Paradigms

Last night I watched this video that documented these 'transformations' that were happening in cities around the world. It was documenting how churches in those cities engaged in spiritual warfare with the occult forces also present. In each case the churches won out purely as a result of prayer. The occult was driven out, and miraclous events and revivals took place. I was skeptical through most of it.

Still, as I wrestled with the video's claims on the way home, I realized something: there was a lot of truth in that video. Yet, I felt like the video oversimplified things to the point of gross error. I thought surely there are hundreds of factors that this video was leaving out. It spoke nothing of politics, economics, climatic/ecological factors, or anything else. This documentary took on a very typical story form (when you hear typical, think of the route-word - type, which implies something that is predictable in plot). The video set up -
the protagonist: Christians
antagonist: Occultic forces
side characters: city government, popular figures, etc.
and the story plays out quite simply - Christians do God's will, praying against the Occult, side characters join in, occult loses, to a certain degree the world is set right. The thing that bothered me is that in all this there were no other factors playing into it. Everything was more or less black and white in this video, and that's where I can't buy it. Most of my experience in the world has revealed that there are multiple takes on all issues, and a plethora of explanations for every event.

So, did this video attributing these extreme transformations that took place in several cities have some truth to it? Were the events in some way determined by the prayer of the churches present in those cities? Was the evil present in those cities directly related to the Occult going on?

I would say on all these: most likely so. Even, emphatically yes.

But . . . .
I don't think that this tells the whole story. I don't think it tells even a majority of the story. I think in all situations there are tons of explanations that are all in some way viable.

When I was driving home last night I started thinking about paradigms. Recently I was brave enough to buy some books that were purely scientific in their discussion. Science fascinates me, but I'm far from being competent in discussing it. But, in all my theological readings I've learned some key scientific names, whose theories have made significant impact on theology. One such guy is named Thomas Kuhn. He basically invented paradigm theory.

Here's the gist:
we are constantly confronted with the experience of our senses, the abstractions of our minds, and the spiritual realm. Imagine that each of these experiences constitute a single star in the sky. Their number is practically infinite. Ultimately, it's good and awe inspiring to look at the night sky, and in the same way that life can be beautiful when we step back and just take it in. But, just taking it in leaves one significant problem: it's all meaningless. Beyond being beautiful the stars also serve to give us direction (at least before GPS systems). The same is true with experience. To just live and let die, is also to go through life aimless and with no ultimate meaning. Ultimately by connecting the stars into patterns and shapes people could use them to find their way. It's the same with facts and experience. They mean nothing until they are connected in such a way as to allow us to find direction and live beyond the current minute and concerns thereof.

This is why there is no such thing as objectivity. Basically, that which is completely objective is also meaningless and therefore not worth anything. Even the driest historical report or most straitforward scientific study is subletly nuanced with subjective data. If they weren't, then in a literal sense, no one would ever read them.

Now when paradigm is used in conversation currently, it most often implies a macroparadigm. This means a paradigm that is shared by a vast majority of people in the world. This is what we are talking about when we say "modernity" or "postmodernity". They are constellations of thought that shape the way a large portion of humanity approaches life.

Here's the thing that Kuhn says about it that I found interesting: Paradigms ultimately are incapable of incorporating all possible data. In other words there is no constellation that can connect all the dots. Every paradigm has to leave out a vast portion of the available experiences and facts, even suppress them, to maintain meaning. Facts that don't line up with the data have to be discounted or explained away. . . . which is what science does with religion, and what overzealous religion does to science.

So, when I watch videos that convey a very simple orientation to what is happening in the world, I can on the one hand appreciate that they are offering a viable explanation. I believe God is at work in those places. I believe he works in response to prayer. I believe that ultimately we need to fight evil in the vast number of forms it come in. I just don't believe that the whole story can be summed up so easily.

I think science too has a constellation that makes a good sense of the facts and experiences of the world. I also find many other religions that I don't like as much as Christianity, but nonetheless, have some siginificant strong points in their paradigms.

