The case against revival

When I was entering high school, I was invited to come with a select number of fellow youth group members to go to Pensacola, Florida to experience the Brownsville revival. At that point, it was into its second year, had gained national attention by church folk and non- alike, and some, including one globally-prominent minister claimed that it was the beginning of the final outpouring before the rapture.

Indeed, the revival drew a global audience. These were the years before the critical mass of satellite television and the interwebs, so the hubbub was largely church to church, and the response for that time was impressive. Considering the historical revivals, the Great Awakenings, Cane Ridge, Wales, Azusa Street, it’s a marvelous thing that with such limited communication they drew such attention. Of course, these events are sensational, not unlike riots or protests, and sensational events garner the attention of the public and media.

I would deny neither the sincerity of the seekers, nor the fact that they have encountered something spiritual. In the same breath, though, sincerity does not make something legitimate, nor does the spiritual encounter justify the end or means. Revival is not only overrated, but dangerous.

The information age has done a service in view of revival: We can explore from afar what is happening, and investigate to see exactly what is going on. The Lakeland revival generated buzz not too long ago, but then we saw exactly who Todd Bentley was and could then disregard it. Benny Hinn’s popularity took a nosedive after the folks at the Trinity Foundation exposed the varied shenanigans in and around the company. The veneer of revival isn’t necessarily that perfect, either: while I was at Brownsville, they were knocking down houses next door during the evening services. The already burgeoning church campus there had undercut their neighbors to make room for more sanctuary. I found this odd. Shortly after I returned from Florida that summer, I had found out that Brownsville had refused a request to be audited, and that members of the pastoral staff were building beachside villas.

All that, and Pensacola remained a really crusty, dirty place. The revival, aside from the chatter of Evangelicals, didn’t really seem to do much to the plethora of strip clubs down the street. And Pensacola remains a popular destination for the “Cops” crew.

All that said, it would be a strawman to kick revivals in the balls because there was some shady activity behind the scenes (or, sometimes, in the scenes themselves.) My beef with those who tend to lead revivals is separate from my problems with revival itself.

First, revival implies that the subject is dead or anemic. Neither, in any instance, is the case. When Evangelicals refer to “dead churches” it would be improper to say that a church has ceased to be animate. And, in the cases where such a pejorative term is used, it is highly inappropriate. No one holds the corner on theological truth. A more apropos term would be a sedentary church, a church inactive in the community or the world, motivated only by self-interest. Ironically, we have many churches that are sedentary, including charismatic churches that would prefer to be defined by their revivals!

Excitement is a poor trade-off for spiritual health. Consider revival to be a new year’s resolution: many say that they will lose weight. They will buy health club memberships, equipment, clothes, workout videos, and few will find that they keep on keepin’ on past January 15. Even fewer make it to February. The entire health club industry is predicated on the notion that people will sign up for contracts and never keep their end of the commitment other than monthly dues. The corollary for churches is disturbingly close to parallel.

Second to consider is the law of diminishing returns: for one to return to an established level of fervor or excitement, it takes a little more to get there. If God wanted his people to live in a revival state, wouldn’t the path be more consistent (not to be confused with easier) than it has historically been? Furthermore, what if Christians were in a constant revival mode? Would there not then be a claim for a higher yet level of excitement and zeal? Would revival then be the new status quo against which sympathetic believers would rebel?

Consider also the self-congratulating nature of revival: if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery–and this was especially true with Pensacola, where they actually encouraged people to mimic what was happening in the Florida panhandle back home–then what we have is not a people re-centered on being Christ’s ambassadors to the world, but a people who want to live in the thrill of what they experienced somewhere else, irrespective of whatever it is the Spirit may be speaking to a particular community of faith regarding the community surrounding them. This is the most troubling aspect to me, this revivolatry. The symptoms of revival have been observed in other cultures in other religious practices unfamiliar with charismatic Christianity. This does not delegitimize the charismata, but rather offers credence for it, though with a caveat: the manifestations are not spiritual, but human responses to the spiritual other. Revival’s tendency toward self-indulgence is self-indicting.

Finally, fire requires fuel. What was amazing about Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus was that the bush was on fire, yet completely intact. Nearly everyone who went to Brownsville burned out, most of them are no longer believers. Excitement fades. Honeymoons end. The soreness of exercise turns people away from exercise. Revivals create people who desire burnout, in order that they may try to get the feeling back. When we seek revival, we seek the absolute wrong thing. When we seek God for revival, I imagine God is mildly offended by such backhanded prayers.

The problem with revivals is that they provide no real commitment. It is lust rather than love, catering to our senses rather than our inner being; not even an affair, but a one night stand or a booty call.

The other problem with revival is that it stands in direct contradistinction to the covenental command of God: to walk humbly, to love justice and to be obedient to God’s leading. (Deuteronomy 10, rephrased in Micah 6, renewed tacitly in the teaching of Jesus to love God and others.) God calls us not to be undignified like David, a reference many revival-seekers improperly hide behind to justify their actions, but to welcome the sojourner and hold others in higher regard than ourselves, which would presumably preclude flopping around on the floor, making animal sounds under the power of “the spirit”, or holding meetings that regular people generally hold with distaste and disregard.

Consistency may be blase to our senses, but it is what God demands of his people. There may not be anything less congruent with his demands than what charismatics consider the high watermark of spiritual experience.

In our sincere desire to worship, could it be that we make for ourselves an abomination?

trading faith for faith: a critique of reasons for unbelief

A battle has raged for years between Evangelical Christians and those who claim skepticism/agnosticism/atheism on the grounds of critical thinking. The accusations are of garden variety: Christians allegedly aren’t able to think for themselves or keep an open mind. The charges are usually levelled by those who used to be believers, charges lobbed with all the zeal of a fresh convert.

One website I have become familiar with is manned by a former Christian trying to figure out “what it means to be an unbeliever and a skeptic.” I don’t mind that people choose to abandon their faith, that is, it does not offend me. Perhaps it should, but that’s not the point. That said, it does profoundly bother me when they proclaim their new gospel with little intellectual integrity or currency. To be clever or witty is not to be mistaken with being thoughtful or reasonable. It makes for good punditry, but awful, imbalanced rhetoric. (I’m looking at you, Mencken.) In other words, politicians ought not be mistaken for intellectuals; whether one wants to admit it or not, the battle for a dominant particular cultural theistic paradigm is more political posturing than anything else.

Plainly, there is no such thing as open-mindedness. To be open-minded does not say as much about a person as it does contrast from someone else. If someone claims to be open-minded, she says nothing about herself as much as she does those who she assumes are supposedly closed-minded. Ironically, the claim of open-mindedness actually is closed-minded, but under the pretense of relativism, she can claim nothing about herself as much as she can fling an under-the-radar ad hominem at someone else. It’s no different than a politician claiming to be ‘progressive’. What is that, anyway? What constitutes your progress? Without an assumption of something that is either status quo or regressive, the progressive has no leg on which to stand.

The issue here is assumption, particularly epistemic assumption. No one lacks epistemic assumptions, every person has a set of parameters by which he or she understands the world. So, the recently-converted unbeliever claims on the grounds of thinking for himself, presuming that believers do not think for themselves. Or that they have developed critical thinking capacities that preclude religious belief, presuming that religious believers are intellectual neanderthals.

In the interest of full disclosure, it comes as no surprise to many of you that I hold a particular disdain for the subcultural foolishness and accidental hubris of pop Christianity, I lament the general lack of theological development in our churches from clergy and laity alike, stupidity drives me batty and I generally have a low view of humanity. If that were all there was to it, I’d be a pretty miserable person. That said, I am moved by nobility and goodness, extraordinary acts of valor and beauty, celebrate in communities that have found a way to eschew mediocrity spiritual and social and am unafraid to act in sacrificial compassion for those around me. I refuse to be defined by the things that would keep me merely a cynic and nothing more.

