Musing on Reform

You do know, don't you, that by and large anything I post in this blog is my thought-process and not my conclusion? I will rarely post conclusions because . . . well, maybe because I rarely get to any, honestly. "Jesus loves me, this I know" (to the extent of dying a horrific death and coming back to glorious life), and He loves you that much, too, and I'm certain of it. I'm also certain I want you, whomever you are, to know Him in a life-giving way. Other than that? I just think a lot. Usually in circles. Here are some more thought-processes to share:

This church history class I'm now taking is "From the Reformation," and I have a mid-term in it tomorrow, so there's a lot about the Reformers going through my head. It's a Protestant seminary through which I am taking this class, so little has been said about the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Reformation, but even though I knew at least a little something about the four initial branches of the Protestant Reformation, I'm finding it interesting to poke around in their history in a little more depth. I'm finding out (or remembering) things like:

• Apart from the reputed anti-Semitism, and that unfortunate link to the Peasant's Revolt, I think Martin Luther was the man. No--not the Man. But just . . . really cool. By and large, I like his theology and his tenacity and his kind of earthiness.
  
• As I thought when we went to visit Grossmunster in Zurich when I was 14, I still think Zwingli was a bit of a twit. I daresay he had a true conversion experience (even though he claimed an earlier date for it than it probably really happened, so he could make it look like it happened for him before it did for Luther), but some of us take a little more "converting" than others, and . . . well, he's just a little harder to like.
• As he may have done to others who actually met him face to face, Calvin makes me uncomfortable. Too smart for me, I think. But I don't dislike him.
• I rather like the Anglican church . . . but how it got there is kind of obnoxious.
  
• I've got some Swiss Anabaptist in my background, and although I'm not one, I agree with their view on (ta da!) baptism. And, as we all know, although I can't seem to completely identify myself as a pacifist, I kind of lean that way. Here's something that interested me (although I guess if I think about it, it doesn't surprise me): The Anabaptists' emphasis on the radical separation of church and state was "new." This approach was the first time Christianity had been separated from the government since Constantine.
  

Good grief.

I've already mused a tiny bit about the effects of Constantine on the Church. I guess I think that the Anabaptists were right to keep it separate. I mean, I don't know that it's possible anymore to truly separate religion from government. It seems like either Christians (or religious people--there can be a difference!) try to infiltrate the government, for example, or the government tries to legislate against them. I liked it when I volunteered at a primary school in London and could tell the Easter story freely because religious education (about all religions) was included in standard school curricula. I don't, on the other hand, like the idea, real or threatened, that symbols of my faith should be removed from public places or that I can't say Merry Christmas if I want to.

God calls people to different vocations and maybe He calls some to be politicians. I mean, I guess He does: I don't think there can be any question, for example, that He put Wilberforce in place for a specific time and purpose. I do believe that God can work through political leaders and that if a Christian is in power, I would hope that their relationship with Christ would have an effect on their policies. However, I don't believe we will ever have a theocracy this side of Heaven, and I think most of even our Christian politicians end up with too much of themselves mixed in. (I think most of us--me, for example--have that problem, but when someone's in the public eye, it affects more people.)

I am starting to think the Anabaptist idea that the Church would always be a persecuted minority in the world, and that it and government could never mesh without unhealthy compromise, is probably true. I struggle with words of separatism at all, as highlighted in my last post, but at the same time, I know the Bible talks about it, sometimes in ways I can't understand, and I know there still is sometimes, somehow, a place for it. I guess I'm still just trying to figure out how and where and when it works.

How do you become and remain incarnational, yet without compromise?

Unequally Yoked

Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said:

“I will live in them
and walk among them.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
Therefore, come out from among unbelievers,
and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord.
Don’t touch their filthy things,
and I will welcome you.
And I will be your Father,
and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

(2 Corinthians 6.14-18, NLT)

Lots and lots and lots of Christians like to use the above passage to prove that Christians should not marry people who aren't. This interpretation isn't totally unreasonable, but I have said before and will say again that even if this passage applies to marriage, it isn't about marriage. And neither is this post.

Once upon a long time ago, during the Roman Empire before Constantine, the emperors were persecuting the Christians and even though there were a lot of really noteworthy and amazing Christian martyrs, there were also a bunch of regular people and they ended up recanting their Christian faith until things got a little easier. Then later, when they wanted to go back to church, some of the churches wouldn't let them because they saw them (understandably, I think) as being duplicitous, or weak. They said they wanted a "pure" church. Thing is, they weren't really offering a whole lot of grace.

Then Augustine came along and, citing Jesus' parable about the wheat and the weeds, said that no one should be kept from church fellowship if they had repented and wanted to be reinstated. And from there (going through a number of permutations, naturally), the concept/practice of a "parish church" type of set-up was born. The idea is that anyone can be a part of the faith community, whether they're an actual believer or not, as long as they play by some basic rules. So when a baby was born in a community, he or she would be baptised right away because the family was a part of that parish . . . everyone "belonged" to a church. You didn't have a conversion experience because you were "in."

