Today, I have been working for my wife, as every good husband should do. 🙂 Slowly, I have been creating a masterpiece of patterned California gold slate and marble on the kitchen floor. It is fit for a Greek goddess. Only my wife by her union with Christ lives a more virtuous life than the ancient pagans. She deserves my loving attention. And knowing how long this floor has been torn up, it is about time I do some manual labor.
But to help me pass the time during this messy job, I decided to plug in to John’s Gospel. I listened to the whole book on CD and then again up to John 6 where I will be preaching tomorrow.
Let me share with you something tonight in my joy. John’s Gospel is like a freight train smashing through America’s atheism, agnosticism, and postmodernism. In the midst of our pluralism that engulfs western thought, what are we to do with the message of this book?
Verily, the book explodes through all the Christianities of America, rising above the rancor and divisions, dominating with one central theme: Jesus Christ is God. He is absolutely unique in comparison to men on this earth. He is infinitely superior to his creatures in every way. He is supreme over all past prophets, human mediators, and present elders. He is the Son of God. The Son of Man.
Read the book this week. Read it again next week. And for whatever that might stand between you and the superhero of this book, get rid of it. If need be, sell your house, quit your job, change your career, shelf your hobby, lay aside other demands, ignore your friends, lovingly confront your family, until you have things right in your heart with the main Person of John’s Gospel. Will you believe Him? Will you hang the entirety of your life on the living gospel words of the Savior in this book?
Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. Look for Him. Blessed are those that hunger and thirst.
Jesus in Idaho Falls 
The commitment pattern doesn’t work on former missionaries, you know. Although suddenly, I feel like reading John’s gospel…
John’s Gospel is like a freight train smashing through America’s atheism, agnosticism, and postmodernism.
::singing:: one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong…can you tell me which one is not like the others, before i finish my song ::/singing::
Clever, Tate.
No, really. Courtesy of Goggle.
define: atheism
– the doctrine or belief that there is no God
– a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
define: agnosticism
– a religious orientation of doubt; a denial of ultimate knowledge of the existence of God; “agnosticism holds that you can neither prove nor disprove God’s existence”
– the disbelief in any claims of ultimate knowledge
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
define: postmodernism
– genre of art and literature and especially architecture in reaction against principles and practices of established modernism
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
(define: modernism
– genre of art and literature that makes a self-conscious break with previous genres
– modernity: the quality of being current or of the present; “a shopping mall would instill a spirit of modernity into this village”
– practices typical of contemporary life or thought
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)
Wait, no mention of God in that last one.
This must be what you meant… I still want to know what you detest so about the emerging conversation… Especially how it relates to doubt and godlessness, as you apparently implied in your previous statement.
Postmodern worldview
The emerging church movement arose as a response to the perceived influence of modernism in Western Christianity. As sociologists noted a cultural shift to postmodern ways of perceiving reality in the late 20th century some Christians began to advocate changes within the church that corresponded to these cultural shifts. These critics began to assert that the church was culturally bound to modernism and began to challenge the church regarding its use of institutional structures, systematic theology, propositional teaching methods, buildings, attractional understanding of mission (trying to bring people into the church rather than improving their world), official clergy, worship lacking in premodern practices such as incense and candles that evoke sacred feelings, and the role conservatives often played in Evangelical politics. Postmodern epistemology is fundamental to emerging church movement beliefs and emergents have labored to construct a postfoundational theology which rejects certainty in favor of a view they describe as more humble in which emergents see their voice as just one among many legitimate, non-dogmatic religious voices that engage in peer-to-peer dialog or “conversation.” Emergents believe it is necessary to deconstruct and reconstruct (redefine and reshape) Christianity in order to engage post-Christian Western culture in this two-way conversation rather than proclaim a message that is alien to and unpopular with that culture.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_church#Postmodern_worldview
But then to play with labels some more… you are anti-ecumenical afterall.
The last statement . . .
Now you have me smiling again.
I seek and believe with all my heart in liberal, ecumenical, catholic Christianity.
But some, who say the very same thing, completely reject all the heart longing I pack behind those adjectives in pursuit of Christ.
In fact, they steal the good adjectives with beautiful meaning right away from me.
