What Matters Most to People Around the World

A map of what matters most to people around the world

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/infographic-what-matters-most-to-people-around-the-world-2015-04-29?link=sfmw_fb

by Shawn Langlois

April 29, 2015

Life satisfaction is the top priority in the United States

Here in the U.S., life satisfaction tops the list. Education is the priority in South America. And in the gilded streets of Monaco, safety is apparently on the minds of monied locals. Those are just some of the takeaways from a recent blog post.

More than 60,000 people from over 180 countries were polled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and their responses were turned into an infographic (see below) by MoveHub.com. The OECD has been putting this data together for its Better Life Index since 2011 and it updates these figures daily.

Other observations include the fact that health, understandably, matters most to a huge portion of the globe, while Australia appears to be the only developed country where work-life balance is the focus. Elsewhere, the environment isn’t concern number one for all that many countries, but, for whatever reason, it is in Slovenia and Georgia.

Topics

Safety
Housing
Jobs
Income
Work-Life Balance
Life Satisfaction
Health
Education
Community
Environment
Civic Engagement

The Err of Protecting Theological Systems Vs. Updating Out-of-Date Theologies

11 recurring mistakes in the debate over the “historical Adam.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/05/11-recurring-mistakes-in-the-debate-over-the-historical-adam/

by Peter Enns

May 11, 2015

Comments

I began getting seriously involved in the Christianity/evolution “controversy” in 2009, which led to my 2012 book The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins.

The debate over the historical Adam continues in an entirely predictable manner: the theological needs of the evangelical system lead to patterns of responses that are aimed at protecting that system rather than addressing the serious theological issues introduced by evolutionary science and modern biblical scholarship on Genesis.

Below are the 11 patterns (“recurring mistakes”) I see, though others could be added, I’m sure. They are in no particular order.

1. It’s all about the authority of the Bible.

I can understand why this claim might have rhetorical effect, but this issue is not about biblical authority. It’s about how the Bible is to be interpreted. It’s about hermeneutics.

It’s always about hermeneutics.

I know that in some circles “hermeneutics” is code for “let’s find a way to get out of the plain meaning of the text.” But even a so-called “plain” or “literal” reading of the Bible is a hermeneutic—an approach to interpretation.

Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (even if implicit) as much as any other approach, and so needs to be defended as much as any other. Literalism is not the default godly way to read the Bible that preserves biblical authority. It is not the “normal” way of reading the Bible that gets a free pass while all others must face the bar of judgment.

So, when someone says, “I don’t read Genesis 1-3 as historical events, and here are the reasons why,” that person is not “denying biblical authority.” That person may be wrong [in your mind], but that would have to be judged on some basis other than the ultimate conversation-stopper, “You’re denying biblical authority.

The Bible is not just “there.” It has to be interpreted. The issue is which interpretations are more defensible than others. Hence, appealing to biblical authority does not tell us how to interpret the Bible. That requires a lot more work. It always has.

“Biblical authority” is a predisposition to the text. It is not a hermeneutic.

2. You’re giving science more authority than the Bible.

This, too, may have some rhetorical effect, but it misses the point.

To say that science gives us a more accurate understanding of human origins than the Bible is not putting science “over” the Bible—unless we assume that the Bible is prepared to give us scientific information.

There are numerous compelling reasons to think that Genesis is not prepared to provide such information—namely the fact that Genesis was written at least 2500 years ago by-and-for people, who, to state the obvious, were not thinking in modern scientific terms.

One might respond, “But Genesis was inspired by God, and so needs to be true.”

That assertion assumes that “truth” is essentially synonymous with historical accuracy and that a text inspired by God in antiquity would, by virtue of its being the word of God, need to give scientific rather than ancient accounts of origins.

These assumptions would need to be vigorously defended, not merely asserted as unimpeachable fact.

Lying behind this error in thinking is the unstated assumption that the Bible, as the word of God, must predetermine the conclusions that scientific investigations can arrive at on any subject matter the Bible addresses.

To make this assumption is to run roughshod not only over commonsense, but over the very notion of the contextual and historically conditioned nature of Scripture.

If Scripture were truly given priority over science in matters open to scientific inquiry, the church would have never gotten past Galileo’s discovery that the earth revolves around the sun.

3. But the church has never questioned the historicity of Adam.

This claim is largely true—though it obscures the symbolic value especially early interpreters found in the Garden story, but I digress.

On the whole, this statement is correct. It is also irrelevant.

Knowing what the history of the church has thought about Adam is not an argument for Adam’s historicity, as some seem to think, since the history of the church did not have evolution or any scientific discoveries to deal with until recently.

That’s the whole point of this debate—evolution and ancient texts that put the biblical story in its cultural context are new factors we have to address.

Appealing to periods in church history before these things were on the table as authoritative and determinative voices in the discussion simply makes no sense. What Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and the Puritans assumed about human origins is not relevant—and to say so is not a dismissal of the study of church history, historical theology, etc., but to put them in their place.

Calling upon church history does not solve the problem; it simply restates it. Appealing to church history does not end the discussion; it just reminds us why we need to have the discussion in the first place.

4. Both Paul and the writer of Genesis thought Adam was a real person, the first man. Denying the historicity of Adam means you think you know better than the biblical writers.

More rhetorical punch, but this assertion simply sidesteps a fundamental interpretive challenge all of us need to address on one level or another.

