Doubt and the journey

Scot McKnight had a great post where he responded to someone who was experiencing doubts. The post is here.

This post really speaks to me. I would say I'm going through such a stage of deconstruction and doubt. It was initiated by a lot of things, but mainly personal experiences, self study, and dialog with trusted friends/mentors. In the book Made to Stick, the authors talk about the "curse of knowledge". What they mean is that once we truly learn something, we can not really unlearn it, nor can we remember how we thought on that topic before we learned the new thing. An example for me is the Bible.

Having studied topics around textual, historical, and social criticism surrounding the Bible, as well as interpretive theories, it is difficult for me to read the Bible “pre-critically” anymore. Will that change? Maybe, but for now, this is where I’m at. I am no longer satisfied with surface readings of a text (and this is all texts, not just the Bible). I also see life more holistically and inter-disciplinary. Meaning, I see value in some of the theories of Jungian psychology for human development and spiritual formation. I see value in what sociology teaches us about cultural formation. I see value in postmodern philosophical understandings of epistemology and truth, and what that can teach us about how we know and learn spiritual things. I see value in the mystics approach to non-dual thinking. I guess what I’m saying is that I no longer see the Bible as the final arbiter of truth on all matters pertaining to life.

This has caused friction amongst those who, unlike me, do not wish to question things to a deeper degree. I’m not at all saying one way is better than another, but I am saying that there is a difference in approaches that can cause friction. What I've learned from relational psychology and spiritual formation studies is that I can no longer deny how i'm "wired", and to say that deep thinking is wrong (and I should just be like everyone else) would be to deny who I am. The friction can be beneficial, but at this stage of things, it causes more internal conflict in me than it does positive growth. I can attribute that to what McKnight talks about in the post referenced above, i.e. deconstruction/reconstruction.

I would say I’m still immersed in the deconstruction phase; questioning assumptions, re-evaluating my spiritual life, etc. I might say that I have a small glimpse of what the reconstructed faith could look like, but as of yet, nothing tangible. The lack of clarity and tangibility appears to some to be selfishness, uncertainty, indecisiveness, etc. Understood, but nothing I can do to change that at this point. It’s a tension of uncertainty and freedom that I have never felt before, but I could never go back to the place I’ve deconstructed.

Great Post!

So, I've been encouraged by a few folks to start blogging again. Mostly because they are probably tired of hearing me talk about all my unformulated crazy thoughts :-) Anyway...I'm giving some thoughts to getting back to writing. In the mean time, this post was priceless, and I agree 100%.

Just had to post this link...

http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/religious-right-insanity-evangel.html

Good job pointing out this lunancy Brian. I totally agree with Frank Schaeffer.

Blogging, Trends, Blah Blah

http://www.iamjoshbrown.com/blog/2009/03/23/why-i-dont-blog-anymore/

This guy's posting was very timely for me to read. As you can obviously tell, I haven't blogged anything in forever, and those of you who know me on Facebook know that I haven't been there in awhile either. While I don't agree with everything the blogger said, the heart of what he is saying has given a small voice to some of the stuff that has been swirling in me lately about blogging, Facebook, and trends in general. I was actually going to blog about it, but then thought...why? what is the point? I will say this: He makes a great point about voices, and about how this media is starting to propogate the same power structures that exist in culture...stamping out the voice of the margins. I ask...what happen to discernment? What happened to thinking through an issue instead of believing in the latest trend because it's cool? Do people really care about what I (or others) are doing 24X7? And if they do...why?? Anyway, before this turns into a posting about trends, I'll stop. Not sure whether I'll blog anymore. Maybe...maybe not.

Back in school...again

So, since the Lehigh thing fell through, I'm taking a class at Biblical. The class is Theology, Ethnicity, and Gender. It's taught by John Franke. I'm absolutely loving the class so far. It is challenging some things in me, in a good way. More on that later. As far as the Culture, Starbucks, etc. postings....haven't had a chance to work on them, but maybe in the next few months I will.