Once the Protestant reformation hit the scene, ages later, this concept began to be switched up a little bit. The Lutherans and the Calvinists, who believed (in different ways) that church and state should work side by side, maintained the sort of parish/wheat-and-weeds setup. They hung onto infant baptism and But the Anabaptists, who believed that the church would always be a persecuted entity until Christ's return and so must therefore be totally separate from the state, wanted to see a "pure" church, where the only members were people who had a genuine faith in Christ and been baptised as adult believers. Their idea was total separateness.

So here I am, this mix of a Germanic Anabaptist and Swedish Lutheran heritage, who grew up in a Baptist church with Reformed leanings, working at an interdenominational church which baptises any little baby whose parents walk them through the door. And I'm taking another big ol' church history class (could you tell?), so I'm thinking about this "what is the church" thing a lot lately.

I will always be a Baptist on the issue of . . . baptism. But I kind of go back and forth as to whether Augustine was right or whether the Anabaptists were, as far as the whole "separateness" thing goes. The passage above seems to indicate fairly unequivocally that a Christian separation from the world is required. Keeping apart from "the world" makes it a lot easier not to "touch their filthy things." I myself have seen and heard of churches and other organisations who have "teamed up with unbelievers" toward a good common cause, and then the Christ-centered aspect of the cause for the believers gets watered down and washed out, and sometimes the entire enterprise tanks. Compromise is maybe inevitable, and, if these verses are anything to go by, it is unacceptable.

On the other hand, I have a really hard time seeing that Jesus did this. I do believe that all Scripture is inspired by God, and so therefore the above verses are something God wanted said, and so therefore Jesus must somehow have abided by them, but however He did it, it didn't look anything like the way I've ever seen those verses interpreted. He is, after all, the guy who got accused all the time of associating with "tax collectors and sinners." If He was exclusionary of anyone, it was the religious folk, the ones who would probably cite verses like the above, if they had been written yet. And I keep thinking about when I was in Gospel Choir in college, and how our drummer who toured with us wasn't a Christian, but how after touring with us for a while and seeing God answer some prayers, he became one. And I think . . . I'm still confused. What is this 2 Corinthians passage really telling us to do. Because how do we make sure the church keeps its necessary distinctives? But how else are people who don't know Jesus going to meet Him unless they're in our lives?

Personal History

Yesterday Grandma Madeira turned 90. Today we had a party. I was the only one of her direct progeny who was able to be there, far-flung family that I have, but her brother and most of his daughters, and her sister's kids, and another brother's granddaughter, and my Grandma Grosser and Auntie Jane from the other side of the family were all there. Also The Swedes, a couple of family friends who just love my grandmother and who more than deserved to be there.

We reserved a room in the retirement community where she lives, and we sat around a white-tableclothed table and ate cake and drank coffee and told her a little of what she meant to us and some of our favourite memories of her. There are certain family stories that get told over and over so many times that even though I may not have been born until 50 years after the event, I could probably tell you the story and make you think I had been there. Some of those got re-aired today. But there were also stories or things I hadn't known before. Or at least, I don't remember knowing them.

I didn't know that Grandma Madeira had been proposed to by two different men at pretty much the same time, and had to pick one. I didn't know that her Swedish immigrant parents had moved back to Sweden after emigrating to the States for a while, and that she was conceived there and her mother was carrying her in the womb when they returned to America on behalf of their children. I didn't know how much she and Grandpa Madeira had meant to their nieces and nephews.

I also don't think I knew that her father came to the US in the first place at age 16 because he didn't want to be drafted, because he didn't believe in fighting. You can tell me my great grandfather was a draft-dodger, but the thing is, I don't take that as an insult, and I'm proud he was a pacifist. It was subsequently pointed out that Grandpa Madeira's father was also a pacifist and conscientious objector, as a "plain person" from Lancaster County, PA. I guess I'm about 99% pacifist, and I guess I've mostly come to that perspective myself, but do you think there are pacifist genes? Because maybe I come by this naturally.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

When I was around 22 and living and working in Nannyfield, my employers (Terry-and-Karin-the-Great--they really were awesome) were kind of concerned about the fact that I had never had a boyfriend. Terry-the-Great knew this guy from work that he wanted to set me up with. Said Guy was somewhat older than I (at that point, such a feat--being older than me--was not difficult to manage), and Terry thought he was a little weird, but that we'd be good together because we were both "religious." The Guy invited me to go with him to a Star Trek convention or something once, but I declined, and never met him in person. Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if we had met. Frankly, I don't think I became proper girlfriend material until I met the Milk Guy, and now I don't care anymore (maybe that's the difference), so probably nothing would've happened, but these are still things you think about sometimes.

Like, when you're studying about the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Long before the Star Trek invite, The Guy invited me to go with him to a celebration of the anniversary of "his church." He sent me, via TtG, a whole lot of literature about it--the Eastern Orthodox church. I'm not sure if this celebration was of the anniversary of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic split, which I would think would be a little tricky to pin down, since there was tension between them for quite a while before they actually divided, or of his own branch in New York City. The latter is more likely, I think. I just learned that US Eastern Orthodox churches do not have patriarchates in this country, but are linked to other ones in the Old Country. (Which old country? It depends, probably.)

