discussion of its own. It is particularly important because the idea of head and heart is ultimately about having our theories connected to reality and experience.

Let me begin by defining some terms. When I speak of the "heart" I am referring to our experiences, and how these affect our feelings, that is how we perceive and experience reality. When I speak of the "head" I am referring to how we cognitively understand those feelings and experiences, including the idea of language. If we have the cognitive alone -- disconnected from our experience of life, it remains merely theoretical, detached from lived experience. So the heart (our experience of life) is important, perhaps we could say it is primary. We however also need the cognitive to make sense of our feelings and experiences. Heck, the fact that you are reading this and thinking about whether you agree with me means you are engaging in the cognitive. At its most basic level it is about making sense, and giving a framework to our experiences and emotions. This does not need to be some deep philosophical exercise. It is something all of us do constantly. For example, a five-year old might think, "I'm feeling something, I think it feels good, it's caused by this other person, who I call 'mom', and this thing is a hug, and it makes me feel safe and loved. I love hugs from my mom." All of that is about understanding, conceptualizing about the meaning of our experiences. In short, both head (our understanding) and heart (our feelings and experiences) are essential for us. They impact theology, but they also of course impact way more, they impact how we all experience life.

With that brief intro, let's consider a comment made by Kent on my previous blog post (which was the impetus for this conversation). He begins by saying this,

"Living a life of being loved by God and loving others is not hard. From my perspective, we are changed (born again/born from above/become a new creation -- whichever biblical description one wants to use) when we experience the love of God in our hearts (right brain) through intuitional revelation."

First of all, there is far more in Kent's comment that agree with than there are things I disagree with. So let me begin where I agree. It is certainly true that we humans are formed through loving relationships. Ideally, as a child we are formed by the love of our parents, and out of that we grow to be loving, responsible, thoughtful, mature people. There is of course a parallel with God's love, and we find that idea expressed in the declaration that "God first loved us" (1 Jn 4:19), which is the context out of which we respond by loving others. As Paul puts it, "all that matters is faith expressing itself in love" (Gal 5:6). Again, just as we are formed by the love of our earthly parents, the idea is that God, our heavenly abba, loves us, and that love forms us, resulting in our loving others as a result. Our trust/faith in our experience of a loving relationship God expresses itself in our, in turn showing the same kind of love to others that we have known -- in short, trust expresses itself in acts of love.

Yet, often experience... let alone (shudder) feelings and emotions... has been spoken of in very dismissive ways by theologians, who tend to be very "head" focused and mistrustful of emotions and experience. That's a real shame because emotions and experience are vital to being human. Moreover, a theology that is disconnected from experience and feeling is disconnected from life, disconnected from relationship (including relationship with God), and disconnected from love. There is a biblical term used to describe that sort of head-only theology: dead. So when theology dismisses experience and feelings and the heart, that means it is very broken.

Experience: Changing your Heart

As noted above, our experiences shape and form us. They make us into who we are. The good news is that this is not only something that happens in childhood. Experiencing love can also change us as adults in positive ways, just as experiencing trauma as adults can change us in negative ways.

Where that connects to theology is that if we think that people are changed merely through information, we are misunderstanding something really basic about how we humans work. People are changed -- including changing our minds -- by what we experience. Change my heart, and that will surely change my mind. So if as pastors we want to change someone for the better, if we want to change the way we treat each other, a crucial part of how we get to that change is by positive experiences re-shaping us.

Let me give an example. One particular school of marriage therapy, known as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), stresses the importance of couples experiencing positive emotions as the central means to healing relationships and rebuilding connections in a marriage. Let's say that there is a couple where the guy is kind of a brute. He barges in and takes over when she is parenting. As the therapist digs into this however, it comes out that the guy is actually pretty insecure, but feels like he needs to be "strong" to hold things together. This is not something that the therapist tells him, but something he uncovers about himself. In other words, EFT helps him to get to a vulnerable part of himself, beneath the protective wall of his outward "strong" behavior.

In turn, as his wife experiences him having these vulnerable feelings, opening up, seeing a side of him that she has never seen before, she herself experiences feelings of empathy and understanding towards him. Experiencing this together as a couple brings them together. So it's about helping couples to break out of old patterns of conflict, by getting them to vulnerable places beneath that outward conflict (their fears, their insecurities, their wounds), in order to build empathy and connection.

The means to this is not primarily about understanding something cognitively, but much more about experiencing it together, and how that positive experience of being understood, as you were vulnerable, leads to deep connection.

The point of all this is that practitioners, who are working directly with people, people who need help with their relationships, with love, are finding that experience plays a crucial part of that work. It is through elicits positive emotional experiences -- not simply by cognitive understanding, but primarily through experiencing vulnerable feelings together -- that empathy and connection is built, the couple is re-connected, and the marriage is healed. Imagine what would happen if pastors learned how to elicit positive emotional experiences in people and how that could affect spiritual formation.

Experience is vital. Love is vital. But I have to disagree with Kent's claim that it is "not hard". Love is good, but it is certainly not easy. If love were easy, marriage therapists would be out of a job! Love is hard, and does not come to all of us intuitively. Couples often need to learn how to communicate, how to relate to one another in ways that bring them together, instead of ways that put them in conflict. A part of that is that most of us do not only have positive experiences as a kids, but also come with some emotional "baggage" that we bring with us into our intimate relationships. That is, we have learned some messed up ways to relate to others, and so we need to learn how to love well. The closer you are to someone, the deeper the intimacy, the harder that becomes.

Re-framing: Changing your mind

All this is not to say that there is no place for the head, for the cognitive. Indeed the cognitive is crucial because without it we'd have no way to make sense of our feelings and experiences. In fact, the way we understand and frame something actually changes the feelings we have about it, changes how we experience it. For example, as a kid I broke my wrist playing soccer, and because this happened in the context of sports, I thought it was cool. When some kids picked on me in school and pushed me against a locker, that was really upsetting to me. The physical pain involved was trivial compared to breaking my wrist, but the emotional experience of being bullied was really upsetting, while breaking a bone felt cool. How we frame our experiences, the narrative we place them in, changes how we actually experience them emotionally.

Theology is all about how we frame things. How do we make sense of who we are as humans? How do we make sense of suffering in our world? The way we frame those kinds of things makes all the difference. Do we frame human misfortune as a sign that God is angry and punishing us? Or do we frame suffering in the context of a God who shares our suffering with us? That framing changes how you experience your life, and that's why negative images of God can be so damaging and debilitating to people. It's not just a detached theory because it impacts our lived experience, in this case in a bad way.

Just as we can have both positive and negative experiences (the heart), we can also have understandings of life (the head) which can help and heal us, and we can equally have understandings that hinder and harm us. So the way we make sense of and frame our experiences matters tremendously, and even shapes how we experience life. That's why the cognitive matters, why theology matters, because badly framed theology can block us from experiencing God's love, and good theology can allow us to experience a life filled with meaning and love.

When all is said and done, we don't need to choose between head and heart, between thinking and feeling, between the experiential and the cognitive. Rather, we need to understand how they both work together. In a nutshell, the head interprets the heart, that is, our understanding frames our experiences. The way this works is not linear (first one and then the other), but more of a circular relationship where both influence each other.

So instead of disparaging one or the other as bad (head focused people saying that emotions are "weak" and "unreliable," or heart-focused people saying that the cognitive is "cold" and "detached"), we need to be able to embrace both of these aspects of ourselves, recognizing that they are both good and vital parts of what it means to be fully human. What we think and what we feel are not in fact separate, but intertwined, each influencing the other. They are not rivals, but partners -- two lovers in a dance.

How do you know God is like Jesus?