Starbucks, Culture, Paradigms - 2

Let me begin by talking about the “old” paradigm that I see Horace operating under. To be fair, I myself operated under this paradigm for the first 12 years of being a Christian; I also am not saying this is a wrong paradigm. It arose in a particular context (Post-Enlightenment Modernity), and spoke well to that context. There are many characteristics that I could talk about for this paradigm, but I want to focus on just two: viewing faith solely as a belief system to be agreed with and defended against (this post), and an understanding that the Gospel is only about dealing with my individual sin so that I can go to heaven when I die (next post).


The tendency in this way of thinking is to view the Christian faith solely (key word there) as a system of beliefs/doctrines, the mental agreement of which constitutes one’s entrance into the body of Christ. Evangelism, or sharing one’s faith, usually entails employing a logical argument for why one needs to “accept Christ”. The “Roman’s Road” for example attempts to reduce the Gospel into a systematic and logical argument using 4 steps. After hearing the argument, the sinner’s prayer (a one-time event) shows one’s agreement with said argument, and secures one’s entrance into heaven.


Now, I realize I’m speaking in generalities here. However, I believe it to be the majority mode of evangelism and understanding of the faith in this paradigm, one that I shared, and one that I still see in operation in a lot of blogs, books, churches, dialogs, etc. One is now part of this new belief system. Those on the “outside” do not hold these beliefs yet, so the goal becomes convincing others, through the method of logic and rational argument, why they need to also subscribe to this set of beliefs. More could be said about this, especially how this is tied so much to Enlightenment rationalism, and its inherent belief that “knowing” involves mastery of facts by an objective knower…but that will suffice for now. So, if Christianity is a system of beliefs, and believing the right things is essential to defining who is and who isn’t a Christian, it makes sense to me why Horace reacted the way he did. When the perception is that the system of beliefs is challenged by Starbucks, Sponge Bob, or whoever, it is viewed as those on the “outside” degrading a belief system. The belief system, according to this view, is what constitutes faith, so any challenge to that must be viewed as an assault on Christian faith. If nothing is done to fight against this, so the thinking goes, Christianity is in jeopardy of compromise, of allowing the “competing” system of beliefs to go unchallenged. So the battle is between competing belief systems.


Until next time....stay cool, drive less, and enjoy the fruit of the vine.

Starbucks, Culture, Paradigms - 1

I’m not sure if anyone saw a recent article about Starbucks new “retro” logo; it’s black and white and features a mermaid. I would link to the article, but I’m sure the link would break in a few months anyway, as usually happens with news sites. Anyway, the article was about how a Christian group was outraged at Starbucks for this. The exact quote from one such member of the San Diego based Christian group was: [the retro-logo] “has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute. Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks." I do find it interesting that the group immediately arrived at this interpretation of the image; the reasons for which are for another post and another time.

I sent the link to the article to some friends of mine, with my accompanying words to the effect of “when are Christians going to get past this stuff and start being concerned about other things.” One particular response from a friend was very interesting to me. If you’re reading this, know that I still love you as a fellow believer, but I adamantly disagree with you! The response of my friend (I’ll call him Horace to protect his identity) was something to the effect of “I hope we never get past this. Why must we always push the limits of decency? Is there no absolute standard anymore, is everything relative? We are becoming saltless (sic) salt”. I responded with thoughts around his definition of salt and light, the so-called “culture war” that I don’t believe we were ever called to initiate nor participate in, Jesus’ approach to the culture, and why he felt the need to hold Starbucks to his (and others who share his view) moral standards? There is more I could have said, especially in regards to the social and cultural construction of certain standards (i.e. what is decent in one culture is not necessary decent in another, and why should the Religious Right dictate that definition of decency and expect others to live by it??) but then I realized something…which is really why I wanted to write these posts.

I realized that engaging in dialog with Horace about this will be unfruitful, and will end up with us talking past one another. I want to talk about why I think this happens in such cases. I believe it comes down to a difference in presuppositions and paradigms (or ways of thinking and processing the world around us), and how it is difficult to have meaningful dialogs when we (Horace and I) are coming from two different paradigms. When we think about our two paradigms, it makes sense why there is a struggle for common understanding.

What are those two different paradigms??? Stay tuned.

Until then....stay clear of unexploded fireworks!