The downward spiral

First of all, sorry for pulling a Tim.

Second, I think these sorts of conversations are good not just for ironing out theological wrinkles, but for engaging Christ and His Word and for sharpening each other--taking a look at the things that don't sit well with us, and wrestling with them until they either sit well or we just accept what doesn't sit well because Jesus said so.

With that said, here are some of the things that don't sit so well with me in regards to what we've been saying, and I think that the emergent church and Brian McLaren offer some interesting ideas when it comes to them.

The first is the most controversial and life-impacting for me. I have trouble with the verses (apologies for my laziness and lack of due diligence here) that discuss the will of the Father that all men should be saved. Does God's will not get accomplished unless all men are saved? Can not God redeem everything? Is Christ's work on the Cross powerful enough to save everyone? I believe the answer to the last two questions is yes. So the question for me then becomes how to interact with the work of Christ on the Cross to receive said redemption.

The church in the last 100 years has worked out a very well oiled, polish-me-often version of what Christianity is. We can shrink the Gospel down to fit on a tract that looks real neat and makes a lot of sense. The only problem with this is, what of the years before that? What of our pre-tract brothers and sisters who didn't engage with Christ in the same manner as we do now? With a flatter world today, we can engage in these types of conversations virtually instantaneously and open up the Bible and see what it says, perform a search in BibleGateway and no big deal. This has no always been the case.

When reading the Ramakrishna quote I immediately thought of our family not too many centuries back who were told that heaven could be bought, that relics were of extreme importance, etc. Is there really an entire era of Christendom where there are potentially no persons on the planet who managed to accept Christ in the way that we've come to believe is the "only way" and they are judged accordingly?

In software engineering, there are several different lifecycles for developing an application or program. One of those is the waterfall process, which essentially starts out at the beginning, and continually makes steps toward the final goal, very chronological, and you keep building on and on to the work accomplished until you've reached the final goal. The spiral process combines multiple waterfall processes in a long string of iterations until the final goal is reached, continually revising, making updates, adding new functionality. The main difference is with the first you essentially keep barreling forward with what you have, and the second is a little more like poetry in motion, enabling you to fix mistakes and figure new things out.

It seems as though Christians especially seem to view Christianity through the lens of a Waterfall, that we've been continually working toward one final theological goal and that we've finally figured it out. This is the secret. Here's how you MUST engage the Savior. For the most part, I think we've made great strides in understanding the gospels and who Christ is. What I don't like is the formulaicness (I believe if you can talk, you can coin words. Deal with it) of it all. I think a lot of the reason Jesus told parables was not to sum up the gospel in 4 nice little sentences so that people would know it and understand it, but to confuse the hell out of people (including his disciples) so that they were forced to engage the person of Jesus himself, not meet some list of criteria.

I, in recent history, have appreciated a spiral approach to the gospel, which, incidentally, McLaren (though conscious of it or not) used in one of his diagrams to show how the emergent church will move forward. Imagine a circle. On the left hand side is the word NORMALCY. The status quo, the way things are. As you move clockwise around the circle, the next word is DISCONTENT. Whenever things reach a stasis, inevitably something will come along that causes us to challenge that normalcy. We become discontent. This will lead to a CONVERSATION, where we find that people around us are not happy about the way things are either. This leads to the DECONSTRUCTION of the way things were previously understood (or misunderstood), taking us back to the essentials (and sometimes challenging the present essentials as in the case of a Marin Luther-esque reformer). Wrestling through these ideas and concepts lead to an AWAKENING or fresh perspective about how things can be viewed. This will lead to a BREAKTHROUGH in how life is lived, in how people are engaged, and sometimes in how Christ is engaged (thankfully). Eventually this new way of thinking or understanding becomes the status quo, the new norm, and we begin the entire cycle again at NORMALCY. Just think of the circle as not a circle, but instead a spiral.

I've always been amazed at how the church continually course-corrects itself. Almost any other institution will implode when opposing radical factions attempt control. The church has a way of getting a little too far off course and then coming back to the middle, although sometimes this may take a couple centuries for it to happen. I think we don't have to be scared of the emergent church, but to look honestly at some of the discontents that people have, the conversations that follow, and be willing to engage people where they are, with their full on doubts and concerns about God the Father. If nothing else, they are providing fresh perspectives and creative ideas to look at and evaluate, and course correct if necessary.

So back to my main point, are there centuries during this course correcting phase of the spiral where people who don't "think rightly about God" or "worship the image of God" (and here take image to mean not a statue or stained glass window as much as their perception of who God is) are eternally condemned for truly giving it their all, for trying their best. Is that really the God we serve? And what of the ones who say "Lord, Lord" and God replies, I never knew you, but God recognizes the ones who took compassion on the least of these? Sounds like it could potentially be more about social justice and being a good person than what I was raised to think (and here I'm not specifically referring to salvation as much as what engaging the person of Jesus really looks like, less about knowing an answer or formula and more about doing instead...)

We're gonna have to save some other stuff for another day, but with all that said, I believe that Jesus had to die on the cross as the Substitute for our sin. He taught a better way to live, without focusing on self, so that you can make the world a better place for it's and His sake, and also for your own. It is only through this work on the Cross that any man can come to know the Father. But like I said, these are the things that don't sit well with me. This is my way of engaging who Jesus is and who He said He is.

I've always liked how Isaac says, "All I know of me toward all I know of You," and wished it was a Bible verse. But it's not, and so I have to deal with the ramifications of what that means for my own personal doctrine. Tolstoy brings up a good point, though...(which hopefully makes sense without the preceding doctrinal support to back up this statement, from his book "The Kingdom of God is Within You")

"The progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus, of the woman that was a sinner, of the robber on the cross, is a greater state of blessedness, according to this doctrine, than the stationary righteousness of the Pharisee. The lost sheep is dearer than ninety-nine that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of money that was lost and found again, are dearer, more precious to God than those which have not been lost.

Every condition, according to this doctrine, is only a particular step in the attainment of inward and outward perfection, and therefore has no significance of itself. Blessedness consists in progress toward perfection; to stand still in any condition whatever means the cessation of this blessedness."

Regardless of the reality of these matters, I want to be someone who is making continual progress toward the person of Jesus, not remaining stagnant or standing still.