A reader asks, "How do you know that the New Testament version of God embodied in Jesus is closer to what God is truly like?"

Let's consider how we know things: In the traditional approach we know based on authority. We know it's true "because the Bible says so." But this is a circular argument, meaning it is a logical fallacy, and does not prove anything.

Really what we are saying is not that this proves it (which a circular argument certainly does not), but simply we are affirming our trust. To someone who does not share that trust, this is not compelling of course. Trust needs to be earned.

We know most things based on trust. We trust the Bible, and so we believe it. We trust our pastor and so we believe them. It's not a matter of certainty based on independent verification (which is a modernist quasi-scientific model), but of trust (a relational model).

There's nothing wrong with trusting what is trustworthy. The question is how we come to believe that it is trustworthy or not. Trust is learned based on positive experience. So the reason I trust that the New Testament version of God embodied in Jesus is closer to what God is truly like (to return to the question posed above) is because I have experienced God's love, and have experienced that it is wonderful and life-giving. When I read the Gospels I recognize that the same "Someone" whose love I have known looks like the person of Jesus who I find in the Gospels. My heart cries out "it's you!" recognizing that the same Jesus described in the Gospels is the one I have met through the Spirit.

I trust that picture of God because I experience that it is good and life-giving, and have experienced this in relationship over a long period of time. I also observe (through hearing other people's stories of their lives) that the not-Jesus-like understandings of God are harmful (harming both the one who holds it, and how they treat others). In other words, I look at the fruits of a not-Jesus-like understanding of God and see that it is rotten, and I look at the fruits of a Jesus-like understanding of God and see that it is good.

That is how I "know" in the biblical sense of the word, which has to do with intimate trust (aka faith). This is the kind of relational "knowing" Paul is speaking of when he prays,

"I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Eph 3:17-19)

As Paul says, through experiential trust we can know (personally through experience) this love that surpasses knowledge. That's pretty awesome, and it's all about relational trust, or to use the word the NT uses for trust, it's about faith. Faith=trust.

Now this immediately brings up another issue. Anyone who, having experienced Christ's love and trusting him sought to follow Jesus more, knows that while his way is indeed good, it is certainly not easy. The Disciples all knew that, and as we become Christ's disciple we find it too.

This is because the way of Jesus is not self-focused, but socially focused. This is good for us because we are social beings made for relationship, but it stretches us as we grow out of self-focus (which is the focus we begin with as infants born into the world), and mature to become social and empathetic towards others.

In short the way of Jesus is good, but it is more than that. It is good but also hard. That's why this way is not about simply following what "feels good" or what we "like" (as so many fear), but rather about following what is truly good for us and for the world, even if doing that is hard. And let's face it, good things are hard.

Next time we'll dig into this a bit more, looking in more detail at what the good/hard way of Jesus looks like practically.

Rethinking the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

In seminary we learned to interpret the doctrine using something called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral which looks to four sources: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The primary source of knowledge here is the Bible, followed by church tradition.

It all sounds quite reasonable, but as I really studied the New Testament what I found was that Jesus and the apostles used a very different criteria: The New Testament perspective is not based on a rigid adherence to Scripture or tradition. It is primarily based on their experience. The disciples had experienced God come among them in Jesus. They had experienced that the messiah had not come as a warrior as they expected from their reading of the Bible, but had instead given his life. They had experienced Jesus rising from the dead. And finally, the early church was now experiencing that salvation had been made available to all people, to gentiles!

All of this, it must be stressed, completely contradicted how they had all read their Bibles up til then, and completely contradicted the religious tradition that had inherited. They did not come to these conclusions because of a new discovery in exegesis, they came to these radically new views through experiencing what the Spirit was doing among them! This caused them to consequently go back and re-read their Bibles again, trying to make sense of what was happening.

Fact: If the apostles had taken the dogmatic approach to reading their Bibles that so many of us have, then they never would have accepted Jesus as messiah, and they never would have preached salvation to gentiles.

Both the idea of a suffering nonviolent messiah and God's mercy towards gentiles simply did not line up with what they had expected from their reading of Scripture. This is not conjecture on my part, it is something they explicitly state (see for example Peter's two exclamations of "Never, Lord!" first in Matthew 16 where he forbids Jesus to go to the cross, and again in Acts 10 where he resists offering salvation to gentiles). However, the apostles stayed open to what God was doing in their midst, even when it expanded their understanding of truth.

If we want to follow in the apostle's footsteps, then we need to move in that same trajectory, rather than tethering ourselves to a supposed "biblical" view that loses step with what the Spirit is doing.

Re-Thinking the gospel #2: The gospel and violence

Last time I discussed how a preacher in the park said that God would send you to hell for stealing a stick of gum. Now what would you say if a person answered, 

"Well, I have never stolen anything. In fact, I have perfectly kept all of God's law. I have no problem keeping all of the commandments!"

Perhaps you would then quote Paul where he says, that no one can keep the law. Except that Paul doesn't ever say this. And guess who the person is who makes the above claim of being the perfect law-keeper? Big drum roll please... 

It was the Apostle Paul.

That's right, Paul says in Philippians 3:6 that he has kept the Torah "faultlessly." He tells us that he was "Hebrew of Hebrews," and has no problem keeping the law perfectly. Yet Paul tells he considers all of this to be "garbage" compared to Christ. Why?

Because of what it did to him.

Despite this spotless record Paul considered himself to be "the worst of all sinners." Not because he had broken any commandments or laws. Again, he was "faultless" here he tells us. No, the reason Paul tells us is "because I was a blasphemer and a violent man." Paul had participated in the violent persecution of the followers of Jesus, and he did this because he thought he was being faithful to God.

When Paul says he is a "blasphemer" this does not mean he was cussing. It means that because of his hurtful actions, he gave God a bad name. Today we experience the same thing: people who preach hate and hurt in God's name drive people from God. They give God a bad name, they make God seem like monster. When people reject this abusive image of God, that is not the blasphemy. The blasphemy, Paul tells us--his blasphemy that he came to be ashamed of--was misrepresenting who God was. As he writes (speaking to people like his former self) "God's name is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you."

Now, the ironic thing is that when people like that preacher tell us that God will send us to hell for some minor infraction, they base this on Romans where Paul says "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Because of this, we get the idea that God is the one with the problem. So we need to tell people that God is really mad at them for some trivial thing they did. It's a message completely detached from life that paints God as a petty legalist.

The thing is, this is not at all Paul's point in Romans. His focus when he says that above statement in Romans is on violence, and more specifically on religious violence. Paul is addressing a religious audience who want God to judge, who want wrath to be poured out on the hated Gentiles. Paul is telling them--and he knows this firsthand because he had participated in this religiously justified violence himself!--that this way leads to death. He is not addressing irreligious sinners and telling them to repent of law-breaking, he is addressing religious people who believe in divine retribution and telling them to repent of that.

Now that is a sin that matters! If our only problem is that we tell a white lie or cuss when we stub our toe, then that is really pretty trivial. Many people would argue that God ought to be able to just overlook trivial things like that. After all, they would say, why can't God forgive like he tells us to? But what Paul is dealing with here is hatred, murder, and violence. People killing each other in the name of God and justice. Now we are dealing with some really serious heavy stuff that does real damage, devastating families, destroying lives. God cares about this because he cares about us.  God cannot just overlook that, because it is really hurting people he loves. Paul is not talking about trivial infractions, he is talking about sin which devastates and destroys. Paul is talking about violence.

