Refreshing Perspective

Everyone I know is sick of seeing the negativity in this year’s Presidential election. I’m not sure we’ve seen anything like it. On my Facebook page, each time I log on I see all the articles and perspectives people on my friends list have posted. I have been distraught over the numerous articles filled win rancor and dissension from “Christians.” Their arguments and their talking points are no different than their particular party’s agenda. Hopefully, what I uphold here is not simply another talking post for liberal politics. If I follow closely with the typical liberal perspective, I am not where I want to be. I am sympathetic to much of the objectives of liberalism, however, see in them much short of kingdom perspective. I am in no way offended by conservativism. There is much there that is good. Why would half of our country espouse the two mindsets? There is good in each.

My strongest disappointment this year comes from (especially conservative, but not limited to) folks who have sold out to rhetoric of fear. My esteemed conservative friend who I discuss things with often (and who is no doubt reading this) falls solidly into that category. In arguing why he can’t vote for Obama, it was exclusively a perspective of fear. As Christians why are we so afraid? We have a higher calling and a broader perspective. I found the following article in my inbox stating my perspective much better than I can. I hope, if you find yourself steaming at this post, you’ll read the following link and see where I’m coming from.

http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3287

Divergent Emergent Perspectives

I ran across this clip on Youtube today searching for emergent discussions. I found it interesting since both RC Sproul and Ravi Zaccarias are featured in the discussion – I never did figure out who the third guy was, but the link for the video on youtube references it as a Ligonier ministry – RC Sproul’s creature. These two are prominently featured in the Truth Project, and their perspectives were unfamiliar to me before our time with the Truth Project. With our congregation in the midst of the discussion, I know find it important to better inform myself. Admittedly, most of the reading that I do is focused among emergent-type authors. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that I am part of churches of Christ who aren’t really evangelicals (though some of us are looking more and more like them), but find ourselves, for the most part, of of these kinds of discussions.

So . . . a few thoughts on this video clip. The speakers unfairly use Brian McLaren as their dartboard picture. He’s an easy target, no doubt, due to what is quickly becoming a prolific writing resume and his widespread appeal in the Emergent Church. However, he is better seen as the representative pastor of the emergent movement as opposed to the theologian and thinker. He is these things, but not nearly at the level of others. In large part, this area of theology is slowly gaining momentum in the academy. Better conversation points should be noted with N.T. Wright, Stanly Grenz, and John Franke, among others.

The end of the clip shows the climax over the issue of homosexuality and the “audacious” claims of McLaren. I don’t want to post at length here, but the last thing I wanted to do was to share in the standing ovation of the crowd. The sharpness and condescending tone of their remarks were also unfortunate.

The relativist perspective they caricature is never seriously dealt with but cast aside in reference to extremist points. The one point they make that I feel needs further conversation among “evangelicals” is the accusation of the emergent movement as conservatives (theologically) finding of liberalism. There is some truth in this for much of what I read. I think the conversation at large is not confined to this, but it is a contributing factor. However, as a true postmodernist, I have to say that I don’t find much help in those categories they loosely throw around. Anyway, for what it’s worth, this video explores the reaction conservative evangelicals are having to postmoderns.

More Politics and The Truth Project

I have a million things to do, but I want to put a quick blog post up in my hopes of being a little more consistent. Since we’ve returned from our vacation, I’ve been pulled a million different directions and I’ve been working at getting focused – all the while, still adjusting to our new schedule with Mary Beth and Clark at the preschool from 9:00 – 12:00. It’s been a challenge.

I want to reference two different topics in this post.

First of all, more thoughts about politics. Recently I have spent some time watching some late night political talk shows. What a waste of time. Really! What a waste of time. Any Christian will have some explaining to do on judgment day as to why they wasted so much time in that arena. All the hosts are so extreme – regardless of the “slant.” There are so many things out there that are more profitable. Some people reading this no doubt watch those shows and are offended that I would make such a swift/all encompassing statement – but seriously, what is the profit? You are more “up on the issues”? I’ve felt that shortcoming lately. It’s easy to feel like you need to educate yourself to better debate the issues with friends and co-workers. The kingdom call us to a higher plane. If politically-obsessed Christians would spend more time creatively considering the crises of our world and the differences they could make in their own circles . . . I just have to think that is more profitable. Is there anything wrong with watching them? I’d say the answer is in that old adage: everything in moderation. If you want to watch a political show, fine. Pick one – just one, and do something more profitable with the rest of your time.

I plan to make a longer post in reference to Brian McLaren’s latest book I’m nearly finished with – Everything Must Change. It’s taken me awhile to get to it (I bought it last year at the zoe conference in Nashville – over a year ago). It’s an interesting work and I’ll post more later.

