discussing the emerging church

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In the last few weeks, in bible study, we've been conversing about the emerging church. Dan posted a great link to an article on the subject on his blog. Since then, I have been doing a lot of thinking and talking about it. Tonight, Dan had to go to a birthday party for his daughter, and so Sean pressed us into watching this sermon by a guy named Mark Driscoll, whom many people associate with the emerging church.

It might be helpful for me to point out that this is a very controversial topic. See, the emerging church seems to have become a buzzword for far left (liberal) Christianity. Apparently, there are several rather outspoken emerging church leaders who are saying and doing all manner of horrid things like: denying the Trinity, denying that Jesus Christ was (is) fully God and fully man, denying that homosexuality is a sin, and denying the legitimacy/accuracy of The Bible. This causes confusion, but, more importantly, this is teaching of false doctrine. This IS actually a turning of Christianity into a ministry of condemnation. Mark Driscoll, in the following sermon, very clearly separates himself and others from those radicals.

Perhaps I should also mention that the emerging church is very often associated with postmodernism. That's a valuable insight to have when addressing the topic. Of course, postmodernism can be most easily described in this context as a tearing up of old way, beliefs, and methods. People tend to rely more on personal experience than logical conclusions or tradition to understand the truth. So, people often try to reanalyze what they have been taught, and it often ends up being very destructive. Do you see how this could cause such controversy in the church today?

Many people believe that the emerging church is a destructive presence in contemporary Christianity. When you look at the radical liberal elements of it, there can be no doubt about that. But I think that, when one considers it in the postive sense Driscoll is talking about below (the first three lanes he discusses), it is actually a good thing. Maybe it's just a modern contextualization of the church. Maybe it's the actions of the Holy Spirit moving the church in the direction of revival. I'm not sure. But I do not think it is a manifest action of Satan to destroy the church though or that, if it was, it would succeed.

All that being said, I will leave you to the video. I warn you: It is about an hour long. But, if you have questions about what the emerging church is or what it means in the context of the future of the Christian church, I think you might do well to watch it. (Note: there seems to be downloads of it available as well. If you go here, you can find them)

Peace!

There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.

- Mark Driscoll (taken from the wikipedia page on him)

A Quick Comment Before Bed

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Combining the streaming aspect of Netflix with the Xbox 360 is pretty much brilliant. Blockbuster's doom is pretty much all but certain as far as I can see. I don't know if I even care about the dvd mailing part of Netflix. Just the streaming part is pretty cool (even if it is somewhat limited). This is already going to save Lilly and myself lots of money in terms of what we watch. We won't have to buy the two Stargate SG-1 movies for example. I don't need to find the last three seasons of Red Dwarf I've been wanting to watch. We don't have to wait to catch up on Heroes season 3. This is pretty cool. We watched "Legend of the Drunken Master" (2) tonight for movie night courtesy of this functionality. Just as easy as Time Warner's video on demand feature....minus the $3.99-$5.99 per movie view. Compared to that as a benchmark: If we watch more than 2 movies a month, we'll have already earned our monthly $8.99 Netflix fee in terms of what we've received. We live in such a culture of instant gratification. This sort of service may end up being the death of the corner video store, and possibly the doom for couch potato haters everywhere.

To venture into the realm of the philosophical for a second: This sort of functionality could be the death of civilization. Seriously. Nothing will promote laziness more than instant gratification we have begun to receive at home. There are already people who won't leave their houses because they seem to have everything they need there. We can easily communicate with our friends from home in a variety of ways. We can order food to our home (not quite instantly yet, but wouldn't that be something?). Many people can work from home, and most can find entertainment that they actually want only a button away at home. I remember a bit of a scandal a couple of years ago because someone set up a site where people could actually hunt deer from home. (I think it was shut down) Imagine what will happen when robots permeate our society and we can, controlling them from home, extend a physical reach into the real world via a mechanical (instead of virtual) avatar. How will a church respond when the members start showing up in avatar form?

I think it's pretty obvious our bodies are not meant for this. The logical ramifications of such a stagnation of even a segment of a modern society would suggest the fall of that country or community long before the rest of the world came with it. Or would it?