All biblical writers were limited by their culture and time in how they viewed the physical world around them. This is hardly a novel notion of inspiration, and premodern theologians from Augustine to Calvin were quite adamant about the point.

No responsible doctrine of inspiration can deny that the biblical authors were thoroughly encultured, ancient people, who spoke as ancient people. Inspiration does not cancel out their “historical particularity,” no matter how inconvenient.

Any notion of inspiration must embrace and engage the notion that God, by his Spirit, speaks within ancient categories.

We do indeed “know more” than the biblical writers about some things. That alone isn’t an alarming theological problem in prciniple. But that principle has become a problem because it now touches on an issue that some feel is of paramount theological importance—the historical Adam.

The stakes have been raised in ways no one expected, for now we understand that the ancient biblical authors’ understanding of human origins is also part of their ancient way of thinking.

Should the principle be abandoned when it becomes theologically uncomfortable?

As I see it, the whole discussion is over how our “knowing more” about human origins can be in conversation with the biblical theological metanarrative. This is the pressing theological challenge before us and it needs to be addressed deliberately and without rancor, not avoided or obscured.

Acknowledging that we know more than biblical writers about certain things is not to disrespect Scripture. We are merely recognizing that the good and wise God had far less difficulty condescending to ancient categories of thinking than some seem to be comfortable with.

5. Genesis as whole, including the Adam story, is a historical narrative and therefore demands to be taken as an historical account.

It is a common, but nevertheless erroneous, assumption that Genesis, as a “historical narrative,” narrates history.

Typically the argument is mounted on two related fronts:

(1) Genesis mentions by name people and places; we are told that people are doing things and going places. That sounds like a sequence of events, and therefore should be taken as “historical.”

(2) Genesis uses a particular Hebrew verbal form (waw "consecutive plus imperfect") that is used throughout Old Testament narratives to present a string of events—"so-and-so did this, then this, then went there and said this, then went there and did that."

As the argument goes, we are bound to conclude that a story that presents people doing things in a sequence is an indication that we are dealing with history. [in actuality, the narrator of the story is following an ancient cultural form of story telling within his/her society whose storyline contents may, or may not be true, perhaps embellished, symbolic, or any number of literary forms - re slater]

That may be the case, but the sequencing of events in a story alone does not in-and-of itself imply historicity. Every story, whether real or imagined, has people doing things in sequences of events.

This does not mean that Genesis can’t be a historical narrative. It only means that the fact that Genesis presents people doing things in sequence is not the reason for drawing that conclusion.

[As example,] The Lord of the Rings [written by JRR Tolkien] masterfully records in great and vivid detail people (and others) doing things in sequence. But is it still pure fiction. A Tale of Two Cities [by Charles Dickens] does the same, but that doesn’t make it a reliable guide to historical events.

The connection between Genesis and history is a complicated, multifaceted issue that many have pondered in great depth. The issue certainly cannot be settled simply by reading the text of Genesis and observing that people do things in time[ful sequences].

6. Evolution is a different “religion” (i.e., “naturalism” or “Darwinism”) and therefore hostile to Christianity.

Certainly for some evolution functions as a different “religion,” hostile to Christianity or any believe in a world beyond the material and random chance.

But that does not mean that all those who hold to evolution as the true explanation of human origins think of evolution as a religion. Nor does it mean that evolutionary theory requires one to adopt an atheistic “naturalistic” or “Darwinistic” worldview. [please understand that Darwin was a Christian and that his system understood God to have created through the mediating process of evolution rather than the immediacy of an instantaneous creation as imposed by biblical creationists. To say "Darwinism" is an atheistic system is a misnomer. It can be taken as this by non-Christians but it may also be understood as a Christian re-statement or re-assessment of the creational process used by God. - re slater]

Christian evolutionists do not see their work in evolutionary science as spiritual adultery. Christian evolutionists take it as a matter of deep faith that evolution is God’sway of creating, the intricacies of which we cannot (ever) be fully comprehend.

In other words, “evolution=naturalistic atheism,” although rhetorically appealing, does not describe Christians who hold to evolution. Their convictions should be taken at face value, rather than suggesting that they have been duped or are compromising their faith Christians.

7. Since Adam is necessary for the Christian faith, we know evolution can’t be true.

Evolution causes theological problems for Christianity. There is no question of that. We cannot simply graft evolution onto evangelical theology and claim that we have reconciled Christianity and evolution.

The theological and philosophical problems for the Christian faith that evolution brings to the table are hardly superficial. They require much thought and a multi-disciplinary effort to work through. For example:

• Is death a natural part of life or unnatural (is it a punishment of God for disobedience?)
• What does it mean to be human and made in God’s image?
• What kind of God creates a process where the fittest survive?
• How can God hold people responsible for their sin if there was no first trespass by a first human couple?

A literal, historical, Adam answers these and other questions. Without an Adam, we are left to find other answers. Nothing is gained by papering over this dilemma. [assuming the former, Relevancy22 has spent the past four years examining in what other ways these questions might be answered rather than through the standard classic portrayal of them. Certainly the classic answers are the easiest to be grasped by the common non-scientific man; but this doesn't make those standard replys accurate. Nor true. Just a continuance of the Christian mythology concerning the nature of death. And by stating "mythology" this does not in anyway remove the idea of "sin" from the Christian vernacular of theology. No, it simply says that on scientific grounds the Christian story needs to be extended as to its accuracy for a technologically scientific society. - re slater]

But, here is my point: The fact that evolution causes theological problems does not mean evolution is wrong. It means we have theological problems.

