Nothing quite concentrates the mind like the sight of a coffin, especially when you knew the person whose body is inside. Eloquently, profoundly, it speaks of closure, of a certain finality, that things will never be the same again. Death suddenly isn't an abstraction, isn't a distant concept, or a matter of biology or medicine. It's there, raw, in your face. Nor can it be fudged: this is not a moment to say one thing and mean another. A modicum of ambiguity over some issues might be helpful to those grieving, but it is generally a moment of looking for certainties to hang on to.
Today, I attended the funeral of J., about whom I blogged before Christmas. As befits a Christian funeral, it was full of hope, full of celebration of life, full of thanksgiving. I was struck by a few things while I was there: first, how seldom I find myself at funerals; second, how few people under the age of 50 were present (just a few close family members, and a couple of church folks); and so, third, how very rare it is for people outside the church community - my colleagues, for example - to go to a funeral, other than that of a close family member.
I've heard it said before that in our modern society, we are very much insulated from the realities of death and dying: I, for example, have never seen a dead body, in all my 40 years of life. But I think the truth goes further than that: with a few tragic exceptions, most people don't really encounter death very much. Many will be in their 30s before their grandparents die. Many will be in their 50s or even 60s before they start to find their friends dying.
For an emerging generation, as it were, death is almost unreal. (I guess that makes the death of a teenager, say, all the more traumatic. But I digress.)
But then this thought struck me: is it a valid one?: in former times, it was very natural to describe the gospel in terms of eternal consolation, in terms of repenting to receive eternal life. Death was all around: in close-knit communities with primitive medicine, the issue of "what happens when you die" surely came up a lot. Today, in the affluent West, life is different.
You can't say that the New Testament doesn't feature this aspect of the gospel: it's a major theme, of course. But it's not all. It's not a particularly large part of Christ's teaching. So it shouldn't come as a shock that many emerging writers tend to concentrate the on the gospel of the Kingdom, here and now, rather than upon hellfire and pearly gates. It's not about denying bible truth; it's not about ignoring eternal consolation; it is about getting a Christ-centred emphasis which strikes a chord and makes a difference for people celebrating life today.
2008/01/04
2008/01/03
Time for a review: "Everything must change"
Brian McLaren
Everything Must Change
I didn't enjoy this book. I wanted to. As with A Generous Orthodoxy, the central message struck a chord with me. But as the old review says, "this book is both new and original. Sadly, the good parts are not original, and the original parts are not good." And it's waaaay to long.
I can't quite decide whom McLaren is addressing with this book. The message that "Everything Must Change" is broadly targetted upon a kind of Evangelicalism which emphasises belief over action, structure over relationship, power over brotherhood, and so on. But although I guess
there must be churches out there which are "like that", I have to say that I've never encountered one. McLaren writes as if he is addressing the whole world, but the message seems to be written truly for a particular introspective, carricature of a right-wing American bible-belt capitalist christian whose main interest in the gospel is some kind of pie-in-the-sky-when-you die. Do those people exist? I don't know. Not being in that millieu, it's hard to tell.
Take, for example, the oft-invoked idea of the Kingdom, preached by Jesus. Almost everyone I've ever heard speak on the subject has emphasised the transforming nature of the gospel for the here and now; how Christians are to be "bringing in the kingdom" in their lives, and
actions, attitudes, and relationships. But McLaren writes as if this is a brand-new idea. One chapter sets up a contrast between a "Conventional View" of Jesus, and an "Emerging View": but I don't think I know anyone who entirely holds the former viewpoint. The book
seems replete with straw men and false dichotomies.
But McLaren is a pastor and teacher; he's good at expounding scripture. I would say that much of what he says about Jesus and the gospel would be uncontroversial in my part of the world -- or at least, familiar, even if tending to perspectives some would dismiss as "liberal". He's a good story-teller, too, and many of his best points are made by the tales he tells. Much of the book, though, deals with philosophy, politics and economics. And I fear it does all of these quite badly. And he goes overboard with the the whole postmodern thing, with endless references to "framing stories". I think we got the message.
To help the reader use the book in a discussion context, each chapter ends with questions for the group. After reading these for the first few chapters, wanting to retain my lunch, I avoided them thereafter. I'd advise other readers to do the same.
I seem to be writing rather negatively about this book. It's not that I'm on the side of the conservative Evangalicals who would want to dismiss McLaren as a heretic (he might be, but my mind's not made up; and perhaps we need more heretics anyway). It's not that I don't
accept that the radical message of Jesus has to be interpreted for our generation, and to question the foundational assumptions (or framing stories, if you prefer) of our society, our community, our church. It's just that I don't think the book was written for people like me,
and I wish it had used about half as many words.