I remember reading in C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength" about how the N.I.C.E.'s eventual plan was to replace real trees and real birds with metal trees with metal birds that sang the recordings of long dead bird songs. The metal trees would serve the same breathable air providing function of the replaced real trees. They would just be metal and therefore devoid of life. It was all about purifying the world. What were they purifying it of? Life. Is that dissimilar to how we presently enter a world where only our perceived experiences matter to us? Where a virtual, computer generated reality is mimicking actual reality to the point where we no longer care which is which? There are scientists and engineers working on technologies that would allow the replication of smells. Why? So that we can watch movies or play video games and smell the realness of the simulated environment. Visual replication will only go so far before we can not visually distinguish the difference between real and fake. We're closer to that than it seems. As engineers work to create more perfect virtual realities that simulate everything from motion and sight to the smells and physical sensations of a simulated reality, a future not too dissimilar from the science fiction of The Matrix becomes less difficult to see.

I digress. I'm not going to be the first to think like this. Obviously so in fact. When we see movies like The Matrix, they are a warning to the future possibility of these ideas. Possible futures where we can get almost anything we want, even sex, without leaving our homes or even coming into contact with another human being. It's a frightening, dismal picture, and some of us may see large parts of it come to pass within our lifetimes. Almost certainly within our children's lifetimes if Christ does not return first or if a world war does not send our civilization into oblivion. The avalanche starts with a tiny snowball. Inch by inch new ways and new habits leap into our lives as the pace of civilization's growth grows faster and faster. How do you want it to end?

In the meantime, I still really like the instant gratification of being able to obtain my favorite mind dulling entertainment and media material at the press of a button. I think this will continue to get worse and worse though, and I wonder when we will hit the bottom.

note: The following, being the text of C.S. Lewis's which I mention above, is also a rather convincing argument for sex. :)

At dinner [Mark Studdock] sat next to Filostrato. There were no other members of the inner circle within earshot. The Italian was in good spirits and talkative. He had just given orders for the cutting down of some fine beech trees in the grounds.

"Why have you done that, Professor?” said a Mr. Winter who sat opposite. “I shouldn't have thought they did much harm at that distance from the house. I'm rather fond of trees myself."

"Oh yes, yes," replied Filostrato. “The pretty trees , the garden trees. But not the savages. I put the rose in my garden, but not the briar. The forest tree is a weed. But I tell you I have seen the civilised tree in Persia. It was a French attache who had it, because he was in a place where trees do not grow. It was made of metal. A poor, crude thing. But how if it were perfected? Light, made of aluminium. So natural, it would even deceive."

"It would hardly be the same as a real tree," said Winter.

"But consider the advantages! You get tired of him in one place: two workmen carry him somewhere else: wherever you please. It never dies. No leaves to fall, no twigs, no birds building nests, no muck and mess."

"I suppose one or two, as curiosities, might be rather amusing."

"Why one or two? At present, I allow, we must have forest for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet."

"Do you mean," put in a man called Gould, “that we are to have no vegetation at all?”

"Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet."

"I wonder what the birds will make of it?”

"I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt."

"It sounds," said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life."

"And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, `Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,' and then drop it?”

"Go on," said Winter.

"And you, especially you English, are you not hostile to any organic life except your own on your own body? Rather than permit it you have invented the daily bath."

"That's true."

"And what do you call dirty dirt? Is it not precisely the organic? Minerals are clean dirt. But the real filth is what comes from organisms - sweat, spittles, excretions. Is not your whole idea of purity one huge example? The impure and the organic are interchangeable conceptions."

"What are you driving at, Professor?” said Gould.

"After all we are organisms ourselves."

"I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mould - all sprouting and budding and breeding and decay­ing. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course; slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation."

"I don't think that would be much fun," said Winter.

"My friend, you have already separated the Fun, as you call it, from the fertility. The Fun itself begins to pass away. Bah! I know that is not what you think. But look at your English women. Six out of ten are frigid are they not? You see? Nature herself begins to throw away the anachronism. When she has quite thrown it away, then real civilisation becomes possible. You would understand if you were peasants. Who would try to work with stallions and bulls? No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex.

- C.S. Lewis - That Hideous Strength

An Obituary

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WARNING! - This might not be for the faint of heart or for those who are particularly sensitive when it comes to subject matter involving animals and violence.

Buttercup was Larry and Mark's cat. She was also a dear friend to all in the house.

Last night, I awoke to my wife screaming one word into my face: "Buttercup!!!!!"

This was quickly followed by something along the lines of, "She's in trouble! Help her!" My first thought was that she was in a cat fight. Not too uncommon, but the growling quickly changed that thought. (Keep in mind, this whole train of action and thought occurred in under two seconds) Leaping to the window, I quickly saw Buttercup surrounded by two mid to large size dogs. They were biting her, and tossing her around in their mouths. We pounded on the window for a second, but there was no change. So, I raced to the back door, opened it just enough to see out, and started making the best angry barking sound I could. Apparently, that worked because the dogs vanished into the night. But, alas, for poor Buttercup it was too late.

