:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

I have a new online comment policy that I’m testing out. I’m trying to not tell people everything I know all at once.

You know those comment threads that go on for paragraph after paragraph? I’m trying to stop that.

Who wants to read a short essay each time I leave a comment?

So far, it’s worked out pretty well. When I was tempted to write a lot in the comments at someone’s blog, I just dropped in a link to a relevant article. As it turned out, the blogger already knew about that article and my perspective.

Conversation over. No need to duke things out. I’m glad he knows about my point of view. If it doesn’t work for him, a long, rambling blog comment won’t change his mind.

Despite this success, I somehow entered into a comment thread on Facebook that turned into a series of short essays by one particular person. Ironically, when I pointed out to the essayist that her long, rambling comments weren’t readable or convincing, she decided to leave a few more.

I think I know how she feels. It’s like you run into someone who HAS to be wrong. It’s a Jekyll and Hyde transformation where you just… can’t… stop… typing. On and on you type. It’s like drinking salt water—only leaving you thirsting to type more. “If I just put it right, he’ll change his mind!”

Of course the conversation topic was women in ministry.

This woman was a complementarian frustrated with the way egalitarian’s such as myself play fast and loose with the Bible.

She presented her “airtight” case based on several bits of scripture that are quite popular with complementarians.

I’d like to step back for a moment and consider what’s going on when someone like me or her starts to list out arguments online like this. There is a presumption that the other party doesn’t know something. Supplying the information in a convincing format will make the difference, right?

Well, I discovered that as awesome as my link may have been, that particular blogger wasn’t convinced. After recovering from the shock that someone… disagreed with me, I had to back off. Well, back off or throw more arguments into the comments, most likely wasting my time and his time.

And there’s something even bigger going on when we engage in these long, drawn out debates in our Facebook and blog comments. We’re throwing information at people we don’t know without any clue about their background, experiences, or knowledge.

This woman didn’t know it, but I’d spent years—and I mean years—studying everything I could find about those verses that she interpreted for me with such certainty. I’d interacted with the champions for her view. I’d also written long papers taking her line of reasoning to task.

Am I right? I think so, but hey, you never know. However, I think a lot of the frustration we hit in these online debates and discussions is the lack of knowledge about the other party. I’ll admit, it’s really frustrating to invest so much time (and money, hello seminary loans) into sorting through a really weighty issue and then being lectured as if I just needed someone to explain it to me on Facebook.

It will always be tough to sort through these tough debates if we don’t know who we’re talking to and what they know.

My suspicion is that I always assume I know more. Always. Things become complicated when the other party feels the same way.

Unless we know who we’re talking to, we’ll just continue dumping information onto others who don’t want it.

I will admit that my sarcastic side was tempted to write to this complementarian, “If I agree with you, does that I mean I’ve submitted to your authority and you’ve instructed a man?” I didn’t, but I thought about it—a lot.

Yeah, as I’ve ably demonstrated, most of the time our online debates don’t actually result in the sharing of useful information.

When I began giving my latest E-book away, I had to ask an important question: Why am I writing this book?

Giving up on any hope of making a profit had a way of sharpening my focus, training my heart to think beyond bank accounts, page views, and marketing platforms (though I will see a few benefits along these lines in the long run). Giving a book away is all about a passion for an idea, believing in my message to the point that I’m willing to share it as widely as possible at any cost.

I didn’t hold back with my latest E-book project. I created something that has value. Even a free book shouldn’t be a waste of someone’s time. I offered readers a chance to buy it for $.99 because I wanted to both provide a simple download option and a chance for them to support my work. However, the free download links on my site provided the same ideas and the same format.

Part of my motivation for this latest adventure in publishing had to do with helping to clean up a really big mess—a mess that I’ve contributed to over the years—divisions among Christians.

As I’ve shared my thoughts on unity and processed how we can make things better on this blog, a central idea emerged. It was not only worthy of an E-book, it was important enough to give it away.

I don’t plan on giving all of my books away this widely, but I know that I’ll do it again. It has been a refreshing reminder that storing up treasure in heaven and blessing others can sometimes fall aside, neglected while I try to build up financial security. Sometimes we have callings to fulfill and wrongs to set right.

Sometimes I need to try something new—something that doesn’t quite make sense but feels just so right that I can’t resist the call of adventure.

This post is part of Bonnie Gray’s Thursday Faith Jam. Visit Faith Barista today to read more stories about adventure.

When I put together my first draft of Coffeehouse Theology, I sent it to tons of friends to get their opinions. Tons. I’ll be owing my friends favors in return for the next two generations.

