The Marker

The picture I chose for my new blogger title banner for a purpose. If you saw Rob Bell on tour last summer or have watched the "Everything is Spiritual" DVD, you probably already know where I'm going. Bell has a unique way of looking at things that really fits the way I think about things and often makes me wonder why his approach is so revolutionary.

As part of his long talks last summer, Bell used the illustration of the marker he held in his hand to show the difference between how people see things in three dimensions. He explained that if you look at a marker from the side, it appears to be a rectangle - a square with two long sides and two short sides. However, if you look at it from the front or the back, you see it as a circle. Any cylinder would have the same effect - a pop can or anything else similarly shaped. He asked how you would respond if someone asked you if it that marker was a rectangle or a circle - all you could say would be "Yup." He then made a simple theological example: predestination versus free-will. Is it possible that God looks down on all our bickering about black-and-white theological concepts and just says, "Yup."

Now, I have to be careful since I'm in candidacy limbo in a particular denomination that really likes the "black" of the "black-and-white" distinctions, but I have to say - is he that off base here? How small must our view of God be to say that his dealings with our world happen according to our pithy human philosophical and theological categories? And yet Bell comes away from this looking like a revolutionary....or a heretic.

What kind of micro-structured theological bio-dome have we created for our almighty God to live in? I think God makes sense - I think He's logical. I think we can trust the revelation of God in His word. I also think that you can still say you think that a Reformed or Wesleyan or Catholic way of looking at things is most consistent with God's revelation. But I don't think its out of line to say that, within the wideness of God's nature, there is at least the possibility of fuzzy categories - of individual discernment - of logic that surpasses our own. I think that's a good thing, not a heresy.

Labrynthspel - Walking the Line

First of all, my apologies for, once again, taking a month off from blogging. I had a rough end of December/beginning of January that caused me to reflect, but now I'm back on track and no less tantalizing or scintillating than before. Also, as most of my good blogging ideas do, this has come to me paired up with another....so a second blog entry has been written and will be posted shortly.

Now then, when I was younger, we had this game closet which stored all the crappy games my mom had picked up at rummage sales - some busted, others boring, and the occasional cool one. Most confusing to me, however, was one of these monstrosities you'll see on the right, a labrynthspel. "A what?" you might ask. A labrynthspel. Essentially they consist of two floating wooden surfaces controlled by knobs on two connected sides, one to control the north/south movement, if you will, and one to control the east west movement. The idea is to keep the tilt correct enough so that the marble which is sitting on the top of the board doesn't fall in one of the holes, but rather, makes it through the maze to the other corner.

Today, I had a conversation with another student who's having a rough time seeing themselves as Christian Reformed - not because of the theology, but because of the people and because of the practice. I have to admit that this is something I struggle with a lot, even being told point blank, "Mark, you're not CRC!" Maybe I am just embarking on a vocational facade, trying to be a non-CRC pastor in the CRC church. Maybe the only people who "get me" are the fringe home missions-types who challenge the norm. Maybe I should just stick with the Church of God or go non-denom or just find a denomination that isn't so out of character for me.

But my conversation today helped. He was complaining to me that CRC people are just too obsessed with "walking the line" when it comes to our engagement with the culture. You know the line - being in the world, but not of it - engaging and transforming culture rather than sticking our heads in the sand. This is what Dordt College is all about! But his argument went something like this: people in the CRC go too far to the "worldly" side of things - they immerse themselves so much in culture that there is not enough distinguishable difference between Christians and the world. There are just some things that Christians shouldn't do. Porn would be an easy example...but what about television, what about movies (and what kind of movies) - oh, and what about music? You know, even the Christian music market has become dreadfully commercial, so should we boycott that, too? All this is very confusing.

It has been fascinating to work in the Church of God, a holiness denomination, which stresses holy living, perhaps best represented by the commonly heard phrase, "We don't smoke, drink, dance or chew, or hang around with those that do." Many of our older members can quote that off the top of their heads as the common refrain of their parents. My senior pastor recently attended a denominational pastor's retreat where the issue of alcohol use came up among new people applying for ordination, often a common theme in emerging-type churches. While it fascinates me that they can hold to any sort of belief as a non-confessional "movement", it fascinates me even more that they tow the party line on alcohol for no apparent reason. Even my senior pastor, who is a tetoller like myself, admits that there's no real Biblical support for the position, its more of a traditional purist holiness party line. But its a line.