Scrambling to put on a shirt (it was really cold), and grabbing a bo-staff that Lilly handed me (the bo-staff is courtesy of Todd at the moment), I ran out to Buttercup. She was breathing, but, as I approached, it was painfully obvious that it was already too late. She lay there on her side, breathing heavily, and, there, across her belly, was a four or five inch gash. Out of it hung her stomach. We tried to comfort her. Lilly had already called Mark, and both he and Larry came out the upstairs door within a few seconds. Even then, by the time they got to her the breathing had stopped, and her body was growing cold.

The sad event had happened around 4:12AM. By around 4:30 AM, the four of us had ventured out into the cold, pre-storm morning air for a sad and hasty funeral. Larry and Mark dug a small, cat sized hole. And, with a few words about how wonderful of a kitty she had been, what gift from God she was, and how remarkably long her life had been, we laid Buttercup to rest and covered her with dirt, leaves, and dust.

Today, the memories of last night have not ceased in haunting me. I realize with a detached sort of logic that all life on this earth must come to an end, and that this is why our Christian eschatalogical hope is so great. In e-mails we passed around today, we talked about how we think and hope that animals (at least some of them) go to heaven. And we also talked about them having voices there again. For, we know that:

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

- Romans 8:19-22

and that the bible says also this:

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:
"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!"

- Revelations 5:13

We all loved Buttercup. Lilly enjoyed very much giving her soft food from time to time. I particularly enjoyed the way she would greet us every time we came home and every time we stepped out our back door to leave. I can say that I felt loved by her when, arriving home from work, she would meet me at my car, walk (more like trot) with me back up to the back door, and generally just enjoy a little bit of loving attention as I would pet her before going inside. She also loved to try to sneak in to our flat. Just the other day, I went to answer the door to let in Daniel. As I was doing so,he was reaching down to pet Buttercup (whom, in her loving fashion, had solicited him for love as well). As I opened the door, Buttercup sprinted inside. She rocketed past my feet, and would have made it deep into the house if I had not called to her sternly. Then she stopped, turned obediently, and raced back outside. I don't know if it was as funny for her, but it left Daniel and I giggling for the next several minutes. Sometimes, we would let Buttercup and Rajah see and talk to each other from a couple of feet apart, and Rajah would certainly watch her from our bedroom window at night. I'm pretty sure he saw the whole incident as well.

There's such a minor bond between Lilly and myself to Buttercup though when compared to what Larry and Mark must have had. I can't imagine all the fun stories they might have. (and, as I write this, it is too late in the evening to ask them) In the winter time, I know she would be allowed in to sleep on Mark's bed. And, as for Larry, I don't know when he acquired her, but I know that the guy who had her before him had her as far back as '94 and '95. I think Larry has had her most of the time since. How many stories must he have of her crazy antics?

She was an old cat, and I guess that when compared to other ways for her to have gone (slow painful ones), this one was probably much better. Buttercup will be missed. She was a gift from God to all who knew her. She was a dear friend to all in the house. She was also Larry and Mark's cat.

"Now, Mrs. Studdock," said the Director, "you shall see a diversion. But you must be perfectly still." With these words he took from his pocket a little silver whistle and blew a note on it. And Jane sat still till the room became filled with silence like a solid thing and there was first a scratching and then a rustling and presently she saw three plump mice working their passage across what was to them the thick undergrowth of the carpet, nosing this way and that so that if their course had been drawn it would have resembled that of a winding river, until they were so close that she could see the palpitation of their noses. In spite of what she said she did not really care for mice in the neighborhood of her feet and it was with an effort that she sat still. Thanks to this effort she saw mice for the first time as a really are - not as creeping things but as dainty quadrupeds, almost, when they sat up, like tiny kangaroos, with sensitive kid-gloved forepaws and transparent ears. With quick inaudible movements they ranged to and fro till not a crumb was left on the floor. Then the blew a second time on his whistle and with a sudden whisk of tails all three of them were racing for home and in a few seconds had disappeared behind the coal box. The Director looked at her with laughter in his eyes....

"There," he said, "a very simple adjustment. Humans want crumbs removed; mice are anxious to remove them. It ought never to have been a cause of war."

- C. S. Lewis, in That Hideous Strength

I love Obadja.

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Check them out at http://www.obadja.com/. You can download the whole cd for their last album, "Unforced Rhythms of Freedom", there as well. It's freakin' awesome. (about half of it is in english, btw)

You can "see" the full version of the above song here: