Was Christ's Model to Abstain from the Political Realm?

Ya ever start a book with the expectation that it's going to support everything you already think only to have it really screw with your head? I'm having that experience with Jim Wallis' God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and Why the Left Doesn't Get It. Everyone who knows me knows I'm ridiculously moderate politically. That much I knew. What this book is showing me by way of contrast is that I have a definitive Anabaptist streak that I wasn't aware of. I'm trying to identify the extent of that streak and evaluate its legitimacy in light of Christ's example.

According to Wallis, both conservative and liberal Christians need to seriously rethink the way their faith informs their political beliefs. He contends that conservatives' political values aren't consistent with Scripture. While he thinks they're more or less on track with abortion, gay marriage, and a couple other issues, he thinks they fail to interject biblical principles into the vast array of other political issues, includes poverty relief, freedom from oppression, health care, war, stewardship of the earth, etc. As for the liberals, he thinks they've become far too secular in their presentation. It's as though they're afraid to talk about God or religious beliefs lest they offend their base constituency. He says that religion should be seen as a powerful good that produces compassion, love, justice, peace, and so forth. So rather than refusing to talk about God in regards to the political sphere, liberals should constantly appeal to them and point out that biblical principles are in many ways deeply compatible with the best of liberal politics. He points to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s role within the Civil Rights movement and how the Women’s Suffrage movement came directly out of the Second Great Awakening as examples for how religious beliefs should positively influence political beliefs and societal structures. In fact, he contends that nearly all the best social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries had explicitly religious origins. Therefore, he suggests that the Right needs to seriously rethink how their faith informs their political beliefs and the Left needs to re-frame the issues such that religious beliefs and political good are not seen in opposition to one another. I'm sure he'll nuance and explicate this position further throughout the book, but that's what I've picked up so far.

I must confess that Wallis' thesis sounds good. In its simplest form, he’s calling Christians to 1) have consistent political beliefs based upon biblical principles, 2) seek to implement those beliefs within public policy, and 3) openly voice those principles within the public square. Honestly, it's all pretty stinkin' appealing. A few years ago, I would’ve bought it without reservation. My problem today is that I know too much history. There's no formulaic one-to-one correlation, but it seems that for every William Wilberforce seeking to end slavery because of his christian beliefs there's also a Pope Urban II declaring, "Deus vult!" (God wills it!) to initiate the Crusades. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Christianity is innately evil like you'll hear from a lot of folks on the left, but neither am I saying that Christianity has basically been without fault as folks on the right seem to see it. The reality is that Christians' historic contributions to the political realm don't seem to be very distinguishable from that of non-Christians. That is, their faith really doesn't seem to have made much of a difference one way or the other. Christians are still corrupted by the same lures as everyone else—power, greed, and lust. And while they've surely done a lot of good, so have plenty of non-Christians, including atheists, pagans, Jews, Muslims, and all the rest. All of this causes me to question the wisdom of Christians being involved in the political process in the first place.

When I look at Jesus, I see a person who was emphatically apolitical despite His having lived within perhaps the greatest powder keg in human history. One could hardly conceive of a tenser situation than first century Jews living under Roman occupation. Because of their fierce independence, conviction that they were a people set apart, and their myriad of idiosyncrasies, the Jews' religious, political, military, economic, social, and cultural oppression under the Romans was something of the perfect storm. At any given moment they were ready to fight and die to gain that liberation. (Is is any coincidence that the temple was destroyed and the Jews were scattered a mere 35 or so years after Jesus' ascension?) If you've studied this stuff, you see these tensions all throughout the NT, but especially in the gospels. Yet every time they come up, Jesus had a brilliant away of transforming it from a temporal discussion of Jewish oppression into an eternal discussion of the Kingdom. If there would've been a perfect time for Jesus to jump into the political fray, that would've been it! Yet he abstained. To hear Jim Wallis tell it, Jesus should have been using his public platform to liberate the Jews and He should have encouraged His followers to be political. But that's not what I read in Scripture. So the question I have to ask is this: why do we keep ignoring Jesus' model?

I understand and commend Wallis' heart. He simply thinks that Christians should seek to implement biblical principles on a societal sale. I have no condescension when I write this, but it just seems a bit naive to me. As a student of history, I see a troubling pattern. When Christians make an effort to implement their faith within politics, the Church doesn't impact the political realm so much as the political realm impacts (or corrupts) the Church. In other words, the eternal Body of Christ becomes prostituted to a temporal political agenda. It's the inverse of what was intended, and it's happened time and again through the efforts of well-intentioned Christians. At some point I think we need to learn from the Anabaptists and say, "Hey, wait a second. This didn't work the first time it was attempted in the Roman Empire, nor has it been successful in the Kingdom of the Franks, the Byzantine Empire, the Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, England, the United States, and Rwanda." Maybe we should consider the possibility that this is not an effective approach. Maybe we should consider the possibility that we keep trying to make the Kingdom of God something it was never intended to be. If biblical principles rub off on the politicians, all the better. But I'm skeptical of the idea that Christians should try to implement their beliefs within political realm to try and impact society.

Our Western, democratic model tells us Christians that if we're going to transform society we had better start with the political realm; that there's no more immediate or effective way of impacting the world. It's this sort of trickle-down view that most all of us embrace without much thought. Yet I agree with Philip Yancey when he wrote, "Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up." I know it flies in the face of everything we're taught by our society, but I genuinely wonder if the best model is not to abstain from the political realm in order to transform the society in other ways. After all, it does appear to be Christ's approach.

We all know it’s true that the political process corrupts. If one is to get anywhere with politics, somewhere along the way he or she has to make some serious compromises. Could it be that that’s one of the main reason Jesus abstained from the political process and never once told His followers to engage in it? Just thoughts…

I'm certainly not prepared to say that this is my final position, but I've got to say that right now I'm unconvinced by the arguments of the extremes of the Christian Right and Christian Left as well as Jim Wallis' moderate position. The model I'm seeing in the NT is abstinence from the political realm.

