Moving Right Along...

The Christian Church is not bringing in very many new adherents. Most of the new membership in any given congregation consists of people from other churches. We're not bringing in new cards; we're merely shuffling the deck. The church has an embedded culture that it clings to tenaciously by embellishing it with rigid dogma. According to the recent Pew Survey, most religious people do not wish their religious traditions to remain dogmatic and doctrinaire. This is not necessarily bad news if you can see the opportunities this presents. One in particular that I can see is heightened by the fact that the Gay Pride Parade took place yesterday in Chicago.

Simply put, we must welcome gay and lesbian human beings into all aspects of the life of the church without holding the threat of hellfire over their heads. To me, this is not a liberal/conservative issue. This is an issue of common decency. Also, we should welcome them not in spite of the perceived threat they pose, but precisely because of the perceived threat they pose. That's exactly what Jesus did in principle. He shared life intimately with those who were perceived to be threatening according to the dictates of the religious establishment. He even said that the tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the Pharisees. That would have been absolutely mind-blowing in a first century Jewish context.
But...but...BUT... (don't miss this)...

I do not believe that the church should form specialized church clubs for homosexuals. The church is to have no favorites and no darlings. Having such clubs would set a certain people apart from the rest of the body of Christ. This, to me, is more divisive than hammering gay people with poorly interpreted Scripture. Forming such groups and clubs would be like saying, "You can join the church if you keep your distance from the rest of us and stay in this nice little closet we've made for you." Christians of all orientations must learn to integrate with one another.

I also do not believe in this disastrous, integrity-sapping idea of "don't ask, don't tell". People should have the opportunity to be open about their sexual orientation without the threat of consequences, because, in the body of Christ there is no Jew or Greek, liberal or conservative, gay or straight. People should be able to be who they are without flaunting or calling attention to themselves.

I firmly believe that the church will take on a new vitality and vigor if it will welcome and integrate people of all walks of life and orientations. But we must do this as a whole and not piecemeal, as it's being done now.

And I could be wrong...

So...What DOES It Mean?

We must grab onto the modernist trapeze if we are going to swing out to the fuzzy middle. Most of us won't do it, and that's okay. As I said in my last post, no one is obligated to enact the suggestions that I post today. But for those of us who want to see the LCMS take on a new vitality here in the U.S. and A, we're going to have to take some risks and give up some things that we've been told we need to hang onto. The platform we're standing on is crumbling right out from under us, so it's time to hold our breath, take a firm grip of the trapeze, and jump off the platform. How?

First, we're going to have to give up our rigid stances on Scriptural interpretation and at least entertain the possibility that we've gotten it all wrong. For instance, at least entertain the possibility that Genesis 1 was written by a priest during the time of the kings of Israel and see what new insights we get from that, putting Mosaic authorship away for the time being. Instead of talking about the Bible as a book that magically appeared from heaven and has given us everything we need to know about science, relationships, morals, doctrine, etc., start talking about the books of the Bible as products of their time, recognizing that we live in a different country, a different culture, a different time in history, and a different worldview. Also, we need to portray the Biblical authors as ordinary humans living in extraordinary circumstances, giving up the idea that they had special pipelines to God. This means that we may even have to purge the idea of Scriptural infallibility (or at least redefine what we mean by that).

Second, we're going to have to change how we talk about God. It's time to abandon the God who goes "zap" (to borrow a phrase from C. Randolph Ross)-- the outside interventionist who comes to the rescue when we're in trouble and performs a miracle. We have to stop talking about God as either a cosmic superman or a celestial puppeteer. This God died a long time ago. People might tell us that they believe in this kind of God to keep us pastor types happy and off their backs, but deep down they reject him. Think about what this would do to the practice of prayer and worship.

Those two things alone will give us plenty to talk about, so I'll stop here and continue with more things in my next post.

Comments?

We Have to Step Off of the Platform

Many of you, my dear readers, are not going to like what I'm going to post today. Some of you will be profoundly disturbed. Others of you will shout, "Amen!" As I've said before, I don't corner the market on truth, and things I say could be completely wrong. This is just how I see it. You might see it differently, and that's fine. But in the midst of everything I write here, please remember that I'm not your enemy.

Also, I'm going to be writing about things in general. I may or may not be talking about you specifically.

A couple of years ago, at an English District pastor's conference in Detroit, we had a speaker who taught us about postmoderism. On his powerpoint presentation he flashed a cartoon of a trapeze artist floating precariously in the air between the trapeze he left and the trapeze that was coming toward him. He looked very confused as to what to do-- should he go back and grab the trapeze he just left or should he grab the other trapeze and go forward?