[Aside: I know lots of people blogged through their reading of this book when it came out a few months ago. I avoided reading them. Now I will go back and revisit others' perspectives. A second blog post may be in order as a result.]
2007/12/22
Baby, bathwater, and reformation
One of the great themes of the Reformation was that the scriptures - and worship - should be in a language understood by the people. In England, that meant that Cranmer's prayer book replaced the Latin Mass. [It's interesting to see how Roman Catholic opinion on this sways around somewhat, with something of a recent reinstatement of the Tridentine Mass, but I digress.] This was, clearly, a Good Thing (apologies to Sellar and Yateman).
But are our modern churches in danger of doing something similar?: not by using a foreign language, but by using a dialect entirely unfamiliar to the population at large. More importantly, too many sermons are couched in a language of theology which is entirely alien to many of the hearers: I know full well that it is possible to say one thing from the pulpit, and have people hear something different. They may even greet you afterwards and thank you for some point - a point which you actually, consciously, did not make. You could put this down to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, but more often, I fear, it is just a failure to communicate.
Theology bothers me. If we cannot rightly divide the Word without recourse to several commentaries, why are people enjoined to daily devotional bibile reading? If people have the impression that only the preacher can interpret the scripture, then where is the priesthood of all believers? [I know that there are counter-arguments, too: we cannot just pick up a 2000-year-old text (still less a 3000-year-old one) and expect to know - in translation - what it meant to those who wrote it. And we can finesse that argument too, and ask whether that matters, and so on. And yes, some have a gift of teaching: but what will they teach, and how? Bear with me.]
In the pre-reformation days, the stories of scripture were brought to the people's attention through pictures and stained glass; freezes, and all manner of other art forms. Worship becomes highly theatrical, as liturgical colours and vestments carry particular meanins. The reformation swept most of that away, and worked on the assumption that vernacular worship and bible teaching would engage the population at large. Well, the people of Calvin's Geneva may have comprehended his Institutes, but I can't help feeling that we - in my country at least - don't necessarily have a general standard of education suitable for most people to engage with most of the literature, most of the time.
I know this isn't an original thought. I suspect that others have articulated it better than I. There is no point congratulating ourselves that our worship is not in Latin, if what we say and do is almost as excluding - to believers and others in our present generation.
I know that many fellowships have experimented with much greater creativity in worship. Some, too, I guess, are working on truly involving the people at large in the interpretation of the word: not to do away with the bible teacher, but to make the most of everything we know about teaching and learning in the 21st century. Above all, let's not over-intellectualize [ooh; I hate words with more than four syllables] faith.
But are our modern churches in danger of doing something similar?: not by using a foreign language, but by using a dialect entirely unfamiliar to the population at large. More importantly, too many sermons are couched in a language of theology which is entirely alien to many of the hearers: I know full well that it is possible to say one thing from the pulpit, and have people hear something different. They may even greet you afterwards and thank you for some point - a point which you actually, consciously, did not make. You could put this down to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, but more often, I fear, it is just a failure to communicate.
Theology bothers me. If we cannot rightly divide the Word without recourse to several commentaries, why are people enjoined to daily devotional bibile reading? If people have the impression that only the preacher can interpret the scripture, then where is the priesthood of all believers? [I know that there are counter-arguments, too: we cannot just pick up a 2000-year-old text (still less a 3000-year-old one) and expect to know - in translation - what it meant to those who wrote it. And we can finesse that argument too, and ask whether that matters, and so on. And yes, some have a gift of teaching: but what will they teach, and how? Bear with me.]
In the pre-reformation days, the stories of scripture were brought to the people's attention through pictures and stained glass; freezes, and all manner of other art forms. Worship becomes highly theatrical, as liturgical colours and vestments carry particular meanins. The reformation swept most of that away, and worked on the assumption that vernacular worship and bible teaching would engage the population at large. Well, the people of Calvin's Geneva may have comprehended his Institutes, but I can't help feeling that we - in my country at least - don't necessarily have a general standard of education suitable for most people to engage with most of the literature, most of the time.
I know this isn't an original thought. I suspect that others have articulated it better than I. There is no point congratulating ourselves that our worship is not in Latin, if what we say and do is almost as excluding - to believers and others in our present generation.
