This is the time where human sexuality, abortion, gay marriage, etc., rule the voting consciences of many Christians. It comes down to a simple principle:

The religious right believes you should legislate morality.

For many voters, this principle goes unquestioned. But is this compatible with the Christian faith? I personally don’t think so.

One simple question states my case pretty clearly. If over night, we were able to pass every single law the religious right would have enacted, would that make our country Christian?

Here are a few more questions to get your minds going: Would it change one single heart? Would it make one single person a follower of Jesus by the enactment of these laws of morality?

Or how about this different set of questions: Would it make those who do not follow Jesus hate his followers even more? Would it close the minds of those already hardened to the message of Christ? Could it possibly increase sin all the more?

Since Christians cannot simply enact all the laws they want over night, these questions could be written off as unnecessary fantasy. But if those questions apply to my fictitious scenario, they could also apply at varying levels to the actual situation.

When one “legal victory” is gained by the religious right, does it draw people closer to Christ or repel them for being forced to follow a morality they do not understand? Does it instill Christian grace in this country, or does it bolster a sense of legalism which both those in and outside of the church strongly sense in today’s evangelicalism?

The attention on legislating morality also hinders Christians from positive political activity which would be in line with their faith. Helping shape the government of the most powerful nation in the world in to a grace-giving, compassionate, force for good would be a real possibility if the religious right were not so obsessed with keeping gays from being married.

Assisting those in need and helping women most at risk for unwanted pregnancies would practically reduce the numbers of abortions. But instead, a war is waged which may never be won. It’s all or nothing for the religious right. How does this match up with what we do for the least of these, we do for Jesus? It doesn’t.

And what about ending corruption in our government? Why aren’t prominent Christians asking the difficult questions about why our civil liberties are vanishing before our very eyes and no one seems to be doing anything about it? Why aren’t our religious leaders questioning how oil companies have made record profits while the country is lead by an oil baron president? That fact isn’t enough to convict George W. Bush of any wrongdoing, but why aren’t they even asking the questions?

How is it I can cross the border and pay $2.83 a gallon for gas, but the cheapest station in my area has gas for $4.49? How does a company once run by the Vice President make billions off of a war most of the country no longer wants us to be in (and if we weren’t told it was unpatriotic wouldn’t have wanted us in in the first place)?

By now, you’ve already resonated with my questions and comments, or you probably aren’t reading any more. Let me just say, for the record, I am not a Democrat. I am no longer a Republican. I will most likely vote Democrat for the first time in my life for President (I voted Green Party last time because I could not respect either candidate from the major political parties), because Obama’s political concerns line up more closely (not anywhere close to perfectly) with my religious beliefs than John McCain’s. A part of my religious beliefs are that you should vote for the person who will do the most good for our country and our world. I am not interested in McCain’s stance on gay marriage, abortion, or any other moral issue a politician could seek to legislate. I am interested in both candidate’s ability to help those in need, respond compassionately to a world filled with strife, and to pursue the best path for the most powerful nation in the world.

Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has some great tongue-in-cheek sarcasm about the Gospels.

You could get a lot of wrong ideas reading the Gospels too much. You could start thinking that Jesus is in favor of some kind of social gospel where people give away lots of things, live in community, get in trouble for their radical compassion and stand outside of the religious establishment much of the time.

In fact, really….the Gospels have some good stories, but wouldn’t we be better off to study things like Romans 3 more often, so we really know what the Gospel is about?

Spending a lot of time in the Gospels could make you a person who is confused about discipleship as compared to grace. We should go to church, hear about grace, and leave much happier. If we read the Gospels too much, we’ll get the idea we’re supposed to do a lot of things that we really don’t have to do to be saved.

Let’s be careful with the Gospels. Don’t go overboard with them. They could mess up your whole religion.

I love it!

Update: Embedding has been turned on and off on this short, and it seems now it is back on. If you can’t get the video to play, click the link in the comments.

“Literalism is a false means of interpretation (hermenuetic) and is a vain attempt to democratize the Holy writings. If they can be read on a literal level, then everyone has equal access to them and everybody has equal authority to interpret them. Thus certain forms of Protestantism, caught up in the various modern theories of the Reformation, sought to do to the Scriptures what many sought to do with their governments. Kill the princes! Kill the priests! Everyone can be his own king, his own priest. Smash the images and any claim to authority. Of course these extreme forms always failed quickly, to be replaced by some version of moderation.

