Category: Spirituality

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Spirituality Theological Hermeneutics Theology

Always Reforming?

Good post from Jamie Smith on the uses and misuses of the slogan “semper reformanda“:

There are strains of the Reformed tradition which like to emphasize that they are “always reforming,” invoking the Latin semper reformanda as a motto. But if one analyzes when and how this is invoked, one will notice something very slippery: that under the banner of “reforming” what we get is really just an agenda for “updating” the faith. And such an “updating” project is far from what was envisioned by the Reformers.

Indeed, such “updating” is more like the mid-century stream of aggiornamento advocated by Catholic theologians who were trying to get the church to “go modern”–to “update” the faith by conforming it to the new regnant standards of what counted as rational, true and just. But such a project of “updating” is ultimately correlationist (as I use the term in Introducing Radical Orthodoxy): it locates the standards for what we ought to believe outside the faith–in the supposedly neutral, objective findings of economics or sociology or evolutionary psychology. This puts Christian faith back on its heels, in a stance of deference to the canons of extra-Scriptural authorities.

But such “updating” is not reform; or, to put it more starkly, to be “always updating” is not the equivalent of semper reformanda. To be sure, Christian faith pushes us to value careful attention to empirical realities and thus requires us to grapple with our unfolding knowledge of our material and social world. Without question. In equal measure, the church, in order to be faithful, is called to be always reforming, not sitting on its laurels as if it has arrived at the truth. Since such a pursuit is an eternal vocation, it would seem odd to think we’ve arrived.

However, the call to be always reforming is not simply a matter of “updating” the faith according to current trends and fads; nor is it even a matter of “correlating” the faith with the supposedly secure findings of other authorities. To be “always reforming” is to be engaged in the hard work of being a tradition, which includes the difficult labor of arguing about what constitutes a faithful extension of the tradition (I have something like Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of “tradition” in mind here). This difficult work of reform differs from “updating” because it retains the center of gravity in the tradition (which, of course, includes and prioritizes the “founding document” of the tradition–in this case, Scripture).

This is merely a sketch to watch the “codes” at work when “always reforming” is invoked, and to urge a kind of semantic caution that under the banner of “reforming” language what we often get is a progressivism that is animated by a chronological snobbery which is a far cry from the task of reform, let alone the Reformers.

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Campus Ministry Spirituality

Youth Groups Ruin Kids' Lives

Well, not exactly, but here is a great post from David Fitch about the dangers of contemporary youth ministry.  With  kids in junior high and high school youth group, I often worry about the things Fitch mentions here.  I’m grateful that my church’s youth ministries focus on some of the things Fitch mentions, particularly missions.  But I do worry about the kind of spirituality a large youth ministry imparts in virtue of its being large.  In fact, I worry sometimes even about the emphasis on missions.   Is there a model for what most of these kids will eventually do in life — work at “ordinary” jobs and raise “ordinary” families somewhere in the U.S.? Or is the message that “real” Christians are “super-Christians”:  missionaries and pastors?  There’s lots of emotion, but is there enough depth to help kids move into the challenges of college and adult life?

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Biblical Studies Spirituality

Curt on the Vibrant Dance

My pastor writes on his time at the Vibrant Dance conference and the need to break down barriers between our faith and the natural sciences.  I’m proud of Curt for engaging this and blessed to have him as a pastor.

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Culture Spirituality

The Day Metallica Came to Church — Part 2

This is the second and final part of my interview with John Van Sloten, author of The Day Metallica Came to Church.  The first part of the interview is here.
 
Dave: So let’s talk a bit about theology for a moment.  In Chapter 3, you use the term “co-illumination.”  What are you getting at here?  How does this idea relate to the classical locus of authority for Protestant Christians — sola scriptura?

John:  Co-illumination occurs when either of God’s two books (creation or the Bible) shines light onto the other; resulting in a fuller/deeper understanding of God’s truth. The underlying assumption is that we need both books, synergistically co-illumining one another, in order to fully understand what God is revealing. While the Bible uses words to describe how the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps 19), the Hubble Space Telescope gives us a picture of what one of the 100 billion galaxies in our known universe actually looks like. Once we’ve seen Hubble’s amazing images the psalm can never be the same. In fact it might even feel 100 billion times more powerful. Nor will looking at Jupiter while on Canada’s remote Galiano Island ever be the same. Because I know the truth of the psalm I now have more with which to see God’s face beyond the solar system’s sacred page. The revelation of God is most fully experienced as we read his words with both reading glasses and a telescope.    