I conclude with several more quotes from Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew. They've all have a particular impact on me:

• "Passing laws to enforce morality serves a necessary function, to dam up evil, but it never solves human problems."
• "Jesus did not say, 'All men will know you are my disciples…if you just pass laws, suppress immorality, and restore decency to family and government,' but rather '…if you love one another.' He made that statement the night before his death, a night when human power, represented by the might of Rome and the full force of Jewish religious authorities, collided head-on with God’s power."
• "Clearly, the kingdom of God operates by a set of rules different from any earthly kingdom’s. God’s kingdom has no geographical borders, no capital city, no parliament building, no royal trappings that you can see. Its followers live right among their enemies, no separated from them by a force fence or a wall. It lives, and grows, on the inside of human beings."
• "Those of us who follow Jesus thus possess a kind of dual citizenship. We live in an external kingdom of family and cities and nationhood, while at the same time belonging to the kingdom of God. In his command, 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,' Jesus underscored the fundamental tension what will result. For the early Christians, loyalty to God’s kingdom sometimes meant a fatal clash with Caesar’s visible kingdom."
  
• Is our first aim to change the external, political kingdom or to further God’s transcendent kingdom? In a nation like the U.S., the two easily get confused.”
• "Each time an election rolls around, Christians debate whether this or that candidate is 'God’s man' for the White House. Projecting myself back into Jesus’ time, I have difficulty imagining him pondering whether Tiberius, Octavius, or Julius Caesar was 'God’s man' for the empire. The politics of Rome were virtually irrelevant to the kingdom of God."
  
• "As America slides, I will work and pray for the kingdom of God to advance. If the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church, the contemporary political scene hardly offers much threat."
  

How do ya love fundamentalists?

Sometimes... OK, the vast majority of the time... I struggle to love fundamentalists. This post contains my convoluted thoughts as I'm working through that.

I see fundamentalism as perhaps the single greatest deterrent to true, biblical Christianity in the United States. Here are a sample of the problems as I see 'em:

• Over the past quarter century, fundamentalists have attempted to redefine evangelicalism away from its historic moderate meaning toward a narrow conservative definition. This has ensured that any Christian whose sincere faith has resulted in theologically, politically, socially, and culturally moderate views is systematically assaulted and dismissed. (See: An Evangelical Manifesto, http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/)
  
• They have linked God and country, suggesting that one must be an unqualified supporter of the U.S. (including a deep sense of patriotism and nationalism) in order to be a genuine follower of Christ. If you merely point out the fact that the Body of Christ is clearly transnational you get dismissed as an unbiblical liberal. (See: Greg Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Nation)
• Some will question your salvation if not come right out and say you're going to hell if you vote for Democrats (See: Jim Wallis' God's Politics: How the Right Got It Wrong and Why the Left Doesn't Get It)
  
• They have not only uncritically embraced such American presuppositions as democracy and capitalism, they have also sought to silence anyone who dares point out that the excesses of these beliefs (i.e. extreme individualism and greed) are ravaging our churches. (See: Budde and Brimlow's Christianity Incorporated: How Big Business is Buying the Church)
  
• They have dismissed, denigrated, and attempted to destroy the life of the mind within the full christian experience. (See: Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind)
  
• They have revealed a spirit of hatred in their relentless attacks upon such groups as homosexuals and atheists. (See: 2004 presidential election)
  
• They have trained up a young generation that excels at cultural critique but utterly fails at cultural creativity. (See: Andy Crouch's Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling)
  
• Rather than humbly teach truth in love, they have become known as arrogant, hateful, and self-righteous. This serves as a serious hindrance for non-Christians to come to saving faith in Christ. (See: Roger Olson's How to be Evangelical without being Conservative)

I could go on, but you get the point.

Admittedly, I used to be a fundamentalist jackass. (Another post on this is in the works. It'll probably end up being this post's prequel.)

I'm not saying this is OK, I'm just telling you where I'm at... These days I shower doubting/struggling Christians and non-Christians alike with love while hating conservatives within the Church who mask their sins and claim to have it all figured out--arrogant theologians, cowardly pastors, self-righteous elders, and bitter, gossiping laity. Honestly, there are times when I take pure delight in breaking these people. They like to beat people down so much that I take joy in giving them a taste of their own medicine. It's kind of like embarrassing the class bully by pointing out he can't read when he keeps calling you an egghead, ya know? (Yes, I did that once. Yes, I was a Dalton even back in the second grade.) Anyway, I enjoy knocking them down when I should be pointing them in the right direction. I struggle to exhibit any grace toward them. I resonate with Jesus' whipping the tax changers out of the temple and calling the Pharisees wolves, not when He forgave Peter. I forget that the Body of Christ is in need of grace, too. My tendency that I constantly fight is hating its members more than any other group on Earth. I talk about love all the while I hate my brothers and sisters in the Lord... such a hypocrite.

There will be more about this in that prequel, but fundamentalists have recently put me through hell. As I was recently chatting with a buddy over lunch and telling him about all this, I revealed my desire to "punch fundamentalists in the face." I'd never actually do it, of course, but that's often how I feel... I've been thinking about that comment. My desire to inflict violence upon them because of their militant lack of love is hypocritical to say the least. I think the difference between their inclination and mine is (speaking in generalities, of course) that they hate people because they think they're wrong whereas I hate them for hating. (Does that make sense??) Nevertheless, regardless of nuance, my gut response to them remains hypocritical. One cannot show another person how to love rather than hate by wanting to punch that person when they hate...

I'm just so wounded by fundamentalists and so mad at them for the harm they've caused me and so many others that I honestly don't know how to love them. I've forgiven a lot, but every time I start to get close to moving past those hurts they wound me yet again. It's like spraining an ankle playing basketball, then keep spraining it over and over again 'cuz ya don't ever give it enough time to heal before playing again. Trying to love them is like trying to love a Pharisee, and I just don't know how to do it...

