Ron Cole : unplugged, unorthodox, heretic

Kingdom friendships...

" When we decide the weak ( poor, sick, oppressed ) are not only objects of our charity but also subjects who teach us needed wisdom, it makes new relationships possible." Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove

Fistful of Mercy...

Beautiful music, stunning lyrics...

 

Fistful of Mercy from Fistful of Mercy on Vimeo.

If your definition of supergroup is, "A group of musicians previously associated with other musical catalogs coming together to form a new one," then the birth of a new supergroup will commence at 8 p.m. Thursday at Easy Street Records in West Seattle (4559 California Ave SW). The show is free. If you need reminding, here's a quick refresher on the players involved: Ben Harper: You may remember him from your college days, particularly when he was fronting the dominant Innocent Criminals, a band that peaked with 1999's Burn to Shine. Lately he's been working with the less-satisfying Relentless7. Dhani Harrison: Yes, his dad was the cool Beatle. Joseph Arthur: Maybe you saw him at the Triple Door in January.

 

God's Economy...the redemptive imagination of the Kingdom

The tactics of Jesus have the power to liberate our imaginations and inspire creative subversions of the status quo. They carve out a space where we can ask questions we never knew we could ask:

What if it's possible to live as citizens of

God's abundant kingdom no matter

what government we live under?

What if it's possible to work against the

principalities and powers of this age

without being captive to them ourselves?

What if it's possible to live God's good life

here and now, no matter what economic

situation we find ourselves in?

What if another world is possible?

What if it's already here?

To interupt the logic of scarcity by trusting Jesus in our homes, churches, and communities is to proclaim the only true economy --- the Kingdom that has broken into this world and will one day utterly consume it in a new heaven and earth. ( God's Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel by Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove; pg 75 )

Post-Christendom...reimagining in the wake of collapse

Andrew Perriman calls the above image " The multi-coloured big picture ", in which he says it smacks of old-style, abstruse, dispensationalist schematizations of salvation history, he apologizes. The difference is in the fact that it is descriptive rather than prescriptive...that it does not attempt to superimpose an idealized, divinely plotted time chart on history, but simply highlights some basic patterns that emerge from scripture and which may help us to understand the present existence of the present church more clearly.

1. The undulating black line roughly indicates the biblical story of the creator God, who creates and re-creates, bringing into existence a people for his own possession which recovers the original blessing of Genesis 1:28 and transmits it to the nations and cultures of the earth.
2. The green vertical stripes represent salient moments of creational renewal. The last green stripe represents the ultimate hope expressed in Revelation 21-22, that all creation will be made new, an event anticipated both actually and prophetically in the existence of the people of God as the new creation redeemed from the macrocosm. But the current emphasis in emerging theologies on new creation language may also suggest that the motif is peculiarly applicable to the journey from Christendom to a Post-Christendom paradigm.
3. The large yellow patch represents the disintegration of the Christendom paradigm, what is called the emerging church is an expression of a broad quest for a new template or paradigm that will give shape to a people that has become in Christ not merely a people of God's own possession, but a tangible sign of the eventual overthrow of all evil and death, and the remaking of heaven and earth.
4. Lastly, the red lines signify periods of difficult transition...if you've read this blog for awhile you're familiar with " liminal space." It's when you come to the end of a paradigm, where we come up against something that has been on the horizon that we don't understand...it's uncomfortable. The tendency is to reach back for the past.

If you've been living in the christian bubble you might be able to convince yourself we are not in this post -christendom paradigm. That it is more akin to weather. We're encountering a low pressure system, a secular weather front pushing up against our christian world view. And, like most weather systems it to will pass, and the christian world view will prevail. Wrong!!! The christendom paradigm is coming to an end.

exploring faith...conversations in a dirty space

It's interesting over the past year or so, I've been meeting and talking to different people in cafe's, especially those who have either left the church, or find themselves on the margins. Most seemed to have found themselves at a crossroad, one person described it as a crisis of faith. It wasn't he was losing his faith, but, more that it had evolved into something more. Years of having faith figured out had completely changed. You might compare it to the physical phenomena of changing states of matter. His early faith was was like a frozen block everything well formulated, contained in a confined space. Later, it became fluid-like, able to flow and move around to a certain extent, but still confined by a boundary. Now, the boundary was gone, his faith was dispersed like a gas...like fog, drifting and floating everywhere. He felt his faith was stronger than ever, yet he was filled with questions and hardly any certitude. He was content with questions. He could find truth in mystery. It's like being content with faith being an unfinished symphony, or like improvisational jazz filled with unresolved chords and notes.

