the parish

This Ad for the Comfortably Stupid Only

I came across an ad for a certain hydra-headed megachurch in a local alternative weekly. Here's the text:

Thou shalt not
go to a church
where thou
understandeth
nothing.

(Insert uber cool logo here with name of church + .tv underneath.)

Non-perplexing messages.
Freakishly good music.
Fancy shmancy coffee drinks.

Let's play adbusters. What is the subtext of this message? The KJV is bad. Okay. You're not very smart or churches are really confusing. Logo. Our sermons (messages...messages? What exactly is a message?) aren't very hard to understand. We play, well, freakishly good music (by someone's standard). And we have Starbucks-like coffee. You should come. You'd probably like it.

That's not the real subtext though. The real subtext is:

• You're stupid, so we'll make this simple.
• The Bible is full of simple messages that we'll pass along to you.
• You have no attention span, so we'll entertain you.
• You're spoiled, so we'll have lattes in the foyer.
• Church should be easy. Why should you have to work to understand it?

This is pandering. I don't know what else to call it. It's also insulting for anyone capable of reading the subtext. It's an effective ad if you're trying to reach people who want a lovely church-lite commodity to consume. Seriously, church should be easy? 'Cause loving your enemy, that's easy stuff, right? Why should difficult or perplexing truth get in the way of enjoying your mocha? Just how long should I attend a church where I'm never challenged to learn words I've never heard before or grapple with difficult texts or wrestle with the perplexities of living in the kingdom and the world simultaneously? How many non-perplexing sermons do I need to hear before I realize that this Christianity thing is so easy I don't even need to go to church to get what this church wants me to have? At what point should it occur to me that the leadership actually believes their own advertising? Once I do, I should run, fast, someplace else where the people are confused about life and faith at least sometimes. However, if life gets too complex I have all the makings of a good church at home: coffee, iTunes, and an Internet connection.

Here's what occurred to me at the consumerism conference in Minneapolis this weekend, and it certainly applies to this ad (an ad I used in my breakout session, by the way). Churches like our local hydra-headed mega believe they have to embrace cultural forms to transform people, but I think we're supposed to help people resist the forms so they can be transformed. At the very least, we should be helping them know how to participate in cultural forms with wisdom and discernment, but that's complicated, and we all know people are too stupid for that sort of thinking; they prefer fancy shmancy coffee drinks and smoke machines.

The Secret Message of Jesus, Part Three

I'm not going to try to do this in four posts as I'd planned previously. I'm not in a hurry, and there is much to cover. Part Two of McLaren's book (Engagement) deals with the meaning of Jesus' "secret" message. I talked a little bit about the medium (stories) in the previous post on the topic, so I'll skip to chapter seven, The Demonstration of the Message.

The chapter is about miracles. I hate the word. We need a better word. I prefer sign, and McLaren comes close to endorsing the same preference. The miracles of Jesus are signs that point to a greater reality. Here is one of the Barthian entry points. God is never the object; God is always subject. We presume to treat God as object, and so, with the help of Enlightenment hubris, we place ourselves at the center of all things (cogito ergo sum) and judge all things with the help of reason, never realizing that reason is filtered through culture, family, education, trauma, circumstance, etc. We posit a world that functions according to laws (please read Chesterton's Orthodoxy), a world wherein God is an interloper or intruder if she exercises power contrary to "law," and so create a world where God is a ghost in the machine, at best.

According to Barth, what we can know of God we know via revelation. Yes, that's a slippery category, but I've stated previously that my ontological priority is Trinity. (In the absence of non-verifiable first principles, what does it matter where we start so long as the starting point is justifiable?) We presume to capture God's nature within the bounds of reason when we talk about miracles as contrary to "natural law." However, the very idea of "natural law" is not without non-verifiable assumptions, including the idea that such "laws" exist (again, read Chesterton). McLaren is on target when he speaks of these miracles (signs) as events that point to a greater reality.

I've said previously that the kingdom of God is what is really real. Those people who insist that this world is real are captivated by the chimera of the shadowlands (Lewis). It is real in one sense, but the laws according to which it operates (powers and principalities) are at odds with the kingdom Jesus proclaims. Thus the signs. They point to a world that is altogether different. A world wherein miracles aren't necessary because shalom prevails. See, the miracles of healing and deliverance don't point to a world where miracles happen all the time; they point to a world wherein miracles aren't necessary.