For me, the experience of co-illumination has been the most amazing part of this theological journey.  I can read about God’s anger in the Old Testament, and I may be able to imagine what it is like.  But when I feel it, at a heart trembling 120db at a raging Metallica concert, as the band gets angry about the same things God does, I’m totally blown away.  I can read Psalm 34:8 and get a sense of what the psalmist is talking about, but there was something about the amazing Persian meal I shared with friends’ last night that really helped me taste and see that God is good.  We are multi-sensory beings. And I believe that God means to engage all of our senses, via two books, both at the same time.

Sola Scriptura.  To me, the Bible is the book that best brings Jesus close. Through written words it clearly communicates the gospel. The message of Jesus is most perspicuous here. So I strongly believe in scripture as the final authority for faith and life, and that without it (as Calvin taught) I am unable to see God’s revelation in creation. But being the final authority doesn’t make it the only authority. So what Sola Scriptura brings to the ideas that I’m living with is a measuring stick, a ruler, and a compass. On any given Sunday in our church I always preach from both books (they keep each other honest). And if a creational truth doesn’t correlate with a biblical truth, then I need to keep searching for the connection.  If it’s not there, I back off.  My experience though, has been that the connection is most often there. In fact, I’m convinced that every biblical truth has a creational twin (several).

Dave:  Later on in the book you talk about one of those great theologian-sounding Latin terms, sensus divinitatus.  What do you mean by that?  How does it relate to what we might learn about God from culture?

John:  Simply stated it’s the sense of the divine that God has built into each of us; a homing beacon of sorts. According to Calvin, God has implanted an inherent understanding and awareness of himself into every person. This awareness, Calvin writes, is, “engraven indelibly on our very way of human being,” meaning that we “cannot open [our] eyes without being compelled to see him.” 

Often the sensus divinitatus is expressed through our yearnings and desires. God built desires into us that are meant to be ultimately met in Him. So when we yearn for a vicarious experience of glory through a World Series game, in a very real sense we’re being who God made us to be, although not fully.  We still need to get the to point where we realize that our ultimate glory comes as we vicariously enter into the victory that Christ has won for us. So the intense desire we see on all those October ballpark fan faces is indeed a God given desire. 

How does this help me learn to discern God’s truth through the culture?  Basically you identify the particular manifestation of the sensus divinitatus (a desire for victory, community, security, love, meaning, comfort, intimacy, beauty, peace, satisfaction, joy, justice, hope, unity, respect, rest, adventure, a sense of belonging, of mattering, or of being found) and you do three things. First, you name it as a God given gift; thereby honouring both that deeply meaningful and compelling yearning and God.  Second, you describe how God is the ultimate answer to all of our yearnings and desires.  God is victory, community, security, intimacy, etc… Third, you help people make the move from the mere foretaste that a World Series game, a good adventure film, or great sex can bring, to the real thing that is victory, adventure and union with Christ. 
 
Dave:  For me, one of the most interesting examples you give is from the world of fashion.  Fashion!  Whenever I’ve heard a preacher mention fashion — which is exceedingly rare! — it’s been with raised eyebrows and a reference to 1 Tim. 2:9.  And I think we have to admit, the world of fashion thrives on some of the deadly sins — Lust, Greed, Envy, and Pride.  How does sin factor in to your theological reading of culture?

John:  Yeah, the church has been good at citing Paul and forgetting Esther (who’s Persian haute couture saved a nation!). Why does the church always have to be known for what it is against? Shouldn’t we, as people of God, also be known for what we are for? Of course there is always a balance… with hemlines probably somewhere around the knee!

Where is the sensus divinitatus at work in fashion?  (I know, you didn’t ask Dave)  I see three of our deepest yearnings being expressed; the desire to be seen, to be beautiful, and to be perfect. God sees us (“You are the God who sees me” – Hagar). Through Christ we are beautiful in his sight and one day we will be perfect again. 