The presenter went on to say that the church is caught between two eras (represented by the trapezes) and is smack dab in the middle of the postmodern transition, hanging precariously and confused on which way to go. Some will desperately try to cling to the modernist era but will find that it is swinging back the other way. It's fading out of sight. The only way to go is through the postmodern transition forward to what lies on the other side (which no one knows about... yet). The presenter told us pastors that we have to let go of the "trapeze" and go flying through the air to the next "trapeze".

Fine. But there's a small problem with this.

Now I'm speaking generally... this may or may not apply to you. If it does, it's not an insult. I'm just telling it like I see it.-- The LCMS hasn't even left the platform yet!! We haven't even grabbed onto the first trapeze. We've dug in our heels, grabbed the pole, and stayed put. We threw the modernists out! Remember the '70s?

There were people who were trying to get the LCMS to grab the trapeze, step off of the platform, and swing. But we said no and they left and took the trapeze with them. They called it Seminex. We stayed safely on the platform. And we're still there!

The presentation in Detroit was inapplicable to us. While it's true that society around us is flying through the air, we are back on the platform hanging onto the pole. Now here comes the funny (or not) part.

We expect the people flying through the air between trapezes to come back to the platform and join us (we call that evangelism), BUT THEY CAN'T!! We expect postmoderns to revert back to moderism as a way back to our premodern epistemologies. But they can't do it. It's not that they won't. They can't. Their hearts and minds won't let them. And besides, the modernist era is dying. The trapeze is heading back in the other direction and into oblivion.

Here's something else that's funny (or not): we can't reach the postmoderns from the premodern platform. We can't jump out beyond the first trapeze out to the middle. It's impossible. There's no jumping allowed! In order to reach those in the fuzzy middle, we have to grab the trapeze and step off of our platform. Which means that, if we want to remain a viable church body, we'll have to embrace (gulp!)-- modernism! But we'll have to do that with the realization that we can't hold onto it for very long because it too is dying. But do it we must!

At the present time our church body teaches things that most people, in their heart of hearts, don't believe anymore. I sense this just by talking to people. The really nice ones will pretend that they believe and go through the motions, but deep down, they just don't buy it. They'll stay because they see no viable alternatives. The ornery ones who leave the church become atheists because they see no viable alternatives. It's an either/or for most people-- either stay and pretend or leave and have no faith at all.

Okay. Now some of you are going to get into the "itching ears" thing, but I don't think these people have itching ears. They have sick hearts. They're not belligerent. They're confused. They're out in the wide open desert with nowhere to go. We can invite them in but they would rather be out in the desert. We might think that to be a bit odd, but to them it makes perfect sense.

I know this is scary stuff. But if we want to be a church body that truly reaches people-- and I mean truly reaches people-- then there are some things we'll have to let go of (and you know what those are). Of course, we are not in any way obligated to do this. But if we don't we will shrivel on the vine and die. Our membership will continue to dwindle.

By the way, the same thing will happen to the ELCA unless they let go of the trapeze they're on.

What does this all mean? Next post!!

Dear James Dobson

Dear James Dobson,

Focus on your own family.

Please.

So Long, George!

Nothing more to say.

Procrastinators Unite...

.... tomorrow!!!!!!

(tee hee)

Belief

Do you believe what you believe because you have to or because you want to?

Dictation Bible

It makes no sense to me that the Bible was dictated word-for-word from God to the Biblical writers. I can't imagine the authors robotically writing what was being said to them from a voice in the sky that only they could hear. Could you imagine the scene?

God: Moses, I want you to write down what I say... In the beginning...
Moses: Wait, wait, wait, wait...
(writing) In...the...begin... (stops writing, looks up) is that with one "n" or two?
God: Uh, I think it's two...

This does not mean, however, that the Bible is uninspired. Don't confuse inspiration with dictation. The authors wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. But we also have to remember that the authors were products of their time. They wrote in a way that made sense to their time and locale. They didn't fall into a trance and receive telepathic signals from God.

I think the Biblical authors were highly intuitive in the sense that they knew the story of their people and God up to their point in time. They saw the events of their people and interpreted them in terms of the overarching narrative. To them, God was somehow being revealed in the course of the contours Israel's existence. This, to me, is what is meant by inspiration.

Also, I don't believe the Biblical authors could predict specific events of the future. There is no such thing as predictive prophecy. By that I mean that they weren't looking into a crystal ball or being psychic. Any prophecies with a future orientation were only put forth in terms of what God had already said in the Sinai Covenant. Simply, if Israel obeyed the covenant they would prosper and live in the land of promise. If Israel disobeyed the covenant the would be ruined and taken into exile. The prophets simply looked around at the prevailing social and religious climate, saw that Israel was in violation of the covenant, and then pronounced doom and gloom on the nation. This would have been fairly obvious when you have superpowers like Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon breathing down your neck!! The role of the prophet was to interpret the events and summon Israel back to covenant faithfulness. The Sinai Covenant was always the context for their statements.