I remember reading everything This Guy sent me, and wondering if it would constitute being unequally yoked if I ended up with an Eastern Orthodox guy. (Everybody that has been reading this blog for the last two years is free to guffaw loudly at this point.)

So, today, going over my notes about Eastern Orthodoxy, I thought about this again, and you know what? There are actually things I like about the Eastern Orthodox church--at least in theory. Apparently during the time of Constantine at least, the Eastern church believed that there should be a sort of seamless union between church and state, and so Constantine was allowed to perform some of the duties at religious functions, and the average Joe was so interested in theology that Constantinople was full of people debating the nature of Christ and stuff. Given what small talk has devolved to, I kind of like that picture. I like the understanding of the Church--that it reflects the Trinity (unity in diversity), is the Body of Christ (an extension of the Incarnation) and is itself the continued Pentecost (implying centrality of the Holy Spirit). I like the concept that the Church exists both visibly and invisibly and is both human and divine. I am definitely a fan of the understanding that doctrinal assertions act as a fence to keep heresy out, but don't (and shouldn't) fully explain or exhaust the mysteries of our faith. I also like that at least ostensibly, the line between clergy and laity is more blurred than in Western churches.

Here's what I think I'd have a hard time with, though. I don't like the concept (found also in the Roman Catholic church and plenty of others) that salvation is impossible outside the church. It kind of reminds me of that baptism scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which is supposed to be funny, but always makes me uncomfortable, because clearly this guy is "converting" for a person and not because he met a Person. But in this tradition, his entering the church and having undergone baptism (which supposedly brings the new birth itself), would be what saves him. I like what it says in the story about his love for the girl. That's all very noble and everything. But I don't like stories of forced or false conversions. Also what is the point of Chrismation (which is kind of a cool word if you think of it like "clay-mation"--does it mean animated by Christ?)? It's confirmation . . . of the children of believing parents. Why would you baptise a baby and then confirm a kid. When does anyone get to decide if they believe or care or not? I guess you don't, because you need to stay in the church, so you can stay saved. I'm a little uneasy about the idea of God the Father as the fountainhead from which the Son and the Spirit proceed, because it makes Him seem superior to them, and I really disagree that sin is a result of death instead of the other way around.

So yeah. While I think it would be fun to stumble across more people debating theology in random conversation (kind of like the third conversation I ever had with the Item, when, over the counter at Starbucks, he told me his background was Catholic but he was first alienated from the church over the doctrine of transubstantiation because it wouldn't allow his non-Catholic father to partake of the Eucharist), and while I like allowing the mysteries to be mysteries, in most other respects, I don't think I'd make a very good Eastern Orthodox. Good thing I never met That Guy.

P.S. I got all that info? from my professor's lecture outline. He is Dr. Garth M. Rosell. I would like to give him the credit, and not be guilty of plagiarism. Thank you.

Communes

Someone, somewhere (like probably Pastor Marty, to whom I just intimated I might not be going to Life Group tonight since I'm studying for my final tomorrow), is going to think I'm slacking off from my studies just to blog. But I'm actually hoping this will be part of the studying process--I'm not even making an excuse.

So here are the first musings of the day. (That you get to know about, anyway!)

Remember that time I said I wanted to be a non-pot-smoking, non-promiscuous hippie? (Remember when I spelled "hippie" with a "y"?) So that little dream was kind of the hermit-hippie version, but for a long time--like, probably since college--I've also had this dream of living in a commune. Which might be why the discussion of monasticism in class kind of draws me.

Uncle Phil was an actual hippie who did live in a commune once, and it was a "Christian" one supposedly, but it got very controlling and very dysfunctional and he has nothing good to say about it. I was a little kid living in Honduras at the time, so I don't know much about it other than dark looks and oblique intimations that it wasn't a good experience. And an LP that came out of it, which I actually liked a lot growing up. But--maybe because I was a little kid and don't know much about it--I still find the idea of communal, sort of monastic living appealing. Jesus and his disciples didn't live in a monastery or anything, and it was a mixed group--men and women--and some of them were married and some of them were single, but they lived together. Some monastic orders, though not "co-educational," really weren't separatists from the world, but actually reached directly into their surrounding culture or sent monks off in groups to travel about and evangelise and care for people's needs. I like that. I think there's something fortifying about belonging to a group like that, working through all the personality differences and stuff, and reaching out together for the common cause of Christ. I don't really think there's another common cause that would make working through the personality differences worth it, frankly--it's too much hard work to just do it for the heck of it, but it's a great exercise in becoming a stronger disciple of Jesus if He's the reason for it. (And help in it!) I like the idea of people belonging to each other because of Jesus, and each being able fully to exercise their gifts for the community--because they're together in life, and not just for Sunday mornings and specific churchy stuff during the week. I like that ancient and medieval monasteries set a rhythm of work and worship, and that their adherents were constantly being reminded to worship God in their work, and also to take time to pause to be with Him together. I think I would learn to pray better if someone told me that at such and such time a day, we were praying, and not doing anything else.