“Thus the Scriptures are not purely democratic – some interpreters are more equal than others.”

This touches on an issue for me, which is that all of our understanding is based on experience. All of our understanding about anythying is based on our experience. God speaks to us through the Scriptures, but it is not in a vacuum.

Justin Baeder makes this observation and shows how difficult it is to balance our own wants and desires with understanding the Bible in his post, Armchair Theology vs. Compromised Theology.

For example, Jesus criticized the man in his parable who tore down his barns to build bigger ones. If I move from an apartment to a house, or buy a nicer car, you could say I did the same thing. One you’ve done something, you tend to rationalize it, particularly if you benefit from it and enjoy it.

Justin surmises,

I say this to point out that we can’t depend entirely on ourselves to judge our own actions, and we can’t just judge others and expect our judgment to be fair. We need to make these determinations in community.

I’ve felt for quite awhile that our understanding of Scripture must be lived out with others striving to follow Christ. Jason brings up a good point in the comments of his post,

Many in the emerging church have argued for the local faith-community as the center of theological reflection and life. But my experiences over the past several years have left me feeling disconnected from anything larger or historical. I feel my attempts have contributed to splintering further Christ’s Body. In many ways, it’s simply been hyper-individualism in a small group form.

Alan, while I am wrestling with some of the Orthodox Church’s claims, your comment raises the question for me about the practical nature of living and experiencing the Bible’s content. If the Scriptures are the Church’s Scriptures, then experiencing and living the Scriptures must be the Church’s reality as a community, not as individuals. The more I think about it, while there is definitely a personal (not necessarily an individual) aspect of living Scripture, it must be in the greater context of the Church’s reality with Scripture. And this has to be more than just a local church’s or denomination’s reading, studying and interpretation of Scripture. And yet, the idea of the Church universal is too vague. The Church universal is too fractured to provide any real context for life in the Scritpures.

On the one hand, I see the need for a greater body of believers for being the community of understanding. Small groups are still easily swayed by shared interests which can jade them in their understanding of the Scriptures.

But that isn’t to say that large groups do not share the same flaw. For me, it is the willingness to learn from the interpretations of those who are not like us that help us better understand the Scriptures. So embracing a large, historical church for the sake of Biblical understanding could discount other communities. Unless the Church honestly should have always existed as the institutional structures we see in Eastern Orthodoxy, we should not expect to find a more perfect understanding by only looking at one segment of the Church.

There are aspects to the Scriptures, especially as it applies to living day to day in the Kingdom of God, which I think are best learned in small groups, while deeper theological questions are best understood within the context of the varying interpretations of the Church universal.

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church structure, ecclesiology, emerging church, bible study

Definitely worth a look for those of you who use projection for your times of community worship.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” – Ephesians 2:8

There’s a disconnect in the common Evangelical doctrine of salvation between faith and works. Perhaps disconnect is not the right word, but there’s a one-sided view of “works.” While we are saved by grace through faith and not by “good works,” there’s certainly a belief, whether stated or not, that bad works can definitely cost you your salvation. Or perhaps, that if you do bad works, that’s a sign that you really don’t have any faith at all.

So perhaps a better way to describe the doctrine of salvation in the Evangelical church is that you are “saved by faith and what you don’t do.”

A confession of belief becomes quickly called into question if you do certain things which are deemed unacceptable by most Evangelicals. Drinking to the point of drunkenness – even on an irregular basis, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, supporting a candidate who wants to keep abortion legal (even if said candidate does more for women in troubled pregnancies and practically reduces the number of abortions by their compassion rather than legislation), or divorcing a spouse without biblical grounds (or in many circles even with biblical grounds).

You can’t have it both ways. Either you are saved by faith and your actions have nothing to do with it, or our actions are central to our faith, both good and bad. Yeah, that’s where things get sticky, don’t you think?

I take issue with those who put all the weight on actions as well, because they seem to put all the weight on the good works and neglect the bad. If someone is actively involved in service to the poor and oppressed, who cares what sins they may be enslaved to? I know that’s an oversimplification. I really do.

The tension really comes into play when defining salvation. It has been so ingrained in us that salvation is eternal life (meaning when we physically die we go to heaven and live eternally), we only give passing consideration to another element in our salvation: empowerment to live and move in the divine image.

The empowerment we receive by the Holy Spirit does not mean total and complete victory. Sin is not a sign we have not accepted Jesus’ invitation to enter the Kingdom of God. At the same time, the fact that we will sin is no excuse for that sin. We are to put to death our sinful desires, progressively, as we are transformed into the image of Christ from one empowering moment to the next.

Our faith is an active faith. Works have everything to do with salvation, but not necessarily prior to salvation. Certainly, our actions and choices prior to following Jesus factor in our development as persons, but we are not earning or rejecting salvation in those actions. In the same way, our works are not earning or rejecting salvation after following Christ.

But…

There’s always a “but” when trying to work out theology.

Continually rejecting the empowerment to overcome our sins and strive to become like Christ could certainly deaden our faith. Our development can be stunted or even reversed by a continual insistence on living in the filth of sin.

In the same way, continually striving to overcome and be developed into the image of Christ will strengthen us and draw us closer to God.

So, I guess I’m saying you aren’t saved by what you do. You aren’t damned for what you do. But salvation for us in the here and now is all about what we do.

These are all issues we must be concerned about.

Do you feel a “but” coming?

But…

There’s a danger in big ideas. The danger is we transfer one cause for another. This is especially dangerous in the emerging church. Many of us have come out of church situations where we the primary focus has been the exaltation of ideas. For many, the danger to switch one big idea for another is too much to overcome.

I see that working in a lot of emerging churches today, at least how they are described by those running them (let’s be honest, very FEW of us have actually experienced most of the emerging churches we are familiar with, it all comes from personal conversation or what we read on the internet or emerging literature). The big ideas of theological reconstruction, focusing on the poor and the oppressed, care for the world we live in–these things can become just big ideas.

In a nation where free speech is touted as one of our greatest freedoms, we have become inclined as individuals to think we are actually doing something when we exercise that freedom. When we associate with others who are talking about the environment, talking about poverty, talking about corruption in politics, talking about (insert big idea here), we feel as though we are doing something. Simply by identifying with the big ideas which often are extremely important, we find an identity which justifies, to the big ideas’ detriment, just being passionate about something without actually doing something related to the big idea.

Even as I write this, I think, well, I recycle! I also drive a Z3 which doesn’t get quite the gas mileage I thought it would…

I do look the homeless persons in the eye when talking to them or passing them on the street, whether I give or not, but I don’t do near what I am able. I could truly help, but I don’t. Somehow, being amongst people who care about the poor makes it easier for me to shirk my responsibility to actually help them.

I don’t want to discredit the ministries which are talking about the big ideas, that is not my intent at all. Being aware, however, of the danger big ideas present, is necessary to overcome the very real possibility (or even probability) that our churches are more about talking up the big ideas than dedicating resources towards them.

And to beat a dead horse for long-time readers of this blog… as long as our primary focus for church life is a meeting with a half-hour or more sermon, big ideas will always be our focus rather than actually doing something about them.

So I recently subscribed to Lainie Petersen’s blog, and this post: Walking the Underdog, or The One Ring (Another Missive from my Atheist Husband) presented an idea had never really considered. Or at least I can’t remember thinking anything remotely like this.

Her husband wrote the post, evidently, and if I can summarize in a nutshell it would be that when a religion with such a strong rooting in persecution throughout its history becomes the predominant religion in the area, the adherents of the religion will divide themselves to be different and draw the ire of others… to feel persecuted.

That’s a very simple way to explain an eloquent post. So go read the whole thing here.

John MacArthur on The Emergent Church:

“This gives us the chance to say that we are so committed to unity in the Body of Christ that we are willing to hang with MacArthur, even when he thinks we are part of a different story. Rather than stooping to divisive rhetoric, we can help interpret the message of Christ by claiming MacArthur in our family, even if he is our crazy Uncle Phil.”

(Via willzhead.)