And ultimately what I'm coming to understand is that Jesus doesn't pretend to give an all-encompassing paradigm. He gives us parables to start us off, but he doesn't even pretend that he will answer all of our questions. Instead, he gives a foundational structure for one on which there are an infinite number of possibilities to construct further understandings. In that we can say science is good, and that if Jesus is foundational, science is also redeemed. Making it holy, and right. Other religions, at least for me, cannot be foundational, but they can contain truth. Lots of it. I think ultimately Christ provides me with what I need so that I don't have to choose one paradigm over another. I can live with the tension between them, and still hold to Christ as my direction and my meaning. Yet this does not mean that Christianity is a paradigm unto itself. It is beyond that. It seeks to unite what conflicts and bring all things together in the service of the God who prevades all the facts and every experience. I don't think it's simple. Life never is. When it appears simple it is because we are suppressing all that doesn't fit with our preconcieved ideas (paradigm). To open ones eyes to the overwhelming variety of experience in our world, results in a necessary humility toward the decisions of others. It forces us to accept that other interpretations of reality are very much valid.

human?

A friend of mine recently wrote a post about being human. It got me to thinking . . . .

What on earth do we imply when we claim to be "just human" or "merely human". I had never really caught on to how loaded those phrases truly are, and now that I am, I don't think I like them much. Obviously, claiming ourselves as merely human is used to imply that we can't be more than that, to which I would agree. But, the way this phrase is typically used is to justify some kind of short-coming on our part. We don't meet up to excessive demands on ourselves because we're "only human". We give into impulses because we are human. And, eventually we justify our sin as something that is simply human.

Now, when I say sin, please don't assume that I'm adhering to the stale, evangelical sense of the word. That's not what I mean, and I'll get to my true idea of its meaning later. My point in the above is to show how when we make such statements about "being human", we are really being pretty pessimistic about the nature of humanity. I imagine there are two lines we could trace in regard to this attitude of human nature. One being the Calvinistic/Lutheran theological line that emphasized the full depravity of man. The second line could be the secular scientific view that we are the next step beyond chimpanzee's which would justify our occasional primal behavior. I think both lines of thought are basically a bunch of crap. Full depravity is a characature, which attempts to fit the world into a stale doctrine that never has adequately explained our world and never will. Degenerative evolutionists on the other hand strike me as lazy people who failed to grow out of the egocentrism and typical behavior one can witness in most toddlers.

And, all that to say, I think we've inherited some wrong ideas about "being human". In fact I think modernity has given us a very perverted view of what exactly makes us human. It seems to me that we need to flip the statement around: instead of saying we are "merely being human", we should start saying instead we are being a little bit less than human. To modernity we are human because we evolved beyond gorillas and increased our capacity to think. So, we find Decartes' "I think therfore I am" as the cliche t-shirt slogan for people up to the 1960's. Yet, now that postmodernity has come on to the scene, people think less highly about our race's intellectual capacity. And so, pop culture has devolved and come to embrace our animal instincts. We've become the first species to evolve to world domination and then wish we could go back.

As a Christian humanist I think there's a different meaning and a different criteria to "being human". It's something that I don't think the English vocabulary has the capacity to handle well, so the best I can describe it is this: I think to be human is to in some weird trancendent kind of way live beyond ourselves. In escence, to be human is to be more. Scientists have enough evidence now to make a very convincing (though maybe not comprehensive) case for evolution on some level. So, if one pulls the Bible verses out of their ears and stops screaming "la la la la la" when an evolutionist opens their mouth, they would probably have to concede, not that the evolutionist is right, but in the least that he makes a good point. So, if we are basically primates with opposable thumbs and abstract reasoning, is that what being human is?? NO.

Being human is being capable of living beyond our immediate environment and finding experience beyond that which immediately involves our senses. One of the greatest residual traits of the God who created us in his image is creativity that goes beyond our intellectual capacity; we explore the abstract even beyond what our mind is capable of grasping. We create not just based on what we know and what assets we have available. We, in essence, create out of nothing.