The past week or so I've been asking a lot of former fundamentalists how ya deal with these people. How do ya show them another way marked by grace and love rather than judgment and hate? So far, no one's been able to produce a good answer. What I keep hearing time and again is that you just have to avoid 'em as much as possible and patiently wait it out; continually looking for an opportunity when their walls start to come down. And everyone I talked to seem perfectly content with this. Like it's just a fact of nature. Quite frankly, I cannot accept that. Too many thinking Christians stand down to the fundamentalists, which allows them to continually win the day and be the dominant voice of American Christianity. This in turn does great harm to the Gospel and the Church. I am of the belief that someone needs to stand up to them when they spread falsehood and hate, and keep standing when they try to beat you down... But now I'm back to fighting them... Dang it.

Just thoughts.

Why Do I Write So Much? Part III - Trying to be understood

3) Trying to be understood

A mentor of mine said a comment that made me laugh: "I'd much rather sit down and have a conversation face to face about these things. I find it's the only way I can be understood." It struck me as the exact opposite of what I've typically experienced. There are a select few people I can engage in great conversation with and will have very little miscommunication, but with the vast majority of folks I find myself being continually misunderstood. I have a theory as to why that is. Seems most (Western) people think in terms of binary oppositions. So if I commend a point within option 'A,' they presume I adhere to the whole system/position. Likewise, if I critique a point of option 'A,' then they presume I hold to the entirety of option 'B.' Meanwhile I see strengths and weaknesses in both sides and my position usually ends up being some synthesis of the two--option 'C.'

Time and again I've had conversations in which I try to preface my comments by saying, "So ya know, I'm pretty moderate. My views rarely fit the typical extreme positions." Even then people default to their binary thought forms, assuming I use the moderate tag to cloak my liberal or conservative tendencies. This results in them cognitively placing me on the end of the spectrum opposite them. Just a couple days ago one guy wrote, "In my experience, people call themselves moderate when they have something to hide." As this interaction reaffirmed, the vast majority of folks seem constricted to those binary thought forms. He genuinely could not get his mind around the idea that I might actually hold a moderate position. I'm not up on anthropological theory enough to know if this is the product of cultural molding or if this is basic human nature, but I do know it's exceedingly difficult to get past for one who thinks in those terms. I can now testify to that both as one who used to be a binary thinker and as one who has since moved away from that paradigm.

The only consistent way I've found to get people to understand how I think is to preface dang near everything. (Yes, it can be annoying.) With almost every issue, I have to write, "Here is extreme 'A.' It looks like this… Here is extreme 'B.' It looks like this… Neither of these extremes is my belief. Rather, my position is 'C.' You've perhaps not seen it before, so let me tell you what it looks like…" Frankly, I hate doing that. It takes forever. But it's the only way I've found to be regularly understood--both in my general thought forms and in my specific beliefs and opinions. And I rarely get to do that outside of writing because it'd awkwardly monopolize conversation. Thus, beyond the reasons why I write so often, the reason the content is so long is because my continual prefacing and clarifying my views has been the only way I've found to be understood.

To put this whole thing in short-hand, people continually complain that my posts are too long, saying, "Why do you write so much?!" Answer: Because they rarely understand me when I don't. Every once in a while I'll get fed up and won't do it (i.e. yesterday's post). Almost without fail, I'll then get an evil message from someone trying to rip off my head for holding a position they misunderstood. So as much as anything, the length of my posts are due to my selfish motive of trying to thwart electronic decapitation.

Why Do I Write So Much? Part II - Limitations of Conversation

* A couple people I respect have responded to this post in a sharp manner, basically saying the tone being conveyed in it is self-centered and arrogant. I re-read the post to check it out. Sure enough, if you don't know me well, haven't interacted with me since I stopped being a fundamentalist jerk a few years ago, and/or haven't read much of my stuff the last two or three years, I can certainly understand how someone would get that impression. So I just wanted to go back and preface this by saying that, after having checked my heart, I truly believe I'm not being prideful, arrogant, or condescending. I'm just being honest about my experiences. I hope that anyone who reads it will do so in that light.

2) Limitations of conversation

I find conversation to be too shallow. (I'm weird. I know.) In my experience, I've found that my conversations rarely explore issues as deep as I can in written form. Consider my recent theological developments as an example. I've been exploring and have found much solace in three major theological trends: postfoundationalism, paleo-orthodoxy, and...

Dang it, this last one doesn't have an official title yet. It's the informal (in terms of disciplinary methodology) biblical interpretation of Ray Vander Laan and the formal interpretation of theologians like N.T. Wright and Brad Young. Basically, it's balancing the preeminent role of the biblical text among conservative theologians and the preeminent role of the historical (i.e. social, cultural, political, economic, geographical, etc.) contexts among liberal theologians. It's saying, "Eastern Orthodox get it wrong 'cuz their interpretations are driven by the Greek thought forms of the Patristic Era. Roman Catholics get it wrong 'cuz their interpretations are driven by Medieval thought forms. Conservative Protestants get it wrong 'cuz their interpretations are driven by the Western, early Modern thought forms of the Reformers. And liberal Protestants get it wrong 'cuz of a uncritical, wholesale swallowing of Modernity. (Not to say that each didn't have great value in terms of application, though.) If we want to get our biblical understanding right, we have to interpret the text as its original Ancient Near Eastern, and particularly Jewish, audience would have done." If someone could come up with a term to concisely describe that whole spiel, Bill Lumbergh and I think that'd be grrrrreat...

OK, so of those three general trends, how many people have even heard of the first two? In my experience, very few--even within a Bible college setting. So how, then, am I going to be able to get into a really meaty conversation with people about these things? 9 times outta 10, I'm providing the introduction, which means that the conservation is going to stay on a shallow level. And it's not just that way with theology. The same happens with almost everything I think about. I'm not saying this to belittle other people or to vent. All I'm saying is that I'm rarely able to delve into topics as deeply as I'd like simply 'cuz those I'm conversing with have never thought about these same things before the conversation. Accordingly, my only way to really process through these things has been through writing.