I know that many fellowships have experimented with much greater creativity in worship. Some, too, I guess, are working on truly involving the people at large in the interpretation of the word: not to do away with the bible teacher, but to make the most of everything we know about teaching and learning in the 21st century. Above all, let's not over-intellectualize [ooh; I hate words with more than four syllables] faith.
2007/12/19
Anger and Fear
A post by Glenn Hager took me off to youtube to see a very funny Nooma parody. It was witty, very well-observed, and well put together. You should watch it, if you have seen the Noomas. They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The production of the Noomas is full of all manner of subtleties, and many of these have been faithfully ripped off in Burito here. Is there a spiritual point to this? Not really, only a very cheesy one. Perhaps it's a gentle way of saying that Rob Bell sometimes comes across as a little self-important: but on balance, I think it's just a bit of fun.
But oh dear, oh dear. You can't go to youtube and watch just one clip, can you? There's always something else to catch your eye. Oh, so there are lots more Nooma parodies. Some are in the same vein, just not as good as this one. But some ... are oh so barbed.
My attention was drawn to Bullwhip. (I can't bring myself to make a link to that). It's a parody of Bullhorn, and also very well-observed and put together. Its purpose is far from mere entertaining distraction, though. The original has images of Rob Bell cut in with the journey of a street evangelist, preparing leaflets and going out to shout at people through a megaphone (Bullhorn, in American, it seems). Bell gently argues that this doesn't seem to be working in 21st Century Michigan, and that maybe a more relational approach to sharing Christ might be more suitable. The parody has a Rob Bell-alike cut in with images of Jesus going to the temple taking a bullwhip, shouting and overturning tables. Rob Bell-alike 'argues' that Jesus should stop being so shouty, and do some more relational stuff, with lots of love, instead.
The analogy fails on so many levels. That's not what interests me. What I'm fascinated by is the way that so much effort has been invested to making this video, deliberately and in a calculated way to undermine the ministry of another. And, too, the number of comments attached to Bullwhip of the "yea, you tell'em" variety. Where is the light? Where is the grace? Where is the gentle correction?
I've blogged before about the amount of anger which seems to accompany the reaction of many to the emerging church. I've seen it in other blogs, too; Josh Brown's tussles with Ken Silva, for example. I really want to work out what's going on there.
If the emerging people (and it's far from clear who those are, and whether or not they include Bell, for example) are spreading a terrible heresy, then isn't the correct New Testament response simply to dissociate from them, and have nothing to do with them? Is there a hint of fear in the background here? Fear that cherished beliefs might be wrong, and need changing? Fear that the emergers are "successful" in dominating the agenda, and that others might be side-lined ("not that we measure by numbers..."). Or is it that the general standard of education in America (and the UK) is such that people are simply not understanding the rhetorical style employed by Bell and others? I must say that some people really wilfully seem to miss the point, and fixate on a minor side-issue: well, either they are wilful, or they really are, er, stupid. It's as if the spirit in which they approach things is to look for error, rather than to look for truth. That's damaging and corrosive.
As for me, well my mind isn't made up. But I know we are to judge by the fruits we see. And I know that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And I know that the fruit of the sinful nature includes hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy. And I know which the Bullwhip people put me in mind of. But maybe I'm wrong.
But oh dear, oh dear. You can't go to youtube and watch just one clip, can you? There's always something else to catch your eye. Oh, so there are lots more Nooma parodies. Some are in the same vein, just not as good as this one. But some ... are oh so barbed.
My attention was drawn to Bullwhip. (I can't bring myself to make a link to that). It's a parody of Bullhorn, and also very well-observed and put together. Its purpose is far from mere entertaining distraction, though. The original has images of Rob Bell cut in with the journey of a street evangelist, preparing leaflets and going out to shout at people through a megaphone (Bullhorn, in American, it seems). Bell gently argues that this doesn't seem to be working in 21st Century Michigan, and that maybe a more relational approach to sharing Christ might be more suitable. The parody has a Rob Bell-alike cut in with images of Jesus going to the temple taking a bullwhip, shouting and overturning tables. Rob Bell-alike 'argues' that Jesus should stop being so shouty, and do some more relational stuff, with lots of love, instead.
The analogy fails on so many levels. That's not what interests me. What I'm fascinated by is the way that so much effort has been invested to making this video, deliberately and in a calculated way to undermine the ministry of another. And, too, the number of comments attached to Bullwhip of the "yea, you tell'em" variety. Where is the light? Where is the grace? Where is the gentle correction?
I've blogged before about the amount of anger which seems to accompany the reaction of many to the emerging church. I've seen it in other blogs, too; Josh Brown's tussles with Ken Silva, for example. I really want to work out what's going on there.