And what about sin?  It’s everywhere; perverting, twisting, polluting, and distorting God’s good creation. So the key in all of this reading culture stuff is discernment. I rely a lot on community for that; both within and outside of our church. But I think it’s important not to let sin have the final word in all of this.  Christ won right? Even though we’re in this now/not yet time, victory is assured.  And even though sin has infected everything, it doesn’t fully destroy anything or anyone (Augustine). The bible speaks its inspired truth through a cast of sin-infected characters. I’m thinking God is doing the same thing now. 
 
Dave:  Ok, to wrap up, back to praxis. You describe some of the “pushback” you’ve received as you’ve begun to preach from the book of culture.  Tell us a bit about that. What challenges might a pastor who wants to exegete culture face?

Over the past few years there has been lots of theological debate, many exit interviews and countless sleepless nights (on my part).  So you need thick skin and a hard head to do this.  You also need patience and grace. I’ve had prophetically judging phone messages, drive by Sunday morning shoutings, email threats and curses and quizzical looks from my mother, to name a few.  To me there are three challenges; psychological (people don’t like to change), theological (so far the vetting has gone well) and practical (how do you live these ideas out?).  These are still early days in terms of testing this worldview out. There are a few more books to be written on this idea. 
 
Dave:  Aside from your book, what are some resources you might recommend for folks interested in seeing how God might be working in culture (tell us, for example, about the TED talks….)?

TED talks have been a huge resource for me. World leading thinkers talking about the leading edges of what they are doing in fields of technology, entertainment and design; it’s all very stimulating and strangely very much in line with what we talk about in our church. 

To be honest I’ve not found a lot of contemporary writing on this issue, nothing that pushes the ideas as far as we do anyways.  Neal Plantinga’s, Engaging God’s World is wonderful, anything from Richard Mouw is great, Kuyper, Bavinck, Calvin, Augustine and Paul are also alright. 

Lately, a few online resources have been very helpful for me; Comment Magazine, Q Ideas, Catapult* Magazine.  In terms of seeing more examples of how this all plays out, I often send people to our church’s website.  We’ve got tons of video and audio of sermons based on films, bands, science, art, work, literature, nature, etc…  Beg, borrow and steal as much as you want.

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Spirituality

The Day Metallica Came to Church

The first part of an interview with John Van Sloten, author of The Day Metallica Came to Church.  In this book, Pastor Van Sloten talks about finding God in culture — from the “high” culture of Van Gogh’s paintings to the pop culture of the heavy metal band Metallica.  This is no manual of seeker techniques.  Rather, it’s a delightful and enlightening riff on culture and common grace.  If you preach or teach or just are interested in the relation between faith and culture, this book is a great resource.

Dave:  You mention in the book’s Preface that you’ve preached sermons on movies such asCrash, the paintings of Van Gogh, video games, sports, and other cultural pursuits.  It might be tempting to think, “Great — more ‘relevant’ sermons with a hip video clip before the same old three expository points…” But you’re up to more than that.  Tell us a bit about how you got into this more extensive mode of cultural exegesis.

John:  Yeah, we’re up to way more than mere relevance here.  And looking back, I’d say it happened to us.  Eight years ago I was researching a sermon series on The Lord of the Rings with a group of local pastors.  At one of our meetings someone said, “Tolkien’s story is just so epic, it would be a shame to break it down in order to ‘hang’ it onto the biblical narrative.  What if we did it the other way around and kept Tolkien’s tale intact, let it lead and hung the Bible story onto it instead?”  And that’s what we did.  We let God’s truth in a fictional myth lead us to God’s truth in the Bible.   A mere halfling pointed us to God’s humble, servant-like, upside-down plan for salvation.

Dave:  In the book you offer some of your own experiences of what C.S. Lewis called the “numinous” — such as entering the “holy place” that houses Van Gogh’s painting The Church in Auvers.  Later in the book you mention some similar experiences friends of yours had with architecture.  If I had to pick one such experience from my own life, it would be hiking in the Irish hills of Connemara, with no one else in sight, and no sounds but the wind and the sheep.  Since we’ve had a chance to talk a bit in person, I know that you weren’t always so sensitive to God’s voice in the everyday.  Tell us a bit about how you realized that you were missing it and how things began to change.

