Call Us Crazy, Please
Last night I was on a groups tour (we're visiting our community groups just to connect with folks and talk about life at Connexus). The tour's been great!
At one of the groups I was at last night, I caught a comment in passing that I loved. One guy was telling me he was talking to friends about being a part of Connexus, and his friend said to him - "Connexus - you guys go to Connexus? Man, Connexus is crazy!"
To me, that's one of the highest compliments anyone can pay our ministry.
Our culture needs more out of the box, crazy, over the top people willing to risk something for the Kingdom. Current Christianity is so sanitized that if any biblical figure jumped out of the scripture into most churches, we'd run them out of town. The Bible is less Christian book store figurine and more like a crazy man who needs a shower.
One of the things I've been thinking about as 2009 rolls in is that we need to do more crazy things for the Kingdom - take risks no one else is taking so we can reach people no one else is reaching. We've got one idea rolling around right now to engage the unchurched that's bound to draw a ton of criticism from people if we actually pull the trigger. I say bring it on. (Stay tuned for details).
Is crazy a part of your spiritual journey? Are you taking enough risks in your leadership for people to call you crazy? Truthfully, not sure I am right now, but in 09 I definitely want to change that.
great stuff. i love it.
miracles = crazy (don't make any sense but they happen).
risk bigger than we can rationalize = relying on God.
Just need to tell you that I think it's great that you're doing community group tours… what a great way to share vision with everyone!
I hope I'm crazy… greater the risk, greater the reward – I think it's true. I know I risk in my personal life, but I need to work on it more in church life.
Great post!
If you guys are crazy, then I feel insane! Actually starting to believe some of this stuff, after a life time of not believing, makes me feel totally crazy – like my head is spinning! So, I'm glad that your church is a risk taker. Makes me feel a little bit more sane, I guess.
I can't think of anyone more crazy (outside the box) than Jesus Christ!
Really … just look at the criticism He incited. It would seem that a pretty good "crazy" marker is when you are drawing criticism.
AMEN!!! Need more crazy.
I think I'm going crazy too!
For all the smiles, folksy jokes, and friendly mannerisms, you appear to be preaching the same bible college fundamentalism as everyone else: God loves you so much that if you don't get saved by Jesus, you get to spend eternity being punished. VERY inside the box thinking! Good old Protestant Fundamentalism…hate with a big wide grin.
Hi James…thanks for the challenge. I agree that Christians have not been the best representatives of Christ. For that, I am sorry, both in my own life and in the wider sense.
One question:objectively, do truth and love have to be opposites? I'd love to know what you think.
Your question, "do truth and love have to be opposites?" doesn't really make much sense. I'm guessing that by truth, however, you're referring to the notions you hold of Biblical inerrancy (if that's really a word) and the limited view you have of Salvation. Neither of these concepts, in their fundamentalist version, withstand scrutiny. We know too much about editors, redactors, missing originals, poor translations, translations that miss cultural and linguistic context and so forth to seriously believe that the Bible is 'without error', but perhaps this depends on your idea of error. My father believed, for example, that there really was a great flood, because the Bible said so. Because he premised everything on the belief that the Bible is the unerring word of God, he was able to comfortably misinterpret all sorts of scientific facts to support this claim. But we know enough thanks to people like Joseph Campbell that this story is mythic. It didn't happen. It also doesn't matter that it didn't happen. It (the story) is trying to teach a message that no literal truth can contain. When people use the word 'myth', fundamentalists and many conservatives get out of sorts. This is because the word has suffered much abuse. When I say that the Bible is a mythology, I mean that as high praise, but it does require that you give up on literalism because it can't be sustained, and that you give up on the whole issue of error, because it's irrelevant. The people who passed these stories down via oral tradition would never have expected anyone to think they recounted events in any empirical sense. That was never the point — the point was to convey meaning.