One of the most difficult things for me in leaving any type of established church is the feeling of being disconnected from the Church universal. Mostly, it’s a game in my mind, as I was no more connected to the church universal by attending an institutional type church than I am gathering with like-minded house-church types. But in a very real sense, I am disconnected in that they no longer see me as a healthy member of the body of Christ. I used to be able to reach out to even MacArthur’s students (I was a pastor in the city where the Master’s College is), and most of them would at least acknowledge I was a Christian (though certainly misguided ). Now, I feel like I can’t even engage them on a level where my faith is recognized as genuine.

And that does break my heart. Sure, I can explain how hyper-fundamentalists divide and tear down those who don’t fall in line, and I can tell others they are poor models of Jesus (though I don’t think I’d want my own life put under a microscope in that regard), but if I truly believe in the gracious God I love and serve, I must see them as family. Family who are not just the “crazy Uncle Phil” types, but the type of family who have disowned me, don’t want to speak to me, and put all of their effort into making sure no one else does either.

I love the Church. I wish I liked her a little more right now than I do. And I wish most of her liked me more than right now, too.

Jesus Creed does Politics — Democrats:

“At the inspiration of Eugene Cho, I’m trying something perhaps risky. We’ve addressed other controversial topics on this blog in a civil manner and now I’m trying something new: the elections. So, today, I’m asking those who are voting Democrat to announce who they are voting for and provide the positive reasons why they are making their choice”

(Via Jesus Creed.)

I haven’t been able to get his widget to work just yet, but hopefully the posts will soon start appearing in my sidebar.

There seems to be more of a buzz about “advent” this year. Perhaps it is the inertia stemming from the “advent conspiracy” movement?

When Christians start to seriously consider the reason for the season, many questions come forth about exactly what we should be doing or thinking about. Sure, it would be simple enough to say, “Think about Jesus, dummy,” but really… Advent offers us an opportunity to examine, meditate, and absorb the incarnation.

Since other person’s perspectives are extremely valuable in our own personal formation, I recommend checking out these advent bloggers as you await the coming of Jesus this season.

Advent Blogging 2007

So, our waiting now is a liturgical waiting, a waiting of reminder. Our waiting now is also a mystical waiting, a waiting on the inside for God, for Jesus, for our Savior as the Holy Spirit gives Him to us, in many different ways. We hear this, perhaps, during Advent, that we are to be awaiting God as He will choose to enter our lives. I’m not sure we always get that though. It’s a little esoteric. Mystical things are like that – a little weird. God, to us, is a lot weird most of the time. He describes Himself in many ways in the Scriptures, using quite a number of analogies. None of them quite nail Him down – nailing God down, yeah, not going to happen. I’m convinced we will understand Him even as He understands Himself one day, but there’s a lot between then and now.

(Via alancreech.)

I just can’t leave alone one smart-ass comment… as Christians, don’t we believe God was nailed down at one time?

Okay, it’s worth reading Alan Creech’s whole post, but the paragraph I quoted above really stood out to me.

To a point, we can control our knowledge of God that is intellectual. It’s directly related to how much time we spend studying and the methods of our studying. However, it’s they mystical elements, those things which are “a little esoteric,” which are not so easy to control. We can enter the Advent season as just another holiday season to come and go, or we can wait on God in this mystical sense. We can use it as a time to commune with God in a unique way with a specific part of Jesus’ story.

These are the aspects of Spiritual Formation which are not as easy to control. Results will vary drastically.

I caution you to not assume, especially if you have more of an analytic brain, that this mystical waiting during advent does not do you any good. I challenge you to dig in and spend time meditating not on precepts or doctrines but on simple thoughts of God coming to earth as the man Jesus. I challenge you to not be frustrated and try to look for the simple, pat answers. The types of disciplines which stretch us and change us the most are those most uncomfortable.

So to take my own advice, I should now go do some in-depth study, since I am much more drawn to the mystical. There was a point when I was not so inclined, but that is definitely my preference for communing with God at this point in my life.

The Church Marketing Sucks blog recently did a series on “Church from a Visitor’s Perspective.”