Not only is this a very serious thing Paul is addressing, it is also quite subtle: It's pretty easy to recognize that alcoholism is bad (indeed it is a very serious sin that causes real harm). It's also easy to recognize that criminal behavior is bad (and it certainly is). But it's a lot harder to recognize the kind of thing Paul is addressing, because this is violence and hurt done in the name of God and justice. What Paul shows us is that you can be religiously "faultless" and still cause severe harm, still spread hate, still advocate for violence, but do it under the cover of God and country, do so while justifying your actions with the Bible! That was Paul's sin, and that is precisely what Paul is addressing in Romans. 

Paul is telling us that the gospel is about breaking out of that way of hurting others in God's name, breaking out of the logic of retributive justice, and entering into God's way of restorative justice demonstrated in Jesus Christ. That's an understanding of the gospel that is not only a much more accurate reading of what Paul is actually saying in Romans, but is also an extremely relevant message for us today.

Re-Thinking the gospel #1: Sin and Chewing Gum

Yesterday, I was walking through Dolores Park and heard a street preacher, saying "If you've ever stolen a stick of gum, then you are guilty of sin! If you've ever looked at Facebook at work, then you've stolen from your employer, and that's sin!" Of course we all know where he was headed: If we have sinned--even with a trivial infraction like a stick of gum--then God who is holy must punish us for all eternity in Hell unless we accept Jesus right now.

I mean, seriously, gum? Why can't God just get over it? Is God less moral than all of us are? This is not a picture of holiness, it is a picture of a petty tyrant. Aside from the horrible picture of God that this gives us (and honestly, who could ever love, trust, and feel safe around a God like that?), what this ultimately does is trivialize sin. It makes sin into a petty infraction of little consequence.

We live in a world with real hurt. All you need to do to see this is read the headlines, and you will see story after story of terrible injustice, violence, and suffering throughout the world. So much so it can overwhelming. If you spend the time to really listen to those around you, and will hear stories of deep hurt, broken families, broken people. We do not need to make up fake problems about chewing gum. There are plenty of real problems and hurt in our lives.

Jesus does not focus on gum, or even going too far with your girl friend in Jr High school, or dropping an F-bomb when you stub your toe. His overwhelming focus was on things that have deep and devastating effects on people's lives--the alienation and estrangement that can come from poverty, sickness, and  injustice. That's what Jesus spent the majority of his time focusing on. They matter more because they have more profound consequences. If you feel worthless, condemned, cut off, this is devastating in a way that affects the whole course of your life.

And here's the thing: Jesus did not tell people that this was a sin. He did not tell them to repent of this. Instead, he demonstrated the care and nearness of God to them. He healed the wounded and embraced the untouchable. The biggest problem, as Jesus saw it, was not that we had done things that were wrong and needed to seek forgiveness from an angry God. Our biggest problem was that people felt cut off from God, forsaken.

This, I would propose, is the #1 struggle that people have with God today. What drives so many people to atheism is not selfishness or hedonism, but the experience of abandonment in the face of suffering, grief, and injustice. In fact, it is a problem that touches us whether we are people of faith or completely secular. In the face of debilitating illness or tragedy we can feel isolated and alone. Similarly, those who have experienced violence know as well that this can make you feel helpless and abandoned.

These are things that can bring us to act in hurtful and destructive ways, but the root problem is not this hurtful behavior (this is a mere symptom), our problem is separation. Our problem is relational.

Now, of course where there is hurt and injustice, there are not only victims, but also those who have hurt others. Surely it is right to call people on their hurtfulness, but the focus needs to be on helping these people to develop empathy, and all the more, our main focus really needs to be on caring for those who have been hurt.

This was the clear focus of Jesus. Yes, he confronted those who hurt others (especially those who did so in the name of religion). Yes, he taught us all to walk in the way of compassion and empathy (which he referred to as  "love of enemies"). But the majority of his time Jesus spent caring for those who had been shut out and wounded, his focus was on victims.

Yes, you heard me right: when we place the focus on sinners in need of repentance we do not share the focus of Jesus. That is simply not how he understood his mission, how he understood the gospel.
It is part of it, but when we make it primarily about this we shrink the gospel, and make it irrelevant to those who are not struggling with this particular issue. In focusing on defining ourselves as "sinners in need of repentance" we have placed the focus on redeeming those who harm others (which includes us), often ignoring the needs of those who have been harmed (which includes us, too). This is simply not the focus of Jesus.

It is good to seek to redeem those who harm, but this cannot mean that we neglect to care for those who have been harmed. That's why Jesus cared so much about issues of poverty, sickness, and a host of other social issues tied to self-worth which can separate a person from God and life which we as the church have so often overlooked. Read the gospels and note that Jesus spends the vast majority of his time demonstrating God's love to those who feel cut off due to suffering and injustice, and relatively little time telling people to repent. In fact, when he does tell people to repent it is almost always addressed to the religious people who were shutting out the poor and the least!

Again, the point here is not to condone sin, not to say "we have grace so let's do whatever." Far from it! The point is to recognize that the problem is much bigger than rule-breaking, and the gospel actually addresses that big problem in a very deep way.  We don't need to make up fake problems (like chewing gum). There are very real problems that we all experience right now, and Jesus clearly addresses these problems. This is what we need to deal with.

That means that the gospel is not some irrelevant problem that we need to convince people they have (God is mad at them for some minor infraction or because of original sin), but rather it addresses our real need in a real way. That includes hurtful behavior (what we call "sin") but it goes way deeper than just the outward behavior--it deals with the heart.

God is not a petty legalist who is angry about every stick of chewing gum. It's just the opposite: God wants us to care for the other. God wants us to care for those whom we value the least. If God cares about sin, it's because God cares about you and me. "As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." God cares because God loves us, and wants us to stop hurting each other. So what we need to learn is how to love like Jesus does. That has nothing to do with rules and everything to do with relationship.

The focus therefore is not about how "good" you need to be in order to make it into heaven, or on whether God can overlook that bad thing you did. It's not about using Jesus as a legal loophole so you can get your ticket to heaven. That ultimately leads to self-focus, and we need to instead be relationally-focused. We need to care about hurting each other, we need to be active in making things right. Because, to paraphrase Jesus on the sermon on the mount: You are worth much more to God than chewing gum.

Next time: Paul's view of sin as religious violence in Romans

A Personal Relationship with God?

(originally published in the Huffington Post)

"A personal relationship with God." It's a phrase you've probably heard before if you've spent any time around church folks. Many would say it captures the very heart of what it means to be a Christian, and I agree. There are a lot of Christians, however, who have a problem with the idea -- people I have a lot of respect for. Rob Bell, for example, correctly points out that the phrase is not found in the Bible. But then again, neither is the word "Trinity."

The real question is whether the concept itself is biblical, and Jesus says the very heart of the law is to "love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself." Those sound like relationships to me. So what's the problem?

For Brian McLaren, the problem is the stress on "personal" relationship and "personal" salvation. The original intent of stressing the personal was to distinguish it from an impersonal relationship (like the orbital relationship of the moon to the earth), and stress that faith is not something we are born into by default, but involves us personally. It needs to be lived. The problem, as McLaren points out, is that the idea of something being "personal" also has an individualistic self-focus to it: personal computer, personal trainer, personal space. As a result, faith becomes focused on us as individuals -- a focus on personal morality, personal prayer, personal Bible study.

The idea of a personal relationship with God should not be taken to mean a privatized faith. If we really took the idea of relationship seriously, we would recognize that faith understood as relationship needs to be both personal and social. A relational faith, by its very definition, is inherently social. As the epistle of John so powerfully says, "if we say we love God, but do not love our brother, then we are deceiving ourselves." We simply cannot say we love God if we do not love those around us.