A literal interpretation of an 'error free' New Testament fails for the same reasons. I'm tired of hearing "I am the way, the truth and the life" abused by people who think Jesus is telling us there is only one path. It's utter nonsense, again based on an incorrect understanding of history and language. Look up the many roles played by the verb 'to be' in an oral language like Aramaic, and how it could get sloppy as it moved into the decaying Greek of the New Testament. What's being said has too many possible meanings to work in modern English, or in any English I know of.
All of this leads to ideas like the ones I remember from Charismatic and Evangelical churches of my youth: that if you aren't Christian, you aren't saved; that other faith traditions are (I remember this silly phrase clearly) deceptions of Satan; that humanity is essentially lost, and so forth. These are the beliefs of a fearful Christianity, one afraid to encounter the world with any sense of wholeness or generosity. It is the worst of religious bigotry, based on profound misunderstanding of wisdom literature, disguising itself as love. Does that engage your question?
James…Heading out and will be away for the evening.
I'll respond tomorrow when I have more time. I'm sure others will add thoughts tonight.
Sorry it's been such a bad experience for you growing up. I really am.
Wow. Faith is amazing, isn't it guys? There is a lot about the bible that may seem unbelievable but I have faith and it's all I need to be able to believe. I have faith that the bible is God's word and for me, that is enough. I've had more than one 'friend' think I'm nuts for believing all this with no proof but the proof is personal. I can't literally "prove" it to anyone but when I'm on my knees crying out to God and I feel his presence and his arms around me telling me it will all be better, not one soul could ever tell me He isn't real. His love for me is more real than words can describe and "all you need is faith" sure isn't a simple thing to understand but it's so true. James, hopefully you'll understand that in time. I don't think anyone can 100% prove there was a flood but I know nobody can 100% disprove it, either. I vote that there was.
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Jen, I didn't have a bad experience growing up; I think I had a pretty typical one. My father and mother were and are wonderful people, just a bit naive at times about certain things. But I notice that as they grow older and read more, they are shedding the simplistic faith they once knew. I attended Pentecostal Churches, did a stint in an outfit called The Vineyard. I do remember, though, in such places the comment being made about non-believers, agnostics, skeptics and sometimes even 'liberal' Christians: he or she must have had a bad experience. It seemed beyond their range to admit that some people simply reach different conclusions without having had 'bad experiences'. However, I recall clearly at age nine being told that my friend Nathan and his family were 'going to hell'. My parents were most genuinely disturbed by this; our families got along quite well. I concluded then that God must be incredibly unjust and mean, since the reason they were subject to this dreadful fate was the fact that they were Jewish. The very thought struck me as pure nastiness. So much for the brotherhood of man! Perhaps that counts as a 'bad experience': if so, I'm glad I had it, as it opened my eyes to the poverty of Christian (or, as I realized later, any) fundamentalism.
There's a lot, as you say, that's 'unbelievable' in the Bible. That's simply because it wasn't meant to be 'believed' with a post-enlightenment or modernist mind, but rather with a mythic mind. You could read up on this. If faith is all you need, well, good for you, but do understand its limits, and that when your faith tells you that others will suffer because they don't share your beliefs, well, you can have that if you like. But it is a matter of preference, not of any sort of truth. Proof can't merely be personal, at least not when you want to turn a subjective feeling of your own into a universal dogma about Salvation, eternity, the meaning of life, and so on. Typically, Christians rebel against the idea of post-modern relativism (with some justification, I might add!) yet here you are adopting it as a cornerstone of your belief…you are crying out to God, you sense his presence, you choose to believe, therefore it's true. And I'm sorry, but faith isn't all you need, unless you prefer to live in some self-constructed ivory tower all your life. Such faith becomes a projection of the individual…you will find the God who most fits your needs. Perhaps we all do. I don't claim, by the way, that God (of some sort) isn't real, only that modern-day Evangelical fundamentalism, all this business of clap-happy hand waving and revelling in being 'saved', is as theologically bad as it gets. And I think anyone who can do math half decently can demonstrate with 100% certainty that there never could have been a Global flood. There have been lots of localized ones, though; they happen all the time. But really…Polar Bears on the Ark? Whatever it is you hope I understand in time, I hope I don't.
