Right Belief...or....Believing in the right way?

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. 
-Letters to a Young Poet...Rainer Maria Rilke 

I think questions birth the kind of mind that can sustain and live in Faith. An unquestioning mind is an unhealthy mind in my opinion. It prevents learning. Light is needed and light travels fast and rarely sits still. Capturing light is an art that requires asking questions in all spheres of life. Light is also fire..and many people are have a lot of trepidation about the destructive nature or possibilities of fire. But they who learn to rightly fear fire...can learn to be illuminated...or illuminate. Fear is often at the root of control, tradition and religion. Fear can breathe wonder or cripple the soul. So whenever I see fear...I try to examine it if is the fear of God, which is a holy mystery...or the ignorance of the intelligence that breeds subservience, privilege and dominance. Humility isn’t afraid. Love can be killed but not conquered. So, in our journey together...let's let go of the fear of questions...they are allowed and wanted.

I’ve been mulling over some recent conversations I've had with some good people and have been trying to articulate a sticking point to me that is problematic in some of what were wrestling through. After re-reading a section from Peter Rollin’s book “How (Not) to Speak of God”...I was able to name what I was concerned about. 

It has to do with the issue of “Right belief vs Believing in the right way” 

It reminds me of a conversation the early American pilgrims heard from their pastor before they boarded the Mayflower to head off into the great unknown, which I read in Brian McLaren's new book:

“I charge you before God and His blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw. Whatever part of His will our God has revealed to Calvin, they (Lutherans) will rather die than embrace it; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a mystery much to be lamented. For thought they were precious shinning lights in their time, yet, God has not revealed his whole will to them. And were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light, as they had received.” 
-Pastor, John Robinson

As I reflect on that, I couldn’t help but think that is so true of this spiritual journey we are on together. Below is the main chunk of Rollins statement about “Right belief vs Believing in a right way”. I am not sure if everyone is going to be able to understand the nuance he is getting at...but Im still going to put this stuff out there. Part of me that is concerned with moving people too fast in reorienting theological conversation. I think the quote above by Rainer Maria Rilke best expresses the manner in which I think is most healthy to move through this season. It's good to be hungry...but don't gorge yourself so much that you end up hemorrhaging your soul. 

In contrast to this, I argue here that those involved in the emerging conversation exhibit the conceptual tools that are necessary to move beyond these modernistic and problematic positions. Here I picture the emerging community as a significant part of a wider religious movement which rejects both absolutism and relativism as idolatrous positions which hide their human origins in the modern myth of pure reason. Instead of following the Greek-influenced idea of orthodoxy as right belief, these chapters show that the emerging community is helping us to rediscover the more Hebraic and mystical notion of the orthodox Christian as one who believes in the right way--that is believing in a loving, sacrificial and Christlike manner. The reversal from 'right belief' to 'believing in the right way' is in no way a move to some binary opposite of the first (for the opposite of right belief is simply wrong belief); rather, it is a way transcending the binary altogether. Thus orthodoxy is no longer (mis)understood as the opposite of heresy but rather is understood as a term that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing thing about the world. 
-Peter Rollins "How (Not) To Speak of God"

I am committed to finding solid ground to stand on or walk upon, scripturally...but, sometimes answers don't satisfy such minds...and questions are all we are left with. Emerging involves gaining new wings to lift the transformed life...there is that which is the same and that which is new. Some is simply a reforming of the old or a reconfiguring it to enable life at a new stage. How to live this stuff out in this emerging new season of our life is going to be where the rubber meets the road. I think love is the only “way” through this transition season...but that doesn’t mean it won’t be rough in spots. But if the manner in which we all travel gets us crucified...so be it...because God didnt tell us to understand all things....He has commanded us to love. It’s both the liberator...and the clarifier...in this emerging life.

Below are some chucks of writing that I think many of you will resonate with...drink deeply, savor and be ok with the moment. 