While salvation begins personally and intimately, it cannot end in a myopic self-focused faith. Genuine personal relationship with God must flow over into all of our relationships -- caring for the least, loving our enemies, and showing the fruit of that genuine personal connection. How could it not? If we really are in a living relationship with Jesus, then won't we come to see people the way he does, and care about the things he cares about?

I'll say it again: If we really took the idea of relationship with God seriously, we would also love others. So rather than focusing on relationship less, I think we should focus more on it. Relationships are at the core of who we are as humans. Nearly every artistic expression is about relationship, from Shakespearian dramas to the current top 10 music charts: songs of love lost and found, tales of our deepest longings and greatest tragedies. Relationships reflect our deepest human struggles. They are the source of our most profound joy and pain -- what we long for most, what keeps us up at night.

It is in relationship that we find out who we are as humans, and what matters most in life. We as humans are made for relationship, and outside of relationship cannot be truly ourselves. We have a relational identity, a social self. As babies we begin life as self-focused and gradually learn to see ourselves as beings in relationship as we learn to love and be loved. That relational love from our parents shapes our self-image, who we are. Our very identity as humans is found in relationship.

This all goes to say that relationship is central to understanding who we are and what life is about. That's why I think that speaking of having a "personal relationship with God" has the potential to revolutionize and deepen theological reflection, so long as we move beyond cheap slogans and sound bites. Again, the problem is not with speaking in terms of a "relationship with God," but that we do not take it seriously enough.

So what might it look like if we did? I've written about this in a lot more detail elsewhere, but here are a few of the consequences of what understanding faith through the lens of relationship would entail:

It would mean a focus on a loving relationship with God and others, and not a focus on abstract rules or doctrine. It would mean an experienced faith now, and not just one that looks to a book from the past. Or more precisely, it would look to Scripture not as a set of rules, but as a witness to what the disciples had experienced of God in Christ in order to get a hold of what they had gotten a hold of.

A focus on relationship would recognize that believing in God is not simply to affirm a fact, but to engage in a trust relationship. Faith means trust. It would see that sin is not primarily about a legal transgression, but more deeply it is a relational breach -- cutting us off from God, others and ourselves. A relational faith would remember that "knowing" in a biblical context is not about intellectual surety, but relational knowing. To know truth does not mean we possess independent absolute knowledge, but rather is a statement of trust and intimate surety that we are known by God.

Most of all, focusing on relationship means caring more about treating others right, than about "being right." As the Apostle Paul says, if we have all the correct doctrines in the world, but have not love, it means nothing. So many Christians use truth like a weapon, and don't seem to care who they hurt with it. But one cannot separate truth from love any more than one can separate the head from the heart. Truth without love is not truth at all.

What the Church Can Learn from Artists

(reprinted from the Huffington Post)

Christianity has a long history of incorporating art into its liturgy and worship. Some classic examples of this are cathedral architecture with its soaring towers and stained glass windows, the religious paintings of artists like Michelangelo and Rembrandt, and of course hymns and classical music. Of course there are modern versions of all of this too that incorporate contemporary music and visual media into services.

What Christians are much less aware of is how the artist's unique perspective can enrich and deepen how we approach theology. So in this post I'd like to take a look at what doing theology as an artist looks like, and how that differs from the way theology has typically been done.

Let me begin by offering a definition of art: First of all, art is not just about creativity. That's part of it, of course, but lots of other work involves creativity too. Art in particular is about taking something in your heart, and putting it out there (on paper, a movie screen, a song, etc.) in such a way that another person can connect with it in his or her heart. A musician writes a song about a breakup, and you hear that song and deeply connect with it. It captures how you are feeling about your own breakup so much that it makes you want to sing it at the top of your lungs as you drive in your car. Art makes us laugh, makes us cry, inspires us or shakes us up because it has become ours. It moves us because we relate to it personally.

Art is something deeply personal of the artist, that becomes deeply personal to us as well. In that sense, the Incarnation can be understood as God's art. It is God's heart, presented in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That's why the Apostle Paul calls Jesus the "image of God" (Colossians 1:15). Jesus is God's own self-portrait, and the artistic medium of the Creator is not oils or clay, but life itself. Again, that divine self-portrait, that song of God in Jesus, is successful to the extent that it connects with us, to the extent that it becomes the song we sing, too. That means that truth needs to connect with us personally to function as truth. We cannot remain neutral and detached around it. With art, to be unaffected by it is to not get it, and the Christian story, at its very heart, is God's art. It's not about abstract doctrinal formulations or moral principles, it's about us connecting with what Hans Urs von Balthasar famously called God's theo-drama, God's story. That gospel, that message from God's heart, is not primarily informational, it is incarnational, and thus personal and relational.

Now, all of this is very different from the way Protestant theology has been approached throughout the modern era. There the focus has been on formulating precise doctrinal statements. It seeks to find objective truth by observing as a neutral party from the outside. This approach works well for the natural sciences, but it does not work in human relationships because we do not live in the general. Everything we experience is particular and personal. That's why the artist insists that truth can only be encountered in the concrete and personal, and never in the abstract, never in a detached way. For us as Christians that means knowing truth is about knowing God relationally, not just knowing facts about God.

The difference between the artist's relational approach to faith, as opposed to the more typical dogmatic approach which has characterized modernism, has many implications. It goes a long way toward explaining why the church has had a history of violence, and why many still perceive Christians as being unloving today. These are of course big topics that are beyond the scope of one blog post. So I'll be covering these themes and others in future posts.

What we can see right away however is that, while the church has often viewed artists with suspicion (and vice versa), there is a lot that we can learn from the artist's perspective that can enrich, expand and challenge how we approach faith. It ultimately involves learning to think with both our heads and hearts, developing both cognitive and emotional intelligence. You don't need to know how to paint to do that.

the vertical dimension of sin

In the comments to my post on my EQ article on the church fathers view of the atonement, Peter Gurry asked some challenging questions which I wanted to address in my next two blog posts. His first question was,

Derek, where's the vertical dimension of sin in your system? I can fully agree that we are broken and need healing but your solution only deals with the horizontal brokenness, not the vertical offensiveness. How does your system deal with profoundly horizontal human sins that are nevertheless against God and God alone (Psalm 51:4)?

Now the inscription of Psalm 51 reads "A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba." So the sins that David is confessing here are specifically adultery and murder. David sleeps with Bathsheba, gets her pregnant, and then has her husband killed, telling his men, "Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die" (2 Sam 11:15). So when David says to God in Psalm 51 "against you, and you only have I sinned" (51:4) he says this referring to the very horizontal sins of adultery and murder. So how can these horizontal sins (sins against people) be spoken of in vertical terms (as sins against God) as David does?

If we look at Nathan's rebuke of David we read,

This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: "I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul... I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more." Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. (2 Sa 12:7-9)

After all that God had done for David, he still did not trust in him. David "despises" all of that generosity of God in his hurtful actions. It's a matter here of David not trusting in God as his source for goodness, and taking matters into his own hands in a way that damages others. He has damaged his relationships both horizontally and vertically.

We see an even deeper insight into what is going on here in the words of Jesus "as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me" (Mt 25:40). Here we see that when we hurt others, we wound God too. In the world of king David the one who was offended by the adultery was the husband. Having the husband killed removed the problem, and David simply took Bathsheba as his wife. That was king David's messed up thinking here. Nathan saying that David's actions were also an offense to God is a way of leveling out that messed up system of honor. It says that even if we hurt someone who is without honor, even if we neglect "the least" we are ultimately hurting the one with the most honor, God. It takes the whole system of rank and honor and levels it.