If the emerging people (and it's far from clear who those are, and whether or not they include Bell, for example) are spreading a terrible heresy, then isn't the correct New Testament response simply to dissociate from them, and have nothing to do with them? Is there a hint of fear in the background here? Fear that cherished beliefs might be wrong, and need changing? Fear that the emergers are "successful" in dominating the agenda, and that others might be side-lined ("not that we measure by numbers..."). Or is it that the general standard of education in America (and the UK) is such that people are simply not understanding the rhetorical style employed by Bell and others? I must say that some people really wilfully seem to miss the point, and fixate on a minor side-issue: well, either they are wilful, or they really are, er, stupid. It's as if the spirit in which they approach things is to look for error, rather than to look for truth. That's damaging and corrosive.
As for me, well my mind isn't made up. But I know we are to judge by the fruits we see. And I know that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And I know that the fruit of the sinful nature includes hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy. And I know which the Bullwhip people put me in mind of. But maybe I'm wrong.
2007/12/15
What it's all about
A member of my church home bible study group died today. I think, though I'm not yet certain, that J. died peacefully in his own bed. He was in his late eighties.
Was J. a long-standing member, a pillar of the church? No: though in his childhood he had some church contact, he was really a life-long non-church-goer. He started coming to our church about five years ago, some time after his wife died (she had been a member of the women's fellowship).
It was obvious that J. was desparately lonely. He joined everything there was going - even the Women's Fellopwship, which had to change its name. He used to tell us that he wished God would take him away too. Without his wife, life was empty and pointless.
But J. started to make friends at the church. Among the young, more so than the old, actually. He started to get out of himself a bit more. But it wasn't just the friendships which meant he stopped saying that he wished he was dead. There was work going on in his spirit, too. It wasn't just that he attended a lot of Alpha courses (he must hold some sort of record there). It wasn't just that he took to reading the bible from cover to cover several times over. It was that, through all those things - relationships, teaching, and reading - God changed him.
A good example was just a couple of years ago. We studied forgiveness in our bible study. We agreed that where there is deep hurt, forgiveness takes a lot of time, and effort, and will. It's a process, not an event. But J. said, more than once, that he had seen such terrible things in the Second World War, he could never forgive the Germans. But God had other ideas. Over the next few months, he was able to change that around. And that was so obviously a burden let go. It changed that little corner of his memories, and there was a little bit of extra peace brought to his life.
J. was frail character: there were so many things wrong with his health, we thought we'd lost him many times. The highlight of this past year was when J. was baptized. He went though with full immersion: almost literally a heart-stopping moment. Could he have succinctly explained "the gospel"? I doubt it very much. But there was a heartfelt confession of faith there.
I'm glad I knew J. I was hopeless at really connecting with him: he and I used to joke about the fact that I never seemed to have time to go and visit. But several others did. And that made a real difference in his life. Not just because it made him less lonely, but because through those relationships he so obviously gained a new perspective on life, and God, and much else beside. And it seems to me that that's what church is all about.
Was J. a long-standing member, a pillar of the church? No: though in his childhood he had some church contact, he was really a life-long non-church-goer. He started coming to our church about five years ago, some time after his wife died (she had been a member of the women's fellowship).
It was obvious that J. was desparately lonely. He joined everything there was going - even the Women's Fellopwship, which had to change its name. He used to tell us that he wished God would take him away too. Without his wife, life was empty and pointless.
But J. started to make friends at the church. Among the young, more so than the old, actually. He started to get out of himself a bit more. But it wasn't just the friendships which meant he stopped saying that he wished he was dead. There was work going on in his spirit, too. It wasn't just that he attended a lot of Alpha courses (he must hold some sort of record there). It wasn't just that he took to reading the bible from cover to cover several times over. It was that, through all those things - relationships, teaching, and reading - God changed him.
A good example was just a couple of years ago. We studied forgiveness in our bible study. We agreed that where there is deep hurt, forgiveness takes a lot of time, and effort, and will. It's a process, not an event. But J. said, more than once, that he had seen such terrible things in the Second World War, he could never forgive the Germans. But God had other ideas. Over the next few months, he was able to change that around. And that was so obviously a burden let go. It changed that little corner of his memories, and there was a little bit of extra peace brought to his life.
J. was frail character: there were so many things wrong with his health, we thought we'd lost him many times. The highlight of this past year was when J. was baptized. He went though with full immersion: almost literally a heart-stopping moment. Could he have succinctly explained "the gospel"? I doubt it very much. But there was a heartfelt confession of faith there.