When people saw and heard Jesus, he was interpreted through the different lenses of the gospel writers, but with the overarching narrative in mind. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John never lost sight of the Old Testament foundation and the Sinai Covenant because Jesus didn't lose sight of them. Many of Jesus' warnings were summonings to Israel to covenant faithfulness. And, as before, Israel would remain unfaithful and were therefore susceptible to the covenantal curses. They would lose their place (temple) and their nation. When Jesus warned them of this, he was not making predictions. He was merely telling it like it was. He was the only one of his day who was doing this.

What I'm saying is we have to give up our notions of magical intervention when it comes to our encounters with the Bible, in both its authorship and its transmission.

I could go on, but I'll stop there. Discuss, please!!

Prayer Is Dead

Perhaps you were shocked by the title of this entry. That's alright. But now that that's out of the way, I believe prayer can be resurrected. But first I need to explain the title.

Prayer, as it is in common usage among us Christians, is many times nothing more than a sacralized version of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. So usually it means that the person requesting the prayers is really asking that God make things turn out the way the person wants them. "My prayers were answered," usually means, "My wish came true."

I believe this kind of prayer is dead, not because people no longer employ such prayers, but because of what it says about God-- that God is far away on the other end of the line. This kind of God is dead because this kind of God doesn't exist. Prayer, then, of this type is useless and senseless.

My last post asked the question of the validity of saying "if A=B, then B=A" when it comes to the phrase, "God is love." I'm going to say yes and move on from there. God is pure, unselfish, other-serving, willful, love. Where this love is found, there God is found. This takes the idea of love beyond our constructs, abstractions, and emotions into a realm that is highly universal in its scope.

We meet this love in the face of Christ, who showed and revealed the Father, and who is the presence of Divine Love. This love has a human face, just like we have human faces. With that in mind, perhaps prayer is the joining together of these faces. It could be that prayer so completely wraps us in pure love. Prayer is the action of a grateful heart, no matter the circumstance.

The ups and downs of life will continue to ride on our lives whether we pray or not. For as long as Christ lives in us, we become that love.

Is Means Is

One pillar of Lutheran hermeneutics, having to do with the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper, is "is means is". When Jesus said, "This is my body... this is my blood..." we take him at his word. The bread is literally the body of Christ. The wine is literally the blood of Christ.

But a question I've had about this has to do with how far we go with this. I'm thinking specifically of 1 John 4:8-- Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

There it is-- God is love.

Does the hermeneutic "is means is" apply here? If not, why not, and what is John talking about here? But if so, can we say "love is God"?

Also, look at verse 16b-- God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Whoever abides in love abides in God.

Hmmm...

What Do You Mean By "God"?

Was Jesus God? Well, that all depends on what is meant by "God". If by God you mean a being who is completely detached from everyday life but intervenes every once in a while with lightning agility to keep things running, like a sort of absentee landlord, then I would have to say no.

If by God you mean a ball of energy that contains all of the forces to sustain life on earth or a giant blob of ooze that looks like Jaba the Hutt, then I would again have to say no.

If by God you mean a stern judge who sits behind a large desk with gavel in hand calling down condemnations and death sentences on the majority of the human population, then I would again have to say no.

If by God you mean a kindly grandfather who looks like Father Time floating on a cloud with a chorus of angels that sounds like the Vienna Boys Choir, then once again I would have to say no.

It could be that God is beyond all concepts and categories. But these are all that we have. We use words to try to explain the unexplainable. I have words that I use, with the awareness that they fall short. Even the Bible, as wonderful as it is, can only give us a glimpse of the reality of God. St. Paul even admits such in Romans 11:33-36-- to use a rabbinic device, if his ways and his judgments are unsearchable and inscrutible, then how much more is the Source of his judgments and ways, God Himself?

Of course, we could say that God is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but what exactly does that mean? Now you're getting into some pretty heady stuff. Explanations of the trinitarian nature of God inevitably end up being half-truths. In fact, Scripture never commands us to understand or attempt to explain the Trinity. It assumes this deep reality and goes on from there. See Ephesians 1.

So, what to do here? I think we have to look at the overall picture of the Scriptural narrative in order to get somewhat of a handle on this, and especially look at the life of Jesus. Especially pertinent are the opening verses of John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (1:1, 14)

Forget about our sky images of a floating, detached deity. God lives with His people! He literally "tabernacles" (to use a desert image) with us. God is with us, but God is not us. God is what I would call a transcendent presence, personal and yet beyond our understanding. How can we understand this today?

Integral theory poses the idea of the 1-2-3 God (1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person), or God in us, God between us, and God beyond us. I think this could potentially give us a more wholistic picture, which would be too lengthy for me to draw out here. But it could be a more effective way to talk about the Trinity: the Father would be "God beyond us", the Son (Jesus) would be "God between us", and the Holy Spirit would be "God in us". Of course this would present some problems, not to mention how these three interact with each other.