John:  I underwent a two part conversion.  First, a totally unplanned, spontaneous confession to a pastor/friend of mine.  I had no plans to make it.  It just spewed out of me, like it had to come out (a very Reformed conversion experience from my perspective, no free will on my part at all!).  Second, my third child Edward was born with Down syndrome.  Again a total surprise. My confession experience introduced me to Christ – the mediator of salvation.  Grace discovered me. Edward’s birth introduced me to Christ – the mediator of creation (John 1:1).  Here I met the God who reveals himself through all things; including the circumstances of my life story. Chapter two of the book tells that story, but in short, a few months after Edward’s birth, I had an experience so illumining, so eye-opening in terms of seeing God’s providential hand on the created order, so demonstrative of his sovereignty over all things, that I really had no choice but to spend the rest of my life unpacking what I’d learned. To be honest it took me years to process it all.  But now, in retrospect, I can see God’s providential intent in calling me the way he did.  He planted the idea of this book (and now my life) into that very painful calling moment.  I didn’t fully realize this until just a few years ago.  About the same time our church stopped using creational texts for their relevanceand started to read them as revelation.

Dave:  In your Calgary Herald article that you reproduce in the book, you note that “Most of the air we breathe is fresh.  Most of the streets we walk on are safe.  Most of our lives are filled with un-cited goodness and grace.” You don’t minimize the reality of suffering, but you’re trying to highlight the common grace that surrounds us.  Why do you think we as human beings, and as Christians, so often seem to be more attracted to despair than to hope?  Is there an “already-not-yet” tension here?  We might need to acknowledge, after all, that the “we” who might read this blog or your book are mostly relatively wealthy people in the relatively stable global North.

John:  I wrote that Calgary Herald editorial because I was sick of the unyielding, 24/7 drone of bad news that was inundating our lives in the ‘relatively stable global north.’  I think our media saturated world thrives on fomenting despair. If it bleeds it leads. So part of me just wanted to set the record straight. Most of life is good most of the time.  Grace is more common that we think.  Another reason I wrote that article is that it helped me process the ‘rose colored glasses’ concern I was feeling.  Early on in this journey of naming God’s goodness, truth and beauty in creation and through cultural texts, I worried that we were just ‘cherry picking’ the good bits while not paying attention to the very real problem of brokenness and sin. The last thing I wanted to do was go all ‘power of positive thinking’ on our church.  Yet I keep seeing more and more of what was right in life.  So this is why I started to measure and count things the way I did in that editorial; 200,000 killed in a tsunami, 3 billion safe on the rest of the world’s shorelines; 32 killed at Virginia Tech, 19 million post-secondary students safely went to school; 14 plane fatalities in 2006, 99.99999375 percent of air passengers arrived safely to their destinations, etc…  I don’t do this math to diminish suffering. It’s real and we ought to suffer with others.  But evil is not supreme in our world.  This fact makes a lot more room for seeing and experiencing God in all things.  As for those in less developed countries, of course, some suffer more than we ever will. But I keep thinking of those global national happiness surveys that come out every couple of years.  Aren’t we always surprised when an African nation leads the pack?

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Spirituality

I am Not in London

Today one of my email accounts was hacked.  The hackers assumed my identity and sent all my contacts a “phishing” email claiming I was in London, that I had been robbed, and asking for money.  I wasted most of the day trying to clean up this mess.  These people are smart — even after you get your email account back, you find they’ve messed with your settings, deleted your archives, taken over your Facebook page, and on and on.  And I know more than most people about this stuff because I’m teaching a course on cybercrime this semester — the professor teaching cybercrime was hacked!  Doh!  Some of you may have received the scam email — sorry for the inconvenience!