Paradigms and dogma can be defended and enforced with guns and prisons, bullets and bonfires, threats and humiliation, fatwas and excommunications. But paradigms and dogma remain profoundly vulnerable when anomalies are present. They can be undone by something as simple as a question.
-Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity

For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. 
-Albert Einstein, from an address presented at The Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in 1940 

O LORD, … It’s hard to admit, even to myself, that there are no easy answers to life’s hard questions. Help me to see things as you see them. In wrestling with you, my imperfect faith is made stronger. In wrestling with you, I discover a deeper truth: that my questions usher me right back to you.
-Missy Buchanan “Talking with God in Old Age: Meditations and Psalms”

Instead, Jesus asks questions, good questions, unnerving questions, re-aligning questions, transforming questions.  He leads us into liminal, and therefore transformative space, much more than taking us into any moral high ground of immediate certitude or ego superiority. He subverts up front the cultural or theological assumptions that we are eventually going to have to face anyway.  He leaves us betwixt and between, where God and grace can get at us, and where we are not at all in control. It probably does not work for a large majority of people, at least in my experience.  They merely ignore you or fight you.  Maybe this is why we have paid so little attention to Jesus questions and emphasized instead his seeming answers. They give us more a feeling of success and closure. We made of Jesus a systematic theologian, who walked around teaching dogmas, instead of a peripatetic and engaging transformer of the soul.  Easy answers instead of hard questions allow us to try to change others instead of allowing God to change us.  At least, I know that is true in my life.
-Richard Rohr

There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation.
-James Nathan Miller

“There are four questions of value in life... What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.” 
-Don Juan deMarco 

“Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.”

A shout out to "The Weary Pilgrim" where I lifted some of these quotes.

Sin....

One can look at sin from two sides...legal and relational.

The legal side is descriptive. It's clear and concise...injunctions are laid out, lists are made, prohibitions are clear and these are found easily within the pages of scripture in both old and new testaments. The Law and the prophets lay out sin and its consequences. From this clarity we see justice, wholeness, purity, perfection, godliness, the ideal, holiness, eternality, glory, light. From these passages we see the image of life as it should be.

The relational side is the spirit behind the law. We see that the clarity of showing sin among us, between us and in us...it has to do with relationships. Sin separates people relationally. There is a side of this that envelops the ideas presented in the NT that have to do with love. Connecting sin to love in phrases like... "That isn't very loving" becomes a relational compass that awakens one to the reality that what they are doing, even if it isn't clearly described somewhere is hurting someone or something and that means you are not loving them. That becomes sin. If one isn't truly walking in faith...for them, and that is the language the bible uses...is sin.

These two sides are one.

Learning to live in love and for the glory of God is a process. It requires learning about the holiness of God and coming to the realization of ones own fallenness. Which brings despair and hope. It involves one despairing of self and seeking the hope given by God, through God and is God...in Jesus Christ. We turn from self and embrace the Son; who becomes for us, salvation, healing, restoration, glorification, life and light. We are born in and through this and from this we grow. And a new life lived in and by the Spirit is entered and we learn to follow the nuances for this relational life.

Sin is present...in both the legal truth and the relational tensions.

Sin crucified the son of God...it's a serious issue. One we must wrestle with, understand, flee, confess, fear, reject and seek freedom from. But it's also a dissonance that should lead us to tune the dial until the music of heaven comes in clearer. An ugly sound within and without...is evidence of a out of tune life. Learning the notes of living...involves this issue of sin. But playing the music is the goal.

Some people who are born legalists or were raised with just light about the demands of holiness and not the remedy and beauty of it....always want to define things. Because they are consumed with being "right" and "good" and love is usually connected to these words to them.

Defining sin is often the evidence of a heart that is still maybe only seeing sin from one side of the coin.

Without the relational side...the legal side is exactingly objective.
With only the relational side of the coin...sin is merely subjective.

We need both sides....but the life of the Spirit...goes beyond these words...as one grows in love.

Soon the definitions becomes irrelevant because the life within, the knowledge of our Father, and the voice of the Holy Spirit and the renewed and reclaimed heart and mind...live in tempo, even with the presence of sin. Sin becomes the fascination and preoccupation of those who have only learned a life of turning from things...instead of the life of turning towards something...or better, Someone.