There! Now I've totally confused the lot of us!! I've posed more problems than solutions-- yikes!! But let's talk this out!!!!

Truth is Truth

It's been said that the postmodern mindset denies the existence of absolute truth. I'm not finding that to be true. What I am finding is that postmoderns do believe in absolute truth!! They just might not necessarily believe that you or I or anyone else has the corner on that market. What they reject are arrogant claims of possessing absolute truth.

I consider myself to be somewhat postmodern in the sense that I believe that truth is truth, no matter the source. That's why in my previous post I quoted the Sufi poet Rumi. I don't believe Rumi has encapsulated all truth, but there are things he wrote that ring true.

However, I do believe that there is one who not only encapsulated truth, but is Truth itself. Of course, I'm speaking of Jesus. As a Christian I hold that Jesus is The Truth, but not in the sense that he offers little tidbits of advice or a list of regulations to follow. Jesus revealed the person and reality of God.

I hold that dearly and truly. But, as some of you may have experienced, faith evolves and grows. My faith is different today than it was, say, ten years ago, and I find that there are things apart from the Christian tradition that can strengthen and deepen my faith in Christ. Of course, there is Word and Sacrament, which I would never compromise as Means of Grace. These remain the primary pillars of my faith. However, I find nothing wrong with complimenting faith by contemplating sources that allow a deeper understanding of these pillars. In other words, I think it's okay to go beyond a Luther's Small Catechism understanding while never losing sight of it. It's a matter of including but transcending, or, as philosopher Ken Wilber might put it, it's integral.

Beyond Right and Wrong

Beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there.-- Rumi

Rumi describes exactly what Jesus did as he welcomed tax collectors and sinners into his company. He did not define them by what they had done, rightly or wrongly. He defined them in terms of how God saw them. In doing that, Jesus created a field, a wide open space for people to be united and integrated into each other and God.

Whenever we believe God is on "our side" (ala Pharisees), we might discover that God is out in the field, beyond our categories of right and wrong, reclining and eating with "tax collectors" and "sinners" right under our collective noses.

Mercy, not sacrifice

I've said many times that it will be the weirdos and pariahs who will save us from ourselves. The people that proper society would rather do without are the very people that they need.

It's one thing to look at the people Jesus embraced; it's quite another thing to look at the nature of that embracing.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. (Matthew 9:10)

Jesus not only hung around with rejects. He became one with them in an act of redemptive reclining. That is what's called mercy-- showing love with those everyone else condemned. Being in solidarity with the ones everyone else wanted to string up. If I'm not mistaken, this is also called shalom-- much more than just the absence of war but more the presence of healing, wholeness, and integration.

The Pharisees weren't willing to do this. They had reputations to uphold and laws to follow. Eat with a tax collector? Forget it! There was too much at stake.

Today, many churches feed and clothe the hungry and the homeless, and throw money at charities. That's well and good and many people are given a leg up. But Jesus didn't give people a leg up, nor did he give them a handout. He became one with them and proclaimed that to be the Kingdom of God. That goes far beyond embrace. It was an intimate sharing of life together.

Jesus quoted Hosea (I desire mercy, and not sacrifice) as a parody on what the Pharisees were doing. They thought that by their propriety they were returning to God. But Jesus, in the spirit of Hosea, reminded the Pharisees that mercy rules the day.

What are some ways we Christians can share life and intimate fellowship with those whose company is undesireable? How can we integrate the weirdos and the pariahs into the mainstream, with the understanding that we need them just as much as they need us?

Whew!

I'm taking the opportunity this day to say:

DETROIT RED WINGS RULE!!!!!!!!

AGAIN!!!!!

HOCKEYTOWN FOREVER!!!!!

Steppin' Out

I was entertained to death this past weekend.

Thursday evening saw me, my wife, and my in-laws on an excursion downtown to see Jersey Boys. If you're not familiar with this musical, it's the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Great show! The music brought back some fond memories from when I was a child.

Then on Friday night I was off to Allstate Arena in Rosemont to attend my eighth Van Halen concert. It was a blast!! The boys were in top form and put on a rollicking performance. Lots of fun-- and confetti at the end!

On Saturday, my son Chris and I went to the Des Plaines Public Library to compete in a Pokemon Battle Road Tournament. Chris got second place in his age division and won four booster packs of Pokemon cards. I, on the other hand, lost all of my matches and ended up being in last place, not only in my age division, but also overall. Oh well. At least we had Quizno's for lunch.

That's quite an expensive weekend, not to mention the price of gasoline at the pump. Ouch! But it was worth every penny to do things I don't normally do and live a little.