Normally, we all know that we cannot judge if something is true on the basis of whether that truth is disruptive to us. We know it is wrong to assume one’s position and then evaluate data on the basis of that predetermined conclusion.

We are also normally very quick to point out this logical fallacy in others. If an atheist would defend his/her own belief system by saying, “I reject this datum because it does not fit my way of thinking,” we would be quick to pounce.

The truth of a historical Adam is not judged by how necessary such an Adam appears to be for theology. The proper response to evolution is to work through the theological challenges it presents (as many theologians and philosophers are doing), not dismiss the challenge itself.

8. Science is changing, therefore it’s all up for grabs.

Science is a self-critical entity, and so it should not surprise us to see developments, even paradigm shifts, in the near and distant future.

Is the universe expanding or oscillating? Are there multiple universes? How many dimensions are there? What about dark matter and dark energy? How many hominids constituted the gene pool from which all alive today have descended? And so forth.

But the fact that science is a changing discipline does not mean that all evolutionary theory is hanging on by a thread, ready to be dismissed at the next turn.

Also, the fact that science is self-correcting doesn’t mean that, if we hold on long enough, sooner or later, the changing nature of science will eventually disprove evolution and vindicate a literal view of Genesis.

Change, development, even paradigm shifts in scientific work, are sure to come, and to point that out is hardly a penetrating insight: that is how science works. But further discoveries will take us forward, not backward.

9. There are scientists who question evolution, and this establishes the credibility of the biblical view of human origins.

Individual, creative, innovative thinking often leads to true advances in the human intellectual drama. I would say that without these pioneering voices pushing the boundaries of knowledge, there would be no progress.

However, the presence of minority voices in and of itself does not constitute a counterargument to evolution.

Particularly in the age of the Internet, it is not hard at all to find someone with a Ph.D. in a relevant field who lends a countervoice to mainstream thinking. This is true in the sciences, in biblical studies, and in any academic field.

One can always find someone out there who thinks he or she has cracked the code, hidden to most others, and disproved the majority. And, in my experience, too often the promotion of minority voices is laced with a fair dose of conspiracy theory, where the claim is made that one’s view has been ostracized simply because it challenges the establishment.

Those without training in the relevant fields are particularly susceptible to following a minority voice if it confirms their own thinking. But simply having a Ph.D., having research experience, or even having written papers on minority positions, does not establishe the credibility of minority positions.

The truthfulness of minority claims must be tested over time by a body of peers, not simply accepted because those claims exist and affirm our own positions.

10. Evidence for and against evolution is open to all and can be assessed by anyone.

Since evolutionary theory is the product of scientific investigation, it follows that those best suited to evaluate the scientific data and arguments are those trained in the relevant sciences—or better those who are practicing scientists and therefore are keeping up with developments.

The years of training and experience required of those who work in fields that touch on evolution rules out of bounds the views of those who lack such training.

This is certainly the case with those who have no scientific training whatsoever beyond basic high school and college courses. I certainly fall into that category, which is why I don’t feel I can enter into scientific discussions, let alone critique them.

Engaging scientific issues requires serious scientific training—which only a fraction of the earth’s population can claim to have.

My point is that most of us do not have a place at the table where the assessment of evidence is the topic of discussion. I include here philosophers of science, historians of science, and sociologists of science. These disciplines look at the human and historical conditions within which scientific work takes place, this giving us the big picture of what is happening behind the scenes intellectually and culturally.

Science is not a “neutral” endeavor, and these fields are invaluable for putting science into a broader intellectual context. I am all for it.

But I have often seen practitioners of these disciplines, without any high-level scientific training, overstep their boundaries by passing judgment on evolution on the basis of the big-picture context these disciplines provide.

Evolution cannot be judged from 30,000 feet. You still have to deal with the scientific data in detail.

I think I stand on very solid ground when I say that these various disciples need to be in conversation with each other, not one standing in judgment over the other.

Simply put, you have to know what you are talking about if you want to debunk evolution. If you want to take on the scientific consensus, you have to argue better science that stands the test of peer review, not better ideology.

11. Believing in evolution means giving up your evangelical identity.

Many arguments I have heard against evolution come down to this: my evangelical ecclesiastical group has never accepted it, and so, to remain in this group, I am bound to reject it too.

It is rarely stated quite this bluntly, but that’s the bottom line.

But, as is well known, in recent decades the term “evangelical” has become a moving target. Is evangelicalism a stable, unchanging movement, or is it flexible enough to be open to substantive change?

Or an even more fundamental consideration: should maintaining evangelical identity at all costs even be the primary concern?

These may be the most important questions for evangelicals to consider when entering into the discussion over the historical Adam.

*This list is an edited collection of a four-part series that I posted in 2011. - Peter Enns

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 3 - Jesus

What is Radical Christianity?

So what is Radical Christianity? At its core, in its simplest and most sublime form, it is Jesus. One's entire theology, dogma, religion, beliefs, ethics, and morality is centered upon Jesus who becomes both the foundation stone and builder upon whom we build out God's kingdom in as many ways as there are people and talents, dreams and hopes.