Now, granted, the Church of God or Wesleyans in general might have more lines than the CRC does, but it doesn't line off everything! In fact, it only tends to line things off that are culturally contextual (alcohol is a no-no in the American Church of God, but the German wing drinks). So, in the Church of God, we've got lines, but they're limited in scope and rationality.

What my friend was arguing with me was that, in the CRC, we need more lines. He said that, because we have so much ambiguity and allow for so much Christian freedom in so many areas, fallen people have no real direction to go other than a downward spiral. He argued, like my ethics professor, that Christians can get involved in politics and movies and the like, but the risk of falling into that lifestyle far outweighs the possibility of redeeming it, and especially to what extent it will be redeemed.

This hit me hard as a Dordt College Defender. After all, Luke Schelhaas, writer for "Touched by an Angel" and "Smallville" was touted as the heroic alumni for engaging culture and attempting to redeem it. What about Kuyper describing Christ as shouting over every square inch of creation, "This is mine!"? What about Colson arguing for Christian worldview defining the approach as Christian or secular instead of defining the action as Christian or secular? There might not be Christian art or Christian music, but there sure as heck is a way to do art or music as a Christian in a redemptive way. I actually side with Carl Zylstra on this one....I don't have to go to NC-17 movies to reach my culture for Christ, but I sure as heck better be engaging His good creation.

Still not convinced? How about this. There's really only two extremes here when it comes to "worldly actions" or "worldly amusements" as the CRC has historically called them. On the one hand, you could fully submerge yourself with culture, like a chameleon, unable to tell you apart from your backdrop. The other option is the Amish one - pull yourself completely out of culture and try to be affected by it the least. Anything else is a matter of discernment. Yup, I just said it. Let's take TV as a good example. You've really got three logical options as a Christian. First, you watch whatever you want to, whenever you want to and get sucked in little by little. Second, you don't have a TV at all. Once again, good logical option, especially if you follow my friend's logic. Third, you keep the TV, count technology as a good gift of God's creation and watch TV in a Christian way. That isn't a comment on posture or on which channels or on maximum TV rating - it is an example of starting with a Christian worldview, enjoying God's creation and practicing discernment. What is not logical is dumping cable out of moral precept and keeping the TV for local channels. Half an apple is still apple. So, I would argue that for almost every forseeable action and worldly amusement, there are two Christian approaches: abstain or engage with discernment.

But here's my issue. I don't like drawing lines in the sand where Scripture does not. My Greek professor at Seminary said one thing I actually valued: "Shout what Scripture shouts and whisper what Scripture whispers" - be obnoxious about the obvious things, and tread lightly on things where Scripture goes either way. The CRC is not Mennonite and it is not holiness and its not fundamentalist. What it is is a culturally-engaging denomination. But with privilege comes responsibility. What my friend saw was selling out to culture - a moral decay within the CRC community that was as bad or worse than the one outside it. So we've reached the crux of the matter: if we are going to be a denomination or a Church that walks the line, then we sure as heck better be preaching discernment.

If you're going to throw rocks at culture, throw rocks at culture. If you're going to abstain from culture, abstain from it. But, by all means, if you are going to engage culture for Christ, then you better be constantly practicing discernment. For pastor and leaders in general, it is our responsibility to remind people where they are walking the line. Teach discernment - teach engagement. But pastors must also be thermometers - able to tell if a group is swinging too far in one direction or the other. When you normalize an audio file, you pitch the extremes - the high sounds and the low sounds. We need to realize in which directions we're overstepping the boundaries and swing the crux of the people back to the middle again. The pastor is like the labrynthspel operator, tilting the table back and forth, trying to keep the balance because discerned balance is a commitment of the church he represents.

Especially as a postmodern, blurry lines with boundaries are good - in fact, they're all over in Christianity. But we need to keep reminding ourselves and others that we're walking the line.