Quite a while back I had read James Fowler's " stages of faith ", where he posits faith , or belief “is the most fundamental category in the human quest for relation to transcendence.” And the stages of faith development, regardless of where one finds them, or in what religious context, are amazingly uniform. I encourage you to read Fowler's research on faith development, it just may help map out where you are on your journey.

I think most of the people I've had conversations with in coffee shops would find themselves in Fowler's stage five or six.

Stage five is characterized by its room for mystery and the unconscious, and is fascinated by it while at the same time apprehensive of its power. It sees the power behind the metaphors while simultaneously acknowledging their relativity. In stage five, the world, demythologized in stage four, is re-sacrilized, literally brimming with vision. It is also imbued with a new sense of justice that goes beyond justice defined by one’s own culture and people. Because one has begun to see “the bigger picture” the walls culture and tradition have built between ourselves and others begins to erode. It is not easy to live on the cusp of paradox, and due to its radical drive towards inclusivity.

And, stage six characterized by exhibiting qualities that shake our usual criteria of normalcy. Their heedlessness to self-preservation and the vividness of their taste and feel for transcendent moral and religious actuality give their actions and words an extraordinary and often unpredictable quality. In their devotion to universalizing compassion they may offend our parochial perceptions of justice. In their penetration through the obsession with survival, security, and significance they threaten our measured standards of righteousness and goodness and prudence. Their enlarged visions of universal community disclose the partialness of our tribes and pseudo-species.

This beckons the huge question, " Is there room for these people in your church? " I suspect not. Most people at these stages have worked there way towards the back door and are on the margins, or have exited altogether.  

   

Many of the people I had conversation all expressed a sadness and longing. Sad, that there was no safe space with in many faith communities where questions, mystery could be explored in deeper conversations, and longing for such a space. The church will continue to hemorrhage people like a severed artery until it awakens to this reality. People are not walking away from faith...most are leaving to find a safe space where they can explore their questions in the context of everyday life filled with its complexity and diversity.

We confuse unity in the church with conformity. As strange as it might seem you could have a collage of people in a community spread all over the map in different stages...and still be unified in Jesus. The churches problem is, we want everyone in one stage, preferably stage three...

is  characterized by conformity, where one finds one’s identity by aligning oneself with a certain perspective, and lives directly through this perception with little opportunity to reflect on it critically. One has an ideology at this point, but may not be aware that one has it. Those who differ in opinion are seen as “the Other,” as different “kinds” of people. Authority derives from the top down, and is invested with power by majority opinion. Dangers in this stage include the internalization of symbolic systems (power, “goodness” “badness”) to such a degree that objective evaluation is impossible.

Sadly, this stage has become the " Status Quo " of the church. This may be all that is left holding the fragile pieces of what is left of the existing church.  Is it too late to change?,time will tell. But for the church to survive in a post-Christendom world it needs to wake up to the reality that these stages exist. We need to help people negotiate between them. We need to allow people to live within the stages rather than try and force everyone to live in one stage. We need to waken to the reality as faith being a journey, and not a destination to one place of certitude and belief. Churches need to be a space of generous, humble, hospitable exploration of faith. To on lookers, they may look more like sand boxes, dirty spaces, messy... as we play and wrestle with the complexities of faith...rather than the sterile environment of an isolation unit in an aging hospital.

Putting Away Childish Things :: Marcus Borg

I received a copy of Marcus Borg's latest book " Putting Away Childish Things " last Thursday from Harper One to read and review. I finished it last evening. This is Marcus Borg's first novel, a work of fiction, but, something he calls  " didactic " novel. I love the subtitle, " A TALE OF MODERN FAITH ", because I think it captures the essence of the book. The story, it's characters are fictional, yet Borg weaves reference material through out its pages.

My sincere hope is that many people will not dismiss this book because of Marcus Borgs controversial background. We was a fellow of the mid-eighties " Jesus Seminar ", and still one of the most influential voices in " Progressive Christianity ", which characterized by willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity with a strong emphasis on social justice or care for the poor and the oppressed and environmental stewardship of the Earth. Progressive Christians have a deep belief in the centrality of the instruction to " love one another" (John 15:17) within the teaching of Jesus . This leads to a focus on compassion, promoting justice and mercy, tolerance, and working towards solving the societal problems of poverty, discrimination, and environmental issues.