“Church is uncomfortable … Where else do you sing songs while staring at a trippy powerpoint with people you don’t know, eat a cracker, take a shot of juice, drop money into a crushed velvet bag and listen to one dude talk about events we weren’t at and worlds we can’t see… -Aaron Marshall on Church from a Visitor’s Perspective

Overview Post

First Post in the Series

How we spend our thought life affects what we are passionate about. There’s no way around it. I know that when I spend little time thinking about the Kingdom of God, Scripture, the Church, that I spend little time acting on anything to do with the Kingdom of God, Scripture, or the Church.

Michael Spencer asks this:

How many conservative Christians are listening to multiple hours of Rush Limbaugh every week? I wonder how many include a couple of hours of Fox News Channel’s conservatives, Hannity and O’Reilly, on that menu. I wonder how many regularly listen to Marlin Maddux’s “Point of View” program, or Pat Robertson’s “700 Club.” How many surf Newsmax.com, Conservative News Network or WorldNet Daily.com, the tabloids of conservative web journalism? If we were to take the total hours devoted to these–and many, many other–conservative information and opinion outlets, how would it compare to the amount of time spent under the teaching of scripture? How would it compare to time spent in acquiring a Biblical vision of God? Does the total amount of time spent by that same random evangelical in “the renewing of the mind” with the Word of God come even close to the amount of time spent seeing the world through the eyes of conservative pundits and journalists?

And he notes this about his own life:

I’ll step to the front of the line and say that I have spent hours a day with these folks when I could, and in the same week spent minutes in personal devotion times. And it showed up in what I thought was important in that week. It showed up in what stirred my mind and emotions. It showed up on the thermostat of optimism that controls my energies in ministry. It showed up in my classroom demeanor, preaching, evangelism and worship. And the result was not a good one.

Those were the weeks I looked at my students and saw troubled youth listening to rap instead of young people God brought from the ends of the earth to sit under my ministry. Those were the weeks I was disgusted at what was on television instead of being thrilled at what was in Psalms. Those were the weeks I thought about the war in Iraq and not missionaries in the 10/40 window. Those were the weeks that I was mad over whatever hacked off Bill or Rush or Sean and not all that excited about the Holy Spirit showed me in the greatest news broadcast of all time. I was upset at how the government was spending my money, and not troubled at all at how I was using God’s money in my checkbook.

Read the entire article, I’m Not a Conservative Christian.

To add a little humor to my day some months ago, I let my fingers stroll back over to the now defunct Emergent No blog. Reading some of the posts and comments over there, besides giving me more than a hearty chuckle a few times, reminded me of some of my college philosophy classes. We discussed paradigm thinking quite a bit.

What’s good to remind myself is that I too am in a paradigm. While mine has dramatically shifted over the past five years, I’m still working out my ideas and thoughts within a paradigm. Things that seem self-evident to me are not necessarily so. Obvious truths may actually be grossly misinterpreted due to my paradigm. I have no problem recognizing that possibility. It does not shake my faith, and admitting I might be wrong about things I hold dear does not tempt me in any way to abandon my faith.

Faith is where the rubber hits the road. If your faith comes strictly from your paradigm, you must hold to words which describe your beliefs at all costs. For if they are wrong, your entire foundation has been demolished beneath you. However, if your faith does not rest on your understanding perfectly, you can relax and trust in what you cannot see perfectly or know entirely.

More and more I am concerned that many abandoning the established church adopt a paradigm where their views are determined more by the world than their life of faith with others. I am concerned that this has happened with myself to some extent, and God has been correcting me lately.

The current paradigm in the culture I find myself in exalts a plurality of ideas and the opinions of others. There is valuable insight to be gained by listening to other’s ideas, but a paradigm in which you can say nothing definitively does not bode well for me.

The problem comes in communicating ideas to those who are not in your paradigm. The definition I like the best for communication is “creating shared meaning.” In order to create shared meaning, the parties communicating must have a sufficient understanding of the other person’s perspective. They do not have to have the same perspective, nor could they, but they do need to have at least a basic understanding of what the words used mean to the person using them. Without this, shared meaning is impossible to attain.