Alcohol & Holiness

This Thursday, our Seminary community will take up what will undoubtedly be one of the most controversial topics ever addressed, let women in office: alcohol consumption by Christians. I've never quite known what to think about this subject, and I'll be the first to admit that my defenses for not drinking have changed over the years. In that light, it might be possible to say that I'm predisposed against alcohol consumption and therefore any argument I try and present is tainted because its simply a new sheath for an old sword. While that might be true, I've found lots of congruency in the holiness movement, understanding their approach to issues of social morality such as this, and I think its a helpful point to consider as I approach the town hall meeting on Thursday.

We have always been taught in Reformed circles that there are two types of people: those who try to earn their salvation (Catholics & holiness types) and those who rest in the election and consequent freedom of God's grace (Calvinists & Lutherans). Those are pretty distinct lines to draw. For one, there's no way that either tradition could totally rest in those categories and have any sort of relevancy. If Catholics and holiness traditions truly had no other purpose in theology than to try and achieve perfection, the movement would have fallen apart. Same with Calvinists/Lutherans: there has to be some moral and social conscience to temper Christian freedom (Paul's admission that all things are permissible for him is grossly expanded here).

I think both sides have their positives and negatives, but in the interest of space and time, I'm going to make an argument for the holiness side in the issue of alcohol consumption because I think it is more legitimate than my Calvinist colleagues are willing to admit.

First of all, we need a redefinition of "Christian freedom" from a holiness perspective. After all, they don't deny Christian freedom, but simply recategorize it. Instead of saying that Christian freedom is the right to do anything God doesn't specifically prohibit, it instead lays the doctrine at the feet of Jesus, saying that Christian freedom is the right to follow Christ more closely. See the difference? One is scouring the Bible for loopholes, while the other is giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt and filling in those cracks. Rather than not doing what the Bible doesn't say we can't do, holiness attempts to do more fully that which the Bible says we should do.

Secondly, the very definition of holiness has its roots in sanctification. Yes, John Wesley went to far at the end of his life, as others have, to promote a perfectionist doctrine. However, if you look at the roots of sanctification, its not pharisitical at all.....its the the same continuing sanctification Calvinists & Lutherans talk about. So if the rule of holiness is sanctification, then there is, at the very core of holiness, a concept of being "set apart". Yes, God sets us apart by dividing us from unbelievers at the last day, but lets think harder about this. How are we "set apart" during the week? Of course, this looks different for all of us. But in some way, we are all attempting to set ourselves apart from the world through moral action as the continuing work of sanctification is applied by the Holy Spirit. Paul continually calls us to a life that is different, a life that is "beyond reproach". In an age where alcohol has become the common currency of our culture, a legal drug, isn't it worth considering that maybe it is worth setting ourselves apart in this area - not in condemnation, but in faithful submission?

Thirdly, this is a different question for those in leadership or in future leadership than it is for laity. Sorry, but its true. In my current charge, my contract specifically states that neither my wife nor I are to drink any alcohol while employed by the church. My wife initially bucked this, not because she's a raging alcoholic (she's mostly given up alcohol for my sake), but because it violated her definition of Christian freedom. The church doesn't have a right to take that away! Well, thankfully, I've found a community that, like I, has chosen to use abstinence from alcohol as one way of "setting themselves apart". Its a very practical one in our congregation - we have several recovered alcoholics, several people with relatives who were victims of alcohol-related deaths, and people who are stuck with alcohol-related birth defects. Our community drinks their problems away - we do not. Now take this seriously, pastors and leadership in churches: you are held to a higher standard. Why are you willing to subject yourself to a suit & tie standard, a living-in-a-stinky-parsonage standard, a roast-pastor standard, a church polity standard, but not an alcohol-free standard? There's lots of things I don't do now that I'm a pastor that I might have done as a Christian in laity: TV shows, language, cigars, reckless driving, being a funny nuisance, playing pranks on Wal-Mart employees....all things I might not consider sinful, but also don't consider to reflect well on my church, reflect well on my congregation. Hanging out in a bar (and I would argue drinking at all) is one of those things.