I openly recognize that something is lost between conversation and writing. There's a sense of relationship building that you cannot do as well through written word. On the other hand, some pessimists and people who don't possess the ability to write well (*not a cheap shot, just a honest observation) will often say that writing doesn't convey emotions. Ridiculously not true. It may not be as easy for the sender to accurately convey and the receiver to... uhhh, receive... the emotions, but they're there. A good writer can transmit and a discerning reader grasp emotions in writing just fine....

In sum, I think valuable things are both lost and gained through the writing process as opposed to conversation. But for where I am and for the questions I'm asking, I've found writing to consistently be much more helpful. Thankfully, I also get refinement of those things via facebook. Friends, mentors, and random people I've never met have a way of letting me know, often in brutally honest fashion, just where my thoughts have erred. Guess I should say thank you, even if a few of you are intentionally jerks :)

Why Do I Write So Much? Part I - Worshiping God with My Mind

I wrote the longest blog post of my life today. How apropos that the topic was about why I write so much. Anyway, I have serious doubt that even my most faithful readers would plow through that bad boy. Even my wife might complain about it. So, I've decided to break it down into manageable pieces and post it as a series. Here's part I:

About three years ago I started writing facebook notes. The first one was an informal thing I'd written for a pastor explaining why I thought Christians should be careful in their embrace secular psychological principles/theories. After I got into a discussion with someone else about the same subject about a year later, I thought I might as well post it online for a few friends to read. While I was at it I decided to post another thing I'd written entitled "Pro-Life: Before and After Birth," which was spurred by sheer frustration in what I saw as the inconsistent political beliefs of pro-life conservatives. Long story short, I ended up posting four notes that day. The second round didn't come till three months later. And the next one about a month later. Slowly but surely, I got addicted to writing.

Today my primary career ambition is to be an author. Still, I get a lot of crap from people who are, to say the least, not encouraging of my efforts because they think it's a waste of time or they simply don't understand why it's so important to me. My intention here is to clear those things up, explaining the factors that have spurred on my interest in writing:

1) Worshiping God with my mind

Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind had recently rocked my world when I posted those first notes three years ago. His general thesis is that the historical development of American evangelicalism unfolded in such a way as to produce a culture that was quick to act and slow to think; the culture had captured the pragmatic impulses of the larger American society to such a degree that thinking seriously as a Christian, about not just the theology but the whole spectrum of ideas, has come to be reviled as innately unspiritual. He identified four major causes for the prevailing anti-intellectual culture: Fundamentalism, Premillennial Dispensationalism, the Holiness Movment, and Pentecostalism. He asserted that those four movements have done much in the way of denigrating, destroying, and the denying the mind's vital role within the full christian experience. Well, 4 for 4, that's was my background! Little wonder I resonated with his writing.

These ideas were revolutionary for me. I began to see that Christians could better understand God and have a better relationship with Him not by rejecting the life of the mind, but by embracing it. If God is the Creator of all, then in the same way that that the Mona Lisa speaks to the nature of Da Vinci, so the entire world speaks to the nature of God. I began to see that if Christ has called His followers to worship God with all their hearts, minds, soul, and strength, that to not worship God with one's mind is sheer disobedience. As Galileo once put it, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." The mind should never be pit against the heart or ranked in terms of superiority. Rather, within the full christian experience, heart and mind should be drawn in a centripetal force toward one another until they become one in the same. That is, if a Christian is serious about seeking God with their heart, it should inevitably lead to the mind, and vice versa.

I had always had an active mind, but to that point I had resisted it because I had grown up within a conservative culture that both implicitly and explicitly taught me that serious thinking would produce a sort of cold rationality resulting in doubt, intellectual pride, and ultimately a rejection of my faith. Noll's book proved to be the fatality that disemboweled my conception of what Christianity was and how a Christian should live. Suddenly my greatest spiritual struggle, keeping my mind quarantined, was gone. My greatest weaknesses had been transformed into my greatest strength. Thank you, Mark Noll.

Most of this doesn't have to do directly with writing, but it does begin to explain my motivation. Writing has become the greatest and most consistent way I worship God with my mind.

I'm Not Dependent on God*

* Not actually true, but it often feels that way...

My church does something that I've not seen anywhere else. During the Sunday School hour after the service, one of the "classes" is sermon discussion. The direction can go just about anywhere. Sometimes people will talk about the how the pastor had extraordinary insight into a particular passage or how they wish they felt his passion. Occasionally the sermon will be heavily critiqued. More often it's simply nuanced and flushed out. It can be heavy on theory or have a constant eye on application. People will often share where they're struggling, what they don't understand, and so forth. It's really a cool thing. Anyway, this week someone made a comment during discussion that thoroughly kicked my butt.

Trying to accurately paraphrase the comments, the person said this:

I really don't feel dependent on God. Not on a day to day basis, anyway. I just don't struggle with life the way I hear a lot of people do. I'm usually able to get by on my own... So rather than praying about things or giving them up to the Lord, I simply get things done. If there's a problem, I figure out what's wrong and fix it. That's the way I'm wired.

The guy was in my head.

Back up the story...

A few years back I had a few buddies over to play Risk. We were supposed to start playing around, say, 7:00 or so. We'd invited a newbie to play and he assured me he'd be there on time. 7:30 rolls around and he's not there. 8:00? Still not there. We tried to give him a call. No answer. Finally we said, "Screw it" and started playing. Around 9:30 the guys finally shows up. He walked in and threw himself on the couch with body language that said, "I'm exhausted. I just had the worst day of my life." We stopped the game and asked what was up. The dude explained that he'd not only had a terrible day, but a terrible week. Everything went wrong. We all just sat there and listened as he rattled through his week: he locked his keys and cell phone in his car while he was in a seedy neighborhood; the next day lost them both; got a speeding ticket when all the traffic was going that speed; didn't get a raise because someone else got credit for his work; was having trouble dealing with a family member; the power went out and screwed up his alarm so he was late to work and got an ear full from a boss; found out he had to pay a month of double rent because of the overlap between leases; etc. He told it as this hilarious, epic saga verifying Murphy's Law. It was great.