There was, however, a silver lining.  I received calls and emails from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances all over the country, in fact all over the world, expressing concern for me.  Some were suspicious but worried that the plea for help might be legitimate.  Some knew it was a phishing scam and wanted to let me know so I could regain control over the account.  I ended up chatting with a few people with whom I hadn’t touched base in a while.  A number of people at church immediately began praying for me and contacting others at church to check up on me.  What a great thing to be part of church, religious and professional communities that care!  I hope the hackers who grabbed my account — who are probably low-level organized crime functionaries in eastern Europe or Asia — find that kind of faith and professional community someday.

Categories
Science and Religion Spirituality

Falk on Mohler and Big Tent Evangelicalism

Darrell Falk argues that we need to save big tent evangelicalism from fundamentalism.  I agree with Falk’s argument, but at the same time I wonder whether it’s time to recognize that there simply isn’t a “big tent” anymore, if a big tent there ever was.

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Spirituality

Contemporary Worship

Nice article by David Taylor on David Crowder’s church worship music conference.

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Spirituality

More on Hipster Christianity

A good interview and review by Thomas at Everyday Liturgy.

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Spirituality

Jamie Smith on Hipster Christians

Jamie Smith offers a blistering review of Brett McCracken’s book Hipster Christianity.  I can’t comment on McCracken’s book directly because I haven’t read it.  However, I’ve had some experience of the tension Smith describes between what he calls “educated” evangelicals and those of us of a certain age who have gotten comfortable with our middle-class lifestyles.  Here’s how Smith puts it:

To be blunt (because I’m not sure how else to put this), the Christian bohemians I’m describing are educated evangelicals. So when McCracken lists (not so tongue in cheek) “ten signs that a Christian college senior has officially become a Democrat” (159), I’m sorry but the list just looks like characteristics of an educated, thoughtful Christian (and believe me, I’m no Democrat). Or when McCracken, in a remarkably cynical flourish in the vein of “Stuff White People Like,” catalogs the authors that Christian hipsters like (Stanley Hauerwas, Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, N. T. Wright, G. K. Chesterton, and others; 97), he does so as if people could only “like” such authors because it’s “cool” to do so. But perhaps they’re just good. McCracken seems unable to really accept what Paste magazine editor Josh Jackson emphasizes: “It’s not about what’s cool. It’s about what good” (92). And if that’s true, then it should be no surprise that Christian colleges and universities are shapers of Christian hipster culture: if McCracken is lamenting the fact that Christian colleges are producing alumni that are smart and discerning with good taste and deep passions about justice, then we’re happy to live with his ire. The fact that young evangelicals, when immersed in a thoughtful liberal arts education, turn out to value what really matters and look critically on the way of life that has been extolled to them in both mass media and mass Christian media—well, we’ll wear that as a badge of honor.

I like all the authors Jamie mentions (or at least most of them) — and he’s right, they are good!  But, I occupy a strange place in this milieu — a middle-aged guy who intellectually leans towards the “Christian Bohemian” perspective, with a comfortable job in the legal profession and a house in the suburbs .  I suspect that not a few Christian Bohemians would consider me a sell-out or a fraud, just as this guy McCracken apparently thinks I’m trying too hard to be cool.

To be sure, my choice to leave a big law firm partnership and become a law professor was sort-of bohemian in my context.  It took me thirteen years of sometimes excruciatingly hard work mixed with mind-numbing tedium, fabulous bend-over-and-take-it indignities and shameless butt-kissing to make partner — not to mention that I was very good at what I did.  I could be making a lot more money at this point in my life — a really, really lot more money, not to mention having a league of minions to help me get stuff done.  Instead, I left it all to pursue a tenure-track teaching job — not any easy pursuit! — to have more time for my family and my church, to make a difference in the lives of students, to contribute intellectually, and so on, as well as for my own sanity.

Let’s be honest, though — teaching law in New Jersey isn’t like teaching poor people in Uganda a basic trade.  This job will never buy me a yacht (or even a decent fishing boat!), but we have a very nice roof over our heads, plenty of food on the table, two big TVs, and (I’m honestly ashamed to admit) an SUV.

So, Mr. McCracken, I’m not going to read your book, but I’m going out on a limb to say I’d certainly agree with Jamie if I did read it.  And Jamie — yes, but remember that there are lots of us ordinary moms and dads out there who are just trying to make a living without giving up life.