Every Thought Captive

With the rising of the emergent church movement and talk of living in a postmodern world, the subject of apologetics has been all the rage in some circles. Some are happy to declare traditional apologetics irrelevant in our new world where the best thing a Christian can do is invite another to share in their story. On the other end of the spectrum is the belief that the rational defense of the faith not only serves the purpose of discipleship, but even evangelism. In his recent article in CT, God is Not Dead Yet, William Lane Craig argues that apologetics are not only not irrelevant, but as useful now as they have ever been.

After Craig assesses the bulk of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, he asks, “Why Bother?” Craig makes the bold and provocative assertion that we do not live in a postmodern world, despite all the declarations to the contrary. In fact, he argues, to bend the subject of Christian apologetics to postmodernism would be catastrophic as it would reduce the truth of Christ to just another voice among a cacophony of views. He notes:

This sort of thinking is guilty of a disastrous misdiagnosis of contemporary culture. The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's not postmodernism; that's modernism! That's just old-line verificationism, which held that anything you can't prove with your five senses is a matter of personal taste. We live in a culture that remains deeply modernist.

As a matter of practical fact, I think Craig is right. I have students who are knee-jerk relativists until they come face to face with reality themselves—they learn they can’t really live out the relativism they have been muttering about religion and ethics most of their lives. But, on the level of belief, I may not be inclined to agree with Craig wholeheartedly. I think the relativism in our culture has lead to an unusual condition where most people (especially most younger people) are content to live with the deep cognitive dissonance Craig cuts through with his evaluation. In other words, more and more people are content to live as if the world is not relative (morally or religiously) while believing (on at least some significant level) that it is.

Nonetheless, Craig is right to remind us of the social, evangelistic, and even discipling benefits of the apologetic tasks. I think if we dismiss it as no longer relevant, we do ourselves more harm than good.

I was working through Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart recently, and something he said stuck out to me as an important insight concerning our formation as Christians specifically, and even for our formation as humans generally.

In encouraging people to pay attention to the most important parts of themselves (heart, soul, will, etc.), Willard notes what happens when we lose sight of our spiritual formation and try to compensate. When the human soul is malformed, our thoughts feelings and inevitably follow and we try to replace a dysfunctional soul with bodily fulfillment. Willard says:

“The human body becomes the primary area of pleasure for the person who does not live honestly and interactively with God, and also the primary source of terror, torture, and death.”

In the malformed soul, bodily fulfillment is our highest hope and bodily discomfort is our greatest fear.

And we see this everywhere. As a culture, we have no idea what a well-formed soul looks like, but we can describe in pornographic detail what a well-formed body looks like. The heroes of our popular culture may or may not have souls worth emulating, but they must have bodies and sensual lives worth copying. Our paragons of virtue and lifestyle are the exact opposite of what they ought to be. A young woman who sleeps around, has kids outside of marriage, is drunk more often than not can still be worthy of our attention and praise if she is physically beautiful. If a young man treats women like disposable diapers, fails to be a father to his kids and flaunts the laws of the land, he can still be a hero to millions if he is rich and muscular.

In the properly formed human, the body serves the virtue of the soul. What does it mean for the pleasures of the body to follow dutifully behind the forming of the mind, will and emotions? And even more difficult, what does it look like for the suffering of the body to be understood in terms of the soul’s formation? Which is worse—the suffering of the body or the dysfunction of the soul?

There is a phrase used only of Jesus in the NT to describe moments when he was deeply moved by the human condition. In the Gospels it says Jesus was “moved with compassion.” In many places it represents the moment where Christ turns to heal an individual. In one interesting case, it moved Christ to teach all day long.

In Mark 6:34, he and his disciples are surrounded by a large crowd of people. When Jesus sees them Mark says he had compassion on them, saw them as sheep without a shepherd, and taught them many things. All day long.

I am fascinated by this display. How did Jesus’ compassion reveal itself when he was faced with a motley group of people with empty stomachs mixed motives for searching him out? (John 6:15 says some of them were political zealots.) He taught them for a very long time. Then he broke the bread and miraculously fed over 5,000 people.