How do you follow a spiel like that? "Sorry dude, all that sucks" didn't seem adequate. And to be honest, I wasn't overly sympathetic. I was annoyed that the dude showed up late... again. Rather than feel for him, I sat there thinking about how this guy had a deterministic view of life as though he was merely a pawn in the chess match of life. Everything was always going wrong for reasons beyond his control. That sort of thing. At that very moment another one of my buddies gave perhaps the single best response I've ever heard to such a tale of woe: "Everything didn't go wrong, you just suck at life." It was shocking, and awesome. When the saga teller tried to defend himself, my buddy continued: "Crap like that doesn't happen to me. I don't lock my keys in my car and I make sure to keep my cell in my pocket so when I get out of my car I have it. I plan ahead and get places early so I don't have to speed. I make sure my boss knows exactly what it is I do. When family is stupid, I confront 'em about it and resolve the problem. I always make sure to have a back-up on my alarm--either a battery back-up or my cell alarm. When I switch apartments, I plan ahead and do the research so I get leave one and get into the other with no more than two week's overlap..." The folk wisdom was undeniable. The experience left an indelible mark and the words "suck at life" have been a part of thought processes and vocabulary ever since.

Fastforward to the present...

The truth of the matter is this: I typically don't suck at life. There's no amazing secret about how to do this. It's simply a matter of doing the little things that add up. I think things through before acting or speaking. I continually seek the counsel of wiser, older men and women. I not only accept, but I actively seek out criticism. I'm intentional about learning from not only the mistakes I make, but also those around me. I don't commit to a whole lot, but when I do I make every effort to surpass people's expectations. I don't harbor grudges. When I screw up, I apologize. I take life seriously, but make sure I can also take a joke. I pick up on social cues and try not to annoy and/or anger people. When there's a problem, I don't presume someone else will fix it. I try to treat people like I'd want to be treated. Again, none of this is rocket science.

Then the sermon discussion messed with my head. I hadn't thought of the possibility that sucking at life could be something of a blessing in disguise while competency could be a curse. I'd always been aware of my physical frailty and my dependence on God for good health. And to a greater or lesser degree, I knew my cognitive limitations made me reliant upon God's grace. It was in those areas that I'd applied the adage that when I am weak, He is strong. But I hadn't applied it to the intricacies of my day to day life.

The honest truth is that my devotional life has been awful for years. A good part of that has had to do with frustrations with the inadequate form of Christianity I'd been talk. As an analytical person, I've constantly been aware of the bad--inconsistent hermeneutics, extra-biblical theology, anti-intellectualism, antagonism toward cultural expression, etc. It's been hard to get past these things and get to the core of what Christianity is truly meant to be. That's all true, but it has also been a really convenient way for me to explain away my nearly complete lack of an existential, personal relationship with God.

The strange irony is that my competency has been working against me spiritually. When I was trying to figure out where to attend college three years back, I didn't ask God where I should go. Instead, I systematically developed a list of needs and wants and ranked them by order of importance, then google searched until I found the right place. When I couldn't find a church that fit my wife's and my needs, I didn't pray and ask God for direction. Instead, I started publicly shared my frustrations until I was told about a church that perfectly filled our needs. When I needed a job for after graduation, I didn't wait on God to open the door. Instead, I wrote an email to all the contacts I'd developed while in college and told them why I'd be a valuable asset. In each case, my self-reliant, secular approach has worked! Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this a good thing. I'm saying that my skills, talents, and abilities have blinded me to a healthy awareness of my dependence on God.

Fall back to the past again...

When I finally turned my life over to God back in high school, I was depressed to the point of seriously entertaining suicide. I hated myself and felt like a completely worthless human being. I felt stupid, weak, unattractive, incompetent, and lazy. Living in the shadow of my ultra successful brother, I tried to keep up with and replicate what he'd accomplished. It was impossible, and in comparison to him I completely sucked at life. I remember vividly when I got to a point where there were only two options left: give my life over to God or die. Didn't exactly know what the former would entail, but it seemed mildly superior to death, so I went with it.

To this day I have no idea how much was my own volitional choices and how much was God's guiding hand, but after I became a (serious) Christian I immediately had to find my identity in Christ. My life had been consumed by basketball to that point, but my health was faltering and I couldn't play my senior year. Something else had to fill my time. I grew my hair out as a way of saying, "Screw you!" to everyone's expectations; it was the light that vanquished my brother's shadow. I became zealous in my pursuit of God--attending Bible studies and prayer meetings almost every night, starting to pleasure read for first time, etc. I surrounded myself with friends who were in the same place I was, trying to be passionate Christians against the backdrop of a nominal, evangelical culture in that small town. Much to my parents' fright, I took a year off after high school to help start a para-church organization in that small town. Everything became about my faith for that time. All else fell away or was distantly second. Life changed. It was in that context that I began to be the person I am today.

Back to the present one more time...

My faith has been manifest in the transformation that has occurred within me the past seven years. To whatever degree I've been able to surrender my pride and take up humility, that is because of my faith. Ethics such as telling the truth cannot help but grow within the fertile soil of faith in Christ. My growing compassion for the poor has was because of Christ's own compassion for them. If I exhibit any humility amidst disagreement, that's got nothing to do with my own nature and everything to do with Christ's model of love. My emphasis upon pursuing the life of the mind was a direct result Christ's teaching that His followers should worship with all their hearts, minds, souls, and strength. My faith has fostered my work ethic, sacrificial love for my wife, forgiveness toward those who've wronged me, stewardship of my time and finances, and responsibility in knowing that I have to do what I say I'm going to do. Even my recent exploration into the way Christians should cultivate and create culture has been because of my faith. In other words, the more I've internalize my faith, the more it has transformed the internal essence of who I am and the external behavior that results (i.e. sanctification). Don't get me wrong. I'm obviously still human and fallen, leaving infinite room to grow, but it remains the case that my identity in Christ is what has made me stop sucking at life.

