THE TRUTH WE SEE

A good conversation with a great old friend recently turned to the subject of the emergent conversation/movement/church/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. We didn't stay there long because we had too many other things to catch up on, but he told me one of these days I'd have bring him up to speed on what I think about the whole thing. If forced to sum up my thoughts on all things emergent I think I'd have to say I'm passionately ambivalent. I'm am at once strongly attracted to certain elements of the emergent ethos, yet, at the same time, remain somewhat skeptical and critical. A full explanation of both my sympathies and my critiques will have to wait for another day. I think I can say however, that more than anything, I fear that what is good about the conversation/movement may simply be co-opted by those church entrepreneurs looking for the latest gimmick.

The folks at Leadership Journal have recently started a blog of their own (haven't we all?) called "Out of Ur" ( http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/). Their most recent entry is "How Emergent Are You? McLaren's Seven Layers of the Emergent Conversation." It certainly isn't the most profound thing out there regarding "emergent stuff" but you might get a chuckle out of Layer One the way I did:

"Layer 1: Style
Seeker Community Church realizes they're ineffective at reaching the coveted 18-32 year old demographic. They send a few staff members to a conference and they come back with goatees and candles."

They forgot to mention the Persian rugs, but you get the point.

McLaren's 'Layer Seven' undoubtedly represents what I appreciate the most about the emergent ethos and is what I hope will last even if the trend we're now calling emergent doesn't.

"Layer 7: World
Maybe the mission of the church isn't simply to become a bigger church? Maybe, like Jesus, the church is to engage the larger world to reveal that the kingdom of God has drawn near? To their amazement, Seeker Community Church discovers significant swaths of the Bible (such as the Pentateuch, prophets, gospels, and epistles) talk about justice, poverty, and compassion. The church begins to speak about social issues and participates in efforts to combat poverty, AIDS, and global injustice."

It's nice to know that this is indeed about more than just facial hair, candles and Persian rugs.

One of my most prized possessions is a beat up old beige journal. I have at least a half-a-dozen others that are virtually indistinguishable from this one – random thoughts and quotes scratched down on about a third of the pages before it got tossed aside and forgotten about. But none of those other ones matter all that much. This one is different. Why? Because, despite the fact that the handwriting is eerily similar to my own, I didn’t write these random thoughts and quotes. I was an eleven year old kid when my dad was scratching down the contents of this notebook. The first entry is from 4:30 a.m. on November 22, 1983.

Most of you that read this (if there are any of you!) know that my dad died in the spring of 1999. It’s hard to believe that it has been that long. I still think about him and miss him all the time. That’s one of the reasons I love this notebook. It’s a little piece of him that I get to keep with me. And it’s a fascinating window into a complex soul (from one who wasn’t particularly well known for opening such windows).

The opening entry struck me again a couple of days ago when I picked up the journal for the first time in a long time. It is probably what inspired me to start most of the other journals I’ve never managed to stick with through the years, but, despite the fact that I rarely ever get much further into a notebook than my dad got into his, I think this entry is worth passing along here anyway. The words come out of another family treasure, the Bible that belonged to the patron saint of my mother’s side of the family, my great-grandmother Grace. Hers was a Bible and then some – one of those copies of the Good Book that had some other devotional and theological material included in the back. Somewhere in that section of added wisdom my dad, at 4:30 a.m. on 11/22/83, found and recorded these words about the virtue of keeping a notebook:

"If I were twenty-one again I would spend a little time every day in the realm of the beautiful. Luther always placed a flower on his desk before he began to write. His stormy nature needed the soothing influence of beauty’s touch. We all need it. A beautiful poem, a sweet song, a lovely picture, a rare literary gem, – the touch of the beautiful – once a day. The nearest practical approach to this for the average person is a well-ordered notebook, carefully conned and reviewed. Most great men have kept and carried a notebook. The things which we “note” are the things which stay with us….

“… Crowd your brain with gems. Fill your soul with the beauty of a thousand lovely thoughts… and do it while you’re young, when passing moments are yours – “while the evil days come not” – when the duties and responsibilities of life press so thick and hard that there does not seem to be a moment for soul culture or spiritual brooding.

“And this shall be the secret law of your heart in the collection and compilation of your literary “bric-a-brac” – whatever touches you – whatever appeals to you – whatever inspires you – whatever seems to you to be “lovely” – whatever sets your soul on fire – this must be treasured in your notebook."

Even (or perhaps especially!) in this age when we all have so many technological devices that promise to save us valuable time, I’m sure that most of us already feel like there’s not much time for soul culture or spiritual brooding, but that’s time we all yearn for and, I think, genuinely need. So go buy yourself a cheap blank book and start writing. Even if you only write in a third of it, the things you note will be the things that stay with you. And just maybe those things will stay with those who love you even when you’re gone.

Last week I received the latest edition of the Mars Hill Audio Journal in my mailbox. Every two months Mars Hill Audio puts together a thought-provoking collection of interviews with leading Christian thinkers (and non-Christians writing on religious themes) designed “to assist Christians who desire to move from thoughtless consumption of modern culture to a vantage point of thoughtful engagement” (from their website http://www.marshillaudio.org/). This volume was one of the best that I’ve heard (including a nice interview with Eugene Peterson, the full one hour version of which can be downloaded for free from their website).

The interview that struck me the most was with sociologist Christian Smith. Smith, along with Michael Emerson, is responsible for one of the most important discussions of the relationship between evangelicalism and the problem of race in America in their book Divided by Faith (Oxford, 2000). The interview on this edition of the Mars Hill Audio Journal focused on Smith’s newest book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Oxford, 2005). What fascinated me about Smith’s comments in the interview was the fact that their research showed that the teenagers studied were very articulate but were, for the most part, completely ill-equipped to articulate the distinctives of their religious traditions. They knew very well the language of the culture, but hardly knew at all the language of the church (Smith illustrated this in the interview by talking about the fact that a word study of the interview transcripts revealed that a lot of young people used the word “grace” but the overwhelming majority of the uses of the word were in reference to Will and Grace). Smith said that what he found as he looked at the data was that while these teenagers were unable to describe the particulars of their respective religious traditions, they were nonetheless describing a coherent set of religious beliefs. Smith describes this set of beliefs with the apt phrase “moralistic therapeutic deism” – God exists, doesn’t want me to misbehave, wants me to be happy, gives me resources to cope with life and help me feel better about myself, but, for the most part, watches from a distance.

The key lesson learned from Smith’s research, it seems to me, is that American teenagers haven’t invented the religion of “moralistic therapeutic deism.” They have inherited it. They have inherited it from well meaning but misguided parents and (perhaps even more importantly) churches (more important because they nurture and form the religious life and language of both parents and children) who have far too often been shaped more by culture than by gospel. “Moralistic therapeutic deism” is marketable in a culture like ours, and many Americans, both young and old, have been catechized into its community. But it’s not the gospel. It doesn’t know words like depravity, redemption, communion, vocation – words without which the church cannot pass the gospel on to the next generation. I’m very much in favor of the church being able to speak the language of the culture, but I have long feared that in North America we’re losing the ability to speak our own language. Unfortunately, Smith and Denton have confirmed my fears.