It is to Jesus whom we bow and must submit the philosophy's of our day to His holy person. Whether it be our personal philosophies held in religious folklores. Our enculturated philosophies of existential dialectic (how we would interpret the world around us). Our societal philosophies of global communication, trade, and common effort. Even our ideas of our self and our identity of who we are before God. Everything, and in every way, must be submitted to Jesus as the Master Builder of our lives, our families, our businesses, our communities, our nations, and our world.

What Do You Want?

Jesus Calls the First Disciples (ESV)

35 The next day again John [the Baptizer] was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he ([John]) looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.[h] 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus[i] was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter[j]).

In John chapter 1 Jesus asks John the Baptizer's disciples a question, "What are you seeking"? Or, asked another way, "What do you want?" This is the sublime question of any man or woman. "What do we want?" At once Jesus shows a rude insightfulness into the lives of His new adopted followers that borders on a personal invasiveness to all that they believe they are in their identity and commitments of themselves to the gospel of God. And rightly so. Especially for the servant of the Lord. And so Jesus asks, "What do you want!?"

So too with us when we come to Jesus in God's Word: "What do I want!? What do I wish to get out of this Jesus-thing?" Or, thought of in another way, we might diagram Jesus' statement in three different ways:

1. You are what you love.
2. You might not love what you think you love.
3. You make what you think you love into what you think you want.

Each of these statements are a truth to themselves. The first asks us "What is our core identity?" Not what do you know, nor what do you believe, but what do you most want our of life.

Statement 1 - "You are what you love."

God has made us as lovers and so it is natural to ask "What do you love?" as Jesus does here in John 1. What is your deepest longings? Your greatest desires? What drives you when you get up in the morning?

We're not talking about agape love (selfless love) but eros love (fleshly, guttural love). This is how God made us. Desire is not a bad thing though it can become a bad thing when used in a wrong way. Hence the question, "What do you most desire, crave, yearn for? What makes you get up in the morning?"

Statement 2 - "You are what you love but you might not love what you think."

What if there is a gap between the answers to the questions we have versus the deepest part of our being which unconsciously hungers for the things we don't know or don't realize we carry within us?

For example, imagine if there was a magical room that you could enter that could  give you not what you thought you wanted but what you really wanted. Would you enter it? Would you take the risk to enter this magical, all-knowing room?

Or, like many, would you hesitate? Would you reconsider your first impulsive to go into this room for fear of discovering something you really hadn't thought about before. Because, quite naturally, what we thought we wanted is not actually what we really wanted all along. Just some facsimile of what we thought we wanted all along. And if what we really wanted turns out quite differently from what we thought we wanted we could be in for quite a little disappointment, or shock, or even dismay!

So what does this mean? Simply, Jesus is "the room." Jesus is the one who will transfer your desires from what you think you want to what you truly want in a process known as "conformity." A process that teaches us to unlearn our first desires of ourselves so that we might discover our heart's greatest desires. It's deepest cravings. It's most powerful longings.

It is the process of discerning who we are and not what we think we are.

Statement 3 - "You make what you think you love into what you think you want."

This latter idea is known as our "rival story of ourselves." That is, it is the lies and delusions we tell ourselves all the time - and then re-inforce them in some narcisstic or harmful way. And let us not count out all the legalisms and self-righteous works we use to tell God just how good-and-valuable we are to Him! Sure, we can blame our actions on the devil or on others or evil but in truth, it is us. It is us telling ourselves a rival story to the real story that lingers in our heart but cannot get out.

What is the solution? To discover ourselves and our rival stories so that they might be re-framed into a truer story of ourselves within the story of Jesus. The better, more conflicted story in which He asks us the dreaded question, "What do you really want from Me?"

It is here where the work of the Holy Spirit comes to us through the story of Jesus and into the stories of ourselves to help us begin to chisel away all the false images of our delusions down into the bedrock of our deepest desires we keep hidden far, far away from ourselves.

Neither the "Christian faith" per se, nor "a belief in God," is the answer here. In point of fact there are many Christian men and women who have hidden from themselves - and Jesus' studied question - by taking on the false imagery of conformity which is more me-lead than Spirit-lead. A false image where we hide ourselves even deeper from the God by telling ourselves we are closer to God because we are doing all the right things, thinking all the right thoughts, believing all the right messages. To this Jesus asks, "What do you want!?" 

This is the Jesus who loves us through our "good" works, penance, and absolutions. Who sees us beyond the fig leaves we have stitched for ourselves. Who walks with us in patience and faithfulness as we wander and bobble about in our lives like toy boats on the waves of life as we try to figure out who we are and what we really want.

The Truer Story of Us

Nay, our story isn't so much about what we are doing but what God is doing in our lives. He, who is the shaper and molder of our lives-and-dreams-and hopes into the identity of ourselves freed from the former self to the transformed self. What Paul calls the "new man" that casts away the "old man."

Yes, even in this new spiritual version of ourselves we can "make what we think we want" from it. But the real trick is to learn to listen to the Spirit and to be willing to move through the process of self-discovery at His pace and not our own. To relax in the providence of God and let life happen as we steer our course through its turbulences.

The image of God within our breast is a deep thing. Far deeper than we know. Not only has God made us to be lovers but He has made us to be makers. We are natural born creators as God's image bearers. Ultimately we are in the process of being re-created by the Holy Spirit as God's image bearers. To be involved in this task and confident that with humility and grace we might survive its chaffings and tortured route.

