Handouts

A few years back I worked for an independent grocer who made the point of treating his customers with the utmost respect. I usually worked in backstock or on the register, but on rare occasions I would bag groceries and carry them out. If the customer had several bags we would offer to help them to their car.

One afternoon I asked an older woman if she would like a hand out with her groceries. She thought I used "handout" to mean some financial assistance in purchasing her goods. She became rather irritated and it took a manager to explain the communication breakdown.

I used to think she was crazy, but reflecting on it, I think people like her are disturbingly rare.

A Rusty Aluminum Age

The letters of Paul are letters to people with serious problems: disunity (1 Corinthians), sexual distortion (2 Corinthians), heresy and doctrinal confusion (Galatians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians), social confusion (Ephesians), racial misunderstanding and doctrinal intolerance (Romans), to name a few.

Some passages are almost embarrassing in their admission of glaring faults in the lives of Christians. I shudder to think that someday someone might discover some letter of mine written to friends containing descriptions similar to the disunity and depravity of the Corinthian church, or the tensions that rocked Timothy's struggling congregation.

Numerous scholars have (rightly) spoken of the 'golden age' of the first-century church as a myth. Instead, we would do better to see it as a rusty aluminum age, like a pile of discarded bicycles sitting in the rain, with various parts removed.

Thus, here is Pauline theology in a nutshell: humans need God's grace.

Pensées

9. I was discussing the Reformation briefly with a professor, who suggested that one way to understand that moment was as the triumph of plain speech over analogy. Generally, this is a true statement, but it can be misleading. In doing away with some of the excess analogies of the Catholic church, reformers hoped to highlight the central analogy of Scripture to which all other ideas must submit. That analogy is that God, throughout history, has been restoring humanity to personal fellowship with himself. Christ sealed this in his atonement, and it is applied to believers through the workings and intercession of the Holy Spirit. We understand this because of the Church, over which Christ reigns as the true head of the church. To suggest that a man is the head of the Church is to take a step in the wrong direction. If we're going to return to the usefulness of analogy in understanding Christianity, it's got to start there.

Pensées

8. You've got to hand it to the emergent church. They've managed to hook people in with the idea that they're "emerging" from the ruins of modernist Christianity, when instead they're staying in those exact same ruins. This isn't surprising, because it's exactly what postmodernism did to modernism in general. Consider:

It is ironic that postmodernists, who distinguish themselves by a refusal of high theory and grand narrative, have to jimmy modernity into an epochal straightjacket in order to claim to have moved beyond it.

- Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, 19.

What the emergent church has performed is the illusion of a major shift; in reality they've changed the packaging of the message, but hardly any of the meaningful content. Where the modern church aesthetic consisted of corportate colors, straight lines and right angles, and sports arena-style sanctuaries, the postmodern church aesthetic consists of hip, alternative colors, crooked lines and varied angles, and meeting areas that resemble your local coffee shop. But the differences end at the aesthetic level. You'll still find the quasi-worship that dumbs the mind and numbs the heart; you'll still hear sermons that will claim to fix some aspect of your life but really won't, and you'll still find the same disregard for covenant, baptism, and Eucharist as in modernist churches. My friend Steven sent me a video in which a pastor and a member figured they should do communion, and wondered what that might look like.

The emergent church is right about the need to embrace postmodernism, but they get the point wrong. N.T. Wright hits the nail on the head when he says that a grasp of postmodernism is needed to cleanse the church of corrupting modern influences. The point of such baptisms is neither to continue being baptised or return to uncleanliness, but to embrace and dwell in union with Christ. That is the real way to get out of this mess.

Pensées - Legalism and Rules of the Camp

7. Many people seem to have the idea that camp rules are legalistic, particularly for camp counselors and other staff members. All sorts of behaviors and dress styles are prohibited, and behaviors must be assumed on entering camp grounds. These rules are generally much more stringent than the rules outside the camp, and so they seem to be legalistic. Whatever legalism might be as defined by Scripture I'm not for certain, but I think the common use of the term means an overemphasis on the law that approaches the notion of salvation by personal works. The people who accuse others of legalism have at the center of their statement a love for the gospel. Yet this gospel is only a fairy tale unless it spurs us on to good deeds towards other human beings, and so in defending the gospel against legalism some people forget that Paul mentions the heart's response with good works to the Gospel. Yes, Paul does mention works and grace in the same literary breath. I think camp rules can be strict, and yet be focused on encouraging loving, Gospel-centered relationships. This might be pietism, but I don't think I would use the L-bomb.