Tate, the emergent movement is reacting to some things that are distasteful to me. I assure you. But I can’t abandon propositional truth . . . and that God speaks in such fashion.
btw, enjoying the conversation
How do you perceive they are abandoning propositional, Biblical, truth?
Tate, some emergent leaders seem to blend evangelical and Roman Catholic teachings.
Here is the central “straight and narrow” heart issue for me:
To God’s glory alone, a sinful man’s eternal salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
For the Christian emergent leaders that you have read and admire, would they say that this is a straight and narrow heart issue?
I know that the Bible talks about a straight and narrow way. Can this be openly and candidly preached in emergent congregations?
In a word, YES. That’s the whole point!
If you do not think so, then I do not think you have yet experienced enough of the conversation.
Tate, I am limited in my conversation.
The last book I read was the Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne.
http://books.google.com/books?id=70hRLTVBNnAC&pg=PP1&dq=inauthor:Shane+inauthor:Claiborne&sig=1DuVEvWH-NPNW7zlGRfiil9X2S0
I just didn’t pick up on the fact that he desired to make my line #3 an important doctrinal statement. And Jim Wallis surely has not made that clear at all in any of the books that I have read by him. He shows no hungering to make that a systematic theology statement.
I admit. I do need to read more. And, Tate, if you are in conversations where line #3 is central to everything and beating with passion, I deeply thank the Lord God and rejoice with you, my friend.
The ultimate conversation is not about us. It is all about God’s glory.
I work at music/video/book store here in town, and receive a generous employee discount…Consequently my book stack is enormous; and working 60-80 hours a week unfortunatley I have little time to read. But in the comming months I hope to have devoured this stack relating to the conversation (in no particular order):
– This Beautiful Mess: Preaching the Prescence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley (pastor of Imago Dei in Portland)
– A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelica, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, anabaptist/anglican, methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian by Brian McLaren (pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Maryland, and a founding father of the movement)
– The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out by Mark Driscoll (pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle)
– The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborne (of The Simple Way in Philadelphia)
– An Emergent Manifesto of Hope edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, with contributions by McLaren, Kimball, Morgenthaler, Samson, Keel, Taylor, Semanovic, Sloan and Bolger
– A Search for What Makes Sense: Finding Faith by Brian McLaren
– Becoming Conversantwith the Emerging Church: Understanding the Movement and Its Implications by D.A. Carson (one of the few books I could find that is written by someone outside the movement, trying to get all perspectives…I think this one would interest you most, Todd)
– An Ecclesiological Assessment of the Emerging Church Movement by John S. Hammett (Professor of Theology, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary – I believe this was his thesis, and it’s available online as a .pdf, another of the few pro/con type pieces out there.)
And I’ve mentioned Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller, I have the rest of his books to read someday too…
I also have a couple that I don’t believe are specifically “emergent” but have been discussed in such circles…
– The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth by Ted Dekker
– My 30 Days Under the Overpass: Not Your Ordinary Devotional by Mike Yankoski
– Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock by Andrew Beaujon
my “books I’d like to get/read” list is equally as long… 🙂
I doubt many of them would come right up and make a “systematic theological statement.” Their purpose is to bring people of all shapes, sizes, colors, variety… into the fold. Once there, teaching can begin and hopefully #3 taught, learned, and accepted by all… I perceive the “mission” of those within the conversation to be one in which they seek to bring people on the outside looking in… actually in, and by whatever means necessary. They seek to preach to the unchurched, the anti-churched, and the average joes who just haven’t found their place in this world. The overall theme goes back to one of the biggest commandments ~ love thy neighbor.
I can see how someone of your background would have a difficult time understanding and internalizing this movement (but I’ll give you crap for it anyway) – I just encourage you to not write it off completely as another “fluff” or distraction… because it’s far from it. And I certainly encourage you to “do as I’m doing” and if you are genuinely intrigued, do the work and learn about it.
I noticed my scribal error #9. I create more wrong textual variants in a day than most people dream about in a lifetime. 🙂
I just read Ted Dekker’s fictional Showdown. Riveting.
But I kept buttin’ heads with him on his projections of God’s sovereignty. It doesn’t seem to match very closely with what I am studying in Isaiah. Yet I am skiddish because of my reactions to open theism.
Hey, the D.A. Carson book does sound good.