Thursday, March 31, 2005
'Tension' Headache
Living in the tension
It seems much of life is about balance and living in the tension between opposite ideologies. And yet I think many of us, at least me, long to be on one side. There was a time when that's what blogging was for me...a place to yell "THIS IS WHAT I THINK..." to make bold statements, often in arrogance, proclaiming a viewpoint as if to convince myself as much as anyone else. So here I sit, an ideological blogger between ideologies. My church journey has left me almost where I started yet not at all the same.
I'm so cautious as to get caught up in it like a shoe string in a turbine at the mill. "it" being either ideology.
But here's the truth - not trying to convince anyone - life is best lived in the tension...
It's God's grace....and God's justice
It's being free from sin....and a slave to Jesus
It's God's kingdom that's both ALREADY here....and NOT YET
The Bible doesn't contradict - it rightly places itself in this tension. And yet we are so uncomfortable with that tension that we shirk it off - we have the Evangelical Conservatives preaching about life, life, life...and we have the Liberal Christians being much more active in issues of social justice and serving those that Jesus served. I can't condemn either on their strengths. Either could easily be condemned on their weaknesses. And yet imagine a world where we could have "one holy universal church" in which we balanced these tensions...
(1) comments
It seems much of life is about balance and living in the tension between opposite ideologies. And yet I think many of us, at least me, long to be on one side. There was a time when that's what blogging was for me...a place to yell "THIS IS WHAT I THINK..." to make bold statements, often in arrogance, proclaiming a viewpoint as if to convince myself as much as anyone else. So here I sit, an ideological blogger between ideologies. My church journey has left me almost where I started yet not at all the same.
I'm so cautious as to get caught up in it like a shoe string in a turbine at the mill. "it" being either ideology.
But here's the truth - not trying to convince anyone - life is best lived in the tension...
It's God's grace....and God's justice
It's being free from sin....and a slave to Jesus
It's God's kingdom that's both ALREADY here....and NOT YET
The Bible doesn't contradict - it rightly places itself in this tension. And yet we are so uncomfortable with that tension that we shirk it off - we have the Evangelical Conservatives preaching about life, life, life...and we have the Liberal Christians being much more active in issues of social justice and serving those that Jesus served. I can't condemn either on their strengths. Either could easily be condemned on their weaknesses. And yet imagine a world where we could have "one holy universal church" in which we balanced these tensions...
(1) comments
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Peterson on the Church as an Institution
This is quality - taken from an interview Christianity Today of Eugene Peterson - WELL worth the read, but here's an excerpt:
Question:
But many Christians would look at this church and say it's dead, merely an institutional expression of the faith.
Answer:
What other church is there besides institutional? There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church. There's sin in the local bank. There's sin in the grocery stores. I really don't understand this naïve criticism of the institution. I really don't get it.
Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.
So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.
There's no idealization of the church in the Bible—none. We've got two thousand years of history now. Why are we so dumb?
And on the topic of reformation:
I'm for always reforming, but to think that we can get a church that's reformed is just silliness.
(1) comments
Question:
But many Christians would look at this church and say it's dead, merely an institutional expression of the faith.
Answer:
What other church is there besides institutional? There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church. There's sin in the local bank. There's sin in the grocery stores. I really don't understand this naïve criticism of the institution. I really don't get it.
Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.
So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.
There's no idealization of the church in the Bible—none. We've got two thousand years of history now. Why are we so dumb?
And on the topic of reformation:
I'm for always reforming, but to think that we can get a church that's reformed is just silliness.
(1) comments