The point of course is not that we should care for God's honor as opposed to caring about people's honor. David in saying "against you, and you only" is not saying he did not sin against Uriah and Bathsheba. What he is saying is that every sin against people is ultimately a sin against God their maker. As Jesus says, God sees every sparrow that falls to the ground. To love God is to love others, and of we fail to love others, we fail to love God. John says, "whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar" (1 Jn 4:20). Vertical sin is tied to horizontal sin. In other words, all horizontal sin is ultimately vertical sin. When the Bible stresses this, there are two reasons:

One reason is that God wants us to love others, especially those we regard as the least. God is love and his priority is on our loving others as the biggest way that we show of love for him.

The other equally important reason is that we were created to be in a loving relationship of dependent trust with God. God needs to be our source. This is the point that Nathan is making above. We need to place our trust in God and see our relationship with him as primary, because all of our goodness flows out of our living in and through a right relationship with God, who works in us and shapes us into the image of his Son. The fundamental starting point of salvation is that restored relationship with God--restoring that vertical connection--so that we can live in, with, and through the indwelling Spirit of Christ. It's all about restoring that loving transformative relationship with God. As we are loved by God, that love changes us, and leads us to love others in the same way we were loved. We want to show the same grace to others that God first showed us. So the horizontal flows from the vertical.

Now the question that remains is: how does God mend the broken relationship between him and us in Jesus? For that we turn to Romans which I will deal with in my next post...

Basing Theology on Experience Pt 2 - Grace

I recently blogged about Basing Theology on Experience. Shortly after writing that I got an email from a reader asking me what I thought of the charismatic movement. They raised a number of important questions, but it all really boiled down to this one:

"But the core of it all - for me it seems that the charismatic movement from its beginning has lead people to believe in an authoritarian God. A God who comes with force, who overpowers you etc. Where as in Jesus I see a very different approach."

I think this raises a very important point: when speaking about "basing theology on experience" that needs a qualifier. I should say basing theology on the experience of grace. Grace is the central narrative of the New Testament, and it is also the lens though which Jesus and the authors of the NT interpreted the Old Testament. Grace is what characterized the entire ministry of Jesus to the sick and the sinner. Grace is what turned a violent Saul into the Chirst following apostle Paul. Miss grace and you miss everything.

The gospels tell a beautiful story of a "sinful woman" who washes Jesus' feet with her tears and pours a jar of alabaster perfume over them. The Pharasees are shocked at this display. But Jesus says "those who are forgiven little, love little" (Lk 7:4). From that let me make a bold assertion: Those who do not know grace, cannot properly understand the Bible. Those who have experienced grace little, understand the Bible little.

On the other hand, if we have experienced grace - that is, if we have known God's amazing grace in the middle of all of our brokenness, darkness, and hurt, that unearned wonderful love completely changes us. It sends us to our knees, it melts our hearts. Such a lived experience of grace is absolutely essential to proper theology. Truth to be understood, must be lived. We need to come to the text as those who know grace and have been transformed by it. Otherwise we may miss its central point. We see this in the story of Paul who before his encounter with Jesus has in fact completely misread the narrative of Scripture and as a result was opposing the church. When he was encountered by grace, this changed his whole outlook, including how he read the Bible.

This experience of God's grace also needs to be how we judge our own religious experiences and interactions with others. Are these demonstrating grace? Are we encountering people with God's transforming love? Is that the main focus of what we do? When charismatics focus more on the manifestation of gifts than then do on the purpose of a gift which is to show love, then I think they miss grace. I was raised charismatic, and still consider myself to be charismatic, so I know that church (it's good parts and bad parts) quite well. I've been in services that get really hyped up and freaky. I've seen many pastors who are on power trips. I've also seen us evangelicals focus on morals and "right and wrong" in a really unloving combative way when what we should be doing is treating others with the same mercy we so desperately need. In each of these grace gets pushed out of the way when it should be the very center of what we do and who we are.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Cor 13:1-8a)

Basing Theology on Experience

What is the source of theology? Some would say it is sola scriptura--Scripture alone. Others cast the net a bit further and say that it is the quadrilateral of Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. That last one, experience, always comes in last. Lots of people are really wary of experience. It makes them think of uncontrolled emotion, subjective feelings, and stuff out of control. But I'd like to make the somewhat radical proposal that experience should be the central category for how we do theology, and that this is a deeply biblical position to take.

By experience I simply mean actually knowing God in a relationship, so that faith is lived and not merely theoretical. That has very little to too with emotions (although there is nothing wrong with emotion!), and everything to do with living our faith, with actually loving God, ourselves, and others. I imagine everyone is with me so far, but what about the Bible? Isn't that a matter of objective detached study?

That is certainly how you learn to study it in seminary. But nevertheless I insist: No! this is not what understanding the Bible should be based on. I've discussed this in some detail in my article on relational theology so I don't want to rehash that here. In a nutshell I would say (following Stanley Grenz here) that Scripture is primary because it informs experience, shapes reason, and is the source from which tradition develops, as well its constant spur to reformation. At the same time however, Scripture ultimately serves a servant function of leading us into relationship with Christ so we can live out Christ-like relationships. So the goal is experience, namely the experience of meeting God and having that transform all our other experiences.

The unforgivable sin, Jesus says, is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says this in the context of the Pharisees rejecting the work of the Spirit happening among them through the healing ministry of Jesus because it conflicted with their understanding of the law. Here experience of what God was doing in Jesus trumps their tradition, and their reading of Scripture, and their reasoning. There is nothing worse, no greater crime, Jesus says, than missing out one what the Spirit is doing right in front of you. It is, Jesus says, the biggest sin possible. Those are some pretty strong words.

With that in mind think about Paul's conversion: His experience on the Damascus road causes him to re-read Scripture anew in light of that encounter with Christ. Paul's experience of Christ caused him to completely re-think (reason) his whole tradition as a Pharisee, and how he had read Scripture. Experience precedes exegesis.

Likewise, the council of Jerusalem in the book of Acts bases their decision to include gentiles in the gospel (which was a huge decision!) based primarily on the experience of what the Spirit was doing among them as testified to by Paul and Peter. Acknowledging this, James then connects their experience to what was foretold in the Scriptures. Experience again precedes and shapes biblical interpretation.

From that I want to argue that in order to really get the Bible, you need to get grace, and the only way to really get it is to experience it. The woman who washed Jesus feet with her tears understood much more deeply than any of the religious scholars sitting at that table and looking down their noses at her did. We need to know grace like that, so its unconditional love brings us to our knees in gratitude, and makes us want to love that way too. Paul before he knew grace read the Bible and got it all wrong. After he met God in Christ on the Damascus road and was struck blind, it was a disciple who was willing to love his enemy who healed him. Think about how it would effect you to be healed by the people who you had tried to kill. That's grace. After that he suddenly got the Bible. We need to get some of that. So my prayer for you is that you would find grace in your life, that you would know what it means to be unconditionally loved, no matter how broken or messed up you are, and that being loved like that would change how you see everything.

Why I'm still not Orthodox (pt 2: mysticism)

If you missed the first installment, you can check it out here. This time I'd like to take up where I left off by sharing some of the things I've been learning about personal relationship with God from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.

One thing that can be quite confusing in a dialog between Orthodox and Protestant believers is the two ways that the term "salvation" is used. In Protestant usage it commonly refers to justification, and thus it is stressed that "salvation is by grace, not works." What this specifically means is that justification or redemption is by grace not works. Of course just about everyone would agree that we need to respond in faith to this. So is that a "work"? No, because works are about earning and merit, and even if we accept a gift (the response of faith) we are still not meriting it. So far so good. On the Orthodox end "salvation" commonly refers to sanctification and so the emphasis is on our participation, our praxis, what we do. Again, just about everyone would agree that we do need to participate in our sanctification, through a life of obedience to God, devotional life, repentance, and so on. We do not do this to earn God's favor, we do this in God's favor, as a response to grace.