One of my friends said something like this, “You seem to like all of this emerging church stuff, but you don’t point out what’s wrong with it.”

Insert: double-take, wounded look, and passionate reply, “Something wrong with the emerging church??? What do you mean?”

I’ll just stick a footnote here in the middle of this post since no one reads footnotes and note without any foot that this was in 2006 before it became fashionable to stop emerging… or whatever.

Still, my highly intelligent friend shocked me. How could he doubt the goodness of this new movement trying to recover practices from ancient Christianity and critiquing the ways Christianity had been infected by Enlightenment Rationalism? I mean really, is that not awesome sauce—that is, before Parks and Recreation taught us to use the phrase “awesome sauce?”

While my time with the emerging church stuff taught me to be jaded and suspicious about the Enlightenment’s effect on Christianity, I hadn’t yet thought that this emerging stuff needed to a taste of its own medicine. Could I find the downside?

As to the details of that, I’ll leave that to the experts. All I know is that I used to think I was on team awesome. I could see the flaws in fundamentalism, mainstream conservative evangelicalism, Catholicism, and mainline liberalism, but I could not see any flaws on team awesome.

How could I see flaws on team awesome? Would I not join team awesome unless it had all of the correct answers?

Clearly the people with the flaws were those not on team awesome… All that to say, it took me a little bit of time before I could see my friend’s point.

And here’s the thing: We have lots of team awesomes. I just read about a NEW team awesome on a popular Christian blog. Only this time the blogger mentioned the conservative flawed team, the liberal flawed team, the emerging/missional flawed team, and the NEW team awesome that doesn’t have any flaws.

The new, cutting edge, revolutionary, game-changing stuff never has any flaws because its part of team awesome. That is, until it’s not.

Reading that post brought me back to that conversation with my friend and the first time that I realized I was a member of a made up team awesome. After looking over the emerging/postmodern context stuff, it didn’t take long to find some flaws that tarnished my image of team awesome.

We were now team pretty good.

In all of this, a lesson from writing a Bible commentary may help. I know, I know, you probably think I’m losing it after reading that last sentence. Just bear with me for a moment…

When writing a commentary about a tricky passage, Bible scholars start with the least likely meaning of a passage and then work toward the most likely meaning. In other words, they rarely say something is “unbiblical” or “wrong” and they rarely say that one perspective is the “certain” or “biblical” meaning.

I always liked this approach to Bible study because it keeps us in our place, seeing things in a mirror dimly, realizing that God’s thoughts are not our own. We all have our most likely take on a Bible passage, but we don’t need to create unrealistic team awesomes that are 100% correct and don’t have any flaws.

At our very best, we’d all be kicked off team awesome if it did exist.

We’re stuck with team pretty good, providing the most likely answers to life. What may surprise us is that a “pretty good, most likely answer” is really all we ever needed.

Working in public spaces, mainly cafes, provides no end of opportunities to evaluate and judge people. I like to think that I’m really good at this. That is, until I realize I’m an awful person. Then I just downgrade myself to so-so at judging others.

Some conversations I happen to overhear. Other times the conversations boom from their sources, invading the ears of everyone within twenty feet. Even my headphones can’t save me. Yes, some people talk THAT LOUD in public.

While listening to conversations, I often catch myself classifying people into types. There are the super-impractical professor types who theorize all day, the bumper sticker activists who are awesome at talking loud and bumping into me when they walk by, and the religious groups who gather for one on one Bible study or “training” that often devolves into us vs. them conversations of one sort or another.

The moment I sort people into groups, I begin to either dismiss them or to develop common cause with them. And here’s the crazy thing: I don’t even know these people, but I’m already sorting out in my head the people I’d rather have over for a cup of tea with us and our rabbits.

All of this is based on looking at how people are dressed and hearing snippets of conversations. Once I create these divides, it’s infinitely harder to be kind to people when I’ve pegged them as too liberal, too conservative, too lazy, too combative, too quirky, too impractical, etc.

I think something happens online as well. We see a profile picture of someone, read a snippet of text on Twitter or Facebook, and we immediately stick people into groups. We write up profiles for people we hardly know, bulldozing over the complexities of their lives and the experiences that shaped who they are.

What gets me is that my type classification system destroys personal stories. While we often adopt the beliefs that our families, friends, and institutions pass on to us, it’s also important to note that our beliefs and actions are shaped by our stories. Speaking for myself, my stories have everything to do with how my beliefs have evolved over time.