Not going to get fully into the discussion, just wanted to throw a couple things out there that caught my eye from my areas of expertise.
Why base whether or not the flood actually happened from the works/teaching/books of Joseph Campbell, a mythology professor, instead of a scientist, like say Walter C. Pitman? Joseph Campbell certainly had a lot of interesting things to say, and he certainly was/is an expert in the field of mythology. The "great flood" in many senses of the word is mythic, but that hardly precludes the fact that it never occurred. If you're interested in reading more on the scientific evidence on the "great flood," check out Walter Pitman's book: http://books.google.ca/books?id=UeMiAAAACAAJ&dq=Walter+C+Pitman
While it's true a lot of Christians do have a hard time dealing with their religious beliefs with postmoderistic thought, that's just because many haven't bothered to think about it at all. Doesn't mean we all haven't, though. Check out this fantastic book by Stan Grenz: http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Postmodernism-Stanley-J-Grenz/dp/0802808646
Side note – I consider myself a Christian, and I don't believe in a global flood, nor do I believe in the literal 7-day creation theory.
Wow James! I find your comments very interesting and thought provoking – way too many for blogging! I don't mean that in a negative way, but more that the comments make for discussion not through a computer. I myself have shared your views (Polar Bears on the Ark!)and still search for meaning and answers to doubts, questions, inconsistencies. I also was told of friends who were going to hell and I had trouble with that – it sure didn't make sense and when you're young it's frightening. Anyway, not to go on at length, but we come to our own personal decisions in a relationship with Christ I find. For me He has helped me when I thought all help was gone – not naive but I know that all the positive thinking in the world couldn't have brought me to where I am now. I know Christians are often thought of as weak, vulnerable, needing a "crutch". Maybe for some that is even true, thus the trend for fundamentalists to be kinda crazy. (whose definition by the way?) In the end, I love the freedom we have to choose and share opinions.
Great stuff. How did you find the site, James? If you visit many of them (sites),you sure will create opportunity for lots of dialogue. Thanks
James…thanks for provoking some great discussion.
Tim, appreciate the links.
James, ultimately, you're deciding on a paradigm that you believe is true, and ultimately, I think you will either be correct or incorrect. Same goes for me. Obviously you've thought through this much over the years, but I wonder if there's an assumption that what you believe is 'better' than other beliefs (the very thing that left a sour taste in many people's mouths about Christianity). I sometimes think that the irony of much post modern thought is that in the name of tolerance and enlightenment we dismiss others who have dismissed others.
I preached through some of the issues raised in these comments…doubt (June 8 2008 http://connexuscommunity.com/connexuscommunitychurch/myweb.php?hls=10037&sermon_id=39) and on hell (August 10 and 17th http://connexuscommunity.com/connexuscommunitychurch/myweb.php?hls=10037). In those messages, I talked about much more than I can explain here in a blog comment or post.
Flood…to believe in creation out of nothing with no intelligent design is a huge proposition. It requires faith (it's a belief system) and it requires leaps in understanding beyond what is immediately comprehensible that are at least equivalent in logical trust to belief in a God who is behind that creation. And whatever your views about how the universe began, clearly we are dealing with things far beyond our comprehension or ability. So I don't find it that implausible to believe in a God who created a flood or the planet in six days.
I feel terribly about Christians who decide that X is going to hell. The fact that I don't like that there's a hell doesn't necessarily mean it's not real.
Much harm has been done by religion, but that doesn't stop the reality that much grace has come through Jesus…grace and truth. The more I can point to that grace and truth, the better I do.
James, you remind me of a friend I don't have anymore(and I still love him and miss his wit) because he and I were butting heads about everything you are saying. He was mad as heck that God had changed my thinking and liked to verbally dance around my heart to confuse me. I think what others dislike about "fundamentalists" is that they seem immoveable in their beliefs – kindof like -on solid rock I stand. my thoughts for you are that God loves each one of us, whether we believe in him or not, that unbelievers get blessed in this world and that Jesus did not come to condemn but to save. I hear a lot of anger in your comments and I think you are using that to keep God at bay. His pursuit of you is unalterable, such is his love for you. That is the amazing thing about him – that he chose to love you and will keep calling you until you hear him. Merry Christmas!