A few years ago the nearby Yankee Drummer Inn went out of business. For the last seven years I've had this back-of-the-mind idea that a group of Christians should buy it. We could all have lived in the rooms, and cooked in the kitchen, and worshiped together in the events hall. I thought we could all keep going to our regular jobs so that we could keep making inroads into the wider community, and maybe people would be drawn to our smaller community and we could disciple them there and stuff.

Sometime this year they tore the whole thing down. Now there's just a chain-link fence and a bunch of weeds. There isn't even a hole in the ground. So much for that idea.

But there still is that controlling thing. St. Benedict, who established that rule of monastic life that so many other monastic communities since then have either ascribed to or adapted, said that the most important thing in communal life was obedience. You had to have an abbot, and the brothers (because of course these were celibate communities) had to have the humility to obey the abbot without question. I kind of wonder if he's right. I wonder if, in order for a group of people to live together effectively, you have to have a sort of authoritarian organisation. I wonder if "controlling" is the nature of monasticism or communism. In that case, Uncle Phil's experience is probably less than unique and maybe there is nothing good to be said about monasticism. The best that could happen in this scenario would be for the person in charge to actually not be a control-freak, and be trustworthy, and for the people not-in-charge to be committed enough to the endeavour and humble enough to not assert their own opinions all the time.

Something in me recoils at that idea. I guess if you enter a monastery you take certain vows which aren't necessary for being a Christian, but are necessary for being in the kind of community you're joining. You voluntarily decide to set your individualism aside, at least in some respects, for the sake of the community. Is that what we're supposed to be doing as followers of Jesus, or isn't it? He came to bring us into unique community and reconciliation with Himself and others. He told us the best we could do was to love God with our entire being and to love our neighbours as ourselves. That doesn't leave much room for selfishness, and it's pretty clear that God doesn't want to leave us any room for selfishness. That's why He came down here in the first place. I think there's probably something bracing and freeing about living in community if it's done well, and something that forces us to die to ourselves in ways that we can't when we're living out "this American life" or whatever.

I don't live in community right now, though (unless you count Oscar). I've looked for roommates on and off since Roommate-Sarah, and I had the Sixes here for a while (they're coming back this summer!), but it seems like intermittent hermit-dom is my lot for now. So I'm glad Jesus came for individuals, too. I suppose the main thing is to be His disciple in whatever state He calls you. It says that in the Bible somewhere, I think . . .

Getting It Right

I'm sort of studying for my church history mid-term, only I think I've kind of forgotten how, and also? I'm not anywhere near as Type-A as I was in high school and college. (Maybe I was never really Type-A, but I was definitely very driven by grades.)

I'm hoping writing this post will help me get my head around some things and will, in a sense, be a way of studying. (At least, it makes a good excuse, doesn't it?) I feel like I'm still stuck on heresies.

I don't really have a problem with the idea that there is orthodox belief and heterodox belief. Unlike most postmoderns, I do believe that there is a Truth, that ultimately that Truth is Jesus Christ and effects the whole universe. I believe that you can be walking more in line with the Truth, or less in line with it. But, like any good postmodern, I guess I'm not always sure I understand how we know it. I guess what I'm struggling with is not so much that the church leadership in the third and fourth centuries needed to create creeds and formulas by which to evaluate faith and life. I agree that they needed to decide on a Biblical canon, and I feel that their choices of books to go into the New Testament were right, and the things that were left out were left out for good reason.

I'm just kind of wrestling with the whole process of how they got there. My professor says (in his CD lectures--I've never actually met the guy) that, for example, in the case of the Biblical canon, the Holy Spirit, having inspired the canonical books, infused them with a certain authority, and that "canonisation is a recognition of what has already taken place." I think this is true, but how did they know it had already taken place? How did they know that Athanasius' list of 27 New Testament books was correct, and Marcion's edited Matthew, Luke and 10 letters of Paul were not? (The fact that he edited them himself might have been an indicator, I suppose, but still--I'm just saying.)

Or how about this? Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria, started teaching that "there was a time when the Son was not"--that is, that the "Son" part of the Godhead had had a beginning, and that Jesus was this dude that God put His Spirit on and basically adopted into the Godhead, but who had not existed eternally like the Father. Athanasius said this was bunk, and that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were co-eternal. Over the course of the Council of Nicea and the Council of Constantinople (dudes--I can even tell you the years of those!), Athanasius' view was vindicated and Arius' was defeated, but what the lectures didn't tell me and the textbook did was that they went back and forth on these issues a few times, with both Arius and Athanasius being condemned and exiled multiple times (although I think Arius died first and got condemned posthumously a couple of times, too).