For example, a reader of my website may read my reluctance to support the wars of the United States and immediately classify me as some kind of liberal, pacifist, wussy who hates American or whatever. However, you can’t understand my feelings about modern warfare until you learn about the ways war has impacted my family and friends, the research I’ve done, and the stories I’ve gathered together.

Knowing this about myself, I need to extend this same complexity and mystery to others. As I think about Christians living in peace with one another, to say nothing about any other daily interaction, this tendency to pre-sort people into groups and types before actually hearing their stories cuts us off from opportunities to love people for who they are, right where they’re at.

When I catch myself thinking that someone is a “type,” I need to repent. I need to ask God for new eyes and grace to share. However, I still think all bets are off for people who don’t have an inside voice.

When we kick off the Women in Ministry Series this Friday, I’m going to take the opportunity to release my latest E-book. It’s titled Divided We Unite: Practical Christian Unity, and I think it’s an appropriate book while we’re discussing a topic like women in ministry since it has been so divisive in the church. In this book I’ll aim to answer the question: How can Christians remain united if we’re already so divided?

The E-book will be a free download for my readers, though I’ll also include an option if you want to pay $.99 for it and support my writing a little—or at least buy me 1/3 a cup of coffee. Stay tuned for a fantastic day on Friday with a great story and a free E-book!

Want to get a sneak peek? You can read the first half of my book here.

About Divided We Unite…

When Jesus prayed that his followers would be one, he wasn’t setting up his future disciples for failure. In fact, the prayer of Jesus may be closer to fulfillment than many Christians in thousands of denominations suspect.

Christian unity isn’t created by signing off on a list of bullet point beliefs. The Holy Spirit unites disciples of Jesus together with bonds that are stronger than any divisions. Though Christians are divided into different denominations, it is possible to practice charitable Christian unity in the midst of very real divisions. Christians are divided, but through God’s Spirit, they can remain united.

Practical Christian unity is the art of living in the unity of the Spirit without letting divisions cut Christians off from one another. Practical, everyday unity is tough and costly, but Divided We Unite shows a way forward that rests fully in the power of God without neglecting the role of each Christian.

This morning I was trying to imagine what Christmas would be like if my family got together and decided we were going to discuss everything we believe about politics, religion, same-sex marriage, abortion, U.S. foreign policy, and anything else that may be a source of contention. Just for the fun of it, we could sit around and evaluate one another’s beliefs and life decisions, criticizing them one by one.

I doubt we would make it to the meal, which would be rather sad since we always have pierogies on Christmas Day.

I don’t have any intention of trying this out. Rather, I write this in order to follow up on last week’s post about Christian unity and the idea that we can remain united despite our divisions.

The more I think about families, the easier it is for me to believe that meaningful Christian unity can be possible today despite the fragmented nature of Christians. It’s true that most of us know the right answer on paper: we are united by the bond of Jesus. Believing that statement when someone holds a belief that seems to run counter to the Bible or acts against the spirit of love requires a bit more faith than we can muster some days.

When I think of the differences in my own family and our ability to gather every year for great parties that have no shortage of love, I’m hopeful about Christianity. Many of us are already experts at living at peace and unity with family despite major differences.

We know how to avoid sensitive topics.

We know how to focus on what joins us together.

We know how to show an interest in others who are quite different from us.

There have been days when I’ve despaired about Christianity and the ways we are hopelessly fragmented. However, this morning, I am hopeful.

Even now we are all looking forward to the birth of Jesus, celebrating his coming among us and the arrival of God’s salvation. We all struggle with materialism. We all have long to-do lists before we can celebrate the holidays.

When we sit down to pray, seeking God amidst busy days and tasting the joys of his presence, we are all connecting to the same Father who loves us. As we tap into the peace and love that comes from our one Lord, may he share with us his passionate love for his people.

I was careful to avoid saying that I would never go to church again, but it was certainly hard to imagine how it would ever happen again. Nine years ago I left a season of rooted stability in my faith and entered into a six-year season of transition into another expression of Christianity.

The basics remained the same, but over that time my perceptions of the church, salvation, the mission of God, the ministry of the church, and my own life calling passed through a major, major overhaul. I don’t know if you’ve ever done major renovations on a house before, but much like house renovations, my faith renovations were not pretty.

I was angry, frustrated, and disappointed at various times. I had a hard time tolerating those who remained rooted with their faith in tact. Sometimes I struck out at them, and sometimes they struck out at me for asking unsettling questions.

I’m now in a season of relative stability, rooted in a take on God that fits my limited perspective. As I look back over the past nine years of transition, I can see how others around me are in similar seasons of being either rooted or transitioning.

