got Word?

Warning: Ramblingly long boring lunchtime post ahead. Apologies.
- the Mgmt

Thanks for everyone with remedies and well-wishes for my headache yesterday. Mostly pollen-related, I think, and I just slept wrong the night before. When I told my brother I "slept funny" the other night, he replied,"How do you sleep funny? I mean, did I sleep serious one night, then sleep funny the next?" - Idiot. Today there's still a tinge of funny-sleepin' headache, but mostly a nausea, too. Not a good trade-off, but even more on the pollen-induced side. Ugh.

In posting some reviews and discussion on Brian McLaren, Dave Fleming and other "emergent" topics/books, I've been getting some new google hits. Both guys have written controversial works that challenge the status quo, something that doesn't like to be challenged and isn't usually threatened with change. It bugs me that so many times, people are misunderstood and labelled as heretics - and that me saying this will cause some to respond defensively, "no we don't". Instead of asking each other questions, we put forth propositional truth statements that you either agree with and are okay, or you don't fully agree and you're dangerous to the cause of Christ. Happens on "both sides", but I'm seeing it more and more from several anti-emergent biased sites. The same search that can lead you here can lead you to sites that rip McLaren and Fleming and their respective inputs on the culture. So many of these webpages miss the points that I've gleaned from these guys, and my own defensive reflexes get the best of me, too. I don't fault them for speaking out, just that there's little room for conversation when there's so much bashing going on.

So, conversationally speaking, I want to lift up the mantle in one area: THE BIBLE. Most folks who are opposed to the new growth of "emergent" thought are hung up on the idea that people are throwing the Bible out of the church. I think they're wrong, and it disturbs me that there's not much middle ground for the discourse to take shape. All my life I've had a Bible, and I've been reading it for a long time. I've heard sermons on some great passages - some of my study Bibles have multiple entries with multiple sermons on the same passages through the years. What I see happening - as limited as my perspective might be - is a re-assessment of what the Bible means to us as Christians. Up to now, it's been something almost deified, given a place of authority it doesn't aspire to, or placed in authority because we don't truly understand "authority". I've come to see, or am still discovering along with others, that Jesus is the Authority of the Word, and that only in relationship with Him does the Bible have anything meaningful to say.

If I don't pay much attention to arguments of inerrancy and infallibility, it's because I don't hold much weight on those things - Jesus is definitely inerrant and infallible, and out of the life we're living the Bible will speak from His heart into ours. Having a higher view of Jesus means that there is a higher, more honest treatment of scripture. Some folks are straying from the Word, and some are deconstructing way too far - I understand that, and deal with it in a few forums, too. But some are accused of leaving the Bible behind when they're not - when they're actually grabbing onto a more solid view of the whole of scripture, getting away from prooftexts and moving toward holistic and significant interpretation and application.

"But they disagree, so they must be wrong. We respectfully disagree - meaning that I allow you to be as wrong as you want as long as the threat I perceive you representing can be dealt with before leading others astray." - that's the call I see coming up across the landscape, and the conversation is nixed because one side or the other doesn't respect the other. That's sad, because we all still have so much to learn.

Example: In a conversation about how a particular worship leader with a new CD should separate himself from the lures of the worldly side of pop music, a friend used 1 Corinthians 10:14-24 to show me what Paul said about staying away from evil, staying pure, choosing Christ - all good, and I appreciated that passage. I commented that if one reads further in 1 Cor 10:25-33, you get a broader view of how interacting with the world is possible with a pure heart and pure motives in living the Christ-life. Instead of cold-turkey avoiding interaction with the world, which might be an idea from the first part of this chapter, Paul seems in context to be checking our hearts, challenging us to live in good conscience with others "for the glory of God" (10:31). We disagreed, his point being on the first half and mine trying to go with that while still making room for the second half - and that's what I see in this "debate", too.

Why is this happening? People hate questions they don't already know the answers to. Lawyers in a courtroom will not ask a witness a question they don't already know the answer to. People want affirmation more than they want information. We already know it all, especially as Christians with the testimony of Jesus, the Answer for all our wrongs. Questions are opposition, making us think and re-think for ourselves. And that's perceived as a bad thing too much of the time. But where "Jesus is the Answer" for all that's wrong in the world, He's also the Redeemer of all that's right, the Creator of all that is, and the Enabler for kingdom-living. There's so much more Truth out there to be learned, beyond our suppositions and propositional statements - and it's dangerous to the status quo. At least, it should be.