Now, when I say we, I do not mean each of us individually. I do not mean 'we' as in small groups of people either. Ultimately I mean 'we' as in humanity. I think that this too is what it means to be human. I think those who are the most human are those who are learning the most how we all function as one race. Not that I think that the individual is unimportant. Ultimately I think that the whole only proceeds as far as it relative parts proceed. Still, I think that to be human, and truly human, is to realize that on some level all things are integrated and interdependent.

so, I offer that as today's convoluted mess of philosophical grappling, enjoy.

Islam's Example and the Regrets of a Former Missions Major

So, I'm now reading a book that is making a useful comparrison/contrast between Christianity and Islam. It's mostly Christian authors, but they are definitely on the ecumenical side, so they are not concerned with proving Christianity right; they are simply offering up important distinctions and misconceptions that each religion tends to make toward the other. The guy presenting the Muslim viewpoint doesn't give any biographical info on himself, but sounds to me like he is more secular than anything else, which in light of the respect he still shows to both religions is refreshing.

Anyway he says some very interesting things in his concluding remarks.

It seems to me that Islam's weakness lies just where its strength lies: in its success. . . 'The Church beneath the Cross' is barely conceivable in Muslim categories. . . . [as] the first Islamic community met with success, [this] became part of the basic model. The more reality diverges from this, the more believers turn back toward this model.

Christian don't typically like to acknowledge the success Islam enjoyed in its early years. Within a hundred years of its conception, Islam's growth had superseded Christianity and any of the great empires of the past. Only once Christianity invaded North and South America did it return to being the world's predominate religion. Also, in a different form of success, we can point that long before the European Enlightenment, the Islamic world was paving the way for science, math (they invented algebra after all), naval exploration, commerce, and philosophy. A book I finished not to long ago pointed out that Europeans were truly the intellectual inferiors to the Muslim world until a guy named Thomas Aquinas came on to the scene and offered up works which set the trajectory that led to the Reformation and in many ways the Enlightenment as well. Oh . . . and, his works can be said plainly to have been offered in response to the 'intellectual threat' of Islam.

Within two hundred years of conception, Islam spread from Morraco and Spain, across North Africa, the whole of the Middle East, all of Arabia, and the whole of Central Asia, down to the plains of India, where it skipped into the Indonesian archipeligo. It's success is nothing short of phenomenal, and as a Christian I must admit, it is hard not to agree it was God-ordained. The same author offered one reason for Islam's success was its practicallity, and its "missionaries".

[Islam's] missionaries were the merchants . . . The merchant, or modern businessman, makes particularly effective use of his social prestige; he is richer than most people, and he represents a higher level of culture. And a businessman never demands the impossible. Islam is spread by lay apostles, which most likely gives it an advantage over Christianity, which has a hard time explaining the discrepancy between the message presented by its missionaries and the behavior of its lay people - not to mention the enormous burden of colonialism.

I definitely would say it is nothing short of amazing that a religion could spread such a staggering stretch of geography with no professional missionaries. With little time given for inculturation and contextualization. With little help from governments, Muslims managed to spread their faith across the world in less than two-hundred years. One obvious reason the author gave was that it amounted to a simple, practical orthopraxy for the lay-believers life. Christians can say all they want to about law, but to a first-generation believer, law is a good thing. In the process of turning from paganism to monotheism their has to be some structure to follow, or syncretism becomes the inevitable fact. In turning to Allah, the convert had only to recite the shahada, and remember the five pillars, and he was thereby in submission to Allah.

Contrast that with the convoluted mess of Christian doctrine concerning the Trinity, attonement, sin, grace, faith, works and righteousness. Contrast it with the confusing, vague ideas of Christian morality, and the historical nature of European missionaries, which it seems more often than not, simply projected the sins they were most ashamed of onto the indigenous population and called them to repent.

