Somehow we (the western church) must unearth the long, lost view of God from underneath the crust of modernism, and rediscover the God who is beyond the God of the Gaps. Somehow we must posit a God -- in our own thinking -- that is worthy of worship and taken seriously again. God is present, but how are we to know and experience God in a present-ness?
What I think I know:
- God is there. [this is the primary statement, and it is one of faith]
- God is mystery. [language, even biblical language is metaphor and cannot fully contain God]
- God cannot be known or experienced unless God takes the initiative. [revelation]
- God is known in the judeo-christian experience, but is primarily revealed in Jesus. [this is why I call myself a Christian]
- God is personal, but is not personality. [God is not a person like we are]
- God is everywhere, but God is not everything. ["in Him we live and move and have our being]
- God somehow speaks to us in and through our thoughts and impressions. [NOTE: This, of course is fraught with danger and traps, see: Genesis 22]
- God's relationship with the world is open and fluid. [God is monstrously creative, taking our very real decisions, which matter and have consequences, and using them to accomplish the divine will for the world]
Hey Mark, I was blogging at one of my offsite offices, the Flying Saucer, in Sundance Square, Fort Worth, and got into a faith conversation of sorts with my waitress Heather. At some point I asked her what faith tradition she came from as TX is still a part of the Bible belt, even though the belt has been loosened a few notches. From the shrug and look on her face I could tell she had no church context at all and I realized how much work I would have to do to explain even the most basic facts of my faith. And as if that wasn’t a high enough hurdle, I am sure that Heather in Bible Belt TX has met enough Christians who have tried in the interest of conversion to strangle the life out of her. Your eight what I know are helpful as foundational for what we have to be about in the post Christian world, even in the Bible belt. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteTo Phil:
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. You hit it right, we both see, I think, the challenge of pomo, but it's not just the culture @ large, it's our own people as well, especially our young adults, for pomo is post -- post Christian, post traditional theism, post reformation, post denomination, post institution. The death of Christendom means the death of what you and I love, but it may offer to the next generation a new way to find the faith. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.
Imagine being born a Hebrew slave in Egypt. You go home from slave work everyday and you hear grandma or some old fool telling stories about God. You hear wild sounding promises. You will become a great nation. You think it was difficult to believe? Don’t feel that blessed. But you were wrong.
ReplyDeleteImagine being a slave in Persia for 70 years. A few old women and a couple of men telling the same ole stories. In spite of God always keeping His promises, it still may have been a stretch to hold on to your faith.
Imagine being born between the two testaments. “400 years of silence” writers often call it. Still a few share some now barely decipherable message.
Now it has been 2000 years since Jesus was here. It seemed so clear then. He gave us the kingdom. He said we were ready???
Now smart guys debate what is to become of he church? Will I survive? YES!!!
Each time God in His time begins a new work.
I think I began with a taken for granted faith based upon my up bring. Today for those post-modern, post-Christian Americans -where religion is a preference more than a fate--well, simple security of belief seems almost unattainable. More often it seems that Professors in our great universities with divinity schools turn from believer to agnostic. Soon a core belief develops that society gave us the gods rather than the reverse. We create the religion we need to give us some hope of a better day, a day when all wrongs will be righted, where suffering is no more. We offer hope to help them cope.
We again wander the desert wondering if we may be the last old fool telling the stories. NO!
Each time a remnant encounters the Living God. We will not however do that by looking out at our universe, nor through reason in the Aristotle tradition, nor thru emotionalism. Only thru our abandoned hearts that faithfully seek God in prayer and worship will we experience God. Of course once we meet the real deal----we will be ready again for the keys to the car.
Hi Bill:
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking then time to read my post. I love your illustration/narrative about the universal and eternal tug of the old again, new again. It is a perfect balance to what I wrote.
What we will do Sunday -- what we will do together -- the reading and preaching of the Word, the Eucharist, (and the baptism) are the ways in which the remnant remains faithful, and prepares for the next portion after Christendom, for, even as you so rightly remind me, the church will survive, Christendom, sadly, will not.
These elements -- the Word, the Cup, and the Bath (Gordon Lathrop) -- make us church, make us "Christian" and open in us the present-ness of the LORD. This God-breathed thriving & churning within our community of hearts so churns and so thrives by the power of God’s presence discovered in the liturgy, and it continues to be expressed outwardly by our care for the poor.
I was reading this week that @ the Jerusalem council in the book of the Acts the Hebrew Christians asked the newly accepted Gentile members of the body of Christ to remember one thing -- the poor. This author said that in all the councils of the church afterward the poor were never mentioned again (until Vatican II).
May this not be said of us.
What I mean is, the word, the cup and the bath lead us into the world, so that even when the pulse of Christendom stops and the old ways finally lie dead, the church will still somehow celebrate the liturgy and she will still somehow remember the poor, loving God and loving neighbor.
Blessings,
M