Our Way, Right Away: Finding God

 In David Wells’ great book, The Courage to be Protestant, he discusses the inherent neo-paganism in American religion.  “The assumption that we all have a natural access to the sacred is as old as the oldest forms of paganism.”  This, writes Wells, is the assumption of many Americans, that we can get to God our way, right away.  But Wells notes two new elements (hence ‘neo’-paganism) of religion today.  First, the centuries-old  paganism was a religion wherein people were afraid of most of the gods. 

“By contrast, we are unafraid of the sacred today.  More than that, we feel that the sacred will be pleased to have us, will spread out the welcome mat, so to speak, and be grateful for our attention.”

The second ‘neo’ to today’s paganism “is our consumer mentality.”

“As consumers we expect to get what we want immediately, without waiting, on our own terms, and with the right of return.  That is the mind-set that now invades the spiritual quest, as it does also many of our churches.  …Today we come confidently seeking, assuming an instant welcome, an immediate access when we have time for this in the midst of our busy lives. …We expect access to the sacred without cost, without thought, without pain, without waiting.  We have learned this in the malls.  After all, this is our right.  It is also our right to walk away from our experience of the divine if we are not satisfied.”

Wells continues.

“And many of us do [walk away unsatisfied].  To see this at work we need not look for strange cults or covens.  It is there among our most ordinary neighbors.  It is going on at the next desk over on the office floor, in break rooms, in meditation rooms, and on the way home in the car.”

Let me give just one more paragraph along this line.

“And it is going on in the garden-variety evangelical church of a seeker-sensitive, [conservative protestant - my addition!], or emergent kind.  There you can see this very same consumer spirituality at work, completely unafraid, buying, matching product to need, at work in all these ways.  Instant access!  An experience to be sized up.  Help when we want it, but on our own terms.”

I’ve quoted from this book before, and again, I deeply appreciated it.  The book was painful at times, because Wells’ critique is penetrating and deep; it was also painful because the finger was pointed at me!  Even if you don’t agree with Wells in this book, I encourage you to read it and let it chuck you around.  I’d love to see an “old-school” presbyterian/reformed guy/gal, a mega-church guy/gal, and an emergent guy/gal discuss this book cordially over coffee! 

Above quotes taken from pages 188-189 of The Courage to be Protestant.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

I Believe…The Communion of the [Sinful] Saints

Somewhere along the line, someone started the rumor that church-going people are decent people, that they’re good and wholesome, that churches are made up of people who have their ethical ducks in a moral row.  When non-church goers who believe that rumor go to a church, they often complain that they ”got burned” because they found “hypocrisy” there.  There is hypocrisy in the church, for sure.  And I’ve not yet found a church wherein all the people are good and wholesome.  In fact (HT to R.C. Sproul here), should I find a church where there are no hypocrites or sinners, I would stay out lest I ruin it.

Building off of yesterday’s post (here), when we say the Creed, “I believe…the communion of the saints,” we’re saying “I believe the communion of saints who believe in the forgiveness of sins.”  Or, in Reformation terms, “I believe in the communion of sinful saints” (the Latin for that sounds cool!).  So if you want to find real sin and hypocrisy, go to church.  In fact, solid churches have a public confession of sins each Sunday – a time where people beside you will say “Against you, Lord, and you alone I have sinned and done this evil in your sight.”  It is like a big sign that says, “we’re not good and perfect!”  If you stay out of church you’ll have to deal with sin and hypocrisy on your own, but if you go to a good one, you’ll at least be able to confess it out loud with a bunch of other sinners and hear about forgiveness through faith in Jesus’ blood.  You won’t find that at Starbucks (or McCafe, whichever you prefer).

Once we get the proper perspective on the Christian life (saint and sinner at the same time), we understand why God said something like ”Let there be a church.”  Cyprian (over and over in his epistles) called the church the nourishing mother of Christians.  Calvin used that term as well, along with others. The institutional church (with pastors, elders, deacons, preaching, teaching, sacraments, and such) is a tremendous gift of God for his people.  Just like a godly Christian mother is one of the “chiefest” blessings in this earthly life, so too is the institutional church.  If you’re not too sinful, church might not be for you.  But if you’re a bona-fide sinner like me, you need the church like we need our mothers when we’re infants – our mothers who feed us, pray for us, discipline us, and embrace us.  Augustine knew a little about Christian mothers and the church.  Here’s what he said:

“Those who do not have the church as their mother do not have God as their Father” (On Baptism, VII). 