Amen Laurie! But I think non believers don't like it when we say God loves them!
) Too bad, we know He does! lol
Good comment, Laurie, I really liked it.
Well, I suppose I started this, so I may as well draw it to a close. I posted in the first place because my lovely young niece, 15, has been attending your church and while I have been visiting, she asked me if I would tell her what I thought. She has been through a great deal of trauma in her young life and is reaching out much of the time. When I read on your site that you believe the Bible to be the unerring word of God and that the only way to Salvation is through Jesus, I recalled what I was taught as a child…the very same things. And while we can digress in a thousand ways, I remain quite comfortable in the knowledge that those are deeply flawed ideas. The first is intellectually bankrupt; it relies on the mistake of thinking about mythology with a non-mythic mind and simply ignores massive stretches of history, science, linguistics, high criticism, etc., apparently because they don't fit. The second is a morally bankrupt idea. It would be a pretty pathetic God who would provide just one path…or condemn anyone to eternity absent of Salvation for believing something else. Yet your website certainly implies that you do believe these things.
Many of the posters sound inconsistent. You claim to believe certain propositions as absolute truths, yet sound at the same time as though they're really just choices of paradigms or even mere opinions. Well, which? I don't think you can consistently hold both views, at least not if you sincerely believe in the big-T "TRUTH" of what you say. Here's s sample of that: "I feel terribly about Christians who decide that X is going to hell. The fact that I don't like that there's a hell doesn't necessarily mean it's not real." Well, is this consistent with the statement about Salvation on your website? Does the statement on your site not mean that if "X" is Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, Jew, etc., then they can't achieve Salvation, and therefore wind up in 'Hell'? BTW, the fact that you believe there's a Hell doesn't mean there is one, either.
I remember a Pastor at the Vineyard making this claim once: "…some people believe that God looks into the heart of the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim and the Jew and He sees a longing to know Him, and that He takes them into His Kingdom…but that's not the way it is, folks, the lost are truly lost!" Well, isn't that what your Church believes?
I know that people in your Church do a great deal of good work in your community, and good on you. But a belief like that one is toxic, silly bigotry. What fundamentalists can't understand so often is how they sound to outsiders. And how do the remarks of that Pastor sound? As absolute rubbish.
Some of you also claim I'm an unbeliever. On what grounds? Because I don't find your version of Christianity reasonable?
If you wonder anything about me (not that you should, but…) I am a member of a Unitarian congregation and have a PhD. in history. I've haven't taught much, as I got into editing instead. What advice did I give my niece? None. I took her shopping. She's a bright young woman, so I bought her Hesse's Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, a couple of books by Thomas Merton, Thich Nat Hahn, the Dalai Lama and Ghandi. And if the poster Laurie thinks she hears a lot of anger in my comments, she's hearing things. You must be a fairly remarkable psychologist if you can tell so much about me! Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, safe driving. That's all!
LOL…ok, so we're good? You believe what you believe and we'll believe what we believe. We don't think any less of you at all. Heck, I love you even more!
) Speaking for myself, my belief is as simple as I believe the bible is God's word. And I believe every single word of it. I only have an English version, not Greek, Hebrew or any other language I don't understand. I'm not sure about what those say and how things may or may not have been translated.
Yup, 'we' may be wrong…maybe we all just die and rot in the ground. No more to it than that. Just because you have a PHD and I don't doesn't make your decision in not following Jesus necessarily a better/right one. Having faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior doesn't make me a fool. (not that you outright called me one)
I'm willing to take the chance. I have absolutely nothing to lose if you're right and I'm wrong. But if…just if I'm right and you're the one that's wrong?
Ok enough on this topic…agreed now that I got myself one more blog in.
