The Fuller Generation

Well, Sam told me about this, and I was going to blog on it, but he already beat me to it. Figures.

Jim Wallis (above) wrote a blog on the Huffington Post discussing the new "twentysomething evangelicals".... and using Fuller Seminary as one of the key examples of the changes happening in evangelical Christian thought and culture in America.

In one sense, I beam with pride for my now-alma mater, because I feel like the changes that are happening are positive ones. I also feel like Jim is describing me when he says that more and more Christians ID themselves as "Matthew 25, Luke 4, and 'Sermon on the Mount' Christians" who seek to live out the Kingdom of God in this life as much as the next one...although this change in my head and heart was rooted in events and biblical discoveries that happened before I ever stepped foot onto the Fuller campus....Fuller simply helped the seeds to grow.

I also am left wondering, "Almost every new movement, every fresh breath of the Holy Spirit, becomes over-systematized and dogmatic eventually, setting the stage for a new movement... when will that happen for us?" In other words, when will we take our new "hooks" and theological toys and push them to the extreme, using them (and not the Spirit, nor the Biblical narrative) as the litmus test for legitimate Christianity? I suppose we are years away from this, since we're still the minority... then again, maybe in some circles, we're not.

The rhetoric has been from the beginning that we continue to "emerge," not to ever close neither our ears from dissension nor our eyes to seeing God's fresh movement in the world...this is what makes people who desire a definition for the emerging church tear out their hair. (minus the "we are democrats" part, this might be one of the better attempts to give some definition to the movement, particularly as it is ID'd as an evangelical movement, primarily.)

My question is, will we stay open to the Spirit, and to criticism, and to theological balance?... B/c human history suggests that we won't.

the gospel according to josh. (part 1 of ?)

Well, the previous blog set a new standard in suck-ery. Good thing no one reads this anymore.

I've had a few theological thoughts ruminating in my head over the past few weeks, a lot of which involving remembering the journey of the past few years. Many of my closer blog friends know that atonement theories (i.e., how the "problem" of the world was solved by Jesus), re-thinking about sin, Pauline thought, dualism, the nature of the Trinity, and the resurrection have all been "hot topics" for me. They have been, because I feel like they really matter to talk about. I mean, I know theology is supposed to be boring, esoteric, and ultimately useless navel-gazing by academicians needing something to put in a dissertation. But, maybe I've been deluded, but I actually think it matters to think about big topics like this. I know that theology comes from life, and so trying to make "meta-categories" like "Trinity" and "Sin" is at best an overgeneralization of experiences and at worst a tool of oppression leading to the death of individual (marginal) experience....but, I still find it useful to do theology.

Because really, theology IS life... Everything we do has spiritual implications. Everything in this world is within the realm of God, and so it has theological meaning. Attempting to dive into this mystery, knowing full well that that mystery is bottomless, should necessarily lead us to a deeper knowledge about life, and namely, the meaning and purpose of it.

Good theology is also self-critical; i.e., it learns from itself, and from its sordid past... if it is, it can never be used as a tool for oppression or violence, because we have too many examples in our history to mention to give us any excuse of ignorance in the future.

I'm no longer a student. I'm a youth pastor now. Which means, when I say things with theological significance, I don't get to put down footnotes and create elaborate arguments; instead I am explaining things have I've studied/discovered to churchgoers and teenagers in simple terms... well, sorta. You can poll any of my kids and they'll probably tell you that I have a tendency to speak in another language at times... I really have to watch myself. And I'm not going to lie; it's been frustrating. I have things in my head that make sense, that I can't seem to communicate as well as I would like. I want people to catch the vision of the Kingdom of God, but I can't seem to put it into terms that most people can get, without having studied theology on their own. Basically, I'm used to working with people who share some basic presuppositions. Without these, I am constantly explaining myself, until I talk myself into so deep a spiral that no one is following me anymore. I exaggerate, but only a little.

After all, my sermons have all been to audiences with whom I feel like I have some continuity in thought and theology....either to classmates, or to the Warehouse, whose congregants largely share my convictions. While I hold these convictions firmly (and yet loosely, which is a conviction in itself), I sometimes now feel like I'm the only one on the planet with this view of the Christian religion...which is not true, of course.

And as you can see, without writing papers constantly, I have become ridiculously verbose...another obstacle to clear communication.

So I've become increasingly interested in working my language and my metaphors, crafting and molding them, so that my progressive convictions can strike an emotional chord with others, just as they do with me. And, I want to be able to show how it all ties together, how it all fits, by logical standards, biblical standards, and historical standards.