Two couples from our congregation spent a day in September attending a simulcast training presentation of Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project. We began showing the series the week we were in Maine – three Sundays ago. It is a 50 minute video presentation, followed by a thirty minute small group experience. The two families that did the training were over-enthusiastic about it and brought that excitement to our church in hopes of bringing more depth to our membership.

Unfortunately, I head up our teens’ small group on Sunday nights and that’s really the only night that we can be together. I had some doubts about how much the teenagers would connect with it, and it’s the only time we’re together, so I was reluctant to separate the teens out. Anyway, the bottom line is I don’t get to watch the videos with the rest of the church or participate in the small groups. There is a make up group during the week, and last night I attended that group watching the second video about worldview and philosophy.

I’ll say up front that I expressed (quietly) some concern . . . no, not concern, doubt – about the underlying philosophy The Truth Project would be coming from – before seeing, but implying from what I know about Focus on the Family and the teasers that we watched. Our membership is excited about the series, and I in no way wanted to damper that, but instead wanted (and still want) people to consider the presentations critically. A note about Focus on the Family – I think they’ve done some good things and James Dobson began with a good direction, but has gone a direction that I am not comfortable at all and his political lobbying has outweighed the message he began with. Extremely disappointing. So, their affiliation with FOTF drew initial skepticism.

I searched for some information online about The Truth Project because I was unfamiliar with it, and couldn’t find much. I did get a few hits praising it, but nothing real substantative, mostly passing references. I did find one substanitive blog in regards to it who shared concerns that I saw going in. If you are interested you can read his posts here. Maybe it was a bad idea to “jade” my own opinion before watching, but through some of his other posts I saw a similar theological outlook. So, if you see some repetition in my own thoughts below, I probably got them from him, and I think he was right on.

OK, so in reference to the second lesson:

It seems to me that the professor, Del Tackett, and the others involved in the series (R.C. Sproul, Os Guiness, Ravi Zaccarias, and others) are reacting to and struggling through a postmodern philosophical and theological shift that has already happened. This video highlights how unhelpful terms can be. “Postmodernism” according to Tackett is a false worldview that he groups next to “secular humanism,” “Islam,” among others. From my understandings, the philospohical foundations for this argument is not very accurate. Towards the end of the video the professor uses a chart which shows “Truth” on one side (what we’re all after) and all the other “world views” on the other side throwing their lies at us, decieving us.

That is foundationalism. If we could just see those foundations, just weed out all the manipulations and half-truths and lies, we’d only be left with “truth.” Tackett never addresses how we can do that when the only thing we have to work through are all those -isms and -ologies that shape our thinking.

He uses a box and some out-dated Sagan video series to illustrate the limits philosophy has put on its self. To see nothing outside the box leads only to despair and inner-conflict – Nietzche’s nihilism (though for some reason, he never mentions Nietzhe). I don’t like his box analogy. It’s much too simple and cuts a critical step out. I told our small group I think I’d compare it more to a Rubik’s cube. Sure, there’s something outside the box (something that every poll shows 95% of people believe, I’m not sure why he spent so much time rehashing a dressed up ontological apologetic) but while we are inside the box are we free to understand that something on our own? I know it freaks out those absolutists, but relativity is inevitable. The great thing about Truth is not that once we have it figured out we are transformed (which is what I hear Tackett saying), but it is in our search for it and our conversations with other in regards to it, we are transformed. Realizing just how little of it we really know.

This is an area of theology I am extremely interested in, but unfortunatley, have difficulty communicating. This makes my interaction through this video series a challenge. I think I will be going back through Grenz and Franke’s book Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context. This was my first exposure to the topic and highlights the divide alive and well in “evangelical theology.” Tackett is more espoused to the D.A. Carson’s and Millard Erickson’s (this divide can be easily seen in Erickson’s response to Grenz’s book Renewing the Center which he aptly titled in opposition: Reclaiming the Center.

In other words, the disagreement and problems that I see coming in this video series are not something I just made up. It is reflective of a broader issue of doing theology in a postmodern context in a post-rationalism, post-absolute world – the world of fragmentation as Grenz and Franke refer to it. I’ll end with a quote from Grenz and Franke highlighting the trouble with Hackett’s criticism of postmodernity:

“Clearly postmodernism cannot be dismissed as nothing more than a deconstrutive agenda that stands in stark opposition to Christian faith and thought. On the contrary, there is much evidence that suggests that the postmodern context has actually been responsible for the renewal of theology as an intellectual discipline after a period of stagnation under the weight of mdernists demands concerning the acquisition of knowledge. Freed from teh constraints of modernity, postmodern concerns have spawned numerous new theological programs.” (p. 22)

If you have seen The Truth Project, I would love to dialogue further about it. I am excited to be having this dialogue in our church and appreciate these two couples wanting to be challenged and wanting to challenge our folks. I hope we are all up to that challenge.