It seems that our defiant agnostic friends would, in a great and terrible kicking against the goads, rather that they were simply not those people. Critical thinking, then, is a cop out, if for no other reason than the truth: critical thinking itself cannot and does not automatically render religious faith to be false. Critical thinking is not designed to deny the existence of things, but to affirm, leaving the a-theist, a-gnostic, un-believer in a most undesirable position: if the point of the aforementioned is to carve out a position that refutes supernatural or religious activity, why all the bluster? As has been said elsewhere, if there is nothing, from a purely materialist perspective, why (again, causally, not metaphysically) is there anything at all?

In sum, perhaps the time has come to doubt doubt, a point Michael Polanyi makes in his tacit epistemology. This falsification-run-amok has caused much harm to the intellectual cause. It’s easy to negate, it’s more difficult to affirm. Negation comes in the critique of something already presented, while the task of epistemic affirmation requires the enterprising and courageous mind to construct a case for something. The epistemic affirmation process requires, at its core a + b = c. The negation is a parasite to the affirming host. Rather than building a case for a-theism, the process ought to be a case for something else, for example, nihilism.

The absurdity of arguing against something that, in the mind of the skeptic, doesn’t exist reaches epic proportions. In a post next week on sailerb, I shall demonstrate why the Pfeffergorgles should have nothing to do with northwestern Iowa.

This is not to say that there is no place for critical thinking: clearly, there have been varying levels of crappy arguments for different things, from Xeno’s paradox to the earth-centered universe to the existence of God. The philosophical task involves the critique of substandard arguments, and standard arguments ought to withstand criticism. There is a level of quality control involved here, let there be no doubt. In fact, this work is an exercise in critique. I digress.

If critical thinking isn’t enough, there’s always science. Indeed, our friend also claims that reading science books (“with an open mind”, he proudly proclaims) helped to “[remove] layer after layer of propaganda”. Now, what exactly about science delivered him to salvation? Old-earth and (presumably Darwinian) evolution. This is a circumstantial ad hominem: the inference here is that young-earth creationism and intelligent design are non-negotiable aspects of Christian faith. This is patently false, moreover, they have nothing to do with Christian soteriology. Like much of what one will see coming from people like our unbeliever, it is a red herring.

I would agree that there is far too much happy, thoughtless chugging of the kool-aid in Evangelical church circles; our response to Darwin has been tepid at best. That said, there are two major points that have been deliberately left out of the general conversation. First, the line of thinking that faith and science are at odds with one another is a philosophical fiction, and actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Religion is often the strawman by which those who hold to naturalism (atheism repackaged) create their aire of dominance. Second, the acceptance of evolution does not, by any means, delegitimize Christianity. The head gasket of a car engine does not blow because someone purchases a car.  When it is also considered that a hyper-literal interpretation of Genesis is fundamentally improper, then the idea that evolution ruins faith is almost laughable. I am willing to concede, again, the fact that our churches have by and large abandoned the scientific conversation, but in the same way, science has generally abandoned faith. It’s a two-way street, paved not by science, but by philosophy.

Science is an extension of empiricism. For centuries, it was natural philosophy, a way of understanding the world around us. Today, it lurches toward scientism, the idea that science is the only way to properly interpret reality. There is one glaring problem, though: science, the process of understanding the empirical world, is reliant on epistemic assumptions, if for no other reason than everything can be reduced to one fundamentally unjustifiable premise. Science not only has its limits, it is, by definition, limited. Science cannot affirm or deny the existence of anything beyond the observable world, which makes Dawkins’ task, amongst others, utterly vain.

What can science do? It can provide powerful explanatory ability, help us understand and harness the capabilities of the world and its resources, provide us a means by which we can use technology as a tool to help (or sometimes, harm) humanity. It is reliant upon the observer or participant. It is not designed to provide us with a why, particularly, a why that is there is no why. And, in the process of understanding the world, it, like critical thinking, is designed to affirm truth and refute error. It also has been the means by which scientists for centuries until late have found a place of worship.

Science is always philosophical, but philosophy is seldom, if ever, scientific. That which is more limited has less explanatory power.

Even in these two instances, it is clear that the idea of science and critical thought somehow negates Christian faith is little more than a red herring, a diversion from the affirming task naturalism consistently fails to undertake. Through circumstantial ad hominem and a lot of clever sound and fury, there is little beyond the presentation that would constitute serious reflection on a very serious matter of personal worldview.

I grant that some of these matters cause serious questions for the theist, and we ought to consider them: if evolution has taken place, what do we do with Christian salvation? Is evolution a legitimate way to understand the creation of the world? If so, why is it that so many other fields of science have moved past the 19th century, while the origins of the universe have apparently been settled for nearly 200 years? Or could it be that Darwin’s work was a product of the times, a work fueled with the spirit of the Enlightenment? Could it be that Darwin, who clearly was inspired by/borrowed from Hegel, Lyell and LaPlace, simply applied a philosophical paradigm to the observable world? Even Newton got trumped. Why not Darwin?

This is what we have by the very pen (or, in this instance, fingers) of our friend: “I was an evangelical Christian for over a decade, completely convinced that God was real and Jesus was alive today. I attended Bible college to train to be a pastor. I worked at a Christian church for many years. I have ‘led people to Christ.’ I have left tracts in bathrooms. I have knocked on hundreds of doors asking people to repent and believe in Jesus. . . . I no longer believe in a personal God or that Jesus was born of a virgin, worked miracles, and rose from the dead. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, angels or demons, holy books or prophecy. I don’t believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago, or that God intelligently designed every species.”

What does he believe? As a self-professed “unbeliever” and “skeptic”, he believes that Christian faith is false, and that there is no way to know anything with certainty.

Problem one: faith cannot be false, a faith claim is a belief claim. Truth and falsehood are terms reserved for facts, not beliefs. Problem two: he is certain that nothing can be certain. However, he is certain that critical thinking works and that Darwinian evolution is factual. He is also certain with regard to probability. (Never mind that Pascal was certain about probability, and yet held firmly to his Christian beliefs.) A skeptic, by definition, doubts the possibility of real knowledge. Why science? Why logic? In spinning himself out of one alleged delusion, he has strangled himself with another.

So, what we have is a person who simply no longer wants to be a Christian, and believes he is warranted in doing so. And that would be fine: he is welcome to find his own way. I have no relationship to him and have no way to provide insight or investment into his life. That said, his reasoning for abandoning faith is little more than one watery excuse after another. He is not interested in declaring what actually happened to change his mind, or in building a case for a better worldview. He is only interested in differentiating himself from his subjective cultural experiences in a setting that affirmed young-earth, literal six-day creation and demanded that he and his friends go door-to-door with tracts and win the lost for Jesus. And in his attempts to say “I’m not one of them anymore,” all he has are generalities: Christians don’t think for themselves, believe in science or probability, ask tough questions, can’t imagine the Bible as anything but literally written by God, and are closed-minded anti-intellectual bigots who believe that God literally created the universe in six days about six to ten-thousand years ago. He may as well be campaigning against bleeding heart liberals or tax cuts for the rich.

In all honesty, I pity him; that his experience in Christian faith was so intellectually vapid that he felt the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I have no pity for his reasons, as they are insulting to anyone who is interested in thoughtful discourse. He is entitled to his reasons for walking away, but he ought not presume to insult the intelligence of his audience, many of whom simply accept his conclusions as true. Preach it, brother!

In reality, his new-found faith is no more reasonable than the faith he left. His new faith is, also, quite unreasonable. He just doesn’t realize it yet.

http:// unreasonablefaith [dot] com [slash] about

thoughts on a resurrection sunday from a believer who won’t be in church

On Good Friday, I left a status update out there that said “rethinking Good Friday”, with a quote from Acts 15. As the [holy] week has crescendo-ed into the passion weekend, I’ve seen more and more status updates about everything from Passover to Good Friday, and now as we’ve officially crossed over into resurrection Sunday, the resurrection. I find the entirety of the passion to be entirely profound; the cross (and, more importantly, the empty tomb) are symbols and realities that literally changed everything we thought we understood about our metaphysical framework. And it it because of its raw power that I find myself wholly irritated by the status updates. And I’m willing to admit that I’m being a curmudgeon about it all, but hear me out.

