Sort of been MIA for a while. Much of source of material has changed. For various reasons, we are now part of a different Bible church (I have nothing but praise for our former assembly). And I have not found the usual background of postmodern/emerging/emergent material lately.
Oh, it is still there. Mars Hill (Seattle, not Grand Rapids) caught-up in controversy over excessive discipline of members. John Piper declaring Christianity to rightly be a male-dominated religion.
But these just have not gotten my juices flowing.
But while I definitely consider myself in the Bible church wing of the evangelical camp, there is something beginning to nag at me about evangelicalism as a whole. The problem is not that I think that their positions are wrong. Rather that they are out of balance. But I don't know how to think about it because I do not know how to arrive at any kind of more "correct" balance.
What I am finding to be out of balance is the emphasis on knowing so many things, on getting personal words from God, and on being "spiritual" rather than on being obedient and living the life that seems to have been ordered by God throughout the Old Testament, then spoken of so much by Jesus.
And this brings some of the "Paul v Jesus" into the mix. I agree that too much of our analysis of the whole New Testament has been flavored by Paul. Often much more than by Jesus. But I have begun to wonder if it is that Paul has somehow missed the mark, as some have suggested, rather than that we have misread Paul. Many years back, I was involved with a group that essentially excised the book of James because they saw him as being contrary to Paul. But at this point, I am beginning to wonder if the most direct route to properly understanding the Christian life is to focus on James and rethink how to read Paul.
I think this may be the key because so often, if we continue reading Paul in the typical ways, we start to even dismiss the very words of Jesus.
So how do we read Paul? Paul starts to write to one of the churches. He notes something they are doing wrong — striving to fulfill the ritual laws of the Old Testament, fighting among the classes and races, tolerating bad teachers. Then he spends some time telling us why it should not be that way. Making statements like "I am dead to the law," or "I am crucified with Christ . . ." or "have the mind that was in Christ." But right after that, he turns back to set us on the correct course of action. But we start having training sessions on how to be crucified with Christ, or have the mind of Christ, and forget that the goal was not to do religious and "spiritual" things, but to turn them back to accepting the salvation they already had, to not think more highly of themselves than they ought, to not be a respecter of persons, to take pains to not stumble the weaker in the faith, and (not last) to live righteously before our God.
The point of the "spiritual" analysis was not to direct us to "spiritual" activities, but to explain why we should "just do it" when it came to the practical living that Paul was addressing. So getting the theological constructs of the "spiritual" discussion down was not the purpose of the writing. In fact, it is almost as if that part is an aside for the purpose of giving us some insight into why and how we should live. And why we have what it takes to do it.
Peter said it differently and in fewer words. Something like "you have everything you need for godliness." And James is not pushing a works salvation. He is "taking our temperature." He is following us along the path like a CSI team looking at the evidence we have left behind to tell how we are doing. The skid marks where we veered off to travel down a different road. The mess of glass and plastic where we ran someone off the road. The carnage where we ran the stop sign. Or the evidence that we have been carefully navigating the road according to the map provided.
I will tour some of the rethinking that has been going on in future posts.
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