http://www.collegeparkchurchplant.com/firstdrafts/

Jeremy’s a friend, a good and honest thinker and a talented writer.

Enjoy,

j

“Take comfort, it is I.  Don’t be afraid.” — Jesus

I can say one thing about my faith,  I understand Jesus to be with me.  And that’s just about it.

And I choose those words carefully.  I don’t say that “I believe” Jesus is with me, because sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, and sometimes I don’t even know what that means.

For me, at the heart of all of my fears, I think, lies the unstated, un-faced fear that I don’t really believe in God.  I am afraid that one day I will wake up and just not believe anymore.  That the difficulty of life, or the evils in the world, or even something I might read in a commentary or text book might leave me with more doubts then I can hold in my head and I’ll just give up.  Sometimes it feels like it would be easier just not to believe anymore.

That, I think, is one of my deepest fears.  And I have a feeling that I am not alone in that.  So what would it look like to face my fear of faithlessness?

I’m not sure for sure, I’m really just starting this process, but I think it might start with realizing that my believing in God, in Christ, in the resurrection, in the gospel, does not affect whether or not they are true or real.  Christ is real whether or not I believe in him.  Or to go the other way, Jesus of Nazareth died 2000 years ago and stayed dead, just like any other guy, whether or not I believe him to be raised.  To put it another way, God’s existence is not contingent on my belief in him.

I know that sounds obvious but I’m not sure we, or at least I, don’t live as if it it’s not the case.  I fear that at times we focus so much attention on convincing ourselves that God exists, or denying our very real doubts that he does, as if it matters.  I mean it matters to us, and we matter to God, so in that way it matters to God.  But the real truth is that God’s gunna do what God’s gunna do, regardless if whether or not we are on board.

In fact, I would argue that very little of real significance in your life or mine is really contingent on your belief in God.  The people who love you will still love you even if you lose your faith, the things you care about you will likely still care about even if you lose your faith.  I’m not saying that a crisis of faith is not a big deal, it is.  But I just want to try and put it in some perspective.  The world will keep spinning even if we all stop believing in the one who keeps it spinning.

What I am trying to do is give myself permission to doubt.  Why?  What does that do for us?  If we allow ourselves to doubt then we can begin a relationship with God in honesty.  Honestly, I think that the most common prayer off the lips of the truly faithful person has to be, “Lord, I believe, help me with my disbelief.”

I am suggesting that this kind of faith that is honest about its doubts is not just a stronger faith but really a whole different type of faith altogether.  A faith that is located in a relationship.

Because if that’s where we are.  If we are at the point where we feel abandoned by God (and I think we are all there sometimes) or if we are at the point where we just don’t believe God even exists and we don’t admit that to God, than we’re not really praying, we’re not really in a relationship with God.

So I suggest that what the life of faith looks like is having a relationship with God, even when we don’t believe in him.

And I believe, to get back to the beginning that this is the path to courage.  To admit that we have doubts about God, about ourselves, about our relationships, to face them, and then eventually lay them down and not worry about them anymore.  Because once we admit these things, the fears and doubts, I think we’ll see that the world doesn’t fall apart – that Christ is still with us.  And that should give us courage to face our other fears and doubts as well.

(Excerpts from my sermon at CPCP, July 19, 2009)

From a talented pastor and a good friend:

http://comingtolife.blogspot.com/2009/07/unmoved.html

I preached in Milford, DE. July 5th and saw this sign on the way there.  Its not a joke:

…wow.

Here is a long but interesting exploration of the thoughts of Brian McLaren in his own words as he defends himself against a critic using a paper thin version of the thinking of Leslie Newbigin as a foil for Brian’s own thoughts.  I recommend it if its your kinda thing.

Jason

One of the most important moments for me in my exploration of this thing called the “Emerging Church” is a chance I had to hear Stan Grenz before he passed.   He was speaking about having a non-foundationalist view of truth and I thought it might be helpful to re-cap that teaching, and what it has meant to me, here:

Foundationalism as a view of truth (as I understand it) comes out of the theories put forth by Descartes (the guy who said, “I think therefore I am”).  And it essentially says that all things that are true can be supported by another truth.  Like a building made of bricks each truth claim must lie on the back of another, secure, truth claim.  This, of course, begs the question of what is the bottom (or foundational) truth claim.  For Descartes, this was that he could think (and therefore existed).  Upon that foundation he could support all other truth claims.  And from this we get modern rationalism and the era we call Modernity (please accept my apologies to anyone who knows more about this then I do — please fill in the blanks!).