Or what about the Council of Ephesus? I'm not even talking about the Robber Synod that came on its heels. I'm talking about how the Antiochene bishops got to the council late and the Alexandrian bishops (and presumably any others--if there were any others) met already and decided that they (the Alexandrians) were in the right in their views on the dual nature of Christ and the title of Mary. The Antiochene bishops were understandably upset, so they came up with this compromise called the "Symbol of Union" which sort of agreed more with the Antiochenes about Christ's dual nature, and sort of agreed with the Alexandrians about Mary's title. You can decide these things via a compromise? What if they compromised on the wrong parts? When told of the issues before being told of the results of the council, I frankly thought the Alexandrians were more correct about the nature of Christ and the Antiochenes were more correct about the title of Mary. What if I'm right and Pope Leo or whomever, was wrong?

Or what if I'm wrong? How wrong do I have to be before I am considered a heretic? If I love Jesus and trust Him to get me to the Father and to have died for my sins and forgiven me and to be gradually transforming me more into His likeness, do I still have to fully understand how He is both fully divine and fully human, or how God is a Unity and a Trinity, or whether the Spirit proceeds from just the Father or both the Father and the Son? What does that even mean?

I feel like there's heresy all over the place, still, today, and often I recognise it when I see it, but I don't always. I don't think anybody does always. How much of our salvation depends on our recognising it? Especially if our salvation is dependent on grace and not works? I think it all does come back to the work of the Holy Spirit. I think He does confirm what He has already accomplished or established. But so many people claim to be speaking for the Holy Spirit. How do you really know the difference?

Speaking of Heresy

My "new" car is fantastic. I am so happy with it. The only things wrong with it are that I have no (working) way to plug my ipod into the sound system, and . . . it has a tiny, well-nigh tasteful, American flag sticker in the lower left hand corner of the rear window.

That's the heretical part of course--that having an American flag sticker stuck on my car would be "wrong." I don't know. I guess I just spent too long in the down-and-out East End of London to be comfortable with iconography that identifies me with one specific ethnic group or nation. Ever since my uncle came out with the album and song "Citizen of Heaven" (what? you've never heard of it? yeah . . . it was kind of like my book: worth it, but obscure) and I realised that was an actual Bible verse, I have had a little trouble being patriotic. (Either that or it gave me an excuse not to be.) Yes, I am an American, and I appreciate the freedoms that I have, and I daresay I take many of them for granted. I just have a little trouble wanting that to be my identity--the thing I'm known for.

When I was a little kid, living in Honduras, I thought the USA was Heaven. After all, we had to fly to get there. Through clouds and everything! Plus, everyone spoke English (i.e., I could understand them) and we could drink water directly from the taps instead of having to boil it first. After we moved back here, however, my attitude started slowly but surely to shift. I guess that happens when you've been exposed to another culture at an early age--even if you spend that early age trying to resist it (stupidly, I refused to learn Spanish). You just realise that there are other people out there and other ways of doing things, and while you may still prefer your way, the lines dividing cultures and nationalities get to feeling really arbitrary and frustrating. At least they did to me.

I've been reading Jeremiah lately. That book is fascinating to me, in part because Jeremiah was so faithful to God, and God was so faithful to him, but he ended up feeling disappointed with how God was demonstrating His faithfulness a lot of the time. Sometimes he just wished God would leave him alone--that he didn't have these words burning a hole in his heart and his tongue that he just had to speak but which got him in heaps (or cisterns) of trouble every time he opened his mouth. I haven't hung out in a cistern lately, and hope not to . . . ever, but there are still some things about this guy that I resonate with, I guess.

The other thing I find fascinating, though, is his message. Here he is, going to the priests and prophets and leaders of a country whose claim to identity was having been hand-chosen by God. They are telling the people, "God's not going to abandon us. Look--His Temple's here. That's His house. He won't let anything happen to that--or to us, either. We are the people of God." And Jeremiah's saying back, "Um, guys? Stop hiding behind this Temple and these religious practices, okay? God knows you haven't really been worshiping Him in a while now--all these idols and stuff instead--and He's getting ready to send in the Babylonians to take you all away for a good long time."

("No He isn't"--"Yes He is"--"No He isn't" . . . )

"So here's what you have to do. You've got to cooperate with the foreign army. Let them in, abide by their laws, go where they tell you, and seek their good, and you'll be spared. If you resist? It's not going to turn out so great for you."

Somehow, the people didn't like this message all that much. And I think I understand why not. For one thing, it sounds heretical. Here they are, the people of God, being told to capitulate to a bunch of heathens. (Never mind that they've been worshiping idols in tandem with God for a long time now.) To make matters worse, the guy that's telling them this is saying that God is telling them to do this. It's another one of those, "God wouldn't say that," moments, like "Go marry a prostitute" (Hosea) and "I'm going to form a child in your womb so it looks like you got pregnant out of wedlock in a culture where that's not okay--okay?" (Mary). Sometimes God asks us to do stuff which is according to His plan, His wisdom, His goodness . . . but it doesn't sound Biblical, if you will.

This message of Jeremiah sounded treasonous--well it was treasonous--and the assumption was that treason against the nation was treason against God, but the fact was, it wasn't. The nation had run away from God a long time ago, and the only way to get any of them back was to send them away for a while and stoke up the fires of repentance and true faith and God-seeking and character-building that God wanted.

