My Response
The Triple T’s ( Tim, Trevor and Travis) have been in dialogue on several important issues concerning, salvation, the Bible, and basically “What it means to be a Christian” to follow Trevor’s original topic. So, although I feel incapable of voicing my opinions with the articulation and clarity of the Three T’s, I will throw this proverbial mud on the wall and see how much of it sticks (or I’ll just watch it slide down).
I am mostly responding to Trevor’s last post.
In regards to secular compassion as a vehicle for salvation-
(Trevor Said) “Of course simple compassion…is living up to God’s Best (we need no text to prove this it is in our guts) and even the inerrant text that would back such a claim is divided and provides no clear picture”
-My problem with this is that if feel just feel God’s Best in our “guts” we open our best actions to being the worst actions in other’s perspectives. For instance a terrorist could easily think that they are following “the way” in trying to please God, when they are really going against God. Suicide bombers aren’t acting selfishly, they have their “arms outstretched to God” in their minds and even though some might say “their aim is the same” their faith by what they believe negates the very core of what I personally think it means to follow God. What about religions who’s beliefs about “God’s Best” leads them to sacrificing their children? Is this a compatible belief with ours? I would think that to follow your logic you would have to say, “Yes.” Or you would have to make a list of acceptable religions (I’m hoping that some Native American religions make it because I think it would be cool.)
In regards to the fall-
I do not want to get into a discussion about whether people are born bad or become bad, but I think that we would all agree that there is bad in us to say the least.
One thing that I do agree very much with in Trevor’s post is his acknowledgement of God’s image into us. I think it is because of God’s imprint in us that we are “without excuse” as the Apostle Paul puts it because of how our soul resonates with His creation. It is interesting (and I know we have a different understanding of what the Bible is) that the scripture does not say “because God’s creation resonates with everyone’s soul, you are all partners in God’s salvation.” On the contrary, he says that we are without excuse. Just an observation.
In regards to Trevor’s "non-universalism"-
My question is “why not just be a Universalist?” It seems very intolerant of you to say that those who follow your list of Truth, Beauty, Love and Compassion somehow are “in” and those with no spiritual life could possible be “out.” (Note: you imply that this is a possibility by denying your position of Universalism, even though you don’t know what will happen to them) Why can’t someone’s spirituality be a religion of selfishness? Why can’t my religion be materialism? What makes Truth, Beauty, Compassion, and Love so great?
I see think kind of thinking very disturbing. It seems to me that Islam and Christianity are mutually exclusive in regards to salvation, unless you just pick what you “like” out of the core beliefs (yes, read “scriptures”). How do you decide what you will believe about Jesus? Do you just pick teachings that you like and leave out the ones where he makes the implication that he is “God”? And if he isn’t God, then aren’t their better teachers and even theologians who have written with more direct fervor the need to love our neighbors in a wholistic, redemptive way?
Oh an one other thing, as far as reading the Bible I totally agree that it is our story and we have made the mistake in the past of reading as a manual for our lives. And although, I do believe that “all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching etc…” I think that the way people have used the Bible throughout our recent history has neglected to see the genres of writing and understand our story through that lens.
Anyway, I really like Trevor. I find him to be honest and in pursuit of God which is beautiful. I really like his tone of discussion and am looking forward to more dialogue in the future.
Comments?
posted by Dan Price @ 3:09 PM
6 Comments:
You will probaly not like my comment on Trevor's blog. :)
I'm glad you like Trev. I like him too. I am happy I "next blogged" and found you and your wife. My mother-in-law would call it a GTBT(God thing big time), but then she's a little nutty sometimes. By the way, how's your wife's toe? Haven't heard anything new from her in a while.
Since many other topics have already been well touched on, and I still find myself agreeing and disagreeing with the latest material in much the same ways as before, I want to present a new perspective on this discussion that I believe is critical to understanding the gaps between viewpoints: our respective ideas of postmodernism and its influence on this discussion.
The appeal to postmodernism should not merely be a realization that christian beliefs have been heavily influcenced by the latent ethos (of modernity) and thus allow us to 'win' any and every argument about what should be in "the way" vs. what is obviously out based on our own reasoned opinions. Instead, postmodern ideas should equally as much cause us to realize that our very lives have been so influenced by our own tainted cultural surroundings (aka - our fallen, sinful world) that there may be times we cannot distinguish God and the way of his Kingdom; that sometimes we are even confused on what is good as well as how we are to actually get at the task of doing it.