Here’s Bavinck.

“It [the church] is a gathered company (coetus) but also the mother of believers (mater fidelium).  …As it is in the natural world, so it is in the spiritual.  Every human being is a product of communion, and the individual believer born from the womb of the believing community.  The universal church is anterior to the particular church and to individual believers just as in every organism the whole precedes the parts.  The church of Christ is indeed a mother, but she is that not only as institution but also as organism.  Believers are simultaneously producer and product…through the church Christ gathers his church.”  (Reformed Dogmatics, IV.II.6).

I’ll have to expand on this some other day, but for now the main point is that the Christian life (sanctification, simil iustus et peccator) has to do with the communion of the saints, which is all about church.  And the church (pastors, elders, & deacons included) is an amazing gift God has given us to help us stumble upwards on the pilgrim way.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Saint Struggling With Sin

 I was contemplating Galatians 5.17  - For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want  (NRSV) – which brought me to Thomas Watson’s The Godly Man’s Picture.   Watson, in section 19 of the booklet, describes the saint who struggles with sin.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes.

“Though sin lives in him [the godly person], yet he does not live in sin.”

“Though sin is in him, he is troubled at it and would gladly get rid of it. …Sin in a wicked man is delightful, being in its natural place, but sin in a child of God is burdensome and he uses all means to expel it.”

“If we would have peace in our souls, we must maintain a war against our favorite sin and never leave off till it is subdued.”

“Grace and sin may be together, but grace and the love of sin cannot.  Therefore parley [meet] with sin no longer, but with the spear of mortification, spill the heart-blood of every sin.”

“A godly man dare not travel for riches along the devil’s highway.”

So Luther said that the Christian life means a severe struggle which never abates until we leave this world.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Expression: “They Sacrificed to their Standards”

A while back, I stumbled over this passage in the Pesher to Habakkuk (from Qumran):

Thou dealest with men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things, to rule over them. They draw [them all up with a fish-hook], and drag them out with their net, and gather them in [their seine. Therefore they sacrifice] to their net. Therefore they rejoice [and exult and burn incense to their seine; for by them] their portion is fat [and their sustenance rich] (i, 14-16)

[[this refers to]] VI the Kittim. And they shall gather in their riches, together with all their booty, like the fish of the sea. And as for that which He said, Therefore they sacrifice to their net and burn incense to their seine: interpreted, this means that they sacrifice to their standards and worship their weapons of war.

1QpHab 5.12-6.5 (cited in The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English [Trans. Geza Vermes; Rev ed; London: Penguin Books, 2004], 512). (Words in double brackets are my addition.)

I was unfamiliar with the expression “sacrificing to a net” or a “standard” and wondered if this should be translated in some other way.  I couldn’t think of any likely sounding alternatives though.  Something I read in Josephus’ The Jewish War, however, made me think that this expression was probably fairly standard in antiquity.

After recording the sack of Jerusalem by Titus and the Roman army, Josephus writes:

As the partisans had fled into the City, and flames were consuming the Sanctuary itself and all its surroundings, the Romans brought their standards into the Temple area, and erecting them opposite the East Gate sacrificed to them there, and with thunderous acclamations hailed Titus as Imperator.

Jewish War, 6.316. (cited in The Jewish War [Trans. G.A. Williamson; Rev ed; London: Penguin Books, 1981], 363).

The end note to this section offers some words of clarification:

Military standards, both the legionary eagles and the standards of auxiliary units … and sections of legions, were objects of reverence and even of cult. This is a unique literary reference to actual sacrifice to them.

The Jewish War, 453 n. 23

Of course, the citation in 1QpHab shows that that this literary reference isn’t completely unique. Still, it is interesting to find such a parallel. In Habakkuk, the traitors/wicked are depicted as fishermen who drag the righteous into his net and once he has landed his catch, attributes all providence and glory to the nets themselves (Hab 1.13-16). In these battle scenes from 1QpHab and Josephus, the armies are glorying in their battle implements, essentially giving spiritual/divine power to them.

This may help to understand why the Psalmist is so horrified in Ps 74.4:

Those hostile against you have roared in the midst of your meeting place
They have placed their signs (standards?) as signs.