The other advantage of Islam was the lack of professionalism: spread instead by merchant apostles. Typically the natives receiving a Christian missionary had to observe one example portrayed by the pious missionaries, who for all their holiness, were still the laziest people to ever walk the earth. If a native converted, he still had to discern his own example of living by faith, since if he followed the missionary's example of jobless preaching and scripture reading, he had little choice but starve. Then throw into the mix the contrast of lay Christians as they came onto the scene, who aside from their weekly hour of reverence were often of the lowest moral character present on the planet. . . . but they did work . . . at least they had that going for them. On the opposite end, Islam was the practical religion of wealthy traders who, at least with greater continuity than Christians, lived out their religion. They offered piety and technology. Their religion was not absent in commerce, but applied there also. This could partially be why, inspite of all the colonial attempts impel Christianity over Islam, we still have no record of a Muslim country (no matter how nominal) ever converting. They were driven out of Spain and Sicily, but not converted to Christianity.

Ultimately, I think this has big implications for Christian missions. If we are going to continue on in our professional pattern of mission work, why do we think we are going to be successful in countries where there is no category for "career spiritual person"? The only place where I assume that pattern could work would be in places like India, Africa, or some Buddhist countries where people who do little but "be spiritual" all day are accepted . . . but the fair warning is that if one decides to take that path he should be prepared to live up to and even exceed that cultures level of spirituality.

But, for other countries, and I find this to apply across the board, why do we think we can spread faith in Christ by being a career spiritual person, when few countries in the Modern/Postmodern world have a category for this. I think it ridiculous now to assume going as a "full-time" missionary to Europe is worth any European's time. There's plenty of clergy in Europe they could follow the example of, if they wanted to listen to someone who reads the Bible and prays in a church all day. If that is what we do, then they can't exactly follow our example can they; nor does our spirituality seem very relevant to their busy schedule, seeing as we have all the time in the world to be that way.

If we want to increase God's Kingdom anywhere we cannot assume that people in that place will be willing to acknowlege distinctions between what we preach, who we are, and what we do. Our message may be great, but if we do nothing, it is dismissed because its messanger is not a practical example.

So, if you're mission-minded and don't want to get a job, go to Africa . . . but I guess chances are you already were, so, proceed on with your plans. . .
Otherwise, if you're mission-minded, incarnation is not optional, please don't steal church money for the sake of being professionally spiritual.

Todd's Question

"At what point (if at all) should we expect, attempt, demand that our friends follow the way of Jesus?"

Now, I'm not stupid enough to think this is really a question that I can give a sufficient answer to, especially in the confines of this blog. Obviously there is no way we can answer this in an 'across the board' fashion. Still, the primary question here in return is: what exactly is 'the way of Jesus'???

Jesus' life was centered thoroughly on the Kingdom of God. To be his disciple is ultimately to be a citizen of that Kingdom. The two ideas are synonymous. Certainly one can't help but see that Jesus' call is to follow him. He does not give us a book of precepts, or a religious system to follow. He does not leave his disciples with an ideology. He simply offered himself. His life was the example. He spoke in parables; I don't believe purely because he wanted to be contextual, but more because he wanted to offer a teaching that transcended legalism and doctrine. Yet even in this bold self-estimation, he never manipulated accolades from his disciples. He would accept their praise, but did not expect it. Peter confessed him as Messiah freely of his own volition. The Roman centurion called him Son of God as a belief he arrived at. Yet to say that Jesus expected to receive such titles would be out of line. He side-stepped such glory. Remember, we should call God good, not Jesus.

So, yes, Christians follow the Christ. But what does that mean when he says things like this:
"What do you think? There was a man with two sons. He said to the first, 'Go and work today in my vineyard.' The first answered, 'No', yet later he changed his mind and went. Next the father went to the second son saying the same. That son said, 'Sure, I'll go', but never went. Which did what the father wanted? Truthfully, traitors and whores are choosing the Kingdom of God before you are." Jesus uses this to call the hearers to repentance, but do we really think responding to an alter call is repentance? No, working in his vineyard is repentance. Doing his will as he asked us to is repentance, regardless of what we may say.