Our Commission and Mission

And what is this image-bearing-thing that we possess? To re-create God's world in all the vocational, recreational, and personal things that we do in this life now by His love. Whether we can ever discover our deeper selves truly, or not, the simplest thing we can do is to bear God's image of love to the loveless, the forlorn, the unempowered, the overlooked, the condemned, and despised.

By this activity we discover ourselves by discovering the image of Jesus indwelling our hearts. We come to the identity of ourselves by unlocking all the potentiality of God's creation to become what it can become by God's Spirit. To translate the story of us into the story of the world. And by that translation release the rival story of ourselves from our hearts into the truer story of ourselves in Jesus.

This is our narrative ultimately. Not of us - but of losing ourselves into God's greater story which frees us from ourselves to release the burden of our creative, loving being upon a world locked in sin and woe.

Ultimately the Christian story is the Jesus story of unleashing God's image through us as His image bearers. And to not worry about all the psychological mumble-jumble of "desires, and cravings, and guilts, and penances." But to love as Jesus loved. This is our commission and mission.

Go Unpack All that I have Made for you

We are the recipients then of a Jesus message that is both a blessing and a necessity. Jesus' story doesn't end in His resurrection but begins with His ascension to become what He truly was on earth. To unpack all that He had created in His lifetime even as we are to enact it by unpacking His truths of love and witness, fellowship and forgiveness.

Like the centripetal force of the centrifuge which gathers in the liquid solvents of the science lab Jesus becomes the gathering force which spins us into Himself as the real center of the world against all the lies and delusions it tells us. So that in the process we might be separated from our former selves into the purer form of our new selves in Christ by His Spirit.

This is the process of transformation by conformity and when done spins us outwards into the world when released from the grip of the devices holding us from breaking out. It is through the process of worshipping together each week that the church is called out to break out during its weekday lives as a commissioned body propelled to missionize our communities by the simple acts of repentance, conformity, and transformation.

There is no real mystery to Jesus. There is no deeper philosophy than God's Spirit. It is the language of love that is the greatest reformer to the world's deepest needs and darkest delusions. And it is the language of conformity to Jesus who spoke in the simplest, but most sublime terms, when saying, "Learn to love. And when loving then do what you will." 

If you love rightly you will do precisely what God's will is by being in His will. This is the radicalness of a Radical Christianity. It begins with Jesus and is sewn through-and-through by Jesus even unto its ends. A Radical Christianity takes its postmodern faith and hermeneutic and re-captivates its message with the person and work and love of Jesus.

Whether we understand ourselves or not. Or this world or not, in all its "velocities of self-implosion" and "accelerations away from itself," to the lies and delusions it holds in front of us as the truer false-paths of self-discovery. No, the power, the source, the engine to all of this is Jesus. Without Jesus there can be no discovery. No release. No truth or fulfillment. Just endless, empty strivings after the winds of our own demise and misplaced stories that we tell ourselves.

The Little Prince

There is a story out there that says "If you want to build a ship than teach people to long for the sea." Not how to build a ship, or to go through the mechanics of building a ship, or even attend apprenticeship classes around the marine industry. No, the truer story is to long for the immensity of the sea. To long for its endless bounty recreated upon every new sunrise as it embeds itself into all that it is from day after day after day until the last dawn of all new mornings.

It is in the story of longing that we may act out the story of us that we don't even realize we are acting out. For it is not a story that we may simply read of - we must become active participants in it. Mark Twain, the great American literarist once said, "He who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can in no other way be taught." So too with Christianity.

It is not enough to read of it, to study and dissect it theologically. It must be lived. Experienced. Used and witnessed to by our very selves as the actors upon God's lively stage.

We attend the communal practice of Christian worship with the mindset that we are to burst from this Sunday assemblies into the worlds we live to really want what God wanted us to want and not the unleafed pages of unlived lives unsullied from trying, failing, or attempting to live life by God's grace and Spirit.

This is the truer story of us. It is the story of Jesus within the greater story of God. It is the truer narrative of who we are in Jesus. We have become the "little prince of our story' who sails around the world dauntless of its fears, ceaselessly yearning for adventure and discovery. To become one with the horizons of our lives lived too meanly upon the leaden pages of our rival stories of ourselves. Lost on the wings of the wind until Jesus came into our lives to become the captain of our ships and the Lover of our souls. He, who is the Lord of creation and the God of our imaginations. Praise ye the Lord.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

May 13, 2015

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 1 - Change

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 2 - Thriving

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 3 - Jesus





Index to past articles on "Phase III"

Remembering a Motherless Day

Reading through Facebook yesterday I came across distressing comments by dear friends who were remembering their loss from many years ago. It is a pain which is shared by many on this special day where we honor our mothers who have worked so hard for us to become the people we are today.

But let us not forget that there are other women out there too who dwell in that special category of "motherless moms" for whom we must remember in our prayers and fellowship,

"Mother's Day is fast approaching...again! Why do I need to be reminded.

Isn't it enough that I continue to feel that same dreadful loneliness that

once consumed me. Our little miracle would have been close to  16 by

now. A singer? Most definately! Oh, how I had dreams." ~ MRD

As I read this script I felt a deep empathy for our friend who loves to sing and perform professionally on the concert stage as she mused over the dreams she held for herself and her daughter. Nor did the passing years quiet her pain in the deep parts of her soul. It remained sharp every time she remembered what could have been and never was.