Turning from sin...is often the tale tell sign of the preoccupation of a Christ-less religion.

Law is a picture of a child reaching out his or her hand...and their Father not reaching back.
Grace is a Father reaching out His hand...and embracing the child's hand.

What picture one sees....will determine the quality and enjoyment of the faith journey.


"Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action." -Cyril Connolly

"It takes the same grace of God to save the most respectable person in the world as (it does) the most lawless person in the world" (Martin Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression).

"Sin is whatever obscures the soul."
Gide, Andre

"He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil."

"God has reserved the time of full cleansing of his people, for another world. Christ could cleanse His people presently from all their spots if He desired. Surely, this is the case. But because they are to live in this world for now, Christ sees that it would not benefit them to be wholly cleansed from sin now and live in a sinful world. This world is not worthy of the saints. Even if you consider them with all their infirmities, still, the world is not worthy of them. Yet it is not for the world to have the saints live here without their spots. If the world is offended that Christians have their spots. then let them be offended. Let Christians be stumbling-blocks to them. It is without a doubt, that many saints are stumbling blocks to many souls. The world, they rejoice when they see the sins that are in the saints" -Jeremiah Burroughs Spots of the Godly and of the Wicked

"What then is it in the soul which causes it to take more pleasure in things which it loves when they are found and recovered than if it has always had them" (Augustine Confessions Bk. VIII Pg. 137)

Love, and do what you like.
Saint Augustine

How Pietism deceives Christians...

This is probably one of the best articles I have ever read.

Burn in Hell...forever?

Hell has been a hot (no pun intended) topic in my recent conversations...specifically the doctrine of eternal torment. It's been good discussion and one that I have visited often coming from a Seventh Day Adventist upbringing. The SDA believe and teach the idea of eternal punishment and destruction vs eternal torture. A distinction that for many people is one that sounds heretical. I am not convinced either way completely...I do wrestle with the fact that eternal torture seems to be under supported in the whole counsel of the Word. It seems to contradict common sense logic about justice and is a doctrine that often repels people away from God instead of drawing them towards Him.

In my conversation the person said: "Eternal Torment was never taught in the old testament, The apostles never talked about it and the few scriptures where Jesus implies it come with no clarity; I think if a doctrine of this magnitude and horrific consequence were true, God would make it abundantly clear to all, and it would be a continuing theme throughout the Bible. On the other hand, eternal destruction is clearly taught and mentioned by all. The only exception is in Revelation where it appears to say Hell will be no more."

Good challenge...worthy of some good biblical study...I thought.

But then my youngest son, Micah came home distraught and angry Wednesday night from kids church. His first words to me were: "I'm pissed off, why would God kill Lots wife, just for looking back!" He was really upset. He told me that he wasn't going to believe in a God that kills people, that destroys huge cities. His little heart was broken and he was angry too. Every answer he recounted from the teachers of his class...he refuted and cast off with a disdain and frustration that they were not good enough answers according to him...which wasn't really the issue, our kids church is awesome and they were simply presenting a bible story; but Micah can grab a part of any talk and magnify it in his little mind. I tried to reason with him and explain the issues of choice, free will and all the other doctrinal anesthesia we use to try to soften a issue that we really can't explain either. I tried to use the concept of a parent telling a kid to stay out of the street for fear of getting hit or a command to come out of a burning building and if they didn't obey is the parent at fault? He responded: "Well Mom would come in an drag me out of the burning building!" I sat there stunned at his apologetic prowess that was really coming from a revelation of a side of God that frightened him and shook his understanding of a loving God.
We ended after talking some more with prayer. I told him I was proud that he cared about those people, cities and that we should love people. He calmed and I prayed with him about the issue. Needless to say, the hell, judgment and punishment doctrines are critical to understand because how we present our Father...can make some people stumble and even Jesus warned about the danger of making little ones stumble. It's a tough concept to wrestle with, one that trite answer dont really soothe the wounded heart.

I still am wrestling with the talk....the look and sound in Micah's face and voice was haunting.