Meine Klein Welt

How Does God Enjoy You?

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This is an excerpt from a book I’m currently reading called Gilead, which recently won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It’s a wonderfully written book and I highly recommend it to anyone. I find there are quite a few sections that cause me to pause, reread and reflect. Here is one particular excerpt that I have been mulling over for the past couple of weeks:

“[John] Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it?…I do like Calvin’s image, though, because it suggest how God might actually enjoy us. I believe we think about that far too little. It would be a way into understanding essential things, since presumably the world exists for God’s enjoyment, not in any simple sense, but as you enjoy the being of a child even when he is in every way a thorn in your heart”(Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. p. 124-125).

Faithfulness

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Christ Church Vienna

This morning’s collect began with the statement,

“Almighty and everlasting God,
you are always more ready to hear than we to pray”

I think sometimes I regard prayer as a chore. Something that should be done…Something that God wants me to do. Like most chores, it becomes something that I can put off too easily. I rationalize the need to a preference. Sure my room could be cleaner, but I can make due with the clutter…and I don’t have the energy anyway.

What I miss out on by treating prayer in this manner is the bounty of blessing God desires to bestow on me. His blessings are greater than anything I can fathom, yet too often I toil away in prayerlessness attempting to do God’s work without God’s blessing. The absurdity of a life such lived is striking as I write it, yet remains too easily maintained.

God’s faithfulness is not dependent on mine. He is always more ready to hear…

Life’s Sojourn

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“But that was only part of it. In truth I was a little scared, and preoccupied about where we’d go from here. For I had asked this of Dad the previous night, asked it straight out: Where do we go from August’s? He didn’t know. We’d simply go forth, he said, like the children of Israel when they packed up and cameled out of Egypt. He meant to encourage me. Juts like us, the Israelites hadn’t any idea where they’d end up! Just like us, they were traveling by faith! Indeed, it did impart a thrill, yet the trip thus far, in the frigid and torpid Plymouth, had reminded me what a hard time the chosen people actually had of it. Once traveling, it’s remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else — ignorance, for example. Same thing happened to the Israelites. Sure it’s weak, but sometimes you’d rather just have a map.”

– Leif Enger, “Peace Like a River“

I find I can quite easily relate to this paragraph of prose, and maybe you can to.

“Once traveling, it’s remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else — ignorance, for example.”

Or stupidity, or naivety… How foolish faith makes me look sometimes. How easy it is to say that I am wasting my costly education on the mission field, or, more broadly, my life. How easy it is to see faith as passive and callow instead of active and discerning.

“Sure it’s weak, but sometimes I’d rather just have a map.”

Or a paycheck, or a girlfriend…It’s easy to dwell on what I don’t have and worry about how I’m going to arrive at these things.

It’s better, though, to trust.

Men in the Church

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I remember reading the book Wild at Heat by John Eldridge a few years back, and while I have quite a few problems with some of his conclusions I think the premise of his book is very good. Defining the male role in society and the church is a very good discussion to have.

I remember reading his assertion that men in general feel out of place or bored with the contemporary church in America. And in reference to my last post, I wonder how much of that has to do with the evangelical church putting so much emphasis on feelings and emotions. I don’t think I’m over-generalizing when I say that most men aren’t very much in touch with their feelings. Can it be that many evangelical churches have pushed men out of the church by preaching sermons that address mainly felt needs and emotional issues?

Any thoughts?

Professional Development

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Our staff is currently working on our ACSI accreditation and as part of that we are required to read a number of books dealing with Christian education. The first book my group read is Love Your God With All Your Mind by J.P. Moreland.

This book spends a great deal of time addressing evangelicalism as an anti-intellectual movement. This certainly isn’t a new idea, but is definitely something that I, as a Christian educator need to be wary of.

Moreland pegs the anti-intellectual trend in American Christianity to revivals including the Great Awakening. These revivals focused on making people feel their need for God, but spent very little effort educating new converts in the essential tenants of their faith. This led to a generation of Christians who, instead of responding to intellectual criticism with an educated response, retreated into the safety of faith. There was no explanation for faith, you simply had to trust that what the Bible says is true.

This line of thinking led to a false dichotomy between faith and reason and an unhealthy skepticism of anything intellectual. Philosophy became a bad word in Christian circles and it didn’t take long for Christians to become a laughing stock amongst any sort of thinking people. The extent of the anti-intellectual movement in American Christianity was perhaps best exhibited during the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925.

Even today evangelicals are very much affected by this non-thinking approach to Christianity. Many sermons in the church address only felt needs and are often emotionally manipulating. Congregations are made to feel guilty instead of being reasoned with. Pastors rely more on rhetoric than sound Biblical teaching. Christianity is put in a box of personal experience, and beyond being a travesty, this is unbiblical. The truth of Christianity is not limited to the experiences of the individual believers.

Jesus often challenges his listeners and disciples with parables that engage the intellect and Paul is often charged to make a philosophical or intellectual case for the truth of Christianity. Unfortunately there are fewer and fewer Christians who are able to intellectually engage their culture because they are not taught how to do so.

The church does a great disservice to Christ and His message to neglect the intellectual development of its congregants. We are  told by Jesus himself to love the Lord with all our mind, so why is the church so hesitant to educate those whom it is responsible to equip?

This is not meant to say that emotion has no role in Christianity, but to more to point out that it has been elevated too highly in many evangelical circles. For instance, how should one witness to those who do not “feel” like they need God? If Christianity is truth, then we should be able to reason with people about it.

There is a bumper sticker that sums up the anti-intellectualism rampant in evangelical churches today: God said it, I believe it, that settles it. If Christians wish to have a meaningful impact on the world they must do better than this. We must be able to reason with those whom we wish to evangelize to. The Truth is not true merely because I believe it.