It is at that point -- where we honestly admit "I may not know how to follow Jesus" -- that we can see the need of a church community to help form our 'grid of interpretation' in order to make it closer to a kingdom grid of understanding.
Among other things, I believe that is what those who came before are here to help us do. Jesus had disciples, people who were asked and chose to follow him. Even though he would tell them simple straight-forward things like "love your neighbor as yourself" and "have faith", it's blatantly obvious from their many mistakes that in the beginning, they didn't know how to do that or even what those statements meant! First they had to follow Jesus so he could remake their view of the world. They had to be disciples.
Then, they became apostles who taught others, who in turn taught others, who ultimately helped create the Bible as a useful and necessary tool to teach other followers. The church community itself helps to carry on the understanding of the Gospel, and postmodernism should not be used simply as a vehicle to escape all that we don't currently like about our community.
Change may certainly be very necessary and deserved, but how that change is brought about is probably as equally as important as the change itself. Hence my reference to Paul's instructions to slaves back on Tim's thread. To re-appropriate an an old saying, the devil is in the details. If we gloss over all those distinctive differences written in the Bible regarding other religions or 'ways', we may be disregarding very important witnesses to the truth, to Jesus. We may lose the teachings that show us how to be living sacrifices within these tensions of tradition, change, and other cultures. Central to these concepts as Tim rightly mentioned, is the idea that the Kingdom isn't completely here and now, nor is it completely later, but it is "in our midst", and such tensions need to be dealt with in that light.
With his new post, Trevor's appeal to 'the way' sounds more and more to me like an appeal to whatever Trevor believes to be good, or if I were to follow his ideas it would ultimately be whatever I believe to be good so long as I wasn't in his community or if I was, so long as my ideas weren't too different from his. As nice as he may be (I don't personally know him), and as astute as his opinions are, this is probably why Tim said it confirmed his earlier suspicions -- from my understanding, universalism was around before postmodernism and you can get to its original conclusions even if you do use slices of postmodernism in your thoughts, too.
"First, where am I with Jesus then? Is he the one, unique Son of God and did the cross wipe out the sins of mankind? To be blatenly honest, I don't know. I don't have any reason to say so, except that's what some people say is true and its what someone (namely Paul) wrote down in a few letters a few century ago."
Trev, if you are reading this, certainly, you cannot know... but you can have faith -- faith in God (and his witnesses). Adam, Tim, and Dan have all pointed out important ways in which your 'way' doesn't seem to jive with these witnesses. I think I'm sounding a little smug here, but I would encourage you to listen to them and their calls to focus on Jesus as truth rather than a melding of various cultures' ephemera of truth.
just a few comments that i think coincide with this topic. first about the fact that we cannot know that God or Jesus exists: this is how it should be. we're commanded to have faith in God and faith in Jesus. if there was absolute knowledge in God's existence then faith wouldn't exist because it would be knowledge rather than faith. this is an extremely scary idea but i also believe that there is some part of us that is able to "feel" that God exists and renews and reassures our faith. secondly, about the church idea, i'm not really sure what the arguments are but i did notice one quote,"we can see the need of a church community." this is something i completely agree with although i am one who is almost turned away from the idea of church. the idea of church was indeed started to be a community, for worship and support. but it seems as though the reasons for church are being forgotten and church now represents law and the way to gain salvation. i'm a catholic and i must say that a great deal of this can be seen in the laws of the catholic church. so the question is, why have we moved away from the ideals that the very idea of church was founded on? and the reason i find is our interpretation of God's word. this certainly is the reason for the various divisions in the church, which more than likely was intended to be universal. i guess my question is, why can't the church just go back to being a community of worship, support, and fellowship instead of trying to be a god on earth?
I don't want to be all reductionistic here, but I'll make it short and sweet with a couple quick reasons -- that fit within this conversation -- in response to the anonymous post as to why I think the church seems less than desirable :
1. People continually elevate the things around God to the status of God ie: the Bible, church authority/leadership, government, our own beliefs/doctrines of what the church should be, etc. Again, this is one of the main concepts that I think Tim is pointing out. Jesus must be the center rather than the web itself.
2. A perhaps overly strong tendency to desire protection of those things rather than have a sacrificial nature to our living.
Also, I'm interested in this line you wrote: "we're commanded to have faith in God". I think this may reflect a viewpoint that would be in line with those 'laws' rather than the other feelings you expressed in your comment. I would instead say, "we're offered the gift of faith in God".
we may not be commanded, but faith is required for salvation, right?
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