)
There was an aspect of fun to this conversation and I truly do thank you for your intelligent (albeit wrong) opinion. LOL…kidding! (sorta…)
Have yourself a very Merry Christmas, too.
Jen, I love your last comments. I have been reading this blog all week and wondered where James was coming from. James, awesome insight and I totally respect your views. I am, like you, an educated man. In my world 1+1=2.
Let's imagine for a moment that the truth is that there is no God and that evolution is also the wrong thing and humanity has it all wrong because truly, we can't definitively prove either (although there is great historical and archeological proof spinning to both camps). If I, as a Christian, believe what I believe and in the end I am wrong then what kind of life did I live?
Now let's pretend for a moment that both are true! I know that it is not possible for both to be true but you know where I am going with this as I realize that you are an educated man. So both are true, which one would you choose?
You see if Christians are wrong then we have lived lives based on principals that frankly could revolutionize the world over and make it a much better place. On the other hand what if we are right? What is your gamble?
Along time ago I discovered that 1+1 doesn't necessarily equal 2. In science and research type studies we very often look at the fact that one of the 1's just might be wrong and it might not be 1 after all. To discover anything new one must let go of what we already assume to be correct and find the truth in the substance of the matter. For me this was one of the easiest equations to solve in my entire life.
Peace to you James and Peace to everyone at this special time of year.
Well, James, I am really happy that your neice feels she can talk to you and I commend you for opening doors in her thinking through writings of others. (I fully realize you couldn't care less about my reaction.) In any case, our journey through this world has everything to do with family and community and what is anything without communication? I am sorry to have attached emotion where you feel it was unwarranted. I still wish you a Merry Christmas . I would have loved to have met you at a Christmas party and engaged in a spirited (pardon the pun) conversation!
Hello James,
Thanks for your heart and your honesty. I came from a family that rather intellectualized faith and I would say pitied those with a faith we thought was simplistic. In fact I grew up from the time I was a young child hearing that when you were dead that was it – there was nothing more – no heaven, no nothing, ball game over. Then, Jesus entered into my life with power and glory and now I'm just in love with him and all Jesus has done and is doing in my life and the lives of others. Not to say my life has been easy. No way. It is very hard, but I'm no longer walking alone. I have Jesus and all of these great friends from Connexus walking with me. I am so grateful! I now have a simplistic faith – all I really need to know is that Jesus loves me (as he loves everyone) and that all I need to do is trust him and get out there and love and serve others. And, now I get to do life with Jesus. Wow! I'm still in awe! The world can be a hard and confusing place and somehow I still found Jesus. (Well, he found me actually). This might all sound corny, but it is true.
God bless you in your journey, and thanks for sharing, James!
James…Thanks for coming back into the discussion. I'm just going to be really honest here about something I worry about in your line of thinking that I'll share with you.
I wonder if in the name of tolerance, you are in danger of becoming a different version of what you left.
I find your word choice interesting. "Toxic", "rubbish""intellectually bankrupt" and "pathetic" are not words people normally use when they are genuinely open to other ideas. Have you traded one form of fundamentalism for another? One system that you perceived as closed for another form of closed thinking?
If you haven't, that's fine. But if you have, I wonder if that's where you want to be. Sometimes post-modern pluralism fools us into a sense of thinking we're open when we're not.
I do come from a place where I think truth is objective, not subjective. Joseph Campbell is right or Jesus is right, but I fail to understand how they can both be right).
But I also believe in a God whom scripture and experience say married truth with love in a more than personal way. Ultimately truth is most compelling when it is married to love, as many Christians believe it is in Jesus.
My hope is that you remain open enough to see Jesus in a fresh light. That somehow, love will meet you in a way it didn't meet you in your earlier experience.
Thanks for being open about your niece. I hope to meet her one day (and you).
My niece asked me to make one last response. I’m reluctant to; your site, your Church, your last word. However…
The crux of the matter shows in a number of ways. I referred to myself as a member of a Unitarian Congregation and got called an unbeliever. That’s telling. People keep hoping I’ll see things their way; implicitly, they must believe it’s the right way. Well, of course they do…you mentioned to me earlier that I must believe I’m right, and that my way is ‘better.’ Of course I do, or I wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t believe what you believe if you didn’t.