Therein lies the trouble. Genuine faith in Christ transforms the believer internally and externally, making the person good at the task of life. But as soon as ya do that, you start to feel self-sustaining, competent, and confident. But at that moment, I for one no longer feel the utter dependence on God that I once did. Consequently, I tend to do things on my own without asking for His wisdom, guidance, or even His enabling. I'm not saying that's right. I'm just telling the truth. And I know God should change that in a heartbeat. My world could come crashing down tomorrow for reasons completely beyond my control. I don't want God to say, "Sorry, Carson. You're getting a little too big for your britches. It's time you be humbled." I've had that happen before and it ain't fun.

I almost think it'd be easy to depend on Christ if you suck at life. You've got no other choice! But then you've got people who are highly competent and genuinely feel dependent. These folks baffle me...

I've heard a fair number of seasoned Christians talk about their continual sense of utter dependence on God. With some of them, I have no doubts of their sincerity but I get this sense that they're practicing self-talk, like they're trying to convince themselves of the truth of that statement; that if they can just repeat it often enough that it'll finally sink in. Then there's this whole other camp that I sense are using supposed dependency to their advantage. It feels like false humility to me, as though they're trying to project dependence on God as a means of looking spiritual. Then there's a few, and honestly it is only a select few, who seem truly dependent on God; not because they suck at life, but because... well, I don't know why. Life experience? Internalizing the truth of Scripture? Whatever it is, I want that...

I guess I'm just trying to figure out how you sustain a contrite heart and a continual sense of dependence on God after sanctification has made ya stop sucking at life.

Movie Review: Funny People

How does a movie that has so much potential and starts off that well bomb so extraordinarily? (Great... great... great... AWFUL!) It had the opportunity to provide some genuinely insightful social commentary and a unique glimpse into the psyche of celebrity through a comedic lightheartedness. What it more, it was accomplishing that! Then it all went to crap and became a trite, directionless film that ran an 45 minutes too long for no apparent reason. Sweet goodness this upset me. Funny People could've been for Adam Sandler what Stranger Than Fiction was for Will Ferrell. Instead, it was didn't even justify the $4 my wife and I paid to see it at the dollar theater.

I Think I'm a Postfoundationalist, Evangelical Christian

Let me first say that I cannot stand describing events, movements, or periods as post-something--post-war, postmodern, postconservative, postfoundationalist. It's a genuinely terrible way to describe a thing. The prefix itself keeps the onus on the past, not the present or the future. I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for tradition and history, but I dislike the idea of being driven by a response to a particular thing. As a history major, I'm keenly aware of the ever-present influence of those who've come before, but I would rather be part of a fresh, creative building of something new than a part of an effort to either maintain or destroy the past. Nevertheless, "postfoundationalism" is the normative term so for the time being I'll work within that construct.

Theology is a discipline that I've loved in theory but have generally loathed in practice. To be candid about it, it was the discipline's practitioners who were ruining it for me. I found it incredibly ironic that so many of these theologians would present their views with such absolute certitude given their own ongoing efforts to preserve the doctrines related to humankind's finitude and fallenness. It always seemed to me that they suffered from brazen arrogance, uncanny self-deception, complete ignorance, or some combination thereof as they failed to apply their principles to their own work as theologians.

I just couldn't track with their reasoning. How could one fervently insist upon the the imperfection of human beings while simultaneously presuming, implicitly if not explicitly, the perfection of his own theological conceptions? The case seems pretty simple to me: Imperfect people are, by definition, incapable of perfectly understanding anything. Therefore, no theologian is capable of developing a perfect theology. Pretty straightforward, right? Yet when I'd bring this inconsistency up to people, I'd get one of four responses:

1) "I don't have the foggiest clue what in the heck you're talking about."
2) "I'm so sorry that you don't have the simple faith to just trust and believe. I'll pray for you."
3) "Finally! I thought I was never going to find another person who was denying absolute truth. What a relief!"
4) "You truth-denying, postmodern, liberal relativist! How dare you deny people's ability to know absolute truth while calling yourself a Christian! May God Himself smite you for your disbelief!!"

Needless to say, I didn't exactly feel like I was getting a lot of support as I engaged in my theological inquiries. I felt wholly misunderstood by absolutely everyone. (In retrospect, I don't think I was, but it did feel that way at the time.) I was never on the verge of throwing in the theological towel, but I was nearing the point in which I'd give up hope that there were others who thought as I did and were asking the same questions I was. Then someone recommended Roger Olson's Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology. Upon its completion, I wrote this comment:

"Time will tell if this proves to be the most important book in my theological development, but right now I suspect this will be the case. This book has helped me to provide the theological methodology that I've been searching for for so long. I don't necessarily agree with Olson on where that methodology takes him in terms of specific doctrines, nor do I like much of the nomenclature he uses. Nevertheless, I finally feel as though I found what I've been looking for."

It would take many posts to adequately explain why I resonated with and found so much comfort in the themes of this book, but suffice to say one of the things that impacted me most was Olson's explanation of the postfoundationalist form of evangelical theology. I'd never heard of that before. In case you haven't either, this theological form can be seen in the works of authors like Stanley Grenz, John Franke, LeRon Shults, Kevin Vanhoozer, and N.T. Wright among others.

(Before I go further, let me throw out a caveat. I have read precisely one book that contained one chapter dealing directly with postfoundationalist theology, so my knowledge base is limited to say the least. If I misrepresent this form of theology, I apologize. This is simply my best attempt to explain what it is and why I like it.)

Here is my understanding of what postfoundationalist evangelical theology looks like:

• The creative task of theology is never complete. There is never a perfect moment at which the task of theology has been achieved. It then follows that there is no Utopian theological period to which Christians ought return, especially in the post-canonical period.
  
