Responding to the grinch

Hm-m-m, how would you respond to the Grinch’s enigma?

Thought I would share some of the joy that I experience at this time of year with a reminder that God the Father sent, for all peoples of all times in all places, the gift of God the Son. Jesus came to earth on mission as a not-so-secret agent of reconciliation.

Christmas is a time for family and friends. But yesterday, I learned that a very close friend, who was working for his sister, just got fired because she was upset with him. Nice Christmas present :-(

I actually learned of this through another friend. I went to visit her with a little present from our family. I figured being single, she might have been feeling a bit lonely at this time of year because, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, she too had become alienated from a bunch of her friends.

In spite of separations like this, I still have hope because of Jesus. He came to earth on a mission to bring people back together. By the way, whether one recognizes it or not, you, I and all people everywhere have also been alienated from God.

Maybe we have not committed atrocities (and then again maybe we have), but neither have we been perfectly just, perfectly loving, perfectly kind to all the people that come across our path on any given day or lifetime. And our unwitting wrongs (not to mention our deliberate ones) can separate us one from another and have separated us from God. Or as a sage of old put it, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you.”

But God the loving Father so desired relationship with all people, both nice and nasty, that he sent His Son as an intermediary to reunite us. Could this be the “more” that the Grinch sought behind the Christmas festivities? Hm-m-m.

The baby Jesus grew up. But Jesus was different from other young men. He interacted perfectly with everyone that crossed his path; those who were hurting he helped, those who were in the wrong he rebuked, those who sought him he spent time with. He showed us what it was to love perfectly.

Because God is perfect He cannot tolerate evil; it must be punished or justice collapses. But He is also inherently loving. So He sent Jesus, who led a perfectly just life, and in his love for us all, willingly agreed to accept the punishments for every injustice committed by every one of us, so that all people everywhere could enjoy a relationship with his perfect, loving Father. Jesus was sentenced to death for the imperfect behavior, words, attitudes, as well as the evil, injustice and atrocities of the whole world throughout all time.

People, whose trust is in Jesus, are acquitted from their crimes and misdemeanors because Jesus took their punishment as though he had done the wrong himself. And now, those people whose place their faith in Jesus and the amnesty he offers can connect with the perfect, loving God.

In case you are interested, the prerequisite for receiving this forgiveness for one's own nasties is to admit that one has been unwittingly and willfully bad and to place one’s confidence in Jesus, that he has accepted the punishment that "I" deserve.

I have found that by placing my confidence in Jesus — the guest of honor at the Christmas festivities — I have been able to enjoy a deepening relationship with God, enjoy rather good relationships with people, and at times have had the privilege of being an agent of reconciliation between people who have become alienated one from another.

So possibly this Christmas, believers and skeptics alike might take the time to entertain the Grinch's questions, "What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?"

As we say here in la belle France, Joyeux Noël !
paul

Church morphing: imperfect understanding

Baseball season is over and Boston swept the World’s Series (and my wife is quite sure that the Pirates will do the same next year!). My softball team nonetheless continues practicing and playing indoors. So batter up!

Dijon University Club indoor tournament

Coach Klaw (left) at the Besançon tournament chilledly awaiting our next game

For this softball game we will of course need an umpire. And before the game starts we will have the luxury of choosing an umpire from one of three schools of interpreting balls and strikes.

The IDEALIST umpire says: “I call it the way it IS. If it IS a strike I call it a strike. If it IS a ball I call it a ball.”

The PRAGMATIST umpire: “I call it the way I see it. The rules are not right or wrong. We agreed on them; they facilitate the game. Cut the chatter and play ball!”

The CRITICAL-REALIST umpire says: “I call it the way I see it. There is a real pitch and an objective standard against which I must judge it, but I can be shown to be right or wrong.”

Well, maybe we aren’t going to play softball. These three “umpires” reflect differing philosophical approaches to the relationship between truth and understanding. And the issue before us is, if one accepts by faith that God and the Bible are absolute Truth, to what extent can one understand it?

One of my French interns once reacted rather strongly to a Bible discussion on eschatology that I facilitated with our university group. He had heard so much bellicose, deductive dogmatism in his ecclesiastic tradition (his father was a theology professor with a conservative denomination) that he said, “You know, I break out in hives whenever someone brings up the subject.” He preferred to take a wait-and-see position.

So let's take the rapture for example. Based upon Jesus' words, “You… must be ready, because the Son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Mt. 24:44), are the following assertions Truth or an understanding of Truth?

a) Jesus will return suddenly.
b) Jesus will return before the Great Tribulation.