I got to thinking about this. I got to imagining modern-day equivalents. I thought about how there are plenty of people in this country who don't believe in God, or believe in different gods, or are open about not caring less whether there is a God or not. But there are also a lot of people in this country who do believe in God and for better or worse are convinced this country once was a Christian nation and that it needs to become so again. I started imagining what would happen if some Christian somewhere began telling everyone that, say, extremist Muslims were going to take over the USA, and that we should let them. It doesn't just sound like we're giving up our national freedoms (which some people seem to equate with, like, the fruits of the Spirit or something anyway). It sounds like we're capitulating to the spiritual enemy. It sounds like by that very action we'd be denying our faith in Christ. Doesn't it?

I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I'm not Jeremiah. As far as I know, God did not wake me up this morning to tell my occasional blog-readers to get ready for a terrorist influx by giving into it. (And I should probably also say, for any Muslim friends of mine who might be reading this, I am not tarring all Muslims with the same brush, but I think we both know there are people of that faith who want to take over the world by shari'a law, and that such a law does not exactly grant equal treatment to people of other faiths. Certainly such impulses exist within aspects of "Christianity" and Buddhism and Hinduism, too, but extremist Muslims seem to me a little more global with theirs at the moment.)

What I think I am saying is, I think it's easy to mix up nationality and national rights and privileges with Christianity, and I don't think they're the same thing. And while fighting for universal rights and freedoms is likely a good thing, I don't think they, as political constructs and national benefits, are as important to God as they are to us or as we think they are to Him. And sometimes I wonder, if there were to come another Jeremiah, whether we'd think he wasn't the anti-Christ and throw him in a well or something.

What's Wrong?

I've been thinking of heresy a lot for the past few months. That's enough to block up anyone's blogposts . . . at least, anyone who is having trouble "wordifying" what she's thinking about the heresies.

The triggers for this current train of thought have been legion, starting, perhaps, with an email from Antagonist-Andrew, which I still haven't answered. (Andrew, if you are even still deigning to read my blog, it's not that I'm ignoring you on purpose. It's just that I'm afraid of rambling again.) On the heels of the email came my Church History class, and in the midst of that came some ongoing discussions with Third Jon. (You have met both First and Second John, but you may not know them by these names.)

I think the main thing that kicked off the maelstrom in my head, however, was that question about Constantine. Overall good, or overall bad? If I say (as I said) that overall, he was bad for the Church, then what about the fact (as bryancti pointed out) that the new freedom and power that Constantine afforded the Church also afforded them time to work out doctrinal issues? When you're on the run from the powers that be all the time, there's not a whole lot of time to sit down and codify exactly what you believe. I could make a nice romantic assumption (and statement) that you also don't have time to come up with any heresies, but that's not true, because most of the big Early Church Heresies started floating (and I do mean floating) around before Constantine was even thought of. Lots of those people who got burned at the stake or chomped on by wild animals in the Coliseum were not only standing up for Christ in the face of polytheists who thought they were atheists, so different was their concept of God, but had already faced up to esoteric fallacies about Christ from people who claimed to have something to do with Him.

But I'm struggling. I think it matters that Jesus is the Son of God--that He is and always has been co-existent with the Father and the Holy Spirit--that they are an eternal Trinity. I think it matters that He was/is both fully God and fully human. I think it matters that there is original sin. I think it matters that God isn't a dualistic force and we don't live in a dualistic universe--Jesus came to prove it by sanctifying both matter and spirit and bringing them together in one. I can get pretty heated about this stuff, actually.

I also know that the apostles dealt with some of these very issues--Gnosticism was already around when Christianity got started. They just conveniently tweaked a few Christian ideas and absorbed them. The Apostles Paul and John both wrote against Gnostic ideas. It matters that God finally revealed Himself to us through Jesus, and we don't need some special hidden knowledge in order to be enlightened and saved.

The thing is, though? Sometimes I feel like even the orthodoxies turn into claims that we evidently do need some special hidden knowledge in order to be enlightened and saved. I do believe it's the Holy Spirit who convicts people of the truth and that we couldn't know or understand the Gospel without that enlightenment. But I feel like the way we "orthodox" Christians talk about this stuff? A lot of times our codification of how salvation happens sounds awfully Gnostic if you really think about it. I was listening to an evangelical speaker on a DVD this week, and he was very good, and the things he said about Jesus were true, but at the end he said, "If you believe and if you trust and if you understand such and such . . . you're saved."

Most of my life I have subscribed to that sort of teaching and understanding, and to some extent I still think that's true. But there's another extent to which that just sounds like more of "works salvation" to me--except that the "work" that "saves" us is accurate belief of certain propositions. You have to be enlightened enough to know all this stuff, and believe in it, and regurgitate it, and support the Republican party, and then you'll be saved.

And I just thought it was God-driven, God-initiated, we-never-could-do-it-or-even-think-it-ourselves, grace.

It's okay. I've already been called a heretic.