Or consider when Jesus says, "Whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me, and therefore the One who sent me. For like the child, the least among you are the greatest." His disciple John unsure then said, "Um, we saw a guy the other day driving out demons, and told him to stop, because he wasn't one of us . . ." Jesus replied, "Don't do that, if he's not against you he is for you."

What does this mean? First, consider this, the Jewish understanding doing something 'in the name of', can be said in the same vein as doing it in the 'spirit of'. Good works are not ruled out by the lack of the Jesus stamp. If people do works in the name of Muhammad, they can still be in the spirit of Jesus. Futhermore, even if one rejects what I just said, it still applies that if he is doing good, at least to that extent, he is on our side. The fact is, in the Kingdom no one should be controlled by evil. So, the Christian, Muslim, and secular humanist, can all serve the same side by driving out demons. I sure hope we have moved beyond the idiocy of thinking God would rather someone remain oppressed and impoverished than let an agnostic peace worker help them out of their situation. This reminds me of Luke 17:20 which recalls Jesus being asked by "spiritual people" when the Kingdom would finally show up. Jesus replies, "Watch the news, listen to gossip: neither will work. The Kingdom is already here, among you, in your society." When we get exclusive, we waste our time waiting for God to come into our world, when truthfully he's never left. And, when Christians fail to do the work of his Kingdom, we find atheists doing it to our shame.

I talked to a friend the other night. She expressed a disdain for an agnostic social worker she had met in Russia when she was doing mission work there. Her basic gist was that the guy she met, was trying to add meaning to his life, by doing good works. His life had no meaning until he went abroad doing good. In my mind though, that is from God. He is serving God's Kingdom and doing God's will in ignorance, to my shame if no one else's. I find it sad that such people have to search hard for meaning, without the wisdom of religious truth to help. Yet I also find that meaning which would satisfy me with a spectator religion that benefits only its own adherents to be a lie. Personally I find secular humanism to be superior to consumer Christianity. It serves God better.

And this brings me back to where we stated (sort of). If I see someone living for the Kingdom of God, I think they are following the way of Jesus, even if ignorantly. I believe that Jesus as the Son who lived more completely by God's will than any other person who has walked the earth is unquestionably a better guide and savior than any other religion or philosophy. But, that is my faith, and it is not a prerequisite for my relationship. Jesus' will is to do God's will. As best as I can tell God desires that his all-encompassing Kingdom would be resored, and in it all things would be made new. If someone is working toward that, then we may not be brothers, but cousins at least.

Another Word

Ecumenical?

I’ve been attempting to describe the meaning of this word to one of my friends for a month now. The first time I ever heard the word was when I was a missionary intern in Europe. I was asking to the missionary I was working under why they didn’t do some joint outreach projects with the charismatic churches down the road, who happened to be the largest evangelical group in the city. As of that point they would play basketball together, but serving together was a whole other story. He said he had played with such “ecumenical” thought for a while, but then rejected it since eventually it meant he had to give the same respect to Hindu’s and Jews as well. I nodded my head at the time and agreed completely. Those were my fundamentalist days; I stood firm rejecting ecumenicalism outright.

Two years later I figured out what ecumenical actually meant and proceeded to wonder why it was such a bad thing. Fundamentalism had instructed me firmly that it was evil just like Disney was evil. Yet something seemed askew in this line of thought. At about this same time I learned that heaven was actually large enough to house Baptists and Methodists along with my entire church (note: I did not say denomination), meaning that either denomination could in reality end up there at some point. It was a ground-breaking time. . . . oh, and that brings me back to the point at hand, what does it mean to be ecumenical?