First, Jesus did not die for you. That’ll rub some people the wrong way, but if we’re taking Paul (a second-hand, after-the-fact witness) as the authority on the matter, then we’re missing the point. Jesus dying for us is, plainly, miscontextualizing the matter. A crucified Jewish peasant passed off as a incendiary zealot means nothing for us. They were a dime a dozen in antiquity, and they all came and went as often as clouds and corrupt politicians. What is it that John (John who, if he did actually write the eponymous gospel, was there firsthand for it all) encourages us to do with his story at the conclusion of it? Paraphrased, but sticking to the truth of the text, it is an exhortation to believe and find life in his authority. A Jewish zealot has no authority, even one who performed miracles and amazed crowds regardless of their standing on the social spectrum. The guy was betrayed, framed as a revolutionary and criminal, and executed with cold and ruthless Roman efficiency. If you want to celebrate that, fine. Just understand that you do so, wittingly or otherwise, for the reasons the religious leaders did: to get what you want out of the deal.

Jesus went into Jerusalem not knowing what to expect. God-man, for all of his God-ness, did not know if he was going to be accepted or rejected, much less crucified. And, when faced with the anxieties of a man anticipating death, God-man looked a lot like man. I’ve argued elsewhere that it was necessary for God to become man because, for all that God knows, he could not fully understand the human condition until he became a part of it, hence, Jesus was an absolutely necessary development. Jesus did the best he could, but don’t think for a moment that, in the garden, the sweating drops of blood was for an amusing literary flourish; these are signs of a man not knowing what is to come. How does the human manifestation of a being who only knows being because that being is being itself deal with the absence of being? Like anybody else. This is a huge, but forgotten part of the power of the gospel; Jesus’ humanity. When his humanity is taken from him wrongfully, what do you expect?

Remember the garden: to disobey God is to begin to die. The wages of sin stuff is not exclusive to Romans or Paul, this is axiomatic going back to the beginning. So what happens when God dies? Or a man who never earned a death paycheck?

Empty tomb.

We believe in the saving power of the gospel not because of Jesus’ death, but because his resurrection has (and rightfully ought to have) serious ramifications on the way we do things. Too often, it seems that we like to relish the fact that someone died so that we don’t have to, instead of staring at the empty tomb and realizing that they way we conduct day-to-day business doesn’t line up with the resurrected Christ. We like being saved, but ignore or hate living as though these things actually happened.

This is why I get frustrated with all the status updates: if you need a reminder about the thing that is of your ultimate concern, and your ultimate concern is in what you get out of the passion deal, that trivializes Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection. The resurrection is not about what Jesus did for us, it is about God’s ultimate victory over his enemies, and the expiration of the old order. We are not to be a people governed by the crucifixion, but the resurrection precisely because the resurrection shows us how ridiculous it is to be beholden to institutions and systems of control that are well-intended but futile in terms of efficacy.

The Jewish Messiah died at the hands of the Romans, was buried in a Jewish tomb and guarded by Roman soldiers. The resurrection tells us that it is for everyone while making everything else irrelevant, even the crucifixion, defying even cause and effect. Jesus Christ, the living and victorious God-man, is a subject without a clause, whose resurrection invites us to become subjects without clauses, in so doing deliberately choosing to be reconciled to full relationship with God. And yet here we are, Christians in the West, incapable of transcending the clauses of Christian culture, still living as though we are, like those referred to in Acts 15, to take on the yoke of tradition, forgetting that no one could hack it. Not to pick on anyone, but what exactly is the point of celebrating Passover, 21st century Evangelical Christians? We are so bound to the constructs that we forget that the work of Christ and the mandate for those who hold faith in the authority of Christ is fundamentally supracultural and is as such ill-suited for our programmatic tendencies. So we pick and choose, thankful for what God has done for us and still unable to share that dynamic reality without resorting to our clauses.

The rest of the world isn’t stupid. They’re wise to our game. And yet we won’t stop playing by our defined rules! The same rules that keep many from ever seeing a legitimate representation of the resurrected Christ, the same rules that demanded the life of an innocent man. History is repeating itself, and yet we’d rather complain about the current state of affairs and hide in 24-7 prayer bomb shelters than face the simple fact that history repeats for those who forget, i.e., us. We may as well the conspirators of John 11 than the people of post-ascension Acts.

Other people matter more than we do. While churches all over America will be full of people who feel obligated to do their twice-a-year duty and those who are overly excited to feel good about themselves and their salvation and those relatively few who are sincere, there are lots of people who won’t set foot anywhere near a community of faith, or a church building. All the cantatas and bait-and-switch in the world won’t get everyone, much less those who need it most. Now more than ever, we need a restored vision of the resurrected Christ, unencumbered by our crappy contexts and exercises in futility. People don’t need church, and they certainly don’t need musicals. They need to see that subjects don’t need clauses, they need to see a people dominated by nothing more or less than the resurrection.

This is why I’m rethinking Good Friday. My salvation means nothing if it does not translate into the language of those who need it most, that is, those who refuse to come to us on our terms. In the case where I have to choose between being a Christian or being Christ to those who need it, even at the cost of not appearing Christian-like, I’ll take the latter every time.

Though this is largely heavy-handed and cynical, it is Resurrection Sunday. But it’s also a day. People will be born today, people will die. And there is still much work to be done, in house and out.

Part of growing up is screwing up. Many times, people are defined and refined by their foibles and pratfalls. Sometimes those mistakes are chalked up as learning experiences, sometimes there is no grading curve and people are marked forever by their mistakes. A basic lesson in moral philosophy is that without the bad, there is no way to determine what is good; Eastern philosophy talks about this in terms of yin and yang, equilibrium.

Could it be that the converse is also true: without good, we would not understand what is bad, evil, wrong?

I would like to take this in two directions: first, in an ethical consideration of the need of an arbiter of good; and second, a consideration of the nature of the God-man, that is, Christ.

Democracy does not lend itself well to ethical principle. The concept of critical mass bears this out: if a good or service (and, for the sake of this conversation, societal actions) attains a level of popularity, that product or action ceases being new or innovative and entrenches itself into the cultural status quo. Things start out innovative or cutting edge and, for its survival, strive toward mediocrity. Ten years ago, the concept of Facebook or MySpace was virtually unheard of: today, Facebook or MySpace has exploded from its entrenchment in young adults into the middle-aged crowd. Those of us who are online check our accounts multiple times a day; going without it long enough creates abnormalcy, leaves unfulfillment. 20 years ago, cell phones were a luxury afforded by the elite and upper-middle class, now cells are not only ubitquitous, but people are texting (or checking Facebook.)

Societal trends and behaviors are no different: something can explode onto the scene and be labeled innovative, dangerous, revolutionary or whatever, and after time be de rigueur. Thomas Kuhn (and Michael Polanyi before him) talked about this kind of thing in terms of paradigm shifts, perhaps what I’m talking about here is paradigm integration. The construct does not necessarily collapse–though it can–but is at least added on to or renovated. Or, more caustically, the frog dies from the slow boil of cultural hegemony.

The rise of the naturalistic, atomistic West and the devolution of ethics and philosophy from sources of wisdom to deconstruction of language and situational ethics are not unrelated.

Ethics may not necessarily require God, but it is certainly hard to derive ethics from something like Darwinian naturalism or semiotics. That, and while people may disagree about original sin or total depravity, we can all agree that people are generally prone to stupidity. Dan Quayle can get ripped for his unorthodox spelling of ‘tomato’, while companies spend gift money on lavish junkets and bonuses. There’s stupid and then there’s stupid, but they’re both stupid.