A reoccurring theme in Mark is that before the bellies are filled, before the healings and exorcisms take place, Jesus teaches people about the Kingdom of God. What good does it do to perform the miraculous or correct social conditions before people understand the who and the why?

One of the first arguments Dallas Willard makes in his book, Renovation of the Heart, is that the “Jesus revolution” is not primarily about correcting institutions or organizations, but is a matter of character change. We live from our hearts, he says, and when those hearts are formed in the right way, we begin to make real headway in the human condition.

Another theme, rising again in emergent circles, is that the “Jesus revolution” is primarily about social justice, filling bellies, and affecting institutional change. That would not be a problem (after all, Jesus did feed the 5,000), but given the emergent proclivity to avoid the kinds of things that Jesus taught, I am not sure they have the stick by the right end. And what did Jesus teach? Mark is quite clear, if not minimalist, on this point: “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (1:15).

I think Mark agrees with Willard and the view that first and foremost hearts and lives ought to be formed to the truths of the Gospel before the rest of the “revolution” can make real sense.

I love Mark 6:34. It is a genuine expression of Christ-like compassion to teach people the truths of the Kingdom of God, even if it takes a very long time.

I was trying again this morning to listen to some of the local Christian music stations, and did not receive any surprises. The reason I don’t listen to popular Christian music is that I find most of it (what gets air-play) trite, shallow, and woefully homogenous. Not only is there not much originality out there, there is very little depth. This morning, one fellow was thanking God for “being by his side.” He also noted how God kept him safe as a child and then “let me go.” Just like a good, hands-off earthly father, God raises us, lets us leave the nest and then wires us money when we get desperate. From a religious tradition that has produced the best music the world has ever heard, we are currently an embarrassment to our heritage.

Reflecting on this, it dawns on me that there is at least one serious culprit to the state of affairs in Christian pop music, and that this culprit is also complicit in why many evangelical churches are in the same place.

This simple practical equation rules the day not only in our culture at large, but among many Christians in position of leadership and influence as well:

Money = Success = Right

If a Christian band comes along, sells a lot of CDs and has a successful tour, producers and companies are prepared to copy that success to make more money. And because we are good American Christians, we like to tag on the thought that we must be putting the right message across if Christians are buying the CDs and t-shirts. As a result, more and more of the music sounds the same and because homogeneity is friendly to radio stations, the plainness spreads like a virus.

The same is true if you follow the trends in evangelical ecclesiology. I use the word “ecclesiology” loosely here. Where our forefathers once wrestled with the question of what a rightly-ordered church looked like, we now wrestle with how to unblinkingly assimilate corporate structure and managerial trickery into the body of Christ. How did we get here? A very small handful of churches successfully assimilated church and corporate success, and because of the equation above, became very influential.

As a result, we have homogenous churches, many of whom have very little character or depth. Being different doesn’t sell very well. Being like the other big guy on the block but with a different colored building does tend to sell.

Is there a solution? I think there is, but it will have to rise like an underground swell from individual musicians, artists, pastors and churches dedicated to what God called them to be in the culture God placed them. The lure of money and success has too much of a hold on us generally to hope for a sweeping correction. Individuals will need to show some spiritual courage and refuse to drink the kool-aid. Christian leaders and influencers will need to have the moral and intellectual wherewithal to pay attention to the character and nature of God and be driven by what he wants done in the here and now.

Like the wise parent responding to their teenager telling them that everyone else is doing it, I think God wants to tell us, “you are not everyone else!”

What do you do when you have been the national, even worldwide leader of a particular vision of doing church, and you discover that your methods did not live up to the hype? How about if you have profited from franchising your numerical success across the evangelical world only to find out you were headed in an unprofitable direction the entire time?

If you are Bill Hybels and Willow Creek, you write a book and confess.

I don’t mean to be too sardonic. I am glad Hybels and his executive pastor are coming out and revealing the results of their recent study with humility. They took an extensive look at their marketing-style, consumer and program-driven way of doing church and discovered that the massive numbers they (and others) boast in their church do not indicate genuine discipleship. You can catch a glimpse of the report at Out of Ur.

The blog notes:

Having put all of their eggs into the program-driven church basket you can understand their shock when the research revealed that “Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone’s becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more.”

