Things I Have Been Working On

For the past few days I have trying to help a friend understand what exactly the "Post Modern" Church is. When I initially took on the task I thought it would be fairly easy since in the college group I lead we have been discussing "How to Minister to the Post Modern Church". When I looked at my notes I realized that we had really only focused on one aspect of the post modern church and that was the Emergent Church. The reason we focused on this aspect of the post moderns is because right now they seem to be the church of choice. They use the same Christian words that believers use, but they add their own meaning to them and that is what makes them especially dangerous.

Here is a taste of what I was writing to him:

Due to vagueness that surrounds Post Modernism belief systems that carry the labels of “Seeker Sensitive”, “Health Wealth and Prosperity Gospel”, ”Felt Needs”, “Open Theism” and “Emergent” all fit into this category. Brian McLaren was interview and asked about all the angst in the reviews of his book A Generous Orthodoxy and he stated there the “mantra” if you will, of the poet modern church which is “putting the fun back in fundamentalism.” In this interview MacLaren says this about God and Hell, “Does it make sense for a good being to create creatures who will experience infinite torture, infinite time, infinite—you know, never be numbed in their consciousness? I mean, how would you even create a universe where that sort of thing could happen? It just sounds—It really raises some questions about the goodness of God.”[1] To the Emergent pastors they feel like they are being historical and that they are being scriptural. They see themselves, as D.A. Carson aptly points out in his book Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church, as the reformers of our era.

In the Post Modern Church all religions believe in the same god. Dr. Marcus Borg said this about his own faith and this encapsulates the Post Modern view “I am by confession a Christian of a nonliteralist and nonexclusivist kind (once Lutheran, now Episcopalian).”[2] Dr Borg in his book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time says this about the relationship between the enlightenment of Budhha and John’s talking about being born again “ Enlightenment as an archetypal religious metaphor belongs to a mystical way of being religious. Outside of the Jewish and Christian traditions, the best-known enlightenment experience is the Buddha’s mystical experience. Such an experience leads to seeing everything differently. It is not simply an intellectual or mental “seeing,” as when we say, “Oh, I see what you mean.” Rather, enlightenment as a religious experience involves communion or union with what is, an immediate “knowing” of the sacred that transforms one’s way of seeing. So it is in John: enlightenment is a central metaphor for salvation. To have one’s eyes opened, to be enlightened, is to move from the negative pole of John’s contrasting symbols to the positive pole. To move from darkness to light is also to move from death to life, from falsehood to truth, from life in the flesh to life in the Spirit, from life “below” to life “from above.”[3] Because of this blurring of religious lines we see candles in the post modern church as a way of seeking a peace about ourselves, we see mantra’s in the worship service as a part of “experiencing” God and we see Catholic Priests, Jewish Rabbi’s and Islamic Cleric’s being allowed to speak from their pulpits. I guess the best way to describe the Post Modern church is universalism. This quote from the book, An Emergent Manifeto of Hope pretty much sums up this feeling, “God’s table is welcoming all who seek, and if any religion is to win, may it be the one that produces people who are the most loving, the most humble, the most Christlike. Whatever the meaning of “salvation” and “judgement,” we Christians are going to be saved by grace, like everyone else, and judged by our works, like everyone else… For most critics of such open Christianity, the problem with inclusiveness is that it allows for truth to be found in other religions. To emerging Christians, that problem is sweet… Moreover, if non-Christians can know our God, then we want to benefit from their contribution to our faith. (195,196)”

So what do "true" believers do with all this information? This is the question we have been asking our college students. Our duty as believers is first to love them. To many time we as Bible believers want to "scripture" whip (like pistol whipping someone, but with your Bible)people to death. We will not be effective in winning them to Christ if we beat them over the head. Now for a point of clarification, I do not mean never introduce scripture. I mean introduce it with love and understanding. Remember you are a sinner too and God does not differentiate between one sin being worse than another. You are just an object of God's grace and mercy. Secondly live life with them. Be a Christ like example before them. Show them that you can be doctrinally sound and not be legalistic in your lifestyle.

I do like MacLaren's statement about putting the "fun" back into fundamentalist because I believe all to many times true believers lack joy. Believers be filled with joy and thankfulness and let the world know that you are a believer by the way you serve others and not by how much scripture you have memorized.