• Some have been disappointed by Christianity for various reasons and left the faith.
• Some have switched from one denomination to another.
• Some are still wandering.
• Some have found loving Christian community in new places that had previously been off their radar.

If we hope to keep the unity of Christ in the midst of our divisions, we need to understand these seasons. Besides our divisions over beliefs and practices, we can also divide over our seasons of belief.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, here are three seasons I have observed:

The Rooted Season of Faith

Many of us are in a rooted season in our faith where we have a certain level of comfort with our understanding of the Bible, our spiritual practices, and the ways we serve others. Those who are rooted need to be aware of welcoming those who are sprouting in their faith and have yet to find their place, while also remaining patient with those who are being transplanted.

The Transplant Season of Faith

For some of us who have been rooted in one spot for a while, sometimes the old answers and ways of doing things stop making sense. We all have our different reasons for pulling up our roots and moving elsewhere, though sometimes wider trends emerge.

Transplants are often in vulnerable positions, as they don’t feel like they fit anywhere, their beliefs have been shaken in some way, and they may be hurting enough to become combative. The hardest thing for a rooted person is patiently loving an argumentative transplant. I reached a point during my own transplant process that I actually couldn’t go to church for a season because I wasn’t in a healthy place to deal with it.

Besides spreading conflict, another problem with transplants is they sometimes rush into something new without dealing with their previous hurts and disappointments. I saw this a lot with folks who were disappointed by the church and then jumped right into house churches or emerging churches without seeking healing first.

The Sprouting Season of Faith

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the more jaded transplants are the sprouts, Christians who are still enthusiastic about their faith. The danger with sprouts is transplants can snuff out their zeal with their grievances, while those who are rooted may fail to reach out to them and nurture them in the faith.

A sprout can wither easily and get trampled down if it isn’t guarded with care. Sprouts will have lots of questions and they may feel overwhelmed by the maturity of those with deep roots. Those who are rooted must make sure they protect the sprouts from storms and hard times, ensuring they receive the nourishment from God they need so badly.

Besides different beliefs and practices, Christians differ with their seasons of faith. I’m sure there are folks who would claim to be hybrids or something different altogether, but these three seasons keep coming up for me. When we understand the seasons of faith of those in our communities, we’ll be able to love them right where they’re at today.

Do these seasons of faith make sense to you?

Have you passed through a season of transition or of being rooted?

As a veteran of Catholic elementary school and a survivor of fundamentalism, I like to think of myself as rather experienced in the realm of poorly exercised authority. My elementary school seemed to teem with sadistic teachers who only knew how to punish us in groups because of the one undiagnosed ADD kid.

At their worst, the fundamentalists figured out a way to make the Bible feel like my sadistic Catholic school teachers—a guide to the punishments we’re bound to receive unless we’re perfect. As a child, most of the religious authority figures I knew were rather heavy on the guilt and punishment end of things, save for a few women who were amazing teachers and Christians.

Attaching the word “loving” with authority strikes me as impossible in some unguarded moments, and yet, for Christians, this is really the only way authority truly works.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my fondest memories of seminary is lunch time. The first generation Korean students gathered at a table and opened their Tupper wares to share with one another. I was even invited to pick up some chop sticks in join them at times.

Meanwhile, the occasional middle-aged pastor who had forgotten to bring a lunch would survey the vending machines with dread, knowing that the cheeseburger in a plastic bag would be his best option. He delayed that decision as long as possible.

Once a month we had a guest speaker come for a pizza lunch. Just about the entire seminary turned out for these events, filling the cafeteria and giving us all a chance to see each other and to catch up. These lunches gave us something that is essential when a bunch of people from a variety of backgrounds and relationships gather together to talk about God: relationships.

Do We Speak Truth in Relationships?

I love the way that ideas and conversations can spread on the internet, but the most significant drawback is the relational void that can occur in some online “conversations.” That isn’t to say that relationships can’t happen—they do. I’m just saying that we can now enter into conversations where we know nothing of the people participating in them.

Consequently, we don’t understand where someone is coming from and we’re not all that invested in seeking the best for that person. We just see a pile of text that challenges something important to us. There’s no prospect of seeing that pile of text at the next community lunch.

The Difference That Relationships Make

I’m certainly all for sharing my ideas online and hearing out those who disagree with me. However, I’ve observed some interesting dynamics. For example, though I’m a committed Arminian, many of my closest friends since childhood remain Calvinists. Although my childhood church is complementarian in their views toward women, and I have changed to egalitarian, I would pay close attention to the opinions of my pastors should they even contact me with a concern about my writing.

