What is the bottom line?

Working at a church, the two things I am asked about the most (other than "What's wrong with those high school kids these days") are creation vs. evolution, and homosexuality. Typically I just listen to people share their views, telling me how stupid anybody who doesn't agree with them is and rationalizing any faults in their own arguments. When asked my opinion, I usually mumble some form of half-affirmation which they take as agreement. The truth is, my opinions are based on very different reasoning, and as much as I would like to bring them to a similar understanding, I know it takes time.

What is this understanding? I understand the Bible as the text that seeks to lead us into Kingdom of God living. It is a lifestyle that is centered upon God and our neighbor, begun by the crucified God and lived through grace, love, faith and hope.

So when somebody asks me where I stand on creation I have two answers floating through my head, which I share only if I think they can handle one or both. First of all, who's to say that the 7 days in Genesis are literal? The sun wasn't created on day 1, nor was man. Furthermore, as any Old Testament scholar will tell you, it is a poem. A poem! Do you read poems literally? No! Does that mean there is no way there can be a literal 7 day creation story? No again. If we believe in a God who creates the earth from nothing, we can also believe in a God who makes the earth look older than it is, or even plants some crazy old fossils for fun. Here's the point in all of it: it doesn't really matter. What matters is Christ crucified. What matters is that we live our lives for the sole purpose of glorifying God. A christian who spends their life arguing and fighting for two pages of the bible to be read in a certain way is missing the point. The bottom line is that our main goal should always be to live into the reality of the kingdom. If your faith rests entirely upon the creation story as literal truth, what are you going to do when this theory becomes fact? Become a citizen of God's kingdom and those sorts of worries won't be there. The rest of that stuff is a massive footnote.

As for homosexuality...that is a harder topic. William Webb's book did a great job of showing that God's view doesn't really change when it comes to this sort of thing. I do think that sooner or later there will end up being some sort of evidence that it is genetic. That leaves us in a sticky situation, one which leaves me pointing back at God's kingdom yet again. If we live for God's kingdom, we no longer live for ourselves. Which means all of us have to repel those things within us that cause us to desire living in a contrary manner. How can anyone who defines themselves by how they receive pleasure be living into God's kingdom? Living into the kingdom means living to please God, not ourselves. The problem with sin is that is causes all of us to be self-centered, and this goes beyond homosexuality to all people. This is why the US is so very far from God's will, though many incorrectly believe us to be some sort of city on a hill. At the same time, though, I do not stand against gay marriage. Maybe that sounds crazy with what I have already written, but I don't think oppressing homosexual men and women will suddenly cause them to want to change their ways. The kingdom has not been demonstrated to them at all at this point. Can we show love in a better way without supporting their actions? I hope so.

Somewhere in here is a glimpse of my bottom line. If I'm going to stand for something, it is going to be love, mercy, forgiveness. God's kingdom is the only thing worth living for. It's worth fighting for too, but that fight has already been won. Now it's just a matter of living as citizens. That's the bottom line.

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: Naked by David Sedaris. Hilarious and brilliant.

We Survived!

We went on a retreat last weekend, and somehow I actually managed to get every kid and leader home alive! Beyond that, we actually had a good retreat too! It was weird for me to be the behind the scenes, planner-type person, a stretching role for me. I've been encouraged by the conversations that occurred and the response I have received so far. I really didn't want to do a retreat just because that's what youth ministries do, and I think we succeeded in making it something more. I still don't know what I'm doing most of the time, but I'm following my beliefs about ministry and it seems to be working so far...

In other news, I am thinking about actually starting a MySpace account, not because I really want to, but because all my students have one and write back and forth constantly.

In other, other news, I'm going to run 22 miles this Friday. After that I start tapering down until the marathon at the end of this month. It's funny, but I actually think I'm going to be able to make it! Crazy.

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: Woman, Child for Sale by Gilbert King.

Currently Listening To: The Postal Service. Also, I've been listening to a David Sedaris reading that my friend Kelly gave me. It is brilliant/hilarious.

Takin' a break...

For the few who arrive at this site on a regular basis, you may have noticed a longer lapse between blog entries lately. It looks like I probably won't post anything until after next week. Why? Because I am currently training for a marathon (I'm up to 20 miles now), am putting on a retreat next weekend (not ready at all), and am dealing with some frustrating junk at work.

The one thought that is consistently stuck in my head is this: is there really any sort of "church discipline" any more? When does grace call us to call others on the carpet for things they've done?