Next up: am I am fundamentalist? Well, I get the point of that. I was raised to be one, but having stepped out of that box, I can see the differences between what I believe now and what I was taught. Fundamentalism of any religious sort depends on three claims. One, God has spoken to my people, not to your people. Two, my people are therefore saved (in some fashion) and yours are not. Three, you’d better get jiggy with my version of God, or you won’t be rewarded in the afterlife, you’ll be punished. Why do I call this toxic? To start with, I think it’s outright blasphemy. The reward/punish/tribal God should have been left behind; it is a small, parochial little man masquerading as creation. It’s always been wrong, even though it’s always been powerful. And, it’s always had its opponents, like the early Church of the East, descendants of the Nazarenes, who appeared to believe none of this, or like Origen, who was punished for questioning it. The Church of the East (Nestorians?) had some interesting connections with Buddhists (one of those faiths I was taught to be a ‘deception of the enemy’) and so created the image of the Lotus Cross…because they recognized that the Lotus and the Cross essentially mean the same thing. In other words, they saw beyond the superficial differences to the real mythic, metaphoric heart of the matter…for in metaphor, in song, in poetry, in myth is where what I suspect we are really about lies. Hence, both Campbell and Jesus are both right; Jesus is the way, the truth and the life because he speaks to the spark of divinity in all of us and tells us that the Kingdom of God is within us, not because he’s the only path to salvation, whatever that may really be. As a side note, name a divine figure born of a virgin, whose father was a carpenter, who was immaculately conceived, who performed miracles, was killed and then resurrected. Jesus? Of course. But also Krishna and Mithra…whose birthday was celebrated on Dec. 25! Of course, you can look this all up for yourself. I once saw a list of something like 120 similarities between the Gospel narrative of Jesus’ life and the life of Krishna. As a young man, I foolishly brought this to the attention of my Pastor; he was condescendingly appreciative, but carefully explained how cleverly Satan could deceive us. I do use strong language, but I am also careful with my words; this moment was when I discovered the value of a word like ‘rubbish’. In fact, I now believe that the pastor was simply scared of the information. A world view carefully hewed, which told him that he was on the spiritual winning side, was being challenged. (It was also a world view that conveniently justified his typical early '60s views…anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, and the belief that his wife should submit to his will.)
And that’s the sad part…it wasn’t. It was being enlarged by an idea like this, I think. Enlarged by being made grander than a claim to spiritual ‘betterness’, enlarged by embracing otherness, not running from it, enlarged by being represented as the most profound act of divine imagination.
I can’t consider myself a Fundamentalist simply because I am strong about a belief; it’s also not why I consider many religious people to be fundamentalists. (N.B., I don't know if you are or not, but many of your Church's stated beliefs suggest the possibility.) It’s for the three reasons outlined above. And as to toxicity…well, list the crimes committed by the religious over the years. Most of them are in fact politically motivated, or have abused the religious feeling by warping it into something else. But when people in Africa die of AIDS at an increased rate because Christian fundamentalists close to the Bush administration would not allow the distribution of condoms, or when others fly airplanes into buildings, I see pretty toxic behaviour. It’s also toxic because it’s about driving people apart rather than bringing them together. It’s toxic because it claims a tribal monopoly on TRUTH, and in a distant but palpable way, de-humanizes out brothers and sisters. You might want to ask a European Jew about that, or a Christian living in parts of India.
Many of the people who have made the effort to respond to me refer to their simple faith. They have emotions that tell them it’s true, needs being met that tell them it’s true, and that’s all, at a personal level, quite meaningful. I have, myself, a pretty simple faith…God is love and everything else is a detail…and I am certain that many of you will take this last remark as insulting. So be it. There is a difference between a simple faith and a simplistic one. Read into that what you wish.
I really am done now; my niece has been reading these postings, and I would sooner she read other things!