If things, moments, behaviors are or they aren’t, then those things by default are either good or not good. Hegemony and critical mass–both democratic patterns of behavior–act in a way that blurs and then paints over the line. The reality of the matter, though, is that the very inception of any noun is, by default, the moment it is open to scrutiny. And what is open to scrutiny is subject to unintended consequences.

The struggle I’m working through is the nature of Christ: how is a man who knows no sin defined? What can refine that? If Jesus was, during his time here, fully man–and I believe he was–does it really matter that he was sinless pre-crucifixion? What defined Jesus in that context was that he was falsely accused and wrongfully executed, but he was sinless, hence the resurrection. Sin and death are inextricably linked; the resurrection is, in no small part, a paradigm implosion.

How could a person like that relate with anyone? Goody-goodies are precisely that for a reason. We can’t stand them. Maybe that’s why he needed to be put down. And perhaps that is why he could live with such profound compassion, and so much prophetic authority against the religious. Jesus, the incarnation of the God who is, is the envoy of a God who has no definition other than being. Being and rightness (or, righteousness) then have to be linked somehow. Bonhoeffer says as much in his ethical musings, and I think he’s right. Creation ought to reflect creator, any disunion is separation; Jesus then is the creation-creator: his life means more because of the attempt of fallen man to define him than anything before. Sinlessness doesn’t mean anything until then, Jesus is a good guy until faced with death, at which point he becomes the Christ.

The question that extends from this understanding, though, is somewhat disconcerting: what is it that Jesus taught while he was with us? Clearly, doing good doesn’t cut it. Repentance from sin is an aspect, but no one could claim Jesus as their salvation pre-resurrection. Our soteriology is utterly reliant on the death and resurrection of Christ; the Christ-event is a unifying portal between creation and creator. But the kingdom of God Jesus preached was not his atoning sacrifice; that would be senseless.

I do not intend to minimize the Christ-event, but want to understand what Christ’s work was prior to the Christ-event, especially as we approach passion week. The crucifixion and resurrection change everything, this much is obvious, but it is only obvious contextually, that is, to us in the [post-]Christian West. Could it be that the Christian ethic, that is, union with God and walking in repentance, is all there is to it? Are we to model Christ and his teachings, or live in the resurrection? Am I the only one who sees these as not necessarily entangled?

This obviosuly lends itself to the “what about those who have never heard?” conversation, but I don’t find that germane to this conversation. Your feedback is welcomed.

Analysis of the AG Trust: part three

Research and Development

“The very first project of the new Assemblies of God Trust is to commission a remake for the Foundations For Faith course to bring its approach into modern times. Six years equals a generation of elementary kids. We are over six generations behind.

Does learning doctrine have to be boring? Can learning doctrine ever be really fun? The group of children’s pastors we brought together to rewrite the curriculum believe it can and will be fun.

The new approach will not change the 16 Fundamental Truths, but will enable us to more effectively teach the next generations — generations who don’t know what it is like to live without a computer, Game Boy, Xbox or cell phone or the Internet.

The Research and Development Initiative of the AG Trust will provide the funds to enable our Fellowship to produce innovative, cutting-edge educational materials to teach timeless truths to all ages.”

Research and development usually entails working on developments and ways to improve or redesign what a company has to offer. One will note, however, that at some point, Ford stopped developing the Pinto once they found out that car exploded from a fender-bender.

You can read the Statement of Fundamental Truths here. The problem that arises from efforts called “research and development” in regard to the 16 tenets is that there is something else called “doctrinal purity”. In fact, what the Assemblies is talking about when it comes to updating Foundations for Faith has nothing to do with research and development and everything to do with repackaging for subsequent generations.

And there is nothing wrong with updating for future generations of young people (and old people, for that matter), provided that what is proclaimed as truth corresponds rightly with theology and is properly epistemic. The fact that the curriculum has not been updated in six generations (for whatever reason, Christians love to refer to people in terms of generations) shows that doctrinal purity, and not research and development continues to be at the fore. The firebrand pastor has been dictating–and still does dictate–how things are operated from Springfield to its affiliated district offices.

I appreciate the tough spot in which the leadership of the Assemblies of God finds itself, from the very top to district officials to university presidents and presbyters. On one side, there is scholarship, some of whom are pastors and faculty, who stop short, in classrooms and offices, of saying that the Statement of Fundamental Truths is broken and needs a revisit and renovation. The intention, generally, is not spite or ill-will, but preservation of the movement and or intellectual integrity.

The other side–again, generally–are those who find Jesus to be the answer to all the questions, who think the solution to real-life societal and ecclesiastical issues is more of the Holy Ghost, who find these serious questions to be a sign of apostasy and a pre-tribulation, premillennial rapture of the church and represent a desire to resort to primitive Pentecostalism.

Both sides are guilty of one thing: appealing to doctrinal purity. In terms of doctrinal purity, the latter has a natural, home-field advantage; while the former needs to watch the tongue for fear of being placed under suspicion. Faculty at A/G Bible colleges don’t get tenure, at last check, but a series of one-year contracts. If they don’t like you, they can replace you, saying they choose not to renew a contract. And they have not been afraid to replace, because those administrators are beholden to regents, many of whom represent the latter.

Tenure is a controversial topic right now in education in general. I believe tenure should remain a part of the academy, but not in its current–unaccountable and broken–form. And if that needs reexamination, so does this concept of “doctrinal purity”.

What you’ll notice by the above link to doctrinal purity is that there is no direct link to anything about the A/G’s Commission on Doctrinal Purity. Their fingerprints are all over anything that has anything to do with doctrine, position papers or theological development (if there is any) coming from headquarters. It’s like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, or the Gestapo: faceless and beholden to its own special interest.

The 1800s brought about a number of significant developments in American religious life: the Second Great Awakening, the rise of the tent meeting, the Holiness movement and the crisis cults. When one also considers the number of catastrophic events endured by the United States in the 19th Century–two economic collapses, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, the oppression of the American South by carpetbaggers and robber barons, etc.–it creates the perfect stew for the explosion of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, first in Europe in the 1890s, then here in America, incidentally, in yet untamed Kansas on New Year’s Day 1901.

I make a brief historical pitstop to say this: nothing that happens anywhere in American life occurs in a vacuum. The flowering of tongues as a new Christian distinctive is neither a sovereign move of God nor an overreaction of human limitation pressed against an undefinable, unqualifiable experience. [Though, in the interest of full disclosure, I tend to think more toward the second than the first.] That statement alone will rankle more than a few, but it’s the truth: it corresponds with reality and is epistemologically sound. Everything that happens with the birth of modern Pentecostal Christianity makes perfect sense when given a historical backdrop. It does not diminish the events, it makes them real. Reality lends these things gravitas.

And reality, frankly, is not what we do very well.

Among the other religious developments were the crisis cults, and Christian flash-in-the-pan heresies: the rise of the Amish, the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, their heritage found in the Millerites (as we’ll see, the Holiness movement is a child of Miller as well), Latter Rain, multiple anointings/blessings (Charles Parham himself preached somewhere between 10-12 ), the Social Gospel, and one could by extension include the Ku Klux Klan and other supremacist movements as well. They all–minus the Social Gospel–preached sanctification as isolation: the Amish still drive buggies, the Mormons moved west, the JWs essentially hid until the date of the end came and went (…and came, and went…and came, and went…) and the Holiness movement latched up with everything from abolition to temperance, beginning what I have long referred to as “bomb shelter Christianity”.

The reality of the matter is that movements that heavily rely on “doctrinal purity” are fundamentally unsure. And you cannot hold something as fundamentally true when it has not happened, thus eliminating the final four of the 16 tenets. So, in the face of anxiety and uncertainty, and in the effort to assert a fully-human existence, a movement needs purity, and to vigilantly defend itself against thorough examination, even from itself.