• Since theological systems are created by finite human interpreters of the biblical text, no single theological system is capable of perfectly representing or explaining God. Doesn't matter what the system is or who is pushing for it. It's inadequate to capture the God who's revealed Himself in the Bible.
  
• It embraces a sort of soft postmodernism where absolute truth does exist, but it cannot be attained in a completely objective manner for the simple facts that people filter the world through their own experiences and are limited by their own human nature. Olson puts it this way: "...'true Truth'... is 'out there' even if we are incapable of making truth claims that are not culturally and historically embodied." Absolute truth exists, but limited people are incapable of fully attaining it.
  
• It denies that absolute certitude and absolute relativism are the only viable options, insisting that "[i]t is only the lingering power of the foundationalist schema that makes us believe we must choose between the polar opposites of timeless an placeless objectivity and sheer, arbitrary and solipsistic relativism." Christians can believe while struggling with doubt. They can always be working to refine their views even while they affirm them.
  
• Christians don't need to have the weight of their salvation resting upon their ability to get every last theological detail correct. Again, Olson writes: "Christians can admit that, like every other set of truth claims, what they believe is open to correction and revision while they continue to believe and worship and practice their faith." Christians ought to seriously wrestle with their beliefs even as they work out their faith with fear and trembling. Part of the human condition is that we never "arrive."
• The purpose of pursuing truth is not merely the acquisition of facts and the increase in one's intellect, but the transformation of the whole person through their own spiritual journey.
  
• It doesn't deny the existence of propositional truth, but it does reject the more or less purely propositional view of theology where the goal is to mine truths out of the biblical text and reconstruct it back into a meaningful whole of what the Bible was "really trying to say." In other words, systematic theology is necessarily but it is not the goal.
  
• Instead, the goal of theology is to understand God's unfolding redemptive work through the biblical narrative. The goal of a Christian's life is to be an ongoing extension of that narrative. The canon closed, but the story has not ended.
  
• It pushes for a holistic view of knowledge, including the belief that "knowledge is not a collection of isolated factual statements arising directly from first principles. Rather, beliefs form a system in which each is supported by its neighbors and, ultimately, by its presence within the whole." Disciplines exist and are helpful, but ultimately they're artificial constructions to break the totality of knowledge into manageable pieces.
  
• It demands intellectual humility because of humankind's "fallibilism," or the "recognition that one could be wrong and must therefore be open to correction." Olson provides a quote by Vanhoozer in which he writes, "Rationality is largely a matter of humility, or to be precise, of the willingness to put one's beliefs (and one's biblical interpretations) to the critical test." It may be cliche, but the old saying rings true: the more you know, the more you know you don't know.
  

I'll conclude by saying this: If the above statements are, in fact, a genuine representation of what postfoundationalist evangelical theology looks like, then I am definitively a postfoundationalist evangelical. Now I just need to make sure my understanding is correct. After that's done, I've gotta find a way to do something about that terrible descriptor...

The Difference between History and Philosophy

This past semester I had a strange string of days. In less than a week, three philosophically-oriented friends and mentors charged me with employing the same logical fallacy: Post hoc ergo propter hoc. (Basically, that fallacy says that the argument "'A' happened, then 'B' happened. Therefore, 'A' caused 'B.'" is bogus because it addresses correlation rather than causation. In laymen's terms, it's sometimes called the "Rooster Syndrome"--crediting the crowing rooster for the sun rising.) The third time this happened I was starting to think that this was no coincidence. By the end of the second week, I'd been charged with committing the fallacy five times and I was certain something was up.

Granted, I've never been taught the formal rules of argumentation and logic, but I tend to think that I'm a decent thinker. I've held my own with each of these guys before and had only rarely been charged with committing a fallacy, so this development was puzzling. Had my reasoning ability suddenly gone to crap or what the heck was going on?? Moreover, I'd never so much as heard of this fallacy before, then suddenly I'm getting charged with it from all over the place. I started to give it some serious thought. It took a couple solid weeks of contemplation, but I think I finally figured out what was up.

The prior semester I had taken Historiography. It was a beast. The course work easily matched all my others classes combined. Through the textbook readings, online forums, class discussions, additional reading, and one-on-one discussions with the prof, I'd been throughly saturated by the discipline of history. In the process, my thought forms had been fundamentally altered. I had moved away from simple historical facts--people, events, trends--and had learned to think as a historian.

It was no coincidence that all of these fallacy charges were occurring at the beginning of the Spring semester. I'd spent quite a bit of time over the winter break thinking about the content of that course and letting the material sink it. By the time the semester geared back up, I was thinking in a thoroughly historical manner. That couple week stretch was the first opportunity I'd had to interact with these guys in months; the first time that I'd wrangled through some deep issues since my thought processes had been so dramatically changed. I hadn't been able to put my finger on it right away, but I was thinking in a manner fundamentally different than they were.

Our education was working! Though we were all sincere, biblically-literate believers sharing a christian worldview, these people and I were thinking in two radically different paradigms. I was thinking as a historian. They were thinking as philosophers. From their perspective, they were absolutely right, I had committed a clear logical fallacy. The problem is, we were playing two different games with two different sets of rules. It'd be like learning to tackle someone in football, then trying to transfer that skill to basketball. Make a good tackle on the football field and your coach go-teams you and says, "Attaboy!" Make a good tackle on the basketball court and the ref ejects you from the game. (Perhaps a better illustration would be when Bobby Boucher tackles his college professor in The Waterboy.) I was simply taking what I'd learned in Historiography and was applying it to my discussion with the philosophers, but the rules they were playing by caused them to cry, "Foul!" Or, in this case, fallacy!

Once I figured this difference out I tried to explain it to them. Perhaps in my naivity, I was surprised when I was rebuffed. One person told me (paraphrasing), "Carson, there are no different rules for this discipline and that discipline, especially for Christian believing in absolute truth. Facts are facts. Logic is logic. Truth is truth. If we're all seeking the truth, then we share a univeral objective. If there is objective truth, then the difference is what facts we're looking at, not how we're looking at them... Frankly, I'm a little worried that you're sliding down the slippery slope of relativism." As good intentioned as this dude was, he completely missed the point I was trying to make.