Finally, there is the issue of the weaker brother. You may have been biting your tongue the entire time you read this, but now want to scream: "Why can't Christians reclaim alcohol for the Kingdom of God? Why can't we model a faithful use of alcohol?" While this is the one point at which I'm usually willing to yield the floor, I have continually been bombarded at the denominational seminary by drunkenness and pressure to drink. To this, I simply have to shake my head. My wife doesn't like it when I smoke cigars every once in a while. What would happen if I smoked them a lot and then blew the smoke in her face? You know. Well, I've got news for you, "Christian reclaimers of alcohol": don't blow smoke in our face. I'll stand with several of my respected colleagues and students who have consciously chosen not to drink for a variety of reasons: mine just so happens not to even be a moral objection. Additionally, Asian students, which comprise an ever-increasing chunk of our seminary community, are more offended by this than I am. There are constantly jokes made in classes and daily conversations at school about how commonplace alcohol is in social settings at our school. After many social invites comes a BYOB or a snicker about getting sloshed. Give me a break. Use that classis money with a little bit more dignity than blowing it on booze and then showing up at our school's food pantry to ask for food you can't afford. I am sad to say that I've had professors, staff people, graduated (& ordained) pastors, and students all joke about alcohol with me - with no acknowledgment that it might be offensive. Luckily, I'm past the point where open comments and joking about alcohol abuse offends me - heck, I'm a hockey player. What I don't like being told is that I would drink if I fully understood Christian freedom, especially when its slurred.

I guess at the end of day, I want for this topic what I want for all topics I post on this blog: recognize that there might just be two legitimate sides to every coin and perhaps we can show more tact and consideration for those who might suffer from alcoholism, have been affected by alcohol-related deaths/problems and those who choose not to drink out of conscientious objection. Are we able to have this debate as people who don't feel like we already know it all? I hope so, but I more so hope that we can have this debate sober.

Public Apology

Just a memo to all Church outsiders in the world: we're sorry.

Let's face a simple fact here: the way Christianity is presented to the world through many different outlets is idiotic and ridiculous. Sometimes when I make my commute into Grand Rapids, I feel self-conscious if I pass someone going 65 because I'm afraid they'll see the Christian fish on the back of my car and assume all Christians are law-breaking vigilantes. But that doesn't compare to the ridiculousness of the face that Christianity presents to the world in many different ways. If I were an outsider, I would think Christians are the most backward, bigoted people in the whole world.

Of course, this isn't true in all areas. Certainly, there are many churches who present a socially conscious self-respecting message to the world without sacrificing the truths we all stand for. But I think this is even more true in the very places the gospel needs to have more relevance: smalltown America.

For example, we've got a fundamentalist church that is positioned right on the main entrance to town that somehow got their hands on a lighted-up sign. Of course, they use that sign to do the Lord's work, like condemning the NIV, associating tattoos with Satan, associating body piercings with hell and telling everyone who drinks that Jesus would disown them.

Come on.

I went to a rummage sale last week where a nice, well-meaning Christian man sold me an entertainment stand for our youth room for $1. He was selling his possessions from his trailer park home so that he could go on the mission field for two years. Even though he knew I was a pastor, he still handed me a tract. As I was leaving, I overheard him trying to "evangelistically" speak to some Harley bikers in a beat-up pickup truck. When he saw one of them wearing army pants, he used this keen line: "You're in the army, huh? Well I'm in the Lord's army!"

Nice. And our numbers are dropping?

And how about that Christian TV. Strong showing for Christianity there. Whether its poorly produced "extreme sports evangelism" or Biblical "health supplements", somehow we've managed to put our least relevant foot forward as a Christian community. Why is it that the only relevant Christian message on television is spoken by vegetables? I was watching South Park the other night on Comedy Central do a caricature of the 700 Club, and it was probably the most accurate thing I've ever seen. If you want to check it out, its episode #311: Starvin Marvin in Space.

I'm tolerant, I really am. We played church league softball a couple weeks back against a team where all the girls wore skirts during the game. But they're socially adjusted! Good Ghandi. Lets just throw in the towel if we really think talking in old English, condemning piercings, or even clinging to Christian education are the kinds of things we need to cling to so Christianity is Christianity. I'm not one of these argumentative emerging-church-only types. I just don't like it when I work all day long to help my church do legitimate ministry as Christ would and we're simply trumped by the louder, prouder arm of the Church that has lost complete touch with their own culture. Like it or not, marketing is part of evangelism, and we suck at it. Some people just need to be shook.