This disturbing trend exists in all the crisis cults. The Assemblies, itself not a cult by any definition, would be wise to step away from such a sordid, unwitting relationship and allow itself to be scrutinized, examined and reworked for the sake of integrity in theology and openness to criticism; at the very least, for its very viability in the near future. If what we believe is true, we ought to welcome it. If what we believe is not properly theological, then we as those bound to truth, should be welcoming of examination. This is not mere semantics or word-play: little things matter. A statement of faith not only allows for institutionalized opinion, but for open and honest scrutiny.

The fact is that the Assemblies of God excels in doctrine, but suffers in theological development. A wholly Pentecostal theology has been sought, but by those who have been kept on the outside (Amos Yong, Clark Pinnock, et al) or forced out, when faced with a preponderance of the evidence (Edith Blumhofer, et al): and these are the people, off the top of my head, who have done the research and attempted to offer help for development!

The Assemblies needs to raise capital to develop a theological task force–many of whom are already in house–to move past fundamental truths and toward sound Pentecostal theology. Simply retooling Foundations for Faith and making the 16 tenets palatable for a new audience is unacceptable when there is so much more work to be done. In this respect, the A/G is no different than the federal government’s answer to problems in education: throw more money at it and make it more entertaining, make them take tests and meet centralized standards. The conscience of the Assemblies is clearly part of the religious right, though unable to be a part of the political process. What business does a generally-conservative laissez faire voting bloc have working within methods that are clearly progressive/statist? (Pro-lifers should also be put on notice this way.) Change the culture and you change things, change things at the top and you can expect two responses on the ground: muted, suppressed hostility or unconscious acceptance.

A conscious people wouldn’t need to fear the approval or contempt of “doctrinal purity” in the first place. Thus, it appears that the AG Trust is banking on unconscious donations based on thoughtless acceptance. After all, thinking about the matter at hand only seems to get one in trouble. There is a better way, and there is hope for the future. The AG Trust  as it is now is neither. The frustrating fact is that it could be a catalyst toward both.

Respectfully submitted for your consideration. Part four forthcoming.

Analysis of the AG Trust: part two

“Let’s keep our brightest and our best.”

“The data shows [sic] that if we can get our AG students to attend one of our AG schools, they have a much better chance of spiritual survival.”

These statements, made virtually sentences apart best summarize the fundamental disconnect between the church and the academic worlds, though my remarks will cover more than this.

At last, the Assemblies of God has realized that it costs too much to attend an Assemblies-sponsored university!

This is the component of the Trust that is the most frustrating: great, because students desperately need the assistance, and not-so-great for a number of reasons.

First, it fails to acknowledge the scores of AG alumni who are saddled with overwhelming debt loads. If money were blood and the Assemblies a body, this is putting a band aid on a deep puncture wound, untreated for 70 years. To recognize this is to the credit of the denomination; to those who are just finishing off their loan payments, just starting their loan payments or just finished defaulting on their student loans, this is icing on the cake.

True to the nature of millennial movements, the Assemblies of God has acted reactively instead of proactively, reactionary instead of prophetic. An endowment or trust fund-type program is long, long overdue. And, to embark on this enterprise now is bad timing: university endowments are losing money, as this story from the Indianapolis Star bears out. A trust or endowment that is not managed well will not bear interest worth handing out to students, much less any interest at all, and the last thing the Assemblies needs is to run this ambitious effort like a pledge drive or with faith promises. A down economy will not make faith promise-givers promise-keepers. (With all apologies to Bill McCartney.)

And, make no mistake, this economy has come unhinged from reality. What is happening in the markets, in my most amateur opinion, is not reflective of reality. In a time when funds are losing value by the week, is it worth the risk of thousands of church dollars? As I said in part one, less dollars means more troubles up top, not to mention pastors’ salaries being threatened. Can a church, right now, afford to pay pastors twice, which is the essence of the Next Generation fund? Can many churches really afford to pay pastors at all?

Now, to speak directly to the aforementioned quotes, what kind of quality does the Assemblies expect from its youth when they imply that their best and brightest will walk away from faith if they don’t go to their schools? What kind of best and brightest are we raising, if we have come to expect them to, under statistically realistic circumstances, fail?

The logical fallacy put forward here says that Assemblies of God-sanctioned schools are academically rigorous and spiritually vibrant, and your kids will fail without it.

Youth pastors: your kids are going to fail.

Senior pastors: your kids are going to fail.

Parents: your kids are going to fail.

What the AG Trust unintentionally says is that, according to UCLA, A/G churches are blowing it at a two-thirds clip, but they’d rather put the blame on an 18-year-old who either cannot afford a Christian college or chooses to go to a secular institution!

In a not-so-incidental twist of irony, Ralph Riggs, the man for whom the Trust’s scholarship is named, put it this way: “If they are lost, we are to blame.” [Wood, "Passion for the Future," p. 8; italics mine]

The reality of the matter is that quality and quantity are not any more connected than Genghis Khan to the assassination of Lincoln. Big youth groups do not show that the ministry to youth is successful. Big churches do not mean that the ministry to the community is successful. Church-going children is not sufficient evidence for meaningful development.

All of these things are neglected when people choose to hide behind polling or statistics. In this case, a scare tactic is substituted for meaningful examination of the reasons why the students are leaving the faith at a conservatively-estimated 70%. (The statistics I had heard while involved with Chi Alpha were not the same as the ones promoted by the AG Trust. Those numbers were closer to 90%. Much more ominous a number, much more revealing than a simple fraction. Regardless, the truth is that the pattern is growing more and more marked as we march along.)

The old, 20th Century church model said that the church needs to be all things to all people, a one-stop shop for all things Christian, a bomb shelter from the evil, nasty outside world. That obsolete thinking–a paradigm that never really worked in the first place, mind you–helps guide the AG Trust; in this case manifested as protection of youth from the world around us. These same kids are–right now–either hopelessly disconnected, or well-exposed. The raw either-or of the predicament shows that the Assemblies hasn’t done a very good job developing people, much less preparing students for ministry or life. Who should worry about backsliding when our students are either too invested or not at all? Over-investment is not a sign of health: it’s a sign of overcompensation.

Riggs, again, looms large: “If they are lost, we are to blame.”

My bias is coming out most obviously here: the AG Trust gives reason for Chi Alpha to worry about the legitimacy of the support from A/G churches, the General Council and US Missions. While Wood’s contribution to the COCHE report delicately walks the high wire between support of AG colleges and Chi Alpha, the fact is that this is an overt attempt to give the moral and financial highground to AG schools, especially when many churches and youth pastors tend to view non-AG-school-attending graduates as less valuable. When coupled with the fact that the statistic used from UCLA is a statistic borrowed directly from Chi Alpha’s research department, this line of thinking grows less conspiratorial and more legitimate. Anecdotally, a recruiter from an Assemblies of God university told me as much with a straight face. This isn’t a partnership or networking, they simply don’t trust Chi Alpha to do its job.

Speaking of Chi Alpha’s job, the three-fold mission of Chi Alpha is as follows: 1) Protect the Investment; 2) Reach international students; 3) Reach the campus with the gospel, essentially in that order. Chi Alpha is a branch of US Missions. Missions organizations exist to spread religious belief. Why, then, is the principle method of growth coming from church kids?

Let me be clear: I believe in campus ministry. I devoted my career in ministry–even, as it turns out, sacrificed my career in ministry with the Assemblies–to the cause of reaching college students. My internship with a noted chapter of Chi Alpha taught me something very profound, amongst other things I value greatly: a ministry can exist on a campus without ever being a part of campus. The majority of students in that organization were church transplants, many of whom came from the same churches. I do not say this with malice or any ill-will toward my chapter, I have great friends there and I value my time spent there, but the reality is that, whether in church or elsewhere, numbers do not tell a whole story, and responsibilities can be shirked when the numbers will deflect criticism.