Then, as I read on, came this very kind and loving reply from her husband,

"It saddens me to think that we could not share our lives with a little one. You

would have made a wonderful mom. Happy Mother's day my love." ~ PCD

Here was a thoughtful man who understood his wife's pain and wished to be present with her in the deep thoughts of her brokenness which filled both heart and soul. No other response could be as good as that of a friend and a spouse who would love his special wife through this time of deep absence.

Which reminds us today of all the "motherless mothers" who have been bereft of children through circumstance and event. Let us therefore be in prayer for the women we know today - not only for the mothers who work so hard to be the best mothers they can be.... But for the broken moms and motherless moms who are burdened with the lost of light they once had borne in the depths of their thirsty souls hungering to give love which could never been given to a lost daughter or son.

R.E. Slater

May 10, 2015

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An open letter to pastors [an except]

(A non-mom speaks about Mother’s Day)

http://timewarpwife.com/open-letter-pastors-non-mom-speaks-mothers-day/

by Amy Young

May 9, 2014

To those who gave birth this year to their first child - we celebrate with you.

To those who lost a child this year - we mourn with you.

To those who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains - we appreciate you.

To those who experienced loss through miscarriage, failed adoptions, or running away - we mourn with you.

To those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with pokes, prods, tears, and disappointment - we walk with you. Forgive us when we say foolish things. We don’t mean to make this harder than it is.

To those who are foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms - we need you.

To those who have warm and close relationships with your children - we celebrate with you.

To those who have disappointment, heart ache, and distance with your children - we sit with you.

To those who lost their mothers this year - we grieve with you.

To those who experienced abuse at the hands of your own mother - we acknowledge your experience.

To those who lived through driving tests, medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood - we are better for having you in our midst.

To those who are single and long to be married and mothering your own children - we mourn that life has not turned out the way you longed for it to be.

To those who step-parent - we walk with you on these complex paths.

To those who envisioned lavishing love on grandchildren - yet that dream is not to be, we grieve with you.

To those who will have emptier nests in the upcoming year - we grieve and rejoice with you.

To those who placed children up for adoption - we commend you for your selflessness and remember how you hold that child in your heart.

And to those who are pregnant with new life, both expected and surprising - we anticipate with you.

This Mother’s Day, we walk with you.

Mothering is not for the faint of heart and we have real warriors in our midst. We remember you.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mother's Day Poems

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 2 - Thriving

Everything Must Change

Not many years ago I began my movement away from what I call a "closed bible" and a "closed faith" towards a spiritual hinterland promising a more open bible and open faith. One that might allow the God I knew "to breathe" again away from the specific theological containers and measured borderlands I had come to place Him in through affiliations to the institutions of my youth. What I strongly felt I needed was a faith that might be "less sure of itself" than what it had now become in its verities and condemnations.

What I didn't see was this same aspect carried through in the corporate religious identities I was associating myself with. In essence, my personal faith identity was not matching up to my corporate faith identity and I sadly knew one or the other must change. By-and-by this discernment became a personal crisis of identity where the God I knew was not the God I was hearing spoken through the voices of a religious America become darkened in its speech and knowledge. One, or both, had to change, and I knew it must first begin with me.

Yes. Personal Change. This was the easier route. But it was also the harder route because it required letting go of my former identity in finding a new identity that bore very little similarity to the older religious groups I saw fomenting around me. Faith groups that I was familiar with and had grown old with. Very old. I was in the early stages of my sixth decade of life by now at 53. I was identified with faith groups that were adopting a new form of Christian identity than I felt comfortable with. In many ways we both were changing. Curiously, I had become less certain while the other corporate form had become more certain in ways that changed their view of God and the Bible in more agitated tones than I first remembered of them.

Even still, I was not alone. Though at the time I felt very much alone. Had I considered it, I did have a fellowship of equals measured in the lives of those men and women of the Bible who likewise faced deeply personal crisis of faith interpretation with the religious institutions of their day that they had grown up and identified with. Who were forcibly flung into the unknown away from friends and family, away from the religious dogmas they had grown up with, and away from their homelands and occupations they once had known. As example of this latter, some bible pastors and professors were being removed from their churches or colleges because their positions on human equality and justice were changing.

Essentially my fellowship was becoming affiliated with a broader Christian fellowship than I had first considered. It was not simply mine own woeful burden of a new Christian awareness as I struggled to be released from "the miry pit of clay" which had formed tightly around me that was presently keeping me from divine breath and light. Nay, others had also trod this unceremonious road of sacrilege to feel despised and alone. Like myself, other destitute men and women of God had wandered foreign lands of idols-and-fear searching for a land not of their own making through the dark days that seemed to stretch endlessly onwards without end.

For myself, my developing new faith was as much an attitude shift as it was an epistemological crisis. I felt strongly moved towards a faith that might be more doubtful, less certain of itself, and less strict in its personal dogmas of confidence. A faith which had lately become quixotically more religious than when I first remembered it as a youth. A faith which once had carried a certain kind of Jesus figure, or Jesus cross, or missional message, but had strangely morphed away from what those things once meant to me and the church to become something completely alien to itself in these, my later years.

Largely, the Christian affiliations I had once identified with seemed to have changed. And as they changed so did my identity as it became something more foreign to myself than when I had first subscribed to it so many long years ago. It required of me to re-think my identity, the message of my Christian heritage, and even the kind of faith I was holding. To find a continuity with my faith heritage that was less dogmatically orthodox and more spiritually orthodox in an updated sense to the contemporary times of my postmodern society.