I'm glad I knew J. I was hopeless at really connecting with him: he and I used to joke about the fact that I never seemed to have time to go and visit. But several others did. And that made a real difference in his life. Not just because it made him less lonely, but because through those relationships he so obviously gained a new perspective on life, and God, and much else beside. And it seems to me that that's what church is all about.
2007/12/10
I feel dirty
I've spent all day on a course about Mobile Social Networking. I do technical stuff normally. I knew this would be more business-oriented. But I had little idea how low everyone would stoop.
There's a site which has (or had, when the stats were collected) 80,000 subscribers: www.flirtomatic.com. The name kind-of suggests what it's all about. Those 80,000 subscribers have between them purchased 3.5m virtual roses. At a cost of something like 40c each.
American folks may not realise how comprehensive mobile phone (cellphone) reach is in the rest of the world. There are 3.3bn active subscribers in the world. But get this, market penetration in several countries (in Asia, and in Europe) is approaching 150% of the population. Yes, that's right, including infants and the very old. So a high proportion of the adult population has two mobile phone accounts. And there are a whole slew of products just coming onto the market for the under-12s.
Evidently a lot of people want a slice of that sort of action. I don't know what to think.
Leaving aside the profligacy of equipping everyone with an advanced instant communication device, the sheer balls of the marketing people who then want to relieve users of their hard-earned cash to buy virtual consumer goods is staggering. On one level, that's not consumptive - it uses very few resources - but boy, oh boy, it plays on people's deepest fears of failing to be at the heart of their social network. Studies have shown that SMS texting is as addictive as smoking - and that people deprived of their phones show classic symptoms of withdrawl.
Has our culture come to this? Yes, indeed. And, europhiles, look where all that exploitative marketing is coming from. Caring, sharing Europe.
There's a site which has (or had, when the stats were collected) 80,000 subscribers: www.flirtomatic.com. The name kind-of suggests what it's all about. Those 80,000 subscribers have between them purchased 3.5m virtual roses. At a cost of something like 40c each.
American folks may not realise how comprehensive mobile phone (cellphone) reach is in the rest of the world. There are 3.3bn active subscribers in the world. But get this, market penetration in several countries (in Asia, and in Europe) is approaching 150% of the population. Yes, that's right, including infants and the very old. So a high proportion of the adult population has two mobile phone accounts. And there are a whole slew of products just coming onto the market for the under-12s.
Evidently a lot of people want a slice of that sort of action. I don't know what to think.
Leaving aside the profligacy of equipping everyone with an advanced instant communication device, the sheer balls of the marketing people who then want to relieve users of their hard-earned cash to buy virtual consumer goods is staggering. On one level, that's not consumptive - it uses very few resources - but boy, oh boy, it plays on people's deepest fears of failing to be at the heart of their social network. Studies have shown that SMS texting is as addictive as smoking - and that people deprived of their phones show classic symptoms of withdrawl.
Has our culture come to this? Yes, indeed. And, europhiles, look where all that exploitative marketing is coming from. Caring, sharing Europe.
2007/12/09
Conflicted: update
So I think I managed to speak without perjuring myself, and without offending anyone. People can be so polite, so you never really know. My former sunday-school teacher made a comment I didn't understand - it could have been a criticism, I'm not sure.
Maybe comparing our approach to prophecy to the way that some read Nostradamus was a bit recherché. But prophecy is a challenging topic. Old Testament texts which may mean many things, but appear to be fulfilled in New Testament events certainly make you pause. The way Matthew, say, quotes Isaiah 7 serves to underline that he really really wasn't a Modern writer, and we can't read the bible simply with a Modern mind-set.
Then there's the prophecies yet to be fulfilled. The second coming and all that. One reason why I'm confident that we don't have all that sewn up (notwithstanding that diagram Nick posted this week) is that the folks in Jesus' time were so mistaken in what they were looking for. Are we likely to be any better?
Maybe comparing our approach to prophecy to the way that some read Nostradamus was a bit recherché. But prophecy is a challenging topic. Old Testament texts which may mean many things, but appear to be fulfilled in New Testament events certainly make you pause. The way Matthew, say, quotes Isaiah 7 serves to underline that he really really wasn't a Modern writer, and we can't read the bible simply with a Modern mind-set.
Then there's the prophecies yet to be fulfilled. The second coming and all that. One reason why I'm confident that we don't have all that sewn up (notwithstanding that diagram Nick posted this week) is that the folks in Jesus' time were so mistaken in what they were looking for. Are we likely to be any better?
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