Here’s a portion of what Dan had to say:

I stressed how we don’t want to focus on hell and punishment as something we dwell on, but at the same time we must not ever forget it. It seems easy for churches and Christians to forget or because it is uncomfortable not talk about it or teach on it. – Full Post

I confess not wanting to delve too deeply into the topic. For some time, my position has been that if someone asks me how to avoid hell or get to heaven, I would share about salvation in Christ… a salvation which has the goal of saving you now so you naturally go to heaven when you die. Not salvation as a means to avoid hellfire. At the same time, I would not answer questions about whether someone is going to hell or not. That is for God to know. Basically, if you ask me how to avoid hell, I’ll tell you a way I believe in 100%, saving faith in Christ Jesus. If you ask me if you’re going to hell or not, well, that’s not up to me.

I appreciate Dan taking this issue on and in a way which a lot of his peers may not agree. Though I do think there’s more conservative theology in the emerging church than currently believed by Evangelical critics, there are certainly a lot of varying views which seem to, if not completely in reality do, negate any concept of hell.

This post is definitely worth the time to read. It’s lengthy, but go through it any way. Dan Kimball on Hell

The post goes on to talk about practice being more important than belief. This has been a contention of mine for awhile, that Jesus focused more on practice than belief. Of course, there’s not a neglect of faith or belief in the teachings of Jesus, but Evangelicalism have tended to favor a skewed interpretation of being saved by grace through faith and neglecting the place of works in salvation.

The question is, are we saved to heaven or are we saved to a new life? This is a serious question. A new life implies a change in our actions and deeds. I’m reminded of Dallas Willard’s teaching that grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. We cannot earn salvation by doing good things, but doing good things is a part of our salvation and continued transformation into the life of Christ.

My only complaint with his post is the title. “gathering-centered” to me evokes the idea of what many in the church already have, which is meeting-centered churches. I think he’s just saying spread-out gatherings that aren’t tied to a unique congregation, but I just don’t think the title does his concept justice.

I’ve been thinking lately about planting a church again. Well, planting of sorts. You see, when I lived in Covina and even Anaheim, I had a house church I was a part of. Many of you know it as The Offramp. While I am still emotionally connected to the group, I’ve moved and honestly haven’t made near the effort I should to stay in any sort of relationship with the church.

Also, it kind of defeats the purpose of a small intimate house church to drive 45 minutes to come to a meeting.

So, I’ve been considering just connecting with a couple people I know that live close who have expressed an interest in a simple church structure. The thing is, I don’t want to be a pastor again. At least not right now. I’ve been hesitant to take on a role I have no desire to fill, and I’m not sure a truly simple church structure would be beneficial without any type of pastoral leadership.

I would be interested, though, if there are people in Los Angeles who would be interested in embarking on a journey towards a church community like Justin describes. More specifically, the west side of the san fernando valley, west l.a., or Venice/Santa Monica (where my heart is and I hope to move back to very shortly).

For me, since most of my conversations now fall outside of the Evangelical world, the use of the term has been quite handy. It’s a term those outside of the bubble do not recognize, and they usually ask what it means. While I consider the emerging church a movement, I do not believe it is an organization or an organizational movement. So identifying with the term emerging church is more a way of describing how I feel part of what God is doing in the body of Christ through the transformation of local churches and conversation across different segments of the body. I am part of that, and I do not mind it when people identify me with the emerging church movement.

Of course, I’m still on the outs with those who really want to call it a “conversation,” but as I’ve said before, that’s just a word game that does not make any sense. Really, if the emerging church is just a conversation, than the emerging church is not doing anything at all. Especially “emerging.”

I understand why some would want to distance themselves from the label, but I think for most, it’s paranoia about how people who are truly insignificant to the life of your local community of faith. Most of the people who are part of an “emerging church” probably are not even aware there is much of a controversy going on amongst Evangelicals regarding the structural, philosophical, and theological questions and changes occurring due to this movement.

For some, it may be a concern of funding when the old guard does not get it and thinks you believe exactly whatever Brian McLaren, Spencer Burke, or Doug Pagitt writes. If you find yourself in that situation, don’t talk about the emerging church at all. Really. Is it necessary? Can’t you just talk about a more organic church structure, a missional vision for your church, an openness to difference of opinion especially regarding nonessential beliefs?

In short, if the label is a problem for you. Drop it. Who cares?

If it’s not a problem, you should consider explaining your views by using the term. It helps aid in the conversation. At least it has for me.

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emerging church, church structure, ecclesiology