What I’m getting at here is that big Chi Alphas and Assemblies colleges can suffer from the same problem, but instead of raw numbers for XA, one can look at percentage of capacity or enrollment ratios for the colleges and commit the same logical fallacy. Enrollment is up, things are great! We have 100 students, things are great! Enrollment is down, what’s wrong with us? Our XA was at 100 but is now at 25, what’s wrong with us? The campus ministry gets more credit for growth, and more criticism for declination. The college may get less overt criticism, but continues to get funding; while a Chi Alpha campus missionary might well lose his or her income!

Indeed, this tells a better, more true-to-life story, and offers a better message: if we are really interested in seeing our students keep the faith, they need to be out where their faith can be tried and tested, not where they are assumed to be righteous. As one of my mentors once told me: the easiest place to backslide is Bible college!

If that weren’t enough, here’s a dirty little secret: according to people who know, Chi Alpha consistently produces better pastors and missionaries than their Bible college counterparts, both in terms of longevity and in terms of spiritual reproduction.

That is not to say that the AG Trust is worthless because AG schools are worthless, that would be a misunderstanding of what I am trying to convey. As I submitted in part one, and am reinforcing now, our churches are not doing the job they set out to do, but instead are suffocating in self-interest, protecting the Assemblies instead of engaging culture. Again, reactive instead of prophetic.

While we’re here, it must be at least taken into consideration that because the denomination, like other denominations, has a tendency to protect itself, that domestic missions efforts have to be to parts of our society that are decidedly not covered by our core demographics. In this way, Teen Challenge and inner-city efforts are celebrated, not unlike the overt preference of the Assemblies to overseas missions. The fact of the matter is that the fellowship is comprised largely of white, upper to middle-class families of middle age and older people. Teen Challenge and inner-city efforts are different; like missionary efforts to non-Eurocentric nations, they share an exotic quotient.

Efforts like Chi Alpha, though, end up muddied by the fact that the majority of college students are the product of white, upper to middle-class families. It is no surprise that churches tend to ask what they get in exchange for campus ministry support, or hold funds hostage in campus cities unless the Chi Alpha missionary funnels students into their pews. Is it any surprise that churches have young adult or college and career ministries in direct competition with a Chi Alpha chapter, or worst of all, don’t even know (or care) that an Assemblies-sanctioned ministry is at work in the midst of campus life? Or those churches will support international student ministry efforts but eschew XA? Cynically stated, foreigners are sexy, Americans just need to get involved in a church. (Or Bible college. I digress.)

Arthur Holmes put it best: Christian colleges do not exist to educate, but indoctrinate. (Ironically, Holmes was a professor at Wheaton.) They are in the retention business first and foremost. Statistics like those the AG Trust offer, coupled with the fear tactics the AG Trust and its partners have a tendency to employ, only make Holmes’ argument all the more accurate. (Why else would Evangel–the AG’s preeminent, if not only, liberal arts university–catch so much flak? Or have a strong alumni financial support network?) If the Assemblies of God is to place the future of the church in the hands of its offspring and trust its fate to be vital and transformative, it will not do so by pushing A/G colleges or creating a trust fund, though those may be well-intentioned and good ideas. It will do so only by building and developing real people to survive and thrive in the real world, a process that, when applied to college-aged people, happens too late. That kind of development comes from healthy churches and healthy families bringing up well-adjusted, disciplined kids.

Additionally, at last check, most colleges and universities in the Assemblies are either land-locked or suffering from enrollment decline. So many Assemblies high-school graduates cannot go to an A/G school not only because it’s too expensive, but also because they physically can’t be there. And because many of those schools for whatever reason have an allergy to off-campus living, the problem can’t be solved aside from building funds and property development.

And for one final reason, numbers drives for Assemblies of God-sponsored institutions of higher learning, both financial and physical, cannot work:

Most Assemblies of God high school graduates simply don’t want to go.

The numbers, as they are, bear this out. The fact that graduates reject Bible college is not the same as them rejecting their faith. Cost can be overcome, provided students want to be there. Harvard, Stanford or a solid state school are all a world apart from Southeastern or Evangel. I’m not picking on Southeastern or Evangel, either; the fact remains that, for whatever reason, these campi are not atop many prospective students’ wish lists.

Sometimes, the better course of action is to respond to the reality of big-picture situations than force your way to an unlikely ideal. The Trust, unfortunately, is clearly neither a response, nor is it likely to move the Assemblies toward its ideal.

Respectfully submitted for your consideration. Part three forthcoming.

Analysis of the AG Trust: part one

For some of you, you’re looking at this and saying “huh?” That’s OK. If you don’t want to delve into church business, statistics and other nonsense, I don’t mind; feel free to peruse other posts out here. No hard feelings.

Several months before I allowed my ministerial license with the denomination in which I was raised to expire, I received a package introducing and outlining a trust designed to help provide payment assistance for would-be ministers’ student loan costs. In that package was a pamphlet, some additional materiel and, of course, a pledge form and return envelope.

The AG Trust is a great idea, but, with all sincerity and good will intended, too little and too late. I hope to spell this out clearly over the next week or so.

A few years ago, the denomination’s Commission on Christian Higher Education (now referred to as the Alliance for Assemblies of God Higher Education) released a report entitled, “Is the Lower Cost Worth the High Price?” The report, a collaboration between then-Secretary, now-General Superintendent George Wood, Christian college consultant Steven Henderson and the director of Assemblies of God Christian Higher Education, Dayton Kingsriter. The resulting product was an impassioned plea for greater enrollment of Assemblies of God high school graduates into A/G colleges and universities.

While the reasoning for the report was ostensibly to protect Christian youth from the dangers of backsliding at a public or private secular institution of higher learning, a glance at the statistics from the past two to three years shows a stagnation of growth in the fellowship, essentially zero growth in the higher education sector and a general “brain drain” of laypeople and ministers from the denomination. (Summary and comprehensive statistics can be found here.)

[In the interest of full disclosure, I am a former minister in the Assemblies: my license lapsed at the turn of the calendar year. That said, I hold no grudge against the denomination. The reason I write about this is because I spent a number of years working in the campus ministry arm of the A/G (Chi Alpha) as a student, volunteer, intern and candidate for ministry. So an enterprise attempting to energize an under-appreciated, under-utilized demographic gets my attention, as well it should.]

The Trust is rooted in three initiatives: “church multiplication”, “training new leaders” and “research and development”. For reference and ease, quotations, unless otherwise noted, come from the AG Trust’s official website, aogtrust.org.

Church multiplication

“We must have vibrant, evangelistic new churches reaching out to the 18,000 communities in the United States that are without an Assemblies of God church. With your help, the Assemblies of God Trust will help make it happen.”

There are a number of problems here. First, the stated goal is to invest in areas where there is no present church affiliated with the Assemblies. These communities are likely small to mid-sized towns and cities. Said towns and cities are a small percentage of the state or general populace. Speaking from a purely fiscal perspective, why should this denomination spend thousands of dollars on planted churches in communities that are either 1) a blip on the map; or 2) stretching thin the supply line for pastoral support?

In all likelihood, smaller cities and towns already have entrenched churches, which already have the cultural highground. Why would the Assemblies risk planting churches in these areas? Further, if there was an Assembly in one of these communities in the past and it shuttered (the ugly upshot of the Decade of Harvest, according to Blumhofer, et al), would it be prudent to plant a new one? And what of church planters; many of whom are decidedly uninterested in rural or smaller communities detached from urban areas? Given the targeted demographic, the black-framed glasses-wearing, soul-patch fronting former youth pastor cum home missionary doesn’t fit the bill, in my opinion.

Second, an analysis of the converse of the above quote betrays another picture entirely. Here’s what it says: “We have stagnant, self-interested established churches reaching out to the x communities in the United States that have an Assemblies of God church.” [x is, of course, the variable of communities that have A/G presence.] Granted, that’s not true, there are great Assemblies churches as well as less-than-stellar ones. This could very well be an accdiental example of overstating the need, in this instance, throwing every other A/G church under the bus. When we consider that the prospective charter membership is comprised of ministers, A/G college alumni, select laypeople and those already established churches, it’s smart to pitch the trust in a way that doesn’t stomp on toes.