Seminary Sunday

Pastor Barry is calling this coming Sunday "Seminary Sunday," I think because it is the anniversary of when he got ordained or something. Since I am half a class and a few transfer credits into an M.Div. myself, he wants me to say something to the congregation about my "calling" to the ministry, so one of my projects this week has been to try figure out what I'm going to say.

I feel that the paltry number of blogposts I have written this year so far is disgraceful, but it's mostly because I'm having a little trouble getting my head round the things I want to write about, enough to write about them, so I'm going to cheat a little and once again post something in here that I have written for another purpose entirely. This is my little "talk" for Sunday. (If you go to GPC, you might want to avert your eyes, so that my delivery on Sunday is not extra-boring for you.) Critiques are acceptable. So are theological debates, if necessary. Just try not to get the two of them mixed up.

So . . . I’m taking this seminary class? One of the most recent lectures touched upon how the earliest of the early Church didn’t make a distinction between sacred and secular vocation. To be called by God meant first of all that He had called you to repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation with Himself and with other people. Then that influenced your calling for what to do with your life. Early Christians lived out their Christianity no matter what they were doing; they all wanted the people they rubbed shoulders with every day to know about the love of God for them through Jesus Christ. So every job was important, whether you were a ship’s navigator or a carpenter or a seamstress or whatever, because every job was an opportunity to work toward excellence and to show people the love of Jesus.

I was listening to this lecture thinking, “Yes! That’s how it’s supposed to be!” It reminded me of this time at another church when I had just started working at Starbucks, and I really believed that that job was how I could best serve Christ at the time. This man came up to me and, knowing I had been a missionary once, said, “But don’t you ever think about going back into the ministry?”

I got so angry, it was all I could do to keep from losing my “Christian” cool and yelling, “Are you completely blind?! How can you be so narrow-minded?” Instead I said calmly, “Well, I think Starbucks is the ministry, too.”

And it was, so you might wonder how I ended up back working for a church and now starting seminary, if I feel that strongly about it. Sometimes I wonder that, too, but I guess even though I do feel strongly that God can reach people through any Christian doing anything and that no task is more noble or more “called” than another, I think I have been called to kind of church-y ministry, mostly. I don’t really know how old I was when I found out that not everybody knew about Jesus, but however old it was, I knew right then that I needed to make sure they found out about Him. I don’t think anyone told me this . . . although my parents were missionaries, so maybe I picked it up by osmosis.

Anyway, I’ve always had a very strong sense that God was true, and that Jesus was, too, and even though a lot of things have changed about me since I first made that decision to tell people about Jesus . . . I still like to talk about Him. And I find that I still care whether or not people know He loves them, and whether or not they know what it is He did for them, through His life, death and resurrection. And whether or not they know He is calling them and wants to make Himself known somehow through them, too.

I didn’t always think it was Biblical (and therefore “okay”) for women to be pastors. If you want to know how my mind changed on that one, you can ask me about it sometime, but anyway, it did, and as soon as it did, I wondered if maybe one of these days God might call me to be a pastor, too.

I’m still not 100% sure He has, except in the sense that “pastor” means “shepherd” or “caretaker,” and in reality I’ve been spiritually “taking care” of people in some way or other for years. Since it seems like I’m going to do that for the rest of my life anyway, I don’t think it could hurt to get some more training to help me do it better. I do know that sometimes He calls people to work at coffee shops or at Norton’s or at Shaw’s, but other times He calls people to buckle down and study about Him so they can provide strength and guidance for all those people working hard and rubbing shoulders with folks who don’t think they’ve met Him yet. I believe He has called me to GPC at this time, and I’ve sort of stumbled into the opportunity to get more training. The doors keep opening, so I’ll just keep walking through them and we’ll see where I end up!

Last fall, I applied to the Masters of Divinity programme at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Wenham, MA. Right now I am getting my feet wet with that church history class I mentioned. You would think that it might be boring, but I find it absolutely fascinating--I love it. So far all this seems to be a good move. As I take it a step at a time, I trust God will keep leading, and I hope you will pray for me when you think of it, that I will learn what He wants me to learn, become who He wants me to become, and do what He wants me to do.

Constantine

At the beginning of my on-line church history class, I ended up writing a little bit about Constantine. I remember learning about him while I was growing up--maybe in 6th grade history class or something--and getting the impression that he was this great guy because he made it okay to be a Christian. (I'm not sure I got that he made it well-nigh mandatory, but even if I had, I probably thought that was a good idea at the time, too.) Now I have some different views, although I suspect they are not entirely free of culturally-influenced thought. One of the "tutor"-type people for the class said that it was okay for me to copy my classwork responses to my blog, so for the sake of future discussion, I am duly posting my on-line discussion:

Discussion Question:
This question is simple. Has the role of Constantine been for the better or the worse throughout history?