Both of these uses of the term "salvation" are legitimate, the Protestant "getting saved" type and the Orthodox "work out your salvation" (Phil 2:12) variety. But since one side is speaking about justification/regeneration (the inception) and the other about sanctification/deification (the continuation/fulfillment) using the same word it can get pretty confusing and lead to a lot of misunderstanding. Put in relational terms, we need to enter into a relationship with God (regeneration), and we then need to grow in that relationship (sanctification).

What I appreciate about Orthodox theology is that it is very much focused on the experience of a lived relationship with God. As Vladimir Lossky has said, "all theology is mystical theology". What that means is that all theology needs to be connected to our living it, to our being in a real transforming relationship. Theology always needs to be joined to praxis. In the end, the real meaning of "orthodox" is not "right doctrine" but "right worship" (as in doxology). Now of course we also find in the Orthodox tradition its share of head-theology entrenched in lots of metaphysics and formulas. One common categorization scholars make is between two schools in Orthodox thought - one of the "head" and one of the "heart". We find this same tug of war in the evangelical church as well of course, and what we need is a balance. We need to be smart about stuff, we need to use our brains, but we need to also have our feet on the ground and have our theology be practical. This sense of "pietism" (I see that as a good word) is very present in orthodoxy. We can see it in ancient writers like the author of the Macarian Homilies, or Symeon the New Theologian, and we can see it in contemporary theologians like Kallistos Ware. Bishop Ware writes that, "All genuine theology must be mystical theology – something based upon a personal experience of God granted in prayer, upon a conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit."

What I find absent in all of this, as I mentioned in my previous post, is a lack of focus on being born again in the Orthodox church, or in other words, a lack of the initial expereince of regeneration. Not just as an assurance of forgivness for a guilty conscience, not simply as a judicial requirement, or as an end in itself, but as a way of entering into new life and lived relationship with God as a way to begin living in grace, in the Spirit. The Orthodox understanding of salvation lacks this experiential beginning, this initial experience of God's indwelling presence and love to begin our participation of growing in God and through God. This expereince of "assurance", of God's indwelling presence and love, (which clearly is the end goal of ascetic praxis and mysticism in the Orthodox faith) was what turned the world upside down for Luther and Wesley (and for me), and I just don't find it in Orthodox writing. That is, I do find them speaking of our pursuit of union with God as the end of ascetic struggle, of experiencing this intimacy with God after struggle and seeking. I think that is all good. But what is missing is how we begin that pursuit of God with God. How we, as Augustine said, at the same time taste of God, and yet hunger for more, how God allows us to experience his love and nearness, and that this embrace makes us long for more. A pursuit we do not embark on on our own, but with God and through God. "I tasted, and now hunger and thirst. Thou touched me, and I longed for Thy peace."

Now I certainly think we can learn a lot from the emphasis of the Orthodox on sanctification. But I also think it goes both ways, and that there needs to be a discovery of the relational transformative expereince of a born again conversion experience in Orthodoxy. New birth in conversion is often rejected by Orthodox Christians who associate it with a legal end, rather than as a relational beginning (Ware for example takes this position). But from the shared relational perspective of our two traditions, this initial experience of the indwelling of the Spirit calling out within us “Abba, Father” is vital, not only because of the transforming assurance of knowing who and whose we are, but because union with God is something that begins and ends in the Spirit, lived together with God, through God, and in God. Despite the emphasis on experience in Orthodox theology, that personal experience of the indwelling of the Spirit previous to, and thus as the cause and means of ascetic struggle, is missing in Orthodoxy.

The Emerging Relational Theology #5

Emergents are often accused of being little more than repackaged liberal Christianity. One place where this comes up is in our understanding of what it means to be a Christian. The typical evangelical pat answer here has to do with believing the right stuff, and having a conversion expereince. The flip side liberal answer has to do with doing the right stuff. Many emergents, unsatisfied with their own evangelical background which was focused on rigid orthodoxy now stress a focus on orthopraxy, and speak of being a "follower of Jesus". In this focus on following the moral teachings of Jesus over and against right belief they do seem very much to echo liberalism.

There is however a third relational way that goes beyond this liberal/conservative divide between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. This way is one that is not so much new as it is a rediscovery of ancient faith (I realize that this is a claim nearly every group makes for itself, that they are the original and true version, so take it with a grain of salt). The term orthodoxy as it was originally used does not actually mean right belief or right doctrine, it means right worship ("dox" as in "doxology"). In this sense what we believe, value, embrace, and affirm is directly connected to how we live, and in fact how we live and love God is primary - that is, our expression and formulation about who God is and who we are come out of experiencing God in history transforming our own history. As a consequence being a Christian is not based on our moral performance, nor is it based on our ability to arrive at the right formulations (a kind of intellectual salvation by works). It is based on God entering into our lives and doing a work in us. This relational view assumes a real living God who can be known by us relationally and that being in this relationship is transforming. It is not simply following the teachings of a dead guy on our own, nor it is affirming the formulations of who God is that were written by some others dead guys, it is about being connected to the living and risen Christ - to the one who is life abundant itself, and having that new life form who we are, how we see, and how we live. Being a Christian is about being alive in Christ. It means having Christ abiding in our hearts, being transformed into his image through his present love in our lives changing us from the inside out.

Now all of this is pretty much a Wesleyan view of salvation as integrally connected to sanctification. It is the kind of intimate relationship with God that many evangelicals have been familiar with from day one. In may be more familiar within charismatic denominations than reformed ones, but it is not really anything "emergent". What is emergent is an additional "catholic" twist to this relational view. That's "catholic" with a small "c" as an adjective not a noun, meaning not the Roman Catholic church, but simply a focus on the church as a body rather than on individual personal salvation in isolation from the community of faith. Here church is not understood as an authoritarian institution that meets on the weekend to dispense correct teaching, but a living community of those who indwelt by God in Christ are being transformed into living out Christ-likeness together. Simply put: loving God cannot be separated from loving others. We learn God's love by seeing it modeled and lived out, and the vocation of the body is to be this salt - to reveal Christ. We can't really speak of a relationship with God if we divorce this from living in relationship with others in community. That's pretty much the point John makes over and over in his epistles.

This communal idea of living in relationship together as the body of Christ in the world is an idea that has been pretty neglected. For many of us we go to church in the sense of it being an event, close our eyes during worship and face forward to listen to the sermon. We sit next to others, but we might as well be alone. Afterwards we might small talk a bit over donuts before we drive off in our cars back to our own private lives. Not exactly the same as the vision of koinonia community in the book of Acts where they lived together sharing everything in common, living and dying together, living out agape love. We know from Paul's letters that this was not always rosy or without problems, but it seems that this kind of real relational living together in our world of commuter church events is not really even on our radar at all. Frankly I am uninterested in whether a church has cool moody candles and overhead beamers with interactive worship video, and would love instead to just have some people sharing their lives and being real - less postmodern glitz and more plain old unromantic friends hanging out and sharing their imperfect lives.

(thanks to emerging grace for the above poster)

The Emerging Relational Theology #4

Hans Frei's narrative theology focused on a hermeneutic through which to understand Scripture interfaces with the ethics based narrative theology of Stanley Hauerwas as we allow God's story - God's Heilsgeschichte - to become our story.