Or maybe I'll just drive the speed limit.

Letters from Arminia

Once upon a time, there was me. Me, being a good little Reformed boy knew the Heidelberg Catechism like the back of my hand. For fun, I used to page through the tune name index of the gray hymnal and looking for congruences between the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Now I find myself in a place where none of that really matters, where we daily walk the line between the Church falling apart and staying together, and where I learn lessons everyday about how the majority of Christendom operates. This is Arminia.

Not very many towns in America are absent of some sort of Presbyterian Church. The ones that are usually have some sort of UCC or Reformed presence somewhere in their midst. Rarely, especially in Michigan, do you find a town where there is not a Reformed soul to be found. A town where the Lutherans are almost ready to close the last of their 3 churches, the baptists welcome people to town with condemning phrases from the KJV, and the Christian minority is almost entirely Catholic, Congregationalist or Wesleyan. Welcome to Greenville.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was the first Calvin Seminary student/graduate every to work in this town, of if I was the first commuter to the Calvin campus in the city's long history. Reformed thought is irrelevant here, it would seem.

Ironically, however, I would like to dissuade people from believing that Arminians are inevitably bent on their own personal choice to the exclusion of all else, that they baptize every congregant every Sunday, and that a Reformed person can get chewed up and spit out within a few Wesleyan sermons. I believe that this is untrue just as much as I believe its untrue that election is a core belief in many of our Reformed communities in this country. The Church is a melting pot, just like the US, and that might just be okay.

People often ask me how I can exist at an Arminian church. How can you reconcile your beliefs with theirs? How can you sit through a worship service, a sermon, an altar call? How do you deal with perfectionism and the like?

Many people describe my senior pastor and I as people who have "agreed to disagree" on some theological topics, and since we get along well, you might think that. However, I think the greater truth is that we both acknowledge what I wrote about in my previous blog. Calvinism and Arminianism, while both eloquent and well defended against one another, are simply a peephole into the grandness and wondrousness that is the actual theology of God, or that which God knows about himself. How we speak about God, our theology, is but a speck of dust compared to God's theology, or how he speaks about himself. If any theologian would deny that to me, I think I might have to pop him in the face.

My senior pastor, Dave, is not an hard-core Arminian. He does not believe that people can achieve perfection this side of glory, as Wesley hinted at in his later years. He's offended by determinism and fatalism, the flaws that he sees in Reformed thought, especially hyper-Calvinism. But then again, so am I. I shudder at the thought that we're just stagnated linemen on some cosmic foosball table, and I don't think its Biblical either. I like theologians, like Aquinas, who give me a way out here. They identify God as the primary actor, but do not push the ideas of election/predestination/etc. While I might confess those if you held a sword to my neck, its not necessary for my daily ministry that I push those on my laity. In fact, I think Dave and I would both say quite openly that while we're comfortable in our own theological recliners, neither of us would be surprised if, at the end of time, Jesus lays out a far different theology than anything Calvin, Wesley, Aquinas, Augustine, Luther, Chrysostom, or anyone else has laid out. Why? They're not God.

While we've come a long way from the way Calvin treated Servetus and how the Reformers treated the Anabaptists, its sad that we really still just don't get it. In communities around the world, ecumenism is broken down by theological cockiness. There are a lot of pastors and churches that just plain weird me out. Some of them are Arminian, some of them are Reformed, and some of them are so "out there" that I can't identify them. Recognize the affinity that you have with people across denominational lines because they, like you, hold up the primacy of Scripture, which is so trampled in today's world and because learn from the things they do better than you. Our church's worship library is now a fully-integrated Reformed/Wesleyan resource, and I hope the same would be true if I find myself in a Reformed congregation someday.

Few Reformed people get the opportunity that I get to see the inner workings of a solid, comparable, Arminian denomination from as up close and personal as you can get. I continue to urge as many people from both sides of the table to sit down and talk....sit down and cooperate. Often times, you will have far more in common than you think. And remember, no matter how big your allegiance to Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, or Wesley is, your greater allegiance is to the Lamb of God, who is not a follower of any of those four. Let God's theology of Himself and His Church increase as your theology of God and His Church decreases. And let all churches, Calvinistic and Arminian alike, ascent "soli deo gloria."