The ruined sanctuary of God is now the site of worship for pagan worship. Rather than a place devoted to the worship of YHWH, it is now a place to worship military cults (provided the setting up of the ‘ot is indeed the setting up of a military standard, which seems quite likely). While we don’t know what “sacrificing to standards” (or nets) might have looked like and what precisely it represented (e.g., worship of the war god? Gods of Rome? The emperor or king?), it is interesting to find this parallel written by Jewish writers with regard to the Roman army (1QpHab and Josephus; Hab 1.16 excepted.)

_________________
Andrew

The Emergent Manifesto (A Quick Review)

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I finally finished this: An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (ed. by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones).  As you may know from earlier posts, I’m about as Emergent as a dead stick.  At the same time, the “movement” fascinates me, and is something I as a pastor want to know something about.  Also, to be sure, the movement makes some good points.  I’ll acknowledge that despite my deep disagreement with much of the theology and piety of the Emergent movement, some things I read by them are helpful.  But instead of discussing Emergent (smarter guys have done it already quite well), I’ll give a few comments on the aforementioned book.

The book has five parts:  1) A People of Hope,  2) Communities of Hope, 3) A Hopeful Faith, 4) A Hopeful Way Forward, and 5) Hopeful Activism.  In each section, around 5 or 6 Emergent type leaders write on differing topics, from jail church to social justice to Karl Barth to sexual ethics to transforming culture.  The book is one you certainly want to get if you need a small and very easy to read window into the Emergent movement. 

On thing I appreciated about the book was that the authors understand our “day” is different from the “day” of 50 or 100 years ago.  I realize some in “conservative” churches are entrenched in the past, using old grammar, language, illustrations, totally unwilling to step into this century.  Again, despite my theological disagreement with how they handle our new “day,” I enjoyed some aspects of how they described it. 

I also enjoyed the chapter on the church in the jail (by Thomas Olson) as well as the chapters on Karl Barth (by Chris Eerdman) and humble theology (by Dan Kimball).  I’m not convinced by Eerdman as he compared Barth’s Church Dogmatics with Brian McLaren’s ”broad ecclesiology” – though I see some truths in the statement, that in some ways Barth and McLaren are similar (p.241).  Kimball’s chapter was so doctrinal that it almost doesn’t fit in the book!  Some authors in the book were saying quite negative things about fundamental theological beliefs, while Kimball advocated the need to hold on to fundamental beliefs (p. 215).  I’d say things a bit differently than Kimball, but the chapter does stick out for me.

I also was quite frustrated with certain aspects of the book.  First, the buzzwords drove me nuts.  How many times can you say “explore” and  ”post-colonial” and “adventure” and “authentic” and “community” and “generative” and “missional” and “conversation” in a single book?  I suppose the buzzwords might have to do with the internet aspect of the Emerging churches.  Buzzwords and internet go hand in hand.

Some aspects of the book were pretty offensive for me.  Though the words “hope” and “future” were all over the place, many of the authors were totally stomping on the historic or “old-school” church.  I was offended when they criticized “modern” churches for being so exclusive and disruptive to families.  For example, on page 53, Carla Barnhill critiques modern churches: In many churches, “There is little help for parents who struggle with a difficult child. There is little room for imperfect families.”  She goes on to say how Emerging churches are much more family-friendly than traditional churches because they are so much more inclusive and diverse than anything else.  This is pretty offensive, not just incorrect.  In the “old-school” churches I’m in, and grew up in, I have seen a group of mothers take turns helping a troubled family for weeks on end – food, cash, and prayers.  A month ago, after church, I saw an 82-year-old woman teaching some 13-year-old girls how to do needle work for their school project.   I’m not sure how you could improve on that kind of help and inclusiveness - this stuff just happens without all the blog buzzwords and talk.

The book also has an underlying theme: white, middle-class Americans (especially males) are to blame for most of the problems in Christianity.  It is my fault the Enlightenment happened, it is my fault that the church is patriarchal, it is my fault that there is racism, it is my fault that churches are fragmenting.  There may be glimmers of truth to some of those statements, and I’m far from perfect, but all those implicit accusations soon became offensive to me.  The only solution to the problems I’ve caused, the book implies, is to become Emergent, then my white-maleness will somehow be erased.  I’m not sure what to do with this undercurrent of the book!

In summary, there were some helpful things in the book and I’m glad I own it.  Some chapters made me want to put it in the compost pile to see if the ink really is biodegradable; other chapters left me pondering a few things.   I could note a few more things; this was just a very short review.  Maybe some other day I’ll post a tad more about it.

shane lems

sunnyside wa