In other words, I want to be Rob Bell.

So, over the next several blog entries (I may interject a few other entries about other things) I plan to let this blog be an open forum where I can craft in everyday language my view of the Gospel. That is, "the Gospel according to josh." Once I write something that I think is compelling, I'll be illiciting feedback from trusted sources, but whoever you are, if you have an opinion, I would love to hear it. It would be a great help to me. And my youth will thank you.

a confession.

I have a confession to make. It’s not an easy one to make, either. In fact, by making it, I will be revealing myself to be a sham. I will give many people who know me, or even who have glossed briefly over this blog, ample reason to call into question any further claims that I make about myself. That is because this confession that I am about to make finds its source in a recent epiphany of mine, which occurred while I was showering just a moment ago. That is to say, I myself wasn’t even aware of this fact. And it calls into question, for myself, much of what I have come to think about, well, myself:

I don’t love to read. And I never have, really.

Now this is distinctly different from saying that I don’t like to read. That’s not the case at all. And in fact, there are an immeasurable number of books and articles that I have devoured, to the point where I could say that I loved reading them. But for me to continue telling the world that I am a bibliophile who spends all of his leisure time rummaging through the pages of Church Dogmatics or Kant’s Critiques would be disingenuous. On top of the usual other possibilities, such as drawing and playing piano or guitar, there is also the possibility of sleeping. Or, watching sports. Basically, if a good football game is on, you can forget about me doing much else.

Sitting down to read almost always has two results: One is that, while reading I will come across a nugget that catches me, and then sends me into a tailspin of emotions and implications, as this novel, brilliant thought intersects my web of beliefs. Those implications often have me chasing me after other further implications, and before you know it I am spewing out original (at least, to me) thought after original thought, as I take these implications and hold them up to my “web,” taking note of both agreements and discrepancies, and as I began to hypothesize what my “web” might look like were I to incorporate this new knowledge. All wonderful things, except that they force me to stop reading in order to concentrate on this task of cognitive reorganization. So I put the book down, and resume reading after I have entertained this new thought fully, perhaps by writing notes in the book margins. A page or two later (or a paragraph, or even a sentence later, if you’re a particularly perceptive writer and the subject matter is engaging me at the moment), I’ll find another nugget, and the process will repeat itself. The result of this is any number of unfinished books on my shelf at one time, having started them and enjoyed them, and even had them influence my thinking to a great degree, but never actually being able to finish them, because the book exhausted me and because it took me an hour to read 5 pages of it.

The other result is that the book is either not engaging, either in general, or to me at the moment that I pick it up to read, or I simply choose, for time and sanity’s sake, not to go down too many of the above-described “rabbit trails” that I normally would. So I skim the book… doing so at a reasonably fast rate, and getting the majority of the book’s content in the process (a skill learned in seminary). I usually get bored, however, and unless I am required by a deadline to continue pushing myself to read on, I will inevitably fall asleep.

There are two problems, as I see it. The first is that I have problems focusing on one thing for long periods of time. Like those with attention deficit disorder, I will experience “hyperfocus” at times, but at others, if I am not engaged by the author, I don’t pay attention all that well. The second is, I think, the greater issue: I am not by nature a “sympathetic” reader. That is to say, I do not attempt to enter the world of the author; I force the author to enter into mine, narcissistic as I am. To follow an author’s thought patterns as disseminated in whatever work of theirs that I might be reading is not natural to me; far more natural it is to break off branches and to graft them into my way of thinking about the world.

I have another confession: I strongly believed the immediately preceding paragraph as I wrote it, but now upon further reflection, I am not so sure. After all, my thoughts are the synthesis of my studies, which involved hours of pouring over sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes my studies truly pulled me into the author’s world and thought process; I recall feeling this when reading Cost of Discipleship or God of the Oppressed. And sometimes, I would read things intently although I had nowhere to “put” the new information assaulting my brain; i.e., it couldn’t yet fit into my web and yet I couldn’t ignore or dismiss it. This was largely my experience with Exclusion and Embrace, although now upon rereading it, I can see just how much the book has influenced my theology. It is perhaps the most influential book for me in my tiny library, in fact. And if I wasn’t at least a little bit of a sympathetic reader, this couldn’t have been possible.

I'm not sure where all of this leaves me, or you, since you chose to read this entry. But the confession is healthy; if nothing else I feel liberated. This is also an exercise in self-reflection. I still love to study and learn, though....so, my nerd-dom is probably safe. But if I come to any further, similarly riveting conclusions, I'll let you know.