It actually can be quite easy to be friends with people we know who believe differently from us. Of course we all have experienced exceptions to this.

Who Should We Listen To?

As a general rule, I put the most stock in the opinions of the people who know me the best. Starting with my wife and some family members, I also pay close attention to friends, pastors, and colleagues. It is both unhealthy and impossible to acknowledge every opinion online as a kind of authority for our lives, and yet, it’s often tempting to do just that—even if we think we need to challenge these voices.

Who Should We Ignore

The tricky part about blogging is that I need to remain open to conversations with folks from a variety of perspectives, but I also can’t let a challenge from someone who doesn’t know me rattle my cage. I can’t lose sleep over the stuff coming from denominational leaders, celebrity pastors, and groups that would condemn someone like me.

They’re free to believe as they wish and I recognize their place in the church, but their critiques are also irrelevant to me. They have nothing invested in my own spiritual growth or the growth of my community, and therefore the best thing I can do is to seek accountability among those who desire to see myself and my community grow. While I seek guidance from perspectives outside of those who agree with me, a relational investment is critical.

Recognizing the Benefits of Authority

Having set some boundaries around the opinions I care most about, I want to make it clear that within the confines of relationships and becoming personally invested in one another, I also highly value the place of authority. We all need pastors and friends who care enough about us to challenge us to change. Tomorrow I’ll write about the freedom that comes from loving, relational authority.

I have something surprising, if not shocking to share with you. It’s something so astounding, that you may not even believe me.

Nothing can quite prepare you for this. So I’ll just go ahead and say it:

There are Christians who love Jesus, serve Jesus, and are even saved by Jesus who… disagree with me.

I know, I know, that is shocking news for you. I sometimes find it hard to believe some days.

There are divisions in the church that separate the sheep from the goats, but these divisions don’t necessarily lead to breaks in our fellowship with one another—even if these divisions take issue with my awesome perspective…

If you’ve read my book Coffeehouse Theology, you know that I’m a firm advocate for dialogue with other Christian perspectives. In fact, the diversity of Christian views available makes the Christian faith stronger in today’s context.

Over the past year I’ve given a lot of time to thinking over redemptive approaches to others, and I think division itself can play a somewhat redemptive function, provided we know when to unite.

My grandparents used to have this huge German Shepherd. They loved that dog, but it growled at the grandkids. Every time we came over, the dog was relocated upstairs. We were divided on our views and experiences of the dog, but for the sake of visiting with each other, the dog was hustled upstairs and locked away.

There are some issues in Christianity today where we have sharp disagreements, and so far as I can tell, we’ll always be divided to a certain degree. We can play around with our word choice here, but I think the word “divided” is in the only way I can honestly describe the nature of some debates.

I’ve seen some Christians do admirable work at fostering dialogue and understanding. There is real value to such dialogue, but I’m curious whether each side enters dialogue thinking, “If I just expressed my views perfectly, those other dummies will change their minds.”

There simply are issues where Christians both love Jesus and remain divided. In most cases that come to mind, civil dialogue won’t bring us to a place where many on either side will change their minds.

Our divisions are real, but we don’t have to let them consume us.

Our divisions are real, but they don’t have to cut us off from one another.

Our divisions are real, but we can actually remain united in spite of them.

For the foreseeable future, I don’t see myself attending a church where women aren’t allowed to teach. I will continue to acknowledge spiritual gifts and healings. I can’t imagine ever again tying the Republican party to my Christian faith. I don’t see the point in trying to ban same sex marriage, but I know I’m not as progressive on this issue as many of my left-leaning friends.

Those are just a few of the issues where I differ from some other Christians that I know. These are issues that “divide” us on one level, but I don’t have to let them get in the way of what actually unites us.

Let’s face it, we’re going to hang on to different theologies, support different cases, and attend different churches. The solution isn’t getting everyone on the same page, and sometimes the solution isn’t always dialogue.

Christian unity does not come from our heads. Unity isn’t a list of bullet points. Unity comes from the life of God’s Spirit within us. Our fights and divisions can’t undo the presence of God among his people.

However, we can decide that our issues and divisions are more important than God’s Spirit. We can fail to recognize the means by which God has made us one—sabotaging his uniting work among us in spite of our divisions.

If someone is good enough for God’s dwelling Spirit, then who am I say I’m too good, too right, or too “just” to have fellowship? How could I ever think I have higher standards than God?