TO WHAT EXTENT CAN ONE UNDERSTAND TRUTH: ABSOLUTELY?
The IDEALIST umpire was prevalent under modernism. Many scientists and theologians alike saw virtually no distinction between objective truth and their understanding of that truth. So the “idealist” (a philosophical school of thought) theologian tacitly asserts, “Scripture is perfect and my understanding of Scripture is perfect.”

Returning to the tribulational discussion, idealist pastors might confidently claim, “The Bible says Jesus will return for His Church (fill in the blank: before, during, after) the Great Tribulation. But as Paul Hiebert (Anthropological Reflections on Missiologial Issues, 26) wryly points out, this claim to a one-to-one correlation between Truth and understanding of Truth “raises problems when disagreements arise”!

Two limitations that hinder even regenerate, godly theologians from arriving at a perfect understanding of Truth are that the human intellect is finite and tainted by sin.


Jay Adams refers to “the noetic effects of sin” that causes people to “distort” messages. (Theology of Christian Counseling, 165, 172). And sin does not only affect the understanding of unregenerate people.* If sin influences regenerate people in the physical realm — materialism, sensuality… (Eph.5:3) — why might we imagine that it does not affect our intellect and understanding of Truth?

David Wells says, “There has long been a Christian argument that reason… is not neutral but it is tainted by sinful bias of various kinds” (Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World, 83-84).

D.A. Carson states, “Our sin ensures that even a system closely aligned with Scripture will be in some measure distorted.” (Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 68)

So I contend that our understanding is subject to distortion and bias and that this applies to our interpretation of the Truth. A contemporary, almost universally recognized example of sin-tainted reasoning was the theological justification of racism by some Dutch Reformed theologians that supported the Affricaans superiority over the majority autochthons — apartheid.

Rez Band first brought apartheid to public awareness with the blistering song, "Afrikaans" (1979)

And we are finite beings, not omniscient. As Carson says, “Human beings can know some true things, even if nothing exhaustively” (Becoming Conversant, 104-110).

So Truth is objective and universal, but our understanding of Truth is local and subjective. Due to the effects of sin and finiteness it is critical to distinguish between the Truth of Scripture and one's understanding of Truth. Scripture must retain its rightful place, far above human understanding (Is.55:8**).

TO WHAT EXTENT CAN ONE UNDERSTAND TRUTH: NOT AT ALL?
A consequence of not recognizing this distinction leads to a PRAGMATIC postmodern allergic reaction to conflicts resulting from contradictory “perfect” understandings of truth*** like that of my intern above, pragmatic avoidance.
A postmodern person could easily say, “We don’t even know if truth exists and we certainly will not have the same interpretation of it, so just play ball!"

But there is a position that accepts the absolute Truth of God and His Word while recognizing man’s provincial, sin-tainted, biased understanding.
TO WHAT EXTENT CAN ONE UNDERSTAND TRUTH: SOMEWHAT?
CRITICAL REALISTS hold that meaning can be adequately determined, but that understanding must be “constantly probed, critiqued, improved, revised, replaced, and evaluated (hence the adjective ‘critical’)” (Becoming Conversant, 104-110).
In the above example, a critical realist would contend that response a) “Jesus will return suddenly” qualifies as Truth, while b) “Jesus will return before the Great Tribulation” is a particular understanding of Truth.

Now it is very appropriate to hold the latter as a personal and even as a collective conviction. But it is not proper to claim, “The Bible says that the rapture will occur prior to the Great Tribulation.” Because the pre-trib view is a theological construct involving significant amounts of human interpretation, both deductive and inductive reasoning, it is preferable to say humbly, “I believe the Bible teaches… Here’s why…”

"Foot Washing" by Wanda Teel. The artist says, “The foot washing picture is about my g-g-grandparents’ church. This was about being humble.” http://www.marciaweberartobjects.com/teel.html

As Tom Julien wrote in “Identity Shock-A Plea for Consensus” (1980s), it is “alarming... to assign certainty to logical inference. When inerrancy is assigned to interpretive systems… this represents a new creedalism…” which historically, my tradition, the Grace Brethren, has staunchly opposed.

Dr. Manahan, president of Grace College and Seminary, wrote, “A significant part of what Grace is comes from the pietistic heritage … Pietists are very pessimistic about the capacity of reason to fathom the mysteries of God.” (“The Pietistic Spirit”)

Paul Hiebert comments, “The Anabaptists … were critical realists. They affirmed that there is objective reality and objective truth (reality as God sees it—as it really is). They recognized, however, that all truth as perceived by humans is partial and has a subjective element within it… This awareness led the Anabaptists to make a sharp distinction between God’s revelation as recorded in Scripture and human understandings expressed in theology.”