A Crisis of Faith

I hadn't planned on doing this as I explained in Part 1. But it was a journey requiring me to move forward in quite an unexpected fashion to my earlier faith identity. An identity that had been formed in my youth and then, as I grew older, had become caught up with the responsibilities of family and job as it trusted to those in religious authority to keep the Christian faith from an apostasy to dogma and dictum.

But these Christian leaders had failed in their congregational duties becoming harsher in their attitudes of Christ and God's sanctifying love. More uncharitable and unforgiving. Belatedly, I now discovered that my faith required a deep updating to the contemporary institutions I had grown up in having trusted them to adopt and accommodate the Christian faith in positive ways to societal trends and academic findings. But apparently senility is as much a problem for long-lived institutions as it can be for older living adults. Even at the age of 53. For myself, I didn't wish to fall into the category of black cynicism and fear which typically marks older age against a more youthful, hopeful faith I was observing in the younger generations of my son and daughter's twenty-something worlds. And yet, a more fearful faith can-and-will fall into this "pit of despair" (as John Bunyan would call it) if it doesn't learn to grow and acclimate itself to its times and seasons of missional opportunity as time will challenge the church to do.

And thus began a very difficult personal journey as I wrote and wrote here at Relevancy22 of my despair and testimony to a more hopeful Christian faith. But never a task which I wished to back away from when facing the deep complexity it would require in deconstructing Christianity's present foundations and structures towards a newer promise filled with God-filled grace and presence. Nor was this task one that I could back away from even if I might hesitate because with age had come a sense of settledness to who I was, and a belief in what I must accomplish, in order to get past the "me of yesterday" to the "me of tomorrow." The faith groups I identified with required as much breakage and re-constructing even as mine own head and heart would require. Each pretending their own fantasies in a world they were lumping along with in a way that they really weren't understanding or able to testify to. My more dogmatic faith only made sense to me in the way that I pretended it to be within its delineated confines. But when doing this I had to shut my eyes and close my heart to what I read in the Bible or saw of God in His secular presence to the world I lived in.

Moving Forward

Overall, I don't really have any magic formulas to describe how God moved me through this formative time of searching, burden, betrayal, abandonment, and resurrection. All I knew was that my theology had to change if I were to come into a Christian faith more flexible with the times and more intolerant to the folklore theologies that abounded everywhere around me.

More curiously, the presence of God was exceedingly strong in my life during this time and there was never a silence of His Spirit that I could attest to by God's absence or lack of guidance. No, I felt very burden by the Holy Spirit to climb out of the hole my faith had lately fallen into while re-envisioning what it might become for the generations ahead of me. To reconstruct, or re-envision, its theological and religious orthodoxies where the God of the Bible is more present in this life than far away. Who might breathe into us a more open Bible to people everywhere burdened with the quest for spirituality than an arcane faith of nonsense and disbelief.

"Yes," I thought, "Everything must change" and nothing can be left unturned that wasn't dissettled before. In many ways it was my third experience of breaking from my hallowed past. The first was when I left my country family, the gentrified farm I grew up on, and the little one-room country school house I had attended, to join a public school system less glamorous than my past. I wasn't concerned about the new subjects I would learn because without attending the public school I wouldn't have been able to learn those newer subjects. But what I actually was experiencing in my transition was a new kind of Christian agnosticism and disbelief that I hadn't experienced in my boyhood years. One that began to drive me to ask the question of why and how and what.

Of course these questions could not be settled right away. It took me some dozen years to re-calculate a more contemporary faith than I had held from the good earth days of my boyhood. My simple, sheltered, almost mystical faith, had become filled with an admixture of Christian and non-Christian thought asking more questions than I could answer. Nor did this go away after high school graduation as I studied the sciences, math, and engineering, having gained a full-ride academic scholarship at a major national university. At the last, the profundity to which I was becoming disturbed caused me to leave university in my junior year to complete my senior year at a bible school over a two year time frame. Afterwards I needed a little time off and found myself teaching out-of-state at a Christian high school for one year before choosing to return to complete a 4-year Master's program in Divinity without ordination. All along I was active in my local churches (GARB Baptist and IFCA Bible), singing, evangelizing, visiting homes, teaching youth, while asking the Lord what next.

Eventually, I settled down, married, took 3 more years of night school towards a partial MBA degree and called it quits on the schooling front. I was laid-off from my financial analyst job at a major Christian publisher and decided to form my own IT consulting firm for the next 27 years where I could explore IT trends and processes, several business entrepreneurships, and generally help small businesses with the then curious world of technology.

During this time I stayed active in my church but stopped reading theology and trying to figure things out because I no longer knew which way to press forward. The best I could do was use what I knew while trusting the Lord to bless the college/career and single adult ministries I was then leading and pastoring at the time. It really wasn't until long years later, once I had left those ministries, that my boyhood years of curiosity and passion began to stir again asking the age-old questions I once was asking.