They quote Hybles later:

Hybels confesses: We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

I think what I am most concerned with is how shocking this appears to be to the evangelical world. For years I was a bit of a black sheep in some pastoral circles because I refused to believe that marketing the Gospel to fickle consumers with testimonials and slick shows was a good way to go.

I think the shock value in this apology is a result of the enculturation of the evangelical pastorate. Because it really can produce large numbers, large budgets, and large national recognition, we have bitten down on the belief that looking and acting like a fast-food restaurant is in accord with Christian witness and discipleship. Because we are so eager to put numbers on our “successes,” we are naturally drawn to reproducible church-packages like moths to a flame. In his under appreciated book, Under the Unpredictable Plant, Eugene Peterson refers to this attitude as "Ecclesiastical Pornography."

I am interested to see how large the reaction market to this is going to be. Where there was money to be made in books and seminars about how church needs to be done, in the wake of this apology I am guessing there will be a lot of money to be made in books and seminars telling us again—with the opposite emphasis, of course—how church should be done.

A new book chronicling the correspondence and interior life of Mother Teresa, Come by My Light, has spurred an article in Time magazine in which her doubts about the faith are highlighted. I did not expect it, but the article does a pretty good job of at least surveying the opinions of those who realize her doubts are an inevitable part of growth in the Christian faith. As soon as Christians began commenting on their walks with God, they openly and faithfully described those seasons in life in which God felt distant. Commonly referred to as the “dark night of the soul,” it is a universal experience among those who seek a deeper and stronger personal walk with Christ.

What may not be explicitly stated in the article is that more often than not, the faithful pilgrim comes out of the dark night into a deeper and almost inexpressible relationship with God. Instead of being some kind of deep realization that God does not exist, it is a passage into an intimacy with the Creator that many have a hard time describing once they get there.

The Christian reading about Mother Teresa’s doubts should not be discouraged—far from it. They should be encouraged that another follower of Christ went through their own season of doubt and questioning. We are not alone when we struggle and question, and the way to the other side—a deeper relationship with Christ—is through the issues we face, not around them.

In addition, Christians should take comfort in the fact that there is a great cloud of witnesses about us who testify to this reality of faith, and of God’s existence, grace, and love.

Predictably, however, is the quote from one of our village atheists, Christopher Hitchens. His position is that her doubts are proof that religion is a fabricated illusion. Time notes:

Says Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing polemic on Teresa, and more recently of the atheist manifesto God Is Not Great: "She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself."

In his gift for impaling himself on his own arguments, Hitchens seems to posit that doubts about a belief belie their falsehood. I wonder how he would handle the actual change of position for Anthony Flew, the rigorous and philosophically respectable former standard bearer for atheism? His doubts about the coherence of atheism in the face of the argument for Intelligent Design lead him to openly move away from his former position to a form of theism. The professing atheist can only write more and more books professing their faith and deepening the pit they have dug for themselves (to paraphrase a bit).

In this great little article by David Swanson, the importance of what have been called the “third places” is highlighted. A “third place” is a niche in a society between the home and the church where people find themselves relating. In some cultures it may be a bar or a pub, a lodge, or a neighborhood park. In our culture, it tends to be the local coffee shop.

Swanson notes one of the characteristics of a place like this as opposed to a church gathering:

Not only don't I know who I'll bump into at the coffeeshop, chances are, they won't look like me. While many churches tend to attract people who are similar, the coffeeshop doesn't have a target demographic....Our church is a highly structured and very busy suburban environment where spontaneous interaction with friends rarely happens....At the coffeeshop, however, I can count on bumping into someone who will be up for some conversation.

The “third place” offers an atmosphere that a church or even a home cannot, and it invites people a church or a home cannot. Is there a way for the church to engage in what the author calls “coffeeshop discipleship”?

It seems to me that there may be a great deal of upside to a third place where discussion and social circles can be more free-flowing than in a pre-structured environment. They might be great places for small groups, for planned discussions, and for impromptu meetings. Just recently I had a good discussion with a young man in a local coffee shop simply because I was sitting there reading a book.

HT: faith-journey