This ethical narrative theology of Stanley Hauerwas is heavily influenced by Alasdair MacIntyre's "Virtue Ethics". Virtue ethics is an ethics based on the development of character. In contrast to deontological and utilitarian ethics which following the Enlightenment attempt to form an objective and detached universal ethics based detached reason, and free from the biases of culture or tradition, an ethics based on character says that morality is formed in a person as they develop character in community. This differs from relativism because it is not my story, but our story, and for those who follow Christ, God's story that we are a part of. We are relative in the sense that we are God's children, connected to relationship - our story tied up in Christ's.

A big part of this shared narrative in a community forming character in a person has for Hauerwas to do with a counter-cultural understanding of the body of Christ as salt in the world. Coming from the United Methodist Church, Hauerwas speaks out against what he calls "Christiandom" in books like "Resident Aliens" and calls for us to model another way that is in the world but not of the world. Joining him in this is the Radical Orthodoxy of John Milbank. Like Hauerwas, Milbank is concerned about the church being co-opted by culture, specifically the spirit crushing values of modernism. Because of this Milbank's Radical Orthodoxy speaks in the context of a post-modern critique on modernism, but it would be a mistake to see it as postmodern theology, rather it is an attempt to return to the roots of Christianity focusing on the patristics (the early church fathers) applying this to the post modern context we live in today.

One person who has championed Radical Orthodoxy in an easy to understand way (Milbank and others have a habit of overloading their work with mind numbing histories of philosophy), and addressing this directly to the emerging church is James K.A. Smith. In his book "Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?" Smith argues that rather than promoting relativism, postmodernism as the death of modernism also heralds the death of secularism, which is indeed good news.

As you can see, the emerging relational theology that began with narrative theology has taken on many different bannersn(narrative theology, postmodern theology, radical orthodoxy, ancient-future faith, neo-evangelicals, the emergent church) and a host of names - Hans Frei, Gerorge Lindbeck, Stanley Grenz, John Milbank, James K.A. Smith, Robert Webber, Stanley Hauerwas, and Nancy Murphy just to name a few. What they all have in common is a shared understanding of a relational theology, of people as relational beings in community with each other and a social God.

These growing critiques reflect a move away from modernist assumptions from both the left and right, each respectively critiquing their own traditions. As a result Christians on both sides of the theological fence are finding commonality and space for conversation rooted in a new shared relational approach to theology. In contrast to a modernist tendency (found among both liberals and conservatives) to break from the past and tradition, this approach is characterized by (1) a deep appreciation for history, (2) a recognition that there is no neutral ground and that we all speak out of a cultural context, and that (3) faith is not an individual intellectual project, but rather is formed in a communal context: Spiritual formation comes through relationship and discipleship. It is always incarnational: a faith lived out in relationship that cannot be detached from this communal context. As social beings we cannot live in the general, but are always situated within a specific world and history that shapes us. Relational faith entails a specific faith contextually rooted in the unique narrative of Scripture and the Christian community that forms a person in Christ – an identity rooted in social context to God, community, and history.

Perhaps the clearest voice here has been that of Robert Webber and his "Younger Evangelicals", but that will have to wait until next time...

The Emerging Relational Theology #3

I'd like to make a detour in our series here to talk about why narrative theology is important to the Emergent movement, or rather why it should be. I just finished listening to a podcast interview national Emergent Village coordinator Tony Jones did with author Phyllis Tickle about her latest book "The Words of Jesus" which takes the words of Jesus from the canonical Gospels and lays them out with some introductory commentary by Tickle, but with all the narrative removed. Now in itself I have no problem with this, after all many Evangelicals have done the same thing with our red letter editions of the New Testament where you read just the words of Jesus. We call it "reading the red". The problem I have is in a comment Tony Jones makes where he mentions a book he is writing on the Didache, and claims that

"in the Didache the gospel is not 'Jesus died on the cross for your sins', the Gospel is the teachings of Jesus"

First of all this is a highly debatable claim for the Didache. The Greek word translated as "Gospel" Tony is referring to is ευαγγελιω which is the word our "evangel" comes from. It simply means "message" or "teaching". The Didache says things like

"all your deeds so do, as you have it in the ευαγγελιω of our Lord"

and in a section before quoting from the Lord's Prayer they write,

"as the Lord commanded in His ευαγγελιω"

The word ευαγγελιω here which is translated as "Gospel" is simply a Greek word for "teaching" or "message" commonly used in other extra-biblical writings. For example in Homer's Odyssey where it means "good tidings"

"Odysseus shall return, so let me have a reward for bearing good tidings (ευαγγελιου), and as soon as he shall come and reach his home, clothe me in a cloak and tunic" (bk 14:152)

Our English term Gospel as it has come to be understood today as the Christian plan of salvation did not exist as a word at the time. So Tony's claim amounts to "in the Didache teaching refers to teaching" which kind of goes without saying. What the Didache does not say is that salvation comes through obeying teachings as opposed to by grace and the cross, which is what Tony implies here.

Now perhaps Tony did not think much before saying this, I realize it was just an ad lib in a podcast so I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but taken as it stands, his statement is one of classical liberal theology that strips away the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection and reduces the Gospel to the teachings of Jesus. With statements like these it is no wonder that people often see Emergent as Evangelicals turned liberal. On the flipside the classic conservative take on the Gospel has too often been to detach the cross from the teaching and life of Christ. People the Gospel is both the words and deeds of Christ. You can't separate them. His teachings on the kingdom are commentaries on his actions, both in his ministry of healing, forgiving, casting out demons, and of his way to the cross. In fact Christ's central teaching on the Sermon on the Mount (which is the focus of the Didache) is how we are to understand his death. As Paul says "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Ro 5:8). The cross is God loving us His enemies, overcoming our evil through unmerited grace.

A Gospel that does not take into account all of what Jesus did and said, the whole narrative of the story of God coming among us, is at best only half a Gospel. The Gospels of Matthew Mark, Luke, and John deliberately present to us this story in narrative form, and all of it - not just the acts, not just the teaching - is how it is presented. When we try to extract from that a collection of propositional truths ( as conservatives like to do) or compendium of teachings (as liberals have a penchant for) we do violence to the intent of the Apostles. Now let me stress again that as long as it is just an exercise, reading the red as Phyllis Tickle is having us do can be a deeply rewarding expereince, but when we start to think that this "red" is the whole Gospel, and we remove the story, the actions of God in history, then we are most certainly taking a detour off the "strait and narrow" road.

We as Emergents need to be post-conservative and post-liberal. That means that we need a constructive theology that allows us to go beyond these old ruts in the road, and I do see a tendency for Emergents to lean away from the right over into the left as evidenced in Tony's statements here which I do not think are atypical. That constructive theology is greatly helped by a narrative theology that unites the words and deeds of God incarnate into one Gospel that transforms our thinking (orthodoxy) our actions (orthopraxy).

The Emerging Relational Theology #2

In my previous post I began talking about a movement in recent theology towards a relational perspective. That movement, which now spans many "schools" of thought, begins with narrative theology.

Narrative theology has become quite a buzz word in theological circles lately. So the question arises: what exactly is it? There are many flavors of narrative theology out there, and indeed it seems that just about anyone can claim the moniker for whatever. So what I would like to do is be clear about the particular form of narrative theology I see as leading towards this emerging relational theology, looking at it from my own evangelical perspective.

One of the biggest names in narrative theology is Hans Frei. Frei (along with the likes of George Lindbeck and David Kelsey) belongs to a group in Yale that became known as "postliberal" (Lindbeck's term). That means that Frei's critiques are primarily directed towards his own liberal background. In many ways Frei's narrative theology can be said to be a furtherance of Karl Barth's "neo-orthodoxy" which was also a reaction against the liberal education and heritage that Barth had. Barth bases his entire theology in his Church Dogmatics on how the event of Jesus Christ changes human history. In that sense, though not explicitly stated, Barth can be seen as beginning narrative theology, and Frei cites him as a major influence.