The critical realist “view led Anabaptists to take a humble view of theology. They held strongly to their theological convictions; many died for them. But they readily admitted that their understanding of truth was partial, biased, and possibly wrong. They were, therefore, willing to test their convictions by returning to the Scriptures.” (Missiological Issues, 98, 100)

A biblically tenable position, therefore, that I believe will serve the local church well in an increasingly postmodern climate is that of the critical realist, distinguishing between the absolute, objective Truth of the Word of God and our partial, subjective, sin-tainted and biased understanding of that Truth, a humble position that Scripture is perfect, but our understanding of Scripture is imperfect.


NOTES
* Millard Erickson (Christian Theology, vol2, 617-618) points out that some the effects of sin are self-deceit (Jer.17:9), insensitivity (1 Ti. 4.2), coveting (James 4:1-2), inability to empathize (Phil. 2:3-5)…..

** “My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

*** “I have observed one thing among true Christians in their differences in many countries: what divides and severs true Christian groups and Christians—what leaves a bitterness that can last for twenty, thirty or forty years (or for fifty or sixty years in a son’s memory)—is not the issue of doctrine or belief which caused the differences in the first place. Invariably it is lack of love—and the bitter things that are said by true Christians in the midst of differences. These stick in the mind like glue.” (Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian, 195, italics mine)

Church morphing: secondhand convictions

I was helping a friend prepare for his licensure exam. I was dismayed when he showed me a sample copy of the test; there was as much about interpretive systems and theological jargon as about Bible content! I lamented, “How will this provide an accurate indication of whether my friend ‘correctly handles the word of truth?’”
Another friend, an evangelist-church planter, has eschewed licensure and ordination saying, “I don’t need that to do what God has called me to do.” A postmodern reaction to a highly developed system that may have at one time served a valid purpose, but no longer responds to current needs.

But might there be some middle ground between these hyper-theological* and “Just say no!” approaches to biblical preparation for ministry? The former could be filtering out all but would-be theologians, potentially excluding apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherds, and the latter leads to pragmatism, potentially leading away from biblically rooted ministry.


Leaders or followers?
In chapter 8 of Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, Paul Hiebert presents the “self-theologizing” principle for use in cross-cultural, church planting situations. His insights are pertinent in this transitional period as leaders guide local churches out of confident modernity through suspicious postmodernity.

Dr. Hiebert writes, “It is essential that we train leaders who can wrestle with the theological issues that emerge within their cultural context (2 Tim. 2:2).”

There are few things to which we Grace Brethren should shout a louder, “Amen!” We want to develop men and women of the Word. We must realize, however, that “it is much harder to train leaders, for we must teach them to think for themselves, to disagree with us, and to stand for their own convictions. We must learn to accept debates and honest disagreements on tough theological issues without cutting off a [postmodern] brother or sister” (216).

And we must realize that without this type of prayerful, direct interaction with the Scriptures, we do not train leaders but followers “who merely believe what we say and imitate us” (215). But those who simply replicate applications of Scripture that were relevant during the 20th century’s liberal wars of religion will find themselves increasingly irrelevant in the 21st century’s proliferation of spiritualities.

And by demanding that emerging leaders believe identically like we modernists do, many of the strong may leave in frustration because they have not had the freedom and opportunity to participate in a dynamic, theologizing process (235).

Theological orientation?
As a church planter, I had wondered what would happen when I was no longer present to influence the theological orientation of the Dijon church. As my wife and I transitioned the church over to French leadership we recognized the accuracy of Hiebert’s words, “there is no way to guarantee the preservation of our theological convictions. We can write them in creeds and constitutions and can police churches and schools. But those who succeed us will come to their own convictions. Each generation in the church must come to its own living faith. Secondhand beliefs will not do” (216).
One Sunday morning, I sat listening to Franck, the Dijon church pastor, teaching from Scripture about healing. I was amazed because I could have preached the exact same content (only Franck presented it much better)! Even though we had never specifically discussed the subject our convictions were almost identical. How could this be if I never taught him? After all, I was his trainer and mentor!

My guess is that this common conviction was a result of relationship (some theology is more caught than taught) and because we approach Scripture utilizing a biblical theological approach and a common hermeneutic (grammatical-historical-contextual-prayerful).