So what's the Barthian connection here? Well, the notion that the world is divided into two realms, natural and supernatural, superimposes categories on the nature of God that may not be God's nature. Jesus is capable of "supernatural" signs because he is the lord of the only realm that is really real. And in the realm of the kingdom of heaven the signs cease to be signs and become reality, just as the road sign which tells you how far you have to travel ceases to be important once you arrive at your destination.

McLaren doesn't go into all that detail, but you can hear Chesterton and Barth and Lewis in the background of the chapter. Enough for tonight. I'm off to Minneapolis on Thursday so I'll continue when I return. If you're of a mind, pray for us regarding the conference. If you're able to attend, I hope to see you there. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, look in the right column near the top of the page.

The New Age Conspiracy has Arrived in Edmond

I am not making this up: someone found my blog today by googling "lifechurch.tv and the new world order." Damnit, Craig, why are you helping the antichrist?! Haven't you read Left Behind? You need to join the Tribulation Force. Someone call Jack Van Impe. We need to get Rexella down here stat. Maybe it's not too late.

Reverend Curmudgeon's Post-Easter Rant

In the past I've not allowed guest bloggers, with the exception of the hot, erudite hairdresser wife. Today I make an exception. A minister friend sent me his post-Easter rant, which I publish here for your benefit, dear readers. By the way, he's not really a liberal, although he considers himself one. I think my post-Easter rant is due tomorrow...

Reading Jesus for twenty years can get to a guy.

It being Easter Sunday and all, everybody showed up to church (Sunday). Most of our families are two out of four Sunday attenders, so having everyone there at the same time is a bit surreal. I started getting reflective right smack dab in the middle of the big Easter Sunday service. Not a good thing to do since it often sends me into a strange theological shame spiral about them and me and Jesus.

In my job I often feel like a used car salesman who wants to sell hybrids, but it ain't what people are buying, and the lot down the street is selling Hummer's real cheap (this is barely a metaphor). The "fun bait-and-switch community building events" that I plan these days don't compete with the big church in town and the straight-ahead gospel events I plan (shelter meals, third world fund-raisers, etc.) haven't sparked much interest either. I want to send a letter to my church families and say something akin to:

"Thought it would be important to tell you that by choosing to not participate in the kingdom of God on earth you are placing yourselves in danger of suffering the fires of hell. Cordially, your minister."

But I'm not quite sure I buy into the idea of hell anyway (another discussion entirely, I know). So there's that. The real problem being that I am a socially minded neo-orthodox liberal working in a 100 year old county seat SBC church. Emergent-smergent. It would leave our folks scratching their heads. What's a boy to do? 

Greeting the kids in Sunday School yesterday, a handful of our high-risk special needs type kids were playing pool, hanging out. A more popular kid walks in, grabs a donut, and says, "No one's here! Where is everybody?" I wanted to snatch him up by his ear and say, "Get the f*** out! This place isn't for you, you little sh**!"

But I didn't do that. Hey, I'm a professional.

So I was having what I call a "Grizzly Adams Moment" last night sitting in my living room, drinking a beer in the dark. I wanted to leave the middle-class American church behind and start taking my family someplace else. Salvation Army comes to mind, but their fundangelical conservatism would send me over. The UCC church seems closer to how I'm feeling theses days, but there isn't one in small-town America. I like Jesus, it just seems like we mostly miss him. Mostly. There are moments, but they are few and far between. Is that the best we can hope for? Few and far between. Is that enough? Seems like everything is turned upside down. I'm not sure what to do.

The Secret Message of Jesus, Part Two

If you've started the book, you'll already know that there is very little earth-shattering material in the first 49 pages of SMoJ. Three of the chapters are dedicated to trying to understand the political nature, Jewish context, and revolutionary thrust of Jesus' message. Before proceeding let me clarify my use of political throughout this series of posts--this is primarily for those of you who don't read the comments, as I've already addressed this issue in the comments section.

