I think I was really close to becoming one. I’ve used U2 while teaching Sunday School. I enjoy Johnny Cash. I'm often on my laptop.
I enjoy coffee. 
I have black, rimmed glasses that make me look smarter than I am.
But, something doesn’t quite jive.
They love what Jesus loves, but don’t hate what Jesus hates. In fact, I think they revel in their perceived naughty school boy rebellions.
The latest Big Tent Christianity event just wrapped up. So I have been reflecting on the first one, which I attended last year in Raleigh, NC. Big Tent equals Emergent Christianity, or Emergent 2.0, or whatever new title we have this time. But of course nothing has really changed and the concept is not new.
This is an (oversimplified example) annoyance I have with Emergent Christians. They feel they are too smart by half yet, their theology feels shallow.
McLaren makes a habit of making big statements and then saying “but I could be wrong about it all.” Way to commit.
Bell says things like, “what IF the Virgin Birth wasn’t true?” (2)
“I mean, um, I’m not remotely saying that, I’m just saying what if?”
Nadia Bolz-Weber started her talk last year with a rambling “spoken word” (so much cooler than a poem) and wasn’t the first or last to throw out some curse words for effect.
Almost every time I hear a minister curse in a talk I sense they think they came up with the idea. I know Tony Campolo did it many years ago. I doubt he was the first then, either.
We are ministers that curse! We are hard core! Join us.
They eschew dogma, wrestle with scripture, drop F-bombs like rose petals, love rock music, slam poetry and visual art. (3)
Way to be completely different from the rest of the world.
Back to Hugh Hollowell’s blog post though. I think that’s why I started writing my own in the first place.
One annoyed reader named Mike commented: “It’s clear that your position is that what you do is more important than what you believe, but I don’t understand the motivation behind hiding what you believe. What would you lose by telling people the truth?”
Then Hugh follows that comment with “Because I have no interest in pretending that God cares more about whether I intellectually agree to a historical fact than whether I love my neighbor as I do myself.”
Historical fact? That makes the resurrection sound like a foot note.
My Fun Facts Book:
A: Who quarterbacked the San Diego Chargers to their last Super Bowl appearance?
B: Who was the first Black Miss America?
C: Who was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead in 3 days, all to take on the cost of our sins on Himself?
See answers at bottom:
Whether it did or did not happen matters.
“I do not believe that kind of certainty is possible from such a distant event.” Replied another commenter, arguing (I think accurately) that Hugh Hollowell was saying we should act as if it happened, and whether it did or not is irrelevant. (4)
But you call yourself Christian? If I chalked the resurrection up to a “maybe” then my heart surely wouldn’t be into Jesus.
If the resurrection did not happen, then to paraphrase CS Lewis (or Bono for my Emergent friends cuz he said it too) then Jesus was just a nut. We can’t have it both ways.
Either he was a loon going around claiming to be God and getting his followers killed for their belief in this; or he actually was and is God.
And what kind of a God was/is Jesus? According to some, He was all about love. Love to the hippy point of view that anything goes.
Do not misunderstand. God IS love. But saying any and everything in this world is ok in the name of love, is not biblical.
God loves us. A Father that reprimands is a loving father.
But the cool kids are more moral than God.
They believe in a God that is incapable of hating anything. Anything including sin. This is heretical on a monumental scale.
Sin is so important to God, his Son was tortured because of our sin. We should not take sin lightly. Nor should we feel we know better what constitutes sin than God.
You cannot out love God. To think so is narcissistic to the extreme.
Answers:
A: Stan Humphries
B: Vanessa Williams
C: Jesus Christ
Sources:
(1) Hugh Hollowell “Do I Deny The Ressurrection?” Tuesday, December 14 2010
(2) Velvet Elvis (page 26) By Rob Bell
(3) BTX in Phoenix: Big, Bold, Exciting and Scary
blog | February 12, 2011 | By Cynthia B. Astle
(4) Commentator appears to be Scott Shirley. He can be found here: http://www.thechurchofchristgadfly.blogspot.com/
"I feel like I'm falling
ReplyDeleteLike I'm spinning on a wheel
It always stops beside of me
With a presence I can feel
I...I believe in love"
-U2 (God Part 2)
Good post, Matt.
ReplyDeleteOK - so yes, the poser attitude can get old. Yes, also, there is nothing new in what the emerging folks are doing. I get annoyed when they ask questions like no one ever thought of them before. And it's not just that they're 30 years behind where the theological mainstream is, they're also picking up themes that are at least as old as Julian of Norwich (14th century): "Because he is God, he is is truth, he is love, he is peace; and his power, his wisdom, his charity and his unity do not allow him to be angry." Sound familiar?
ReplyDeleteBut for all their annoying tics, the cool kids are part of a venerable tradition and I think they play an important role. They are keenly aware that many people (especially young people) have come to regard Christianity and Christians as retrograde, unthinking, judgmental and overly tied to a particular kind of political view. What the world has not heard clearly is a Christian message that resonates with flesh-and-blood and ties together love and the need for overcoming sin. The temptation in the tradition of liberal theology (which is where I place most of these folks and which is not the same as liberal politics) is to give up on the traditional language of the church in order to speak to the realities of the world. They try to find other words for things like resurrection and sin because they don't compute in the modern world. But the danger, and I think you're hitting on it here, is that they may lose what makes Christianity unique and which gives it something to really offer the world. The old language is not just packaging - it IS what we're about and maybe we need to claim it and reintroduce it.
I can't be too critical because I've got a lot of this stream in me. I don't have big black frames on my glasses and I definitely don't have the hipster hair, but I do love the people who are growing up in the postmodern world and want to speak to them and even learn from them. That recent interview with Bono is powerful and I think, "He really has been on a mission and used what he had to seek Christ." And he still has a vocabulary for sin.
So I have a high tolerance for the Tony Joneses and Rob Bells of the world (less for McLaren, who seems to me kind of vapid). And I pray with them for the right words and the right heart.
Glad to see this up, Matt.