Here’s the point, western Christianity, in large part, accepted this structure of truth.  What we did, though, was change the “foundation”.  For some of us the Bible became the foundational truth claim upon which any other truth claim can (and must be) based.  And for others the religious experience became the foundation (don’t think Pentacostalism so much as mainline churches and their concentration on Christian ethics and liturgy).  And because of this, so you can see why both sides defend their “foundations” so vehemently.  If one sees an error in the Biblical account, for example, its not just one’s faith that is thrown into question rut ones whole conception of reality.

So what is the alternative?

Many folks accuse Postmoderns and Emergents of rejecting truth.  And at least for me, that’s not what it’s about.  I don’t reject truth but I am suspect of any attempt to claim a  foundational truth upon which I can base all other truths, or at the very least, I reject the notion that I can access that foundational truth.  Instead, as Grenz suggested, I see truth as a web with many nodes.  Each node is a truth claim, some are more essential then others to be sure, and all are connected to one another, but no single truth claim provides the foundation for all the others.

So why does this matter?

If someone starts to challenge me on the truth of something, lets take the the virgin birth for example, I am able to look at the argument it on its own merits.  Because I don’t have to fear that if I end up changing my mind on that one thing that my whole conception of reality will come crashing down.  And say I do end up changing my mind on the virgin birth (which btw, I haven’t) it would certainly cause a ripple throughout my whole constructed web of truth, but it wouldn’t cause most of the building to collapse as it would if it was a lower brick on a building.

Maybe its because i have been watching too much news (seriously, is there anything else going on in the world?) but I am surprised to admit that i am a little sad about Michael Jackson.

Although, really, I have felt a little sad about him for a long time now. I watched an old video of his last night and he was such a handsome young man, talented and even seemed, I don’t know, happy. But then, well you know what happened then.

(watching his life play out has been like a scene in an Indian Jones movie where someones dissolves into ash, or melts into a puddle of goo, only we’ve been watching it happen for like 30 years now)

And honestly, I can’t help but feel like its my fault some how. I mean not MINE, but ours, all of ours. I feel like MJ was, at least in part, a monster of our making.

So what if we began a conversation, now, after his death, about how this happens to our celebrities, who is it happening to now (Britney Spears anyone?) and how we can prevent it? Or if we even can?

Or maybe I just have an overinflated sense of responsibility, i am a pastor after all.

I know its shocking, but I came up against a story of Peter’s with a message I want to resist.

Its a story about a group of early Christians who leave Jerusalem on the Saturday between the cross and the resurrection.  They live as Christians (really good Christians) for a thousand years before a missionary reaches them and tells them the “Good News” of the resurrection.  But the leader of the little community is sad and not happy, because he says, (I’m paraphrasing here) “up til now we have been living a life of emulating Christ out of sheer love for Christ, with no hope of reward.  But with this news of the resurrection I fear we will begin to follow Christ out of the hope of a heavenly reward, a resurrection”.

And in Peter’s commentary on the story he says that the life of this alternative Christians community in its love for “the Least, the Last, and the Lost” (my terminology, but you get what I mean) you see the true resurrection of Christ.

But, i don’t know, i think that that rings untrue to me.  The resurrection is important to me not because it means I too will be resurrected (though, I have to admit, I am happy about that) but because I believe the whole world will be.  If I didn’t believe that the whole world would ultimately be resurrected by God and put to rights i don’t think i could try.  In fact I think that without the promise that in the end God Wins, the demands of Christ would be, almost, oppressive.

Ethics without faith is like guilt without hope.

And though I hate to use this terminology because it is so often unhelpful, but this, it seems to me is exactly the kind of thing that the liberal church has tried and has found ultimately unsustainable.  I’m not calling Rollins a liberal, because he isn’t, and I’m not saying that everything the liberal church believes is bad, because it isn’t.  But I do think that this idea of a resurrection people without the actual resurrection is a liberal idea “par excelance” and though it can lead to great reform movements like King and others it can also lead to a dead faith and empty churches.

I hope someone out there will disagree with me here and show me where I am thinking too narrowly about what Peter is saying, because i feel like i have more to learn form this story but i’m just not seeing it.

I have been thinking lately about how difficult it is for me to be content. I don’t know if its just me, or if its my culture, my gender, religion, or simply being human (or some Molotov cocktail of all of those) but something in me is constantly yearning for whats next — forever discontent with life as it is.

But really, when I am clear headed, I know that the following is true (pretty much every day):