Basically, the whole idea is closely linked to globalization. Back in the day one could refer to the Western world as the “Christian” world. One could also assume that everyone in India was Hindu. All Arabs were Muslim. All Asians were Buddhist, except for the Chinese who were. . . well, Chinese. And, Christians could raise a plea to go convert the poor ignorant souls in that place, wherever that was. Today is different. The question remains quite profound to me, why are we sending people to Asia, to convert the Buddhist(?) Asians, if we have more Asians right here in our own country than we know what to do with, and select few have even briefly considered Christianity. In fact today it is redundant to point out that few “Westerners” are still Christian in any traditional sense, and as a matter of fact, they happen to be among the least religious people on the planet. And, thus, the cliché goes, “If you want to be a foreign missionary, walk across the street.”

Used to be, Christians were able to go and declare the rightness of our religion in opposition to the ridiculous wrongness of theirs. This sort of good, Bible-based preaching would be just the spur in the saddle which would covert the billions of lost souls to the only true religion, heck, the only religion that religion that wasn’t completely ridiculous . . . right? right? If that didn’t get them we’d simply point out that they were one step away from eternal mortification by fire at the judgment of a God who paradoxically was neither evil, nor vindictive. Needless to say the only conversions that resulted from this were those of the children of such missionaries, from Christianity to anything else.

The truth is that this sort of religious attitude uses ignorance as its prerequisite. It’s easy to think that Muslims are bad people needing conversion, until you meet a Muslim who is a better person than any Christian you have known. Even then it is easy to think he still needs to be converted, until you look at the world through his eyes, realizing that if he were to even think about Jesus being equal to God he is in danger of Hell, according to the Qur’an. Then realize that he has seen the Way of Submission change people to the core. Within his own faith he has seen the same good results that Christians offer him. Yet most Christians would never listen long enough to see Islam this way. Furthermore, we often seek to discredit the good of their religion. The Buddhist speaks of the peace he knows by following the eight-fold path, but we claim the only real peace is by the Holy Spirit . . . his must be a fake peace. . . obviously . . .

Ecumenicalism is a step beyond the ignorance that keeps humans from seeking to understand each other. It starts out with the recognition that my religion is not the only one capable of experiencing God. Because of this, their faith might just have something to teach me. Also, it’s necessary to point out quickly, this is not the same thing as pluralism. Pluralism, first, is simply a fact. Other religions exist, and we can’t continue to treat them like they are inferior solely because they adhere to a different faith. But, pluralism is also a referral to the laziness that is so common in postmodern thought. As though all religions are the same, which is one of the most idiotic ideas that a person could ever claim. Ecumenicalism is not pluralism. In fact, pluralism is ultimately incompatible with ecumenicalism. I can be ecumenical and still hold firmly to my belief in Jesus as Savior. I cannot though assume that the religion that follows Jesus is the only religion that has had a true experience of God.

If God is who we say he is, then he is seeking to be known by all of humanity. Therefore, a Buddhist can teach me a lot about God. And even more revolutionary is the idea that a Buddhist can teach me a lot about how to be more Christian than I have been. It is not pluralism because I do not assume my Buddhist friend is OK. His faith too, can be challenged by mine, but this is a far cry from assuming I am right and he is wrong: as though by wearing Christ’s name I am the only one whose experience of Divinity is not completely false.

Regardless of our differences, we can still maintain respect, and that is in line with the core of all the major religions. The fact is that we now live in a world where no religion is truly a world away. Rather within a mile of my apartment there are Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, secularists, Hindus, and pagans. If I begin conversation with these people with our differences in mind, I will never be worth their time, nor will I shed the least twinkle of the light of Christ on them. This is what the ecumenical idea has realized.

So, to put it concisely, ecumenical implies an open-mindedness to challenge and be challenged through respectful dialogue between different faiths. This does not imply that we’re all the same, but rather that all of us can learn from each other. It means seeking first the common ground where we work as one to heal the broken world, instead of using our dogmas to fracture it further. It means that God is not so small that he only has time to reveal himself through Christianity.