Politics is simply the means whereby we all manage to get along: local, state, federal, personal, corporate, ecclesial, etc., realms all have a set of rules for helping us all get along and make sure things get done. This is politics in the simplest sense of the word. When McLaren talks about the political message of Jesus, he is talking specifically about where Jesus' message fit into his Jewish/Roman context: Essenes, Herodians, Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, people of the land. Jesus' message is political because it challenged all these groups to look anew on their philosophies of life and politics. No single group could claim him, and he claimed no group. To say that Jesus' message was political is simply to say that it dealt with how we get along, how we ought to live with and among each other, and how we ought to treat others. That critique can easily be applied in any form of government. Additionally, every realm has a politic. (For the U.S. we are nearing the days of an outright capitalistic oligarchy with vestiges of republicanism or democracy still floating around.) For those who claim Jesus as Lord, which is to say "king" in some sense, we are forced to ask the question "what do the politics of our Lord's kingdom look like?" This is the political question before us, and the sense in which I mean Jesus' political message.

McLaren also reminds us that Jesus stands in a long line of prophets, and the Jewishness of his message must be understood from within that rubric. McLaren points to four emphases of the prophetic message: care for the marginalized, sincerity of the heart over against outward performance, inevitability of judgment, especially on hypocrisy and injustice, and the expectation of a new world or order. This is the most important aspect of the message according to McLaren, and I tend to agree. In the proclamation of the kingdom, we see eschatology realized. Jesus is the beginning of the end, and the Christ event is the eschatological sign of the new age, especially the resurrection. The other three components of the prophetic message find their meaning within the new age (kingdom of God) that Jesus describes and embodies. (Corollary: the church is to be the embodiment and reflection of the kingdom of God; therefore, the question of politics is an important that must be answered before the church understands her identity.) McLaren says that the scandal of Jesus' message, at least to his Jewish audience was that he proclaimed the presence of the kingdom in his own ministry, in his own person, and didn't look to some future golden age. (The reading of the Isaianic oracle is just one example of Jesus' understanding of his own ministry.)

Why is the message revolutionary? Because this age will dawn, this kingdom come, as the followers of Jesus begin to live like Jesus. No military conquest, no smiting of the evil people, no scapegoating of outsiders or practitioners of other religions, no intervention by God into history in epic ways (with the exception of the Christ event, again). The parables, what McLaren calls the medium of the message, give the hints about how the kingdom will come. Mustard seeds and crops and good soil. All take time. All start small. All rely on patience and nurture and the grace (common) of God. This message is revolutionary because it will not rely on violence or coercion to make its point; it will not insist on having its way; it will not overwhelm with arguments and wisdom and sophistry; instead, it will work its way into our hearts, exploding into life in moments when we don't expect it, as the meaning of the parables become clear. It is revolutionary because it expects the best of us, not the worst, and it expects us to live into the reality of the kingdom.

That's part one, and a tiny bit of part two (the parables). As I said, nothing new for people who have read Yoder or Wink or Brueggemann before. Good stuff though. Part two next time.

A Brief Interruption in the McLaren Series

Easter madness has begun. I usually post a rant every year about the way churches advertise their services. Not going to do that tonight, but I did want to mention a sign the hot hairdresser wife and I saw today. You know those little paper signs that are stapled to wooden stakes and placed on street corners and medians? Well, saw one today that said:

The Passion
A drive through event

It's being offered by a Pentecostal Holiness church here in town. Apparently dwelling on the passion of Christ during the duration of Holy Week is too taxing. Not to worry, River of Life Church offers you a drive through experience. See all the Holy Week sights from the comfort of your car. That springtime Oklahoma wind is strong; we wouldn't want you to risk getting out of your car. Never mind that Christ washed feet on Maundy Thursday. You shouldn't have to exert yourself by actually leaving your car. Relax with A/C and your favorite radio station (K-Love?) or CD (may we suggest the soundtrack to the Passion of the Christ?) while you drive slowly through the Holy Week stations. From Hosanna to Hallelujah, Palm Sunday to Easter, you'll see it all. Why should you have to sit through an actual church service on Good Friday? We know Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, but that's so you don't have to leave your car. C'mon over to our place and enjoy Holy Week for a change. Lent, schment. We're talking comfort here.

The Secret Message of Jesus, Part One

Here's the important footnote in McLaren's new book:

Among these theologians and writers who explore the political dimension of Jesus's (sic) message are John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, N.T. Wright, Jim Wallis, Walter Brueggemann, Walter Wink, Rene Padilla, and Chuck Gutenson. (pg. 235) [I have an advance review copy so page numbers could be different in the final release.]

Behind the names of most of those men stands another name: Karl Barth. Most trace their theological heritage back to Barth. The tree that McLaren draws from includes Barth, Frei, Moltmann, Ellul, and finally Yoder. The others are branches off that main trunk. Not that they are less important, just that McLaren draws from an interesting assemblage to build his case in this book.