…but here’s the problem with being nice: it doesn’t solve the problem, the problem being that the big picture is bleak, growth is at zero, an entire demographic (18-30) has almost entirely abdicated the movement and where there are congregations, they are graying. Where there are gray hairs, there is less income; less income, less offerings; less offerings, big problems up top. So, they’re essentially selling a revolution to the bourgeoisie, should the trust be effective in stimulating the economy of the church, against whom they would revolt! I don’t get the feeling the Bolsheviks or Sandinistas asked for permission before taking over, much less an allowance to make it happen.

As an aside, one is forced to ask a question of A/G management: Is the converse statement true? If not, why are most church planters entering suburban/exburban America and places where there are already Assemblies churches in proximity?

Concerning the established churches and established ministers, the preferred way to enter full-time ministry is for a would-be pastor to go through Bible college. Should a freshly-graduated Bible college alum head out straightaway into planting a church? If established churches balk at the idea of having a young senior pastor, and those in campus ministry–a field, I would argue, that is pitted in direct competition with planting–aren’t allowed to head straight out from the college to the field, why have a church planting major?

Additionally, what meaningful difference is there between those in pastoral studies and church planting? That question goes two ways: educationally (is there a dichotomy in curricula and why?) and institutionally (is there a departure in philosophy and why?) Most of all, why plant when you all but admit that the way you do spiritual business is failing, or at best, not optimal? If most pastors go through the Bible college experience, what, if any, difference is there between a church planter and one headed into traditional church ministry? To borrow from one of my seminary professors, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Statistics of church plant closures are nearly impossible to come by, and probably with good reason. Anecdotally, and I have offered this elsewhere courtesy a public statement from a faculty member of an Assemblies of God Bible college, 90% of graduates who enter full-time ministry are out within ten years of graduation. (When factored against a statistic like nearly nine of ten Evangelical youth group-going, high school graduates walk away from their faith after one semester at a non-Christian college or university, the problem becomes much more striking. More on this in the next part in this series.) A fair and reasonable guess is that the successes of these plants are dwarfed by the failures, while an educated perspective goes on to say that many of those who do ’succeed’ do so by adopting to the methods of the traditional Assemblies of God church model. The dressing is a little different, the coffee may be a little better and there may not be an organ, banner or tambourine in sight, but the end result is probably something that is more or less more of the same.

And what is to come that, 30, 40, 50 years down the line, will rescue church plants from a legacy of mediocrity? For that is what Superintendent Wood all but says about the current state of the union.

I would love to be wrong on this, but if the Assemblies of God is staking their future as a movement in casting wide the seeds of church plants, it doesn’t appear to be an idea that is considerate of current socio-political cultural motif, a wise investment of money and energies, or presented in a way that adequately or accurately stresses the necessity for such capital.

Respectfully submitted for your consideration. Part two forthcoming.

on niceness

We’ve become too nice.

I just returned from my second set of intensive courses at seminary, where I had hoped for academic rigor and challenging peers. While I have found both, what I have also found, are saccharine and shallow people, those who’d rather be nice than make a point. In other words, what I have found are people who are fundamentally no different than those I strive to–and went to seminary to–avoid.

We offer people the kingdom of God, but give them a crusty double-wide. Hey, at least there are plenty of doormats.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve met some great people there, people serious about their faith and academics. But there are those who would rather be passive and nice than pursue anything meaningful. And they’re in ministry, en masse.

I’m not against being friendly, I don’t think people should be cruel or mean. But persistent niceness is not virtuous, nor is it healthy. It’s ecclesiastical correctness. Think political correctness, but for the 8/9.30/11 AM church crowd.

I’m not cynical enough to say that nice people are nice because there’s nothing else there. But clearly, as demonstrated by this cross-section of church people, there is a line of thinking in this little corner of society that upholds niceness as a preeminent value, a fruit of the spirit. The world is a cold, indifferent place; what makes us think that going from the freezer into the fire somehow makes for evenly-cooked meat? That is to say, taking a frozen steak, slapping it on a hot grill and serving it may look good, but little if anything happens in the middle. It comes out half-baked.

Time and again, I was told that you can’t attract a bear with crap; the metaphor essentially saying that people won’t hear you unless you give them something they want. The metaphor breaks down because truth, and the pursuit of it, is nothing like sating one’s particular taste. Often times, the truth is more like brussel sprouts at the cosmic dinner table: you’re not going anywhere until you put them in your stomach whether you like them or not.

The Christian message, indeed, the Christ himself, was utterly disinterested in the flavor of the day in antiquity, and he, the ultimate truth, was not a flavor for which those who were so anxiously awaiting their messiah were particularly in the mood. For those who desperately needed some sustenance to survive, though, Jesus was the bread of life.

Best of all, Jesus was not polite. Christ did not come from Stepford, nor is his message one resembling happy happy joy joy.

So we had a guest lecturer in one of our morning sessions, a young Ph.D. who gave his talk not only to the class, but to a select number of professors and faculty: he was interviewing for a job with the seminary. The spotlight was on, and our presenter really struggled, and understandably so. The self can be the toughest obstacle to overcome when you’re fighting for a job. Nevertheless, he wilted under the pressure.

After a break, we reconvened without the candidate and the faculty asked for feedback, written and verbal. I volunteered some thoughts that were strong and fair, but firmly in the camp of being concerned about the prospect’s ability to handle a graduate-level classroom. And lo! the class turned to look at me as though I wanted to wrest open the poor man’s jaw and poop in his mouth! The other comments offered ranged from ‘he’s a nice guy,’ ‘I think he did a good job,’ to ‘well, he’s trying’ to ‘he shows humility.’ Forgive me for thinking that mostly whiffing with the classroom opportunity demonstrates something other than humility!

The feedback time ended, and I returned to taking notes, and I found myself feeling bad for offering a loaded critique. Was I too hard on him? Did I treat him fairly in my analysis? Am I mean for giving negative feedback?

At that point I realized that the climate established by those in the classroom was one of blissful ignorance. And it’s not that the school is doing it, but it comes from wherever it is they come from. Our churches are producing what CS Lewis uncharitably, but truthfully called “men without chests”. (Since most churchgoers are women, I choose to also include the equal opportunity “women without chests,” in the most non-bosom way possible. And, while I’m here, why is seminary a sausage-fest when most of our laypeople are female? Another conversation for another day.)

People aren’t nice. Does that mean we ought to be mean? Of course not. Of course, if we are overly nice in a cruel world full of people who do not excel in being polite or downright cheery, how is that a witness to anything other than just being annoying?

Later on in intensives, my professor said something that left quite an impression on me: he said that his commitment to truth surpasses even his commitment to theology. And it makes perfect sense: if all truth is God’s truth (which all is), and the quest for truth helps us understand the nature of God (which it does), then even the study of God’s nature and interaction with the world is secondary. How much less important, then, is being nice as a matter of Christian discipline?

There’s a difference between being nice and being kind. Kindness is an extension of compassion, whereas niceness tends to have no regard for anyone but the self. Unshakable niceness may be covering an existential vacuum, after all. Have you ever seen a nice person let their guard down? It’s not pretty, in fact, it shows how artificial being nice is. In the quest for ecclesiastical correctness, we see how fundamentally incorrect people can be.

I’m not interested in nice people. I don’t need people who incessantly must be cheery. I need people who are unafraid to be, um, people: gloriously human in our joys and sorrows, our anger and peace, our sin and righteousness, and in our positive and negative impressions on events, people, places and experiences. A relationship with God does not exempt us from the all-encompassing realities that comprise the spectrum of life.

And if that spectrum includes disappointment, frustration, anxiety and frankness, we ought not feel shame for expressing them. In fact, I would argue for quite the opposite: so long as the spectrum of experience does not lead us to sin, our honesty is in itself an act of worship.