1/16/10
Recently a non-Christian friend of mine accused me of having "something of an affliction fetish." I'm not sure that's exactly how I would term it (but I might as well get off to a shocking start with my interactivity assignments). However, I do think, as a follower of Jesus, that "trials" or "persecutions" or "afflictions" or whatever else we may want to call them, are probably meant to be par for the course. I suspect I have a tendency, from my comfy North American living room, to idealize and romanticize "the persecuted church." I don't feel quite right about saying, "Constantine should never have been part of church history because we as Christians should always be getting beat up for our faith." As cthayer [another student] states, "While it is clear throughout history that the church stunningly thrives under persecution, it makes it no less of an atrocity that men and women of faith throughout the centuries have had to undergo it."

On the other hand, I do think that in many if not most cases, our brothers and sisters in more "religiously dangerous" countries across the globe have a lot sturdier faiths than I or many of my compatriots have. I guess I'm grateful for my freedoms because I haven't experienced much of anything else, but it speaks volumes to me that many times people within what is termed the Persecuted Church ask for our prayers--not that the sufferings will end, but that they will bear up under them and not deny their Lord.

It seems to me that via Constantine (and by his successors in power-mongering), the lack of persecution did make the spread of Christianity easier and quicker, but it may also have declawed it in some senses and places. If we are not bearing a cross in the name of Christ, it's a lot harder for the Cross to be much more than a symbol [in the name of nationalism, like it was for Constantine]. It is, of course, possible, but it seems like, whatever his personal allegiances really were, Constantine did his best to imbue the Cross with power instead of with the humility and sacrifice that it actually portrays. I guess I have a mild, semi-conscious resentment of Constantine for kicking off the fat-cat Christianity that seems to have beleaguered Christ's Bride and her witness for the rest of history. I might also mention that when I'm trying to talk about Jesus to non-Christian friends like the aforementioned one, Constantine almost always comes up, in a negative light, and it's very difficult to witness around him.

Nevertheless, though on a personal level I feel that his influence was primarily negative, it seems to me too simplistic to term it that way. I tend to agree with kbacklund's reminder that God works all things together for good to those who love Him, and with awestmoreland's highlighting of God's hand is in history. The Church was able to work through certain doctrinal issues during Constantine's time that would not have been possible had it still been struggling with the persecution (though perhaps the Gospel would have remained a little more unadorned if the time for these things had not been available), and surely, whether God exactly ordained Constantine's rule or simply allowed it, He was not surprised by it and He is able to make good any situation. It seems that in some ways, He is still doing that up to this very day with all the church's past mistakes, and not just Constantine's.

You Learn Something New . . .

I have enrolled in my first seminary course. It is "Church History to the Reformation," and I am finding myself surprisingly riveted. I've always had a sort of passive interest in church history (feed it to me and I'll gobble it up, but no hunting/gathering really happens here), but I think what surprises me most is that the main textbook for the class--naturally a weighty tome--is so well-written. I've never had a textbook, which wasn't a novel for a literature class, that I have looked forward to reading so much. (Well, except for maybe Dr. Blomberg's Jesus and the Gospels.)

As I'm reading it, I'm finding lots of thoughts entering my head, not to mention information I never knew before. Like this: in 1975, when this book was written? The author thought that Gnosticism had totally died out. Huh. Maybe not.

Here's something else. It is impossible, in a post-DaVinci Code world, not to have heard about the bad, bad, misogynisitc, racist, close-minded clerics who gave Gnostics and other heretics a run for their money . . . or tried to get them to totally die out. Said clerics may in fact have been misogyinistic and/or racist--or they may have been products of their time and not been thinking about those issues because they were thinking of whether or not Jesus was both fully God and fully human and what that meant. There were some less-than-pleasant characters among them. I'm just saying, they might not be the villains it is currently fashionable to paint them as.

Among the lesser-known details about these accounts is that on occasion, the heretics won out--at least temporarily. Arius, for example, was sent into exile, but for some time later his doctrine almost completely triumphed, dying out mainly because divisions within the group's own ranks.

I have friends who promulgate something like the Arian heresy and although I disagree, I don't feel inclined to exile them or anything. If I get brave and motivated enough, there may come a post one of these days where I wrestle more with the question of heresy and orthodoxy in general. But right now, because I'm feeling a little fed up with fashionable conspiracy theories, I feel like telling some heretics to stop whining--they had their day, and they still have it . . . heresies come and go and come back, for goodness' sake (or something?), so stop making stuff up about the 2nd and 3rd century theologians (not to mention, say, the apostle Paul) and try to deal with orthodoxy. Accept it, reject it, whatever. Just . . . is it really necessary to make up stories about Paul being a Gnostic and Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene just because we're uncomfortable with Jesus' life and claims?

Okay. Enough soap-box. It's going to come back to bite me (if soap-boxes can bite), via my own words or someone else's--or both--soon enough.

But here's the other thing I just found out. Evidently, in the time of Tertullian, when people got baptised, there was a lot more to the ceremony than there is in most churches I've ever been in, but also, after the baptism, the one who had just been baptised "refrained from the daily bath for a week after having received the rite" (Latourette, p194). I'm glad that tradition didn't stick around . . . although it might explain why people hardly bathed at all during the Middle Ages . . .