It is true that McLaren cites these men as contributing to the political dimension of Jesus' ministry and message, but he also uses their arguments, especially Wink, Yoder, and Wright to discuss the larger ministry of Jesus. Wright is indebted to C.S. Lewis at many places in his thinking, and McLaren has already discussed nascent postmodern theology in Lewis before (New Kind of Christian), so it is no surprise that Lewis shows up repeatedly in this book as well.

What McLaren is wanting to do is discuss the real message Jesus is preaching, and that is impossible without understanding the political nature of that message; this is of course Yoder's whole argument in Politics of Jesus. This is where McLaren will finally nail the coffin shut on his relationship with many evangelicals. They will not tread the road he is taking. McLaren has moved from evangelical foundationalism and a personalized, spiritualized Gospel to the Gospel of the kingdom as understood by Yoder and Wink.

What does that mean? Here's the simple answer: McLaren's argument is that Jesus really means what he says. Really. Again, Yoder makes this argument at length in PoJ and Royal Priesthood, but McLaren presents the argument as if it is "the secret message of Jesus." The reality, of course, is that the Anabaptists have always believed that (it's never been a big secret to them), thus McLaren's dependence upon Yoder. When the Protestant Reformation began, the Reformers quickly split into three separate branches (sorry to be so pedantic, as many of you will know this, but some of you won't): Calvinists, Lutherans, and Radical Reformers. The Radical Reformers wanted to take the reformation of the Church farther than the Lutherans or Calvinists. Both those groups were committed to a vision of the kingdom that was tied to the secular state—to be fair, they would have had no such understanding of a secular state. The phrase is anachronistic, but allow me to use it. The Radical Reformers, eventually Anabaptists because of their insistence on believer baptism, understood the words of Jesus, especially the Sermon on the Mount, as the controlling grammar and vocabulary of the kingdom. The kingdom wasn't tied to a secular state; it was a state unto itself. The Anabaptists understood Jesus to be talking about a present reality, not a future state of bliss in heaven, nor a future millenial reign on earth, nor a standard that drove us to grace. Rather, they saw the grammar of the Sermon on the Mount as the grammar of the kingdom. This is who Jesus is, so this is who we are to be. This is what Jesus says, so this is what we are to do. Simple, right?

That's an important introduction, I think, because McLaren assumes much of that as the book moves through its three parts: Excavation, Engagement, Imagination. He said on his blog several months ago that the previous trilogy was preparatory work for this book. He's right and wrong about that. He could have written this without writing the previous three. In fact, he might have had a wider audience for this book had he written it between books two and three of the trilogy. That's a side issue though, and I think this is a good and necessary book. McLaren will command an audience that many of us would never reach, and what he has to say, the filtered wisdom of the best theologians of the previous century, could revolutionize the Church. I'll cover the three separate parts of the book over the next three posts. Notice I didn't say the next three days.

Miscellaneous (Revised Because I'm an Idiot at Times)

Been working on stories and my paper for the consumerism conference so I have very little time for blogging. Not that I think y'all are sitting around hitting the refresh button...

A few things:

• Finally got to see Good Night and Good Luck. Good movie. Probably use Strathairn's opening monologue in church at some point. However, what the hell did George Clooney do in that movie to deserve an Oscar? (Note to self: Clooney won for Syriana. Thanks, Zalm. Dear Reader, ignore the rest of this bullet point.) When Judy Dench won for her six minutes in Shakespeare in Love, she did such an incredible job that you came away believing that the queen herself couldn't have acted the part any better. But Clooney? C'mon. I've suspected that the Oscars are infected by political nonsense from time to time, but I've never seen clearer evidence than this. Lest you think I'm over the top here, let me remind you that he beat out Matt Dillon for Crash and Jake Gyllenhaal for Brokeback Mountain.
• You must, MUST, see Jarhead.
• Buy the current issue of Harper's and read Bryan Mealer's gonzo-journalism piece Congo's Daily Blood. You will not be sorry. You will be appalled and saddened, but you will be a better person for reading it.
• Starting tomorrow (I promise) I'm going to blog about McLaren's new book. Probably take two or three posts. So, Daniel, for the answer to your question, tune in tomorrow.
• Schneider Aventinus has replaced the beloved Celebrator as my favorite beer. If there is a pub in your city that sells it, patronize that place. It is grace in a glass.