Mostly, I think I had delayed this more fundamental period of investigation because I knew the hard work it would require of me if I should stop and ask disturbing questions of my Christian faith. And, more specifically, how disruptive it might become if a father and a husband started to ask questions which were very-unlike what my wife and children had come to expect of me as a Christian lay minister, "Pauline tent-builder," and family figure. And so, I plodded along until discovering one day I could no longer be content with where I was personally. I began asking questions and then started trying to answer those questions back in the days when I was a promising young student theologian. To then discover that my non-Calvinistic or non-Reformed orthodoxy answers may be disruptive to the my faith tradition I grew up in. My faith dilemma suddenly became a deeply orthodox dilemma so that what I feared would happen, did. Over past several years it would require the wisdom of God to put all back together quite like the Humpty-Dumpty which had fallen off the theological wall. There the pieces lie everywhere about the ground and I, not wanting to reassemble it, into the fashion it once was. No, this assembling would take a deep, more complex rethink of the Christian faith.

Hallowed Ground Fell Away to Discovery

It seemed the epistemological grounds which the Lord had been sowing in my life had lain fallow inside of me until the seeds of my discontent must burst forth lest they became more rigid and inflexible with the passing years of old age as I was now witnessing in my older friends. A new kind of faith now echoed within my once youthful vigor. But one that could finally seek more meaningful direction. I think my work in sales, product marketing, adaptive entrepreneurship, and the rapidly changing industry of technology had taught me how to handle the upheaval of a postmodern society throwing out the past while dealing with the ills of a post-postmodernism full of anarchy, chaos, hate, and division.

A new philosophical direction inhabited me. One I couldn't ask my questions of before but had, with the passage of time, learned to become more able to discern and read among the newer, more promising, trends and directions I was sensing within Christianity. It dawned upon me that the times of silence in my life might not only have been the best answer to epistemic or theologic unknowing, but perhaps the best ontic solution during those times of metaphysical unknowing.

Surely, the process of epistemological tension requires the patience of decades as much as movement, shout, and roar of the society we dwell within as it writhes, twists, and turns. Significantly, I now had the advantage of old age and a contemporary postmodern history of event showing to me the way forward... and the way out! The way forward into a postmodern Christianity more developed than it once had been years earlier. And the way out of a secular Christianity more at odds with itself than it ever was in the past having adopted neo-Calvinistic and non-scared conventions and sanctums into its lapsing evangelicalism.

And so, being part innovator, part creator, part artist, I knew I had to set aside time to think, research, pray, and write of these new developments in my own spiritual world as well as that of the church I hoped to see again. I began with writing unpublished poetry for two-three years from dawn to dusk and eventually this task slowly gave way to a conscious need to write of a more open faith which might rest upon a more open theology. A theology both of my past (the good parts) as well as a theology of the future. In essence, my poetry came to an abrupt stoppage because it wanted a better theological foundation to write upon.

One that might move away from its more linear edges I was now observing within American Christianity. An open faith and theology that might re-embrace God's grace with the good spiritual sense He has given His followers to be gracious in witness and humble in prayer. Less agitated with sin and judgment and more agitated for mercy and forgiveness.

For me, it was the development of a new spiritual constitution that I could no longer be patient waiting for against what I was seeing from the lips and actions of a harsher brand of Christian faith than once remembered. My faith of yesteryear had grown up from the whips and chains of fear-mongering to seek a more open Christianity at peace with itself and with the world it lived within. What I had learned from my fundamental, conservative church experiences was the love of God for all men and women everywhere, as curious as that now sounds to me when looking back on those impressionable years of youthful faith development within the heart of darker church constitutions. Surely that must be a work of the Spirit to see straight-and-true the gospel Christ had lived, preached, and died for!

And so, today, I wish to present a new kind of faith. One more rounded to its future faith possibilities and more jagged to its present-tense assembly of itself beheld in fiery Christian pulpits and incharitable (stereotypical) Christian media. One that embraces people with God's love and forgiveness as much as against the calling down of God's holy judgment by self-proclaimed false prophets of our day and age.

I have felt then, as I do now, a holy prophetic calling of God to preach salvation to both the unbeliever as much as to the believer. That the roots and foundations of our dogmatic chains must fall off if we are to behold the light and beauty of the gospel of Jesus as it reclaims this wicked world from the bondages of its miseries and woes. That evil comes in all forms - even that of well-intentioned Christian religion. And that like all sin, must be burned up and thrown on the trash heap of bad theology as readily as any farmer would to save the soils of his land from biological rape and destitution.

My pro-bono calling now is to discover this new homeland where the Christian faith might breathe again in the postmodern airs of disruption and upheaval. And if it can, than I have met my calling and answered my burden long enough to allow others the opportunity to carry forward what I and others had sensed among us was corrupting the great halls of past hallowed orthodoxies. Spiritual reformations which were once bourne by dissembling faith-bearers against their own times and cultures who were agitating for God's calls for truth, love and worship.

Faith-bearers we now know as the great saints of the Christian past though greatly differing in spiritual judgment to the dying churches and dead cults of their day. Who strove for both precept and principle, by letter and by deed, for the grace and mercy of Christ their Lord. Even so do we postmodern reformers by picking up the broken glass shards of theology lying shattered everywhere on the churchy floors around us by reframing new theological windows looking out upon the Creator Redeemer of the universe streaming into our souls the purer airs of blue skies and brighter hues of sun and moon.

Peace be with you, my brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

R.E. Slater

April 30, 2015
revised May 13, 2015;
September 3, 2020

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 1 - Change

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 2 - Thriving

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 3 - Jesus





Index to past articles on "Phase III"