As a rational human being, I was not doubting the existence of facts or whether logic is applicable across the entire academic spectrum (e.g. The U.S. was founded as a representative democracy no matter if you're engaged in a discussion of political philosophy or American history). Rather, I was trying to explore how the different disciplines approach those facts and what they seek to do with them. There is no doubt that both philosophy and history are, at their core, the pursuit of truth. But it's important to note that they're not asking the same questions. Allow to me show the difference between philosophy and history using contrasting binary pairs:

Philosophers ask, "What do we believe?"
Historians ask, "How did those beliefs develop?"

Philosophers ask, "What is truth?"
Historians ask, "How did different conceptions of truth develop in different times and places?"

Philosophers ask, "What is right?"
Historians ask, "What were the influences that culminated in that perception of 'right'?"

Philosophers ask, "What exists?"
Historians ask, "How did the things that exist come to be the way they are?"

Philosophers ask, "What is the value in what happened?"
Historians ask, "What happened?"

Philosophers say, "Written language is limited."
Historians say, "Written language is the key tool in how we understand the past."

Philosophers say, "If A, then B. If B, then C. Therefore, if A, then C."
Historians say, "A, B, and C are facts. Now, how are they related?"

Philosophers refuse to ask questions of cause, motive, and bias so as to avoid the ad hominem fallacy (* see bottom for definition) and move the argument away from the facts.
Historians demand that you ask questions of cause, motive, and bias in order to rightly understand the facts.

Philosophers take what is known and logically deduce truth from it (bottom-up methodology).
Historians take what is known, dig to undercover further information, and then try to reconstruct the truth (top-down methodology).

Philosophers use facts and figures to prove an argument.
Historians use facts and figures to try and understand what happened.

Philosophers are uneasy about the soft sciences, preferring to deal with hard statistical data and deducible, logical premises.
Historians will embrace facts come from both the hard and the soft sciences, utilizing statistical data but also cultural studies.

Philosophers are hesitant to comment on anything they can't prove.
Historians will openly acknowledge that there's a lot they can't explain.

Philosophers try to make value judgments.
Historians try to provide explanations.

Philosophers want to accept facts in order to have premises with which to construct their arguments.
Historians want to scrutinize facts, insisting that facts must themselves be interpreted before being interjected into a large historical interpretation.

Philosophers tend to be overtly aggressive in their efforts to make definitive truth claims and value judgments.
Historians tend to be covertly aggressive in their efforts to get into people's heads, explaining how their influences produced what people think.

Philosophers believe that logic is king.
Historians assert that people don't always think logically.

Philosophers put forth how things should be.
Historians deal with how things are.

Philosophers insist that one presents, in logical order, the premises that lead to the given conclusion.
Historians insist that all data must be synthesized into a coherent explanation that explains the observed trend.

Philosophers say, "You must deal with the facts one premise at a time. You cannot synthesize that information!"
Historians say, "A complex reality demands you, as much as possible, deal with all facts simultaneously. You must synthesize the information!"

So what's the practical meaning of all this? First, my thinking is far more historical than philosophical. At least initially, I'm far more interested in trying to rightly understand a given person, event, movement, etc. than making I am making judgment calls as to the subjects' validity or merit. Second, this means that there is no post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in the historical realm. The goal of history as a formal discipline is not prove logical arguments or declare whether a particular thing is right or wrong. Rather, the goal of history is to reconstruct the past; interpreting primary source information in such a way as understand what happened and to provide a reasonable explanation for how and why events, trends, movements, and the like developed as they did.

Still fuzzy? Let me provide an example from one of the times I got charged with the fallacy...

A buddy and I were discussing Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan. He wanted to know whether the decision was right or wrong. I was trying to understand the motivations for the decision. I hypothesized that one of the possible factors that could have gone into that decision was to send a warning to the Soviet Union. Among my evidence for this view, I referred to the chronological proximity of V-J Day and the advent of the Cold War. In other words, Hiroshima and Nagasaki could've been aimed not only at winning the war, but a way to send a clear message to a then-ally (and a rising power) that everyone knew would be a post-war enemy. My buddy cried, "Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Correlation not causation. You can't say that Truman's intent in bombing Japan was to warn the Soviets to back off just cuz the A-bombs were dropped at the end of WWII and the Cold War started shortly thereafter... Two unrelated events." I showed him a military intelligence document from a high ranking official discussing the rising threat of the Soviet Union and the coming availability of the bomb to deal with such a threat. If memory serves, it was written about a month before Hiroshima. While the document did not explicitly connect Japan with the USSR, it did seem to provide a viable ulterior motive for dropping 'em. Again, he objected: "You cannot speculate about people's motivations. Seriously, man, you can only deal with what the established facts--what is written!" I replied, "Dude, you've got to read between the lines. No army official with a brain was going to write a memo saying, 'Our plan is to bomb Japan in order to tell Russia not to screw with us once the alliance has been broken after the war.'... In order to understand how the past fits together you necessarily must factor in possible motives, biases, and all the rest below the surface." "Argument from silence, man." "Plus you gotta consider the events that led up to that time and the events that followed it. It's all inter-connected and cannot be neatly divided up to prove some logical argument." "Again, Post hoc ergo propter hoc!"...

We went around and around like this. The problem all along? He was thinking as a philosopher while I was thinking as a historian. Though we were both Christians, our thought forms had been trained differently. If by "worldview" we mean "the grid through which one sees and interprets all of reality," then I would suggest that there is something of a unique disciplinary worldview deriving from each academic discipline. It's not merely a matter of what is factually accurate, but how do we approach the facts and what do we seek to do with them?

* ad hominem fallacy (def.: an argument that attacks the person who holds a view or advances an argument, rather than commenting on the view or responding to the argument)