Spiritual immaturity?
So should emerging postmodern leaders of Grace Brethren churches assume the responsibility and have the “right to understand and apply the gospel in their own settings? Is there not a danger that they will go theologically astray? The answer to both of these questions is yes. To grow, spiritually young churches must search the Scriptures themselves, and if—for fear that they well leave the truth—we do not allow them to do so, we condemn them to spiritual infancy and early death. On the other hand, to allow people to study the Scriptures for themselves always entails some risk” (208).

But as Hiebert says, “The Scriptures… speak of the priesthood of all believers. We need to teach all Christians to study and interpret the Bible for themselves and to apply its message to their lives. To deny them this is to keep them spiritually immature.”
I believe that Hiebert's "self-theologizing" approach to biblical truth is throughly in harmony with our Grace Brethren heritage and is a key to biblical mission. Young leaders are needed, guided by the Spirit of God, accompanied by gifted people, committed to the absolute truth of the Living Word, studying and applying it in fresh ways in their localities if we want to see local churches, not simply survive, but thrive and hive** into the postmodern future.


* theology: not in the sense of “knowledge of God” but rather of “a religious theory, school of thought, or system of belief.”

** "Hiving" is a term French church planters use for church multiplication. Just as bees form new cells onto a hive, churches “hive” out with new groups.

Church morphing: truth or interpretation?

I was sitting in Marcus’ living room. He had grown up in a German Grace Brethren Church (my denomination). This young man is a building contractor, the lead elder in a lay-led church; his vision includes seeing simple churches scattered across the region of Germany surrounding his church!

Marcus had just shared with me about the work that God was doing in his life, obviously a fresh filling of the Spirit! And he turned to me with this question: “Does one need to be dispensationalist in order to be Grace Brethren?”

In 2008, the Grace Brethren will be celebrating our 300-year birthday! For the past few decades the predominant interpretive system among our pastors has been dispensationalism, but over the last three centuries the Grace Brethren have simply focused on biblical truth, relationship and mission. So in light of history, I shared, “No. We adhere to biblical truth, not an interpretive system.”

Alexander Mack founded the Brethren movement in 1708, not all that far from Marcus' home in Germany. Mack was a pietist, strongly committed to Scripture.

You will have recognized that an epistemological* question arises, n’est-ce pas ?! If truth exists, can I understand it? And between truth and understanding lies one’s interpretative system (everyone has one).

Thanks to his empirical methodology, Sigmund Freud recorded some rather interesting observations about dreams. He said, “Dreaming is evidently mental life during sleep.” “We see that dreams are not disturbers of sleep, as they are abusively called, but guardians of sleep which get rid of disturbances of sleep” (Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 107, 158).

Salvador Dali "Sleep" 1937

Fascinating stuff. But Freud pushes farther wanting to interpret the dream and so developed an interpretive grid based upon sex. Predicated upon “evolutionary truth” (197), Freud logically deduced that work became “an equivalent and substitute for sexual activity.”

He opines, “If the hypothesis I have here sketched out is correct, it would give us a possibility of understanding dream-symbolism… and why in general, weapons and tools always stand for what is male, while materials and things that are worked upon stand for what is female” (206).

A professionally trained female auto mechanic in Kenya (www.un.org)

Okay, now how many of us would agree with Freud’s starting point and the resulting interpretive system? We would all agree that dreams are real, but even psychiatrists differ on what dreams mean based upon varying interpretive systems. Similarly, truth exists, but our understanding of that truth will differ based upon the interpretive system used.

Brent Sandy, in his insightful book, Plowshares & Pruning Hooks: Rethinking the Language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic, quotes John Stott saying, “The hallmark of authentic Evangelicalism is not the uncritical repetition of old traditions but the willingness to submit every tradition, however ancient, to fresh biblical scrutiny, and, if necessary, reform.” Brent goes on to say, “Sadly,… many people have inadvertently domesticated God.” Our interpretive systems can also domesticate His Word.


Brent points out that the raw truth of the Bible must have primacy over and evaluate even our interpretive systems. In a reference to C. S. Lewis’ Aslan, Dr. Sandy asserts (207), “The intent of the prophets is to let the lion roar”!

"Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good." Mr. Beaver to Lucy

SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CHURCH MORPHING?

As local churches move from modernity to postmodernity, young leaders must be encouraged to interact with the unadulterated Word of God. “Sola scriptura” (Scrpiture only) and “ad fontes” (back to the source documents) are the need of the moment.

To be continued…

* epistemology basically deals with the question, how do I know what I know.