Another big influence for Frei was Jewish literary scholar Erich Auerbach. Frei's narrative theology is neatly summed up in this wonderfully provocative quote from Auerbach's Mimesis:

"The Bible seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history... The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be historically true reality – it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy. All other scenes, issues, and ordinances have no right to appear independently of it and it is promised that all of them, the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it." (p. 15)

In other words, while liberal theology focuses on trying to make Scripture relevant for our modern world by reading it as myth, narrative theology comes at it the other way saying that we need to look at what it really says and fit ourselves into what the Bible says about who we are and what life is about rather than fitting the Bible into our world. The Bible's narrative does not only claim to be true, but to trump all other perspectives, to narrate God's world, the world (or if you prefer, the kingdom) that we are to fit our lives and self-understanding into.

Frei's focus was on biblical hermeneutics, which means his version of narrative theology focused on how we should read the Bible as a realistic narrative, similar to a novel, as opposed to reading to reading it as a myth à la Joseph Campbell. That means that the stories in the Bible are not written like mythical fables of super-human giants, but of real people with believable flaws and complex stories that feel like our own. Frei does not deny here the factuality of these stories. For example in a reply to Evangelical pillar Carl F. H. Henry's lecture at Trinity which expressed some Evangelical concerns with narrative theology, Frei stated that,

"If I am asked to speak in the language of factuality, then I would say, yes... I have to speak of an empty tomb. In those terms I have to speak of a literal resurrection" (Theology & Narrative p. 211)

But while he acknowledges the "factuality" of the Bible when forced to speak in those terms, he thinks that this focus on facts has caused both modernist liberals and conservatives to have the wring focus. On the one hand, liberals who reject the factuality of the biblical claims try to re-write it as myth detached from fact. The resurrection becomes a powerful story that did not actually happen and the "Christ of faith" is separated from the "Jesus of history". On the other hand, conservatives spend all their time with apologetics and finding "evidence that demands a verdict" rather than on proclaiming and embodying the actual message and consequence of the resurrection. What Frei wants us not to miss here is that narratives - even ones that are rooted in factual accounts - go deeper into what makes a person tick than an objective history does. The Bible expresses itself in terms of complex narratives (like the Gospels) and pastoral letters (like the Epistles) and in so doing gives a much more interactive and complex theology than any ordered systematic treatment ever could. It gives us the messy and complex picture of real life and shows us how God incarnate meets us there.

The bottom line here is to look at what the message of the Bible really is, even when that steps on our toes, and to allow God's story to become our story. That is where Frei's narrative theology of biblical interpretation meets Stanley Hauerwas' narrative theology of Christian virtue ethics. but I'll leave that for the next post....

The Emerging Relational Theology #1

Modernist liberal Christianity entailed a move towards expressing truth in generalized pluralistic empirical terms in order to relate Christianity to our modern lives. While this project has enjoyed prominence in liberal theology for a good part of the 20^th century (and is still advocated by such popular theologians as Marcus Borg), it has come under considerable criticism from many mainline theologians in the light of postmodern critique.

These growing critiques reflect a move away from modernist assumptions from both the left and right, each respectively critiquing their own traditions. As a result Christians on both sides of the theological fence are finding commonality and space for conversation rooted in a new shared relational approach to theology.

These “post-liberal” and “post-conservative” voices are found under many banners (narrative theology, postmodern theology, radical orthodoxy, ancient-future faith, neo-evangelicals, the emergent church) and a host of names - Hans Frei, Gerorge Lindbeck, Stanley Grenz, John Millbank, James K.A. Smith, Robert Webber, Stanley Hauerwas, and Nancy Murphy just to name a few.

What all of these names and movements have in common is a relational way of seeing themselves and their world. In contrast to a modernist tendency (found among both liberals and conservatives) to break from the past and tradition, this approach is characterized by(1) a deep appreciation for history, (2) a recognition that there is no neutral ground and that we all speak out of a cultural context, and that (3) faith is not an individual intellectual project, but rather is formed in a communal context: Spiritual formation comes through relationship and discipleship. It is always incarnational: a faith lived out in relationship that cannot be detached from this communal context. As social beings we cannot live in the general, but are always situated within a specific world and history that shapes us.

Relational faith entails a specific faith contextually rooted in the unique narrative of Scripture and the Christian community that forms a person in Christ – an identity rooted in social context to God, community, and history.

One can see in this emerging theology a positive and constructive proposal for the shape of a postmodern faith (or better said: faithfulness to the Gospel in our postmodern context), as opposed to the typical emergent penchant to simply be against everything but not really for anything (other than being ultra-hip and cynical, which tend to be synonymous). For that reason I am really excited to find people who are proposing some solutions - turning on the lights, rather than just grumbling about the darkness. Actually having some ideas about how to fix a problem instead of just complaining is a rare and wonderful thing. As one sage put it, "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world"

With this post introducing the broad "20,000 foot perspective" of a relational faith emerging on several fronts, over the next few blog posts I will be reviewing these different voices and their proposals for the shape of our faith in the postmodern and post-secular world we inhabit. In the next post we will take a look at the beginnings of this movement in narrative theology.

The Rebel God

Some people have complained about the term the "rebel God" saying that it plays into the pop cultural cliches. I can understand this critique since being a rebel has often been appropriated by the corporate propaganda machine to sell conformity - everyone being "original" in the exact same way, "alternative" being the new hip way to say "popular". But I still want to hold onto the idea of the rebel God because I think it tells is something profound about what it means to understand Jesus as Lord, God, and Savior. Jesus was condemned as a blasphemer and crucified as an outlaw. He was a threat to the government and subversive to religious authority. He was nothing else if not a rebel, and following him meant rebelling against the "world" system. Why else do you think the early Christians were killed? Faithfulness to Christ meant subversion of Caesar. Sadly, for so many people today God is associated ith that same authoritative system. Throughout history the church has tragically allied itself with a Constantinian understanding of authority and power. But if Jesus is God then God is the rebel, God is the outlaw, God is the one who is planning to subvert the way of this world with his revolutionary kingdom by starting that revolution in our hearts with the new birth.

I was always taught that rebellion was at the root of sin. But the more I have followed Jesus the more I have found rebellion to be a character trait. It is rebellion that taught me to question not only the assumptions of my culture and its screwed up values, but also to question myself and to never assume that I had a hold on truth, but to instead have a life of seeking. Rebellion has protected me from swallowing the toxic faith that has hurt so many people I know. It is a rebellion against authority that is rooted in the New Testaments witness that authority can be just as fallen as we can be. The "God of this world" is not the one we should follow unquestioningly, but the one we are to oppose in Jesus name. That has meant practically needing to stand up to my pastors when they were wrong and abusing their authority (which has meant taking my lumps at times), but the only regrets I have here are when I did not trust in my conscience and did not stand up. I hope that people I lead would do the same with me.

There needs to be a way for us Christians to embrace absolute truth without being seduced into thinking we have a corner on truth, thinking we can systematize and franchise truth authoritatively. Instead we need to understand that truth is a person who we always need to a to cling to in humility with an open and seeking heart. If Jesus is God then that means the ultimate authority is the one who was an outlaw, the one who identified with the sinner and the least. If Jesus is God then that means the picture of morality and holiness is seen in the one who was accused of being a lawbreaker in the very act of loving and caring for those in need, and who went right ahead and did it anyway despite the reputation it gave him. If Jesus is God then that means that God is the rebel God, it means God is a punk.