Back from Maine and Caught up . . . Almost

Whew . . . what a couple of weeks. I’ve been able to sit back and really appreciate our blessings over the course of the past two weeks. In a matter of two weeks I’ve been able to spend some good quality time with my wife. I suppose it is the last hoorah before Astird (after last night’s episode of The Office, our unborn child will be known until Astird until further notice – if you missed it, watch it on line!). We spent a week in Maine. We flew to Portland, spent a day there, and then drove up the coast through L.L. Bean land in Freeport, ME, and enjoyed the rest of our trip at the Oceanside Meadow Inn bed and breakfast on the ocean in Prospect Harbor, across the harbor from Acadia National Park. It was one of the most incredible places I’ve ever been. I’d tell you all about it, but I’ll let the pictures do the talking. They are on another computer – I’m hoping to upload them to my new flickr account soon. We also took a really neat side trip we weren’t planning on taking further up the coast and, actually entering New Brunswick, Canada, visited Campobello Island – follow the link to learn about it – it was really neat.

Monday night we went to the Monday Night Football game in Cleveland where the Browns took on the Giants in a beat down that lit that city up unlike I have ever seen. We hung out and tailgated a few hours before kick off with some friends. It was incredible. Got to my parents house at 4:00 am – that was kind of rough – but well worth it.

Tonight ends our little two-week escape from reality as we will be attending our first musical of the season (we have season tickets again this year) Frost/Nixon. Neither of us know much about it, so it will be interesting. Our social calendar has never been this full, but it has been nice to enjoy that time. We’ll come crashing down to reality tomorrow. My last j.v. football game is tomorrow and I’ll be done for the season. I am taking the advancement test on Nov. 1 to become a class 1 official to be able to do varsity contests next year. That’ll be fun – if I pass.

I have a few things that have been rumbling in my mind to post here. One involves a book that everyone has been talking about. Another is a reflection on my current political status. And just some other ramblings. Since I’ve already posted at length here today, I’ll think I’ll just comment a bit about the book and get political next week – I’m sure you’re disappointed!

Everywhere I look folks are talking about The Shack. Just Google it and I’m sure a million blogs alone will come up. I didn’t really know anything about it other than everyone was talking about it – apparently I wasn’t listening to them! So, I picked it up and Mary Beth and I read it together in Maine. In many ways it wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be – but at the same time, I didn’t have a clue what to expect. Anyway,

It’s the story of a father wrestling face to face with God over demons of his past – a poor relationship with an abusive father and the horrible murder of his daughter. Wm. Paul Young uses a vivid narrative to wrestle with some of the most challenging points of faith. There is a flury of folks debating over the intricacies of Young’s theology. Interesting, as a “trained” theologian, I didn’t spend much time reflecting on that (probably means I’m not trained very well!) , but instead engaged the story as it was. Without giving much away, God shows up in the story as three separate people: a large black woman, an intriguing and mysterious Asian woman, and a joe schmo Jesus. I loved the depiction of the three members of the trinity! It had to make you smile, and at the same time think!

I don’t want to delve much into the book other than to say that I didn’t like it in the beginning, but it grew on me. It was a bit cheesy at first, but as I worked through it, it grew, and then I thought the ending was great – fitting and provacative. On the cover of my copy Eugene Peterson’s comment is, “This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!” I’m not sure that I share his enthusiasm quite to the extent that he does, but it is a good book nonetheless.

I think the true modernists will really struggle through the work focusing not on the well-described narrative and instead labor through -ologies and -isms that don’t seem quite to fit into the “correct” box. I think it’s funny how people freak out about stories like this instead of allowing them to simmer and transform us. I have already found myself using it as a solid reference work for people who have dealt with tragic, traumatic situations and severely wrestle with the “why?” and the “How could he?” questions – something we all at times have to address.

In the end, it left me reflecting on my faith and challenging my transparence and commitment. I enjoyed it and think it will be profitable for all. And . . . that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Too funny not to post

I’m not a big Palin/McCain fan, as you’ve no doubt seen in my previous posts. That’s just a personal preference and I’m not really trying to support/bash folks here. With all that said, whatever you feel about Sarah Palin, she has made a humorous object for political satire. If you haven’t seen Tina Fey on SNL the past few weeks, it’s great. I include this video since I referenced the Flobots here back a few months ago. Very funny. If you can’t take a joke, please don’t leave hate comments! It’s all in fun. (Some of the images here aren’t my favorite, but the song is!