So it is important to understand that this novel flows out of Marcus Borg's life engaged in that contest of living out his faith. This book is extremely important because Christianity is becoming more polarized between the voices of conservatism, liberalism and left and right. As numbers, and churches decline in North America a survival mode mentality becomes the driving force where fundamentalism focuses in on belief more than faithful living.

It will take a special voice, and a different way of writing to engage a polarized faith, to provide a space where we can talk. It will take a story teller. This is a story in which I believe we can all see ourselves, and also the sacred cows that we are unwilling to let roam free.

The story's main character Kate Riley is a popular religious studies professor in a small mid-western liberal arts college. Through the story, and its characters Marcus Borg weaves in the important issues that are dividing and polarizing the Christian faith today. The reader becomes engaged in the deep questions of what does the Bible really teach? Who is Jesus, the historical pre-easter version, and the post-easter Christ version? And, what is the nature of faith today?

One of the dominant strands that weaves its way through the story is " truth ", the postmodern view as truth being relative, shifting sand rubbing against the conservative literal view etched in granite. It is the polarization of truth...factuality is the evidence, verifying something as " true." Or, if evidence can not be excavated like an archaeologist, then truth becomes belief...something different than faith.

In a radio interview Kate is questioned around the gospel stories of Jesus birth, where she claims truth and factuality are not the same thing.

The host spoke again. " So, with these differences --- and some sounding like contradictions---are you saying that these stories aren't historically factual? I think most Christians believe they are---that these things did happen. But if they didn't happen this way, why should people take them seriously?"

" Well," Kate answered, " that depends upon how we see these stories. If we see their purpose as historical reporting, to tell us what happened, then the matter of factuality matters a great deal. People often get fixated on factuality: either things happened this way, or these stories aren't true. ( page 25 )

Through Kate, Borg introduces many of the gospel stories are overtures or parables. Like an overture to a symphony typically introduces the central themes of the symphony as a whole, the birth stories in the gospels are an overture to the grand themes of the good news and Kingdom that follow.

" Parables are about meaning, not factuality. And the truth of a parable is its meaning. Parables can be truthful, truth-filled, even while not being historically factual. And I apply this to the birth stories: we best understand them when we see them as parables and overtures, and when we don't argue about whether they're factual." ( page 26 )

Borg through the voice of Kate offers us a middle way, between the the fortified walls of liberalism and conservatism...where profound divine truth might be found between the arguing, and fighting voices for literalism, and that of a pious fable. Where truth is found in meaning, that place where the Psalmist says deep calls to deep...or to Jesus saying the Kingdom can be found in faith as small as a mustard seed.

In Marcus Borg's book he engages us in the current conversation of religion and politics. Kate believes the separation of religion and politics is un biblical. Reading the gospel stories one can not miss the clash of Roman Empire theology, and that of Jesus Kingdom. This is the reality that made the Jesus so subversive. The Kingdom was a threat to the empire. Jesus death was political as much as it was spiritual. The book draws into the conversation where we must honestly face politics and faith together not as separate entities. The faith of Jesus confronted the politics of the day..." Putting Away Childish things " reminds us, we need do the same.

As I found myself coming to the closing pages of the book, something profound percolated to surface of my mind...what makes a Christian. In our current landscape, it is all over the map...everyone fighting for territory. Stake our claim, and then fight to try and dominate and expand our borders.

In the closing chapters is a seminary in a quandary, about to receive a generous endowment for a chair in evangelical thought. The faculty meets but before they can pursue potential applicants there is great discussion on how the label is applied.

“It seems to me that there isn’t a general sense of agreement about what makes an evangelical… Would it be enough if those under consideration identify themselves as evangelicals? Or does it mean that they have to meet certain standards, such as professing a belief in the inerrancy of Scripture, confessing Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation, having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, or counting the Bible as the ultimate basis for their beliefs rather than experience or tradition?” (149)

Some may be mystified by Marcus Borg's change of direction to a fictional novel. But, sometimes you need a story teller to help you see a new way. I highly recommend this book. It is my hope it will draw us all to a place of humble hospitality where grace abounds. To a place where there is always an open table an empty chair to accommodate everyone. We need more than ever to rediscover the faith that Jesus lived and spoke, Putting Away Childish Things brings us to place to talk about what that is.