Audit ramblings

So, those of you who are aware know that wife and I have begun to transition ourselves out of full-time ministry. Right now, we volunteer with Beta and are beginning to groom our students to take the reigns of the community full-time.

Because part of the process included (or perhaps was induced by) the disembowelment of our finances, I scrambled to find work. Place after place rejected me outright (the graduate school thing scares people out of their minds, apparently), until I landed in a Hampton Inn here last fall. Younger, naive, hyper-idealistic, stupid Brent (feel free to select your preferred adjective) would have looked at this situation and screamed.

You see, I was raised with the notion that I am a child of promise, that I was destined to be somebody of note. Often the refrain would come from others, and I believed that God had some kind of special plan for my life. So when realistic Brent is doing laundry because the guy working the previous shift decided to camp out on his laptop and quite seriously do next to nothing, the internal squabble rages anew between “Why the [expletive] are you folding towels?!” and “Um…so I can help support my family, moron.”

The only reason you’re seeing this published at some point in the five o’clock hour is because I’m winding down my overnight shift. Wife doesn’t like it when I’m not in bed when she’s in bed. She says she can’t sleep well when I’m not there. I wish I could say the same, but, when it comes down to it, I prefer waking up at 3 AM because she decided to burrito herself and leave me with the corner of a sheet. We read to know we’re not alone; obviously we get married under similar pretenses. Turns out, I love my job. It doesn’t pay well, but I am insured; the hours aren’t that great but I was fortunate to find a job in a down climate; be trained by one of the best managers I’ve had; work under a great boss and great second-in-command and generally be surrounded by good people I enjoy calling colleagues, that is, if colleagues is kosher in the grey-collar hospitality sector.

As an added bonus, as I wrestled with this thought folding towels and muttering under my breath about the aforementioned chump who left me with three commercial-grade loads of towels to wash, dry and fold, this job has taught me much about leadership and humility, far more than I ever learned in Bible college, my internship in Tallahassee or in ministry on my own. I fundamentally and skeptical of leadership classes and gurus and have been for some time. During my time at the gulag, I was inundated with tripe from John Maxwell and his array of Cosby sweaters, and even then it made no sense: how can someone teach leadership, when what they do, in essence, is create a market that needs guidance? Hence, John Maxwell is full of crap. You don’t teach leaders in some macro-economic model, you create acolytes, followers.

And followers there are a-plenty in the church world. It bothered me so much that I ended up walking away from church life and developing a personal philosophy of ministry that emphasized people over process, even if it means person, as in, there aren’t enough people here to call them people. Working in a hotel, though, has only reinforced my initial notions of investing in people over fitting them into programs. We have regulars here, they’re miles from loved ones and home. I know more than a few of them by name, and over time, they’ve opened up a little; not too much, but enough to let you know that they’re glad for a friendly face.

I never liked airports for the simple fact that I would see so many people that I would never see again. Each person had a story, loved ones, homes, lives and we were all penned into this stale government-controlled holding bay, waiting for a flight to take us back to a context. Hotel life really isn’t that different, but being on this end of it, I want to share in that person’s story, even if it’s a check-in or getting them a bottle of water. I’m not interested in proselytizing, most people here didn’t even know what I did before I donned the business casual garb. I just want to be helpful.

Not too long ago, I wrote about divine calling and how I don’t exactly believe in full-time vocational ministry anymore. Perhaps there are those out there who look at my situation now and say that I was never supposed to be in ministry in the first place. Perhaps others who think I’ve put my tail between my legs and slunk away from the scene. And to both of you I would gladly extend both middle fingers, because you would both be insulting and wrong. That child of promise stuff may well still be valid, but I guarantee you it won’t be in the way you think it will come to pass. Primarily because it’s not how I thought it would come to pass, and even more obviously because that’s not how God works in the least. And I’m still alive, though there are those who would rather that I weren’t, particularly those who were more than delighted to join in on slapping me on the disavowed list. Just saying.

But hey, I could be bitter, but why? I have been well taken care of, though it hasn’t always felt like a down comforter or a cold drink on a hot day. I have a wife who loves me, a job that, though is tedious at times, I find rewarding, our finances are stable (mostly) and I’m going to school to pursue my education and work toward long-term goals: teaching, investing in students, continuing to challenge convention and fight for truth and justice in the Christian world. Because once I have my Ph.D., I can start writing books and hosting seminars and creating a niche market only I can satisfy. And then you will have to listen to me…and put up with my God-awful sweater collection.

Hotel theology, Gideons notwithstanding. Who knew?

While meeting with some friends for a Bible study Tuesday, I stumbled into an epiphany of sorts regarding the scriptures we’re walking through right now. Consider, as we did, Hebrews 4 [ESV]:

[continuing a theme from chapter 3]…Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said, “They shall not enter my rest.”

Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

For as long as I can remember, I have been told and taught in church that the “word of God is living and active” refers to scripture. To insist on that being an accurate interpretation is to flatly refute the many tools of interpretive and criticial exegesis given to us. It’s also completely disrespectful to the context and authorial intent.

Plainly, I think we’ve got this one wrong.

At a glance, we see just from this excerpt of the letter, the author is not talking about scripture anywhere within the logical literary unit. Secondarily, we see that this is not a parenthetical interjection, the line in question is clearly part of the main flow of the text, either as a narratival theme or possibly a sub-narrative (‘rest’, as we have discovered for the past month and a half, is a major theme in Hebrews, linked with disobedience and sensitivity to the leading of God’s spirit. A separate conversation.)

So the writer isn’t talking about the Bible. Where else in the New Testament do we see the ‘word of God’? John’s prologue. I’ve argued elsewhere that ‘word’ doesn’t exactly fit in the prologue, either. It is clear that the ‘word’ as found in John is a metaphor for Jesus, but being that the root is logos, ‘logic’ or ‘paradigm’ is more fitting for translation than a clunky, ill-fitting ‘word’.

(For the record, I do not say that ‘logic’ means something akin to gnosticism or just getting smart as salvation. Just because I dispute the ‘word’ does not mean I deny the employment of metaphor here. ‘In the beginning was the logic, and the logic was with God and the logic was God…’ Clearly, the ‘logic’ is the spirit of Christ, as found in Jesus, the prototype of what it means for man to live in communion with God. So, no, I’m not a heretic. ‘Word’ just is a poor translation, in my opinion.)

So, what is the author of Hebrews saying? “For the ‘logic of God’ [or, 'spirit of Christ'] is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning to the thoughts and intentions of heart.”

I approach this thought another way: many conservatives recoil at the thought of judges legislating from the bench, complaining about people who view the US Constitution as a living document. Those conservatives argue in favor of the jurisprudence of original intent, or strict originalism. Being that many people have taken a living document approach to scripture and committed heinous religious, political and cultural atrocities, shouldn’t we argue for the jurisprudence of original intent when it comes to scripture? Some people open the Bible and come to wild conclusions, others gut the content of its salvific potency, is that same Bible living and active? Or is it the spirit of Christ that brings understanding to a reader in need of rest? Perhaps the way we understand it right now needs to be reworked.

Certainly understanding this verse as the spirit of Christ brings a greater level of understanding to the text. As it was, we had a disjointed passage with an ill-fitting verse in the middle. This passage is still somewhat disjointed–the author of Hebrews is clearly someone who is less Matthew and more Mark–but it clicks now, especially with the following passage.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the [spirit of Christ] is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from [his] sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

[Note the brackets: the biggest clue to the true nature of 'word' is the fact that the following verse has the same subject with a different pronoun. If the verse in question were indeed about scripture, the pronoun following should be an 'it', not a 'he'. Context clues demand that we work with what we're given, not with what we assume.]

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

The same spirit of Christ that brings judgment upon the heart, is the same spirit that, having endured all that Jesus did, brings us atonement and reconciliation to God. Which is a powerful theological reality lost when we simply assume a verse’s meaning based on osmosis. It is a sword and a sheath, a conviction and an aquittal, a turning of the back and a warm embrace; all contingent upon the state of a person.