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: Soul Shaper by Tony Jones.

Relevancy

I was greatly challenged this week concerning my thoughts on relevancy. Like many church practitioners I have been attempting to share the gospel in a "relevant" way, which typically means playing songs or videos that relate to the culture, or using the popular lingo to talk about the gospel. I don't think any of this is wrong in and of itself, but I realized that there is a much bigger portion to relevancy that I have not fully put into practice.

The sort of relevancy I'm talking about is how the gospel relates to specific areas of our culture and media. What does the gospel deconstruct? What does it affirm? What sort of critique of modern culture does the gospel of Christ provide?

All of this is stuff that I have done, but never with this idea surrounding it. I think relevancy at this point becomes a question of "How does the culture line up with the gospel" rather than the slightly different but apparently much more followed question of "How does the gospel line up with the culture"?

Maybe all of this is just plain obvious to some, but it was eye-opening for me this week.

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: Six Degrees by Duncan J. Watts.

Derrida Quotes

Something has not yet arrived, neither at Christianity nor by means of Christianity. What has not yet arrived at or happened to Christianity is Christianity. Christianity has not yet come to Christianity. What has not yet come about is the fulfillment, within history and in political history, and first and foremost in European politics, of the new responsibility announced by the mysterium tremendum. There has not yet been an authentically Christian politics because there remains this residue of the Platonic polis. Christian politics must break more definitively and more radically with Greco-Roman Platonic politics in order to finally fulfill the mysterium tremendum. Only in this condition will Europe have a future, and will there be a future in general. (page 29)

The crypto- or mysto-genealogy of responsibility is woven with the double and inextricably intertwined thread of the gift and of death: in short of the gift of death. The gift made to me by God as he holds me in his gaze and in his hand while remaining inaccessible to me, the terribly dissymmetrical gift of the mysterium tremendum only allows me to respond and only rouses me to the responsibility it gives me by making a gift of death, giving the secret of death, a new experience of death. (page 33)

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading and Quoting From: The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida.

The Church

The recollection of the crucified Christ obliges Christian faith permanently to distinguish itself from the 'Christian-bourgeois world' and from Christianity as the 'religion of contemporary society'.

A Christianity which does not measures itslf in theology and practice by this criterion loses its identity and becomes confused with the surrounding world; it becomes the religious fulfilment of the prevailing interests, or of the interests of those who dominate society. It becomes a chameleon which can no longer be distinguished from the leaves of the tree in which it sits.

But a Christianity which applies to its theology and practice the criterion of its own fundamental origin cannot remain what it is at the present moment in social, political and psychological terms. It experiences an outward crisis of identity, in which its inherited identification with the desires and interests of the world around it is broken down. It becomes something other than what it imagined itself to be, and what was expected of it.

-Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, pp.38-39.

What if every American Christian read this quote, and while they nodded their head in agreement, really began to understand it and see just how terribly we have corrupted the Gospel, perverting everything Christ said to make our democratic/materialist/capitalist system feel like it came from Jesus' mouth? I don't know how much longer I can put up with all of it.

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: PERELANDRA by C.S. Lewis.

Church

"The church is a whore, but she is my mother." -Martin Luther

Our Hermeneutical Task

I am on a real hermeneutical kick these days. After reading the articles mentioned on my last post, I finished Slaves, Women and Homosexuals by William Webb and continued my slow reading of Gadamer's Truth and Method. There is much for us to ponder as we study the Biblical text and think about what it is leading the Church to do.

I believe we have to read the Bible with a redemptive-movement hermeneutic. This means that we study biblical trajectories and ponder how those trajectories speak into our culture. For example, both women and slaves are treated better as scripture moves through time. The same can be said for homosexuals in the fact that they are no longer murdered, but cannot be said for the acceptance of their actions. As I wrote before, we must interpret scripture with the help of the Spirit, seeing the life in the text today.

This requires the church. Moltmann wrote that it was the Spirit, which is true, but we need to be able to discern the voice of the Spirit, which is done in community. We need to the voices of other believers (and even non-believers) to bounce ideas off one another and speak truth into our lives. Following a redemptive-movement hermeneutic is tricky and easily prone to error. The Spirit must be heard, and it is through the individual and the church of individuals that this happens. Our hermeneutical task is to listen to God's Spirit speak through the text, the culture, and our fellow believers, past and present. What a task!

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: The Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann.