I can't remember ever being asked to leave a church. Mostly I was the good kid earning the prize for 100 attendances...
Recently I have been enjoying a fairly engaging conversation with Nate on Adam's blog. Adam posted a reflection on developments in a ministry called "Exodus" in the UK. Nate and I (and Meghan for a while) got into an interesting conversation about different ways to approach ethical questions - most notably, whether people of faith are called to be "boundary-watchers" (Nate's term).
I don't know if reading text makes a person's tone sound more aggressive than it's meant to be, but I thought the tone of the conversation was assertive but respectful. More interesting to me is that while I engaged Nate about some aspects of faith that I feel strongly about, after visiting his own blog, I sense we probably have more in common than we disagree on. My sense is that our differences are worth talking through - we are on the road to finding each other... (I thought!)
That was until Adam shut down the conversation with a short explanation: "Nate & Barry…I’m glad the two of you could engage one another in this conversation, but perhaps it’s time to take this conversation to your blogs or to an email correspondence. Thanks." Adam has closed the comments on this discussion thread, effectively stopping the "public" nature of the conversation (we can of course continue privately). Also, out conversation will no longer be associated with Adam's blog.
So I'm wondering, why did we get bumped? Are we using up his webspace? Are our comments/conversation not the purpose of hosting a blog? Are our comments and perspectives, or just the robust nature of the conversation embarrasing to Adam? Or was he just tired of deleting our comments in his INBOX?
I can't remember ever being asked to leave a church... but this certainly gives me a glimpse of what it must be like to be silenced by an authority in the community - without explanation...
6 comments:
Barry,
I could certainly paste my last comment on Adam's blog on here and we could fire the convo back up again...
Nate
p.s. The way you introduce the issue here in your post, it comes across that I think people of faith are called to be "boundary-watchers" alone; part of my suggestion over on adam's blog was an expansion of the role of people of faith from either "compassionate" or "boundary-watchers" to recognizing that faithfulness includes both...and that the place where those meet is often messy.
For sure! Let's continue this conversation!
please post your last comment and I'll respond...
in the mean-time let me briefly respond to your "p.s."
Sorry that I simpified your comments - it was just a way to refer to our conversation which has been lengthy and complex. I don't regard you as ONLY a "boundary-watcher" and as the conversation develops I am more inclined to trust your intentions... I apologise if my reference to you in the blog post presented you badly - I am hoping that people will actually read our conversation and consider your well-constructed and thoughtful comments!
of all the things you've said I like this the most: "...recognizing that faithfulness includes both...and that the place where those meet is often messy."
i think that your reference to messiness is the very thing that I have been trying to find space for... it's not that I don't have boundaries, ethical or theological or sexual etc... Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a fairly "principled" person. I just no longer feel that imposing those "boundaries" on others is the primary purpose of a faithful life. I am suggesting that Jesus was able to "sit with the messiness" of people's lives precisely because compassion (God is Love) was (/is) the overriding value of his Life.
i suppose i would be interested to explore with you why you prefer the term "boundary-watcher" as counter-weight to "compassion"...
( i have a very different understanding of the relationship between compassion and boundaries that doesn't set them up as "opposites" or in tension with each other.)
I'm quite glad you guys are throwing mud at each other over here rather than on the other blog. I would not have been a spectator otherwise.
Oh, apology certainly accepted...I just thought it was important to set the conversation on your blog off on a solid note so readers could see where we both were coming from and what we were suggesting...and aiden, I'm glad that you're following, even if I disagree with your assessment of us throwing mud on each other. : ) I assume that was a lighthearted joke.
Here's my last comment from the other site;
Hello again Barry,
I really am glad we’ve had a chance to go deeper in this conversation; these kinds of talks both sharpen and deepen my thoughts on issues.
To start off, I should establish that I am a self-identified postmodern, or at least one who resonates with much of what Brian McLaren and other folks have said about the transition taking place right now. In saying what I said in my comment just above, I was addressing an extreme I’ve seen postmodern folks go to (the key words were can be just before “so deconstructionist”); in retrospect, I probably was talking less to you and more venting frustrations I’ve had in the past over positions that had some similarity to a couple sections of your comments; mainly the exalting of “sincerity” or “authenticity” over the pursuit of truth that sometimes requires taking positions.
I’m all for sincere doubts about the nature of truth (you should see the looks I get from my church family on Sundays when I start bringing trying to rightly bring complexity to what has often been falsely assumed before, like “Christians vote Republican” or the unspoken-but-often-held belief that the United States is the kingdom of God or that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are evil because George Bush says so…these are surfacy examples, but relevant), but my critique comes in when that doubting the modern conception of absolute truth undermines the pursuit of truth; or, in other words, creates a mindset that nothing is really “knowable” or “fully truthful” in our subjective reality. I’m sure you’ve heard the critique that “there are no absolutes” is in fact an absolute statement itself. The problem with the extreme of modernity was the temptation to put everything in absolute categories; I’d say the problem with the extreme of postmodernity is to the temptation to put everything in relative categories.
As far as the need for challenge, you challenged a strong claim of mine with a truth claim that my understanding is relative; I accept that your claim is true. But again I want to emphasize that I was not suggesting I “knew” the length and depth of Jesus’ teachings to their furthest extent; I was stating that to know Jesus means one must have boundaries in one’s behavior and thoughts and words.
As far as your comment on the dissenting voice in the church today, I think the issue is more complex than you make it. Clearly those who call for the inclusion of gay people into the church are the dissenting voice, given that the majority opinion is that they should not be. But as Christians, we can’t just hop on the dissenting voice wagon and say that there’s automatically something truthful there; especially if we invoke Jesus’ challenge of the status quo in support of our position. We have to instead make value judgments on various dissenting voices and decide if what they are calling for is in fact truthful and faithful or not. The church’s past has been checkered on this, but again, that should not paralyze our need to address various issues. Again, I am glad you are sincere, but I believe you are sincerely wrong; and I believe the testament and weight of Scripture is consistently against your sincere position. By reducing Jesus to “compassionate” and judging Scripture in light of your litmus test of “compassion,” you have a deeply individualistic, subjective, and ahistorical position on an issue that has been around for as long as humans have been around.
I believe the faithful dissenting voice in the church today regarding the homosexual question is those who believe LGBT lifestyle temptations as simply that, temptations to a lifestyle outside of God’s expectations for human life; yet they don’t stop there with believing this to be true. They pursue relationships with LGBT persons that help to bring transformation in their lives; deep relationships that seek when to challenge and when to build trust with those persons. This, I believe, is consistent with the example of Jesus and the testament of Scriptures; healthy boundaries and a deep love for and service of all.
You say you are convinced. I ask you; what has convinced you? Experience? Science? Both of those are deeply subjective, and even the “concrete” evidence of the scientific position that LGBT lifestyles are genetic and therefore hard-wired into them is flawed in light of newer science that shows how even our genetics can be dramatically altered by our behavior and environment. Are you exalting the things that have convinced you above the testament of the consistency of Scripture on this point? Then I’d question your foundation as a follower of Jesus. What deeply informs your position on this issue has secondary waves of impact on a variety of issues in your life; it has been proposed scientifically that alcoholism is genetically passed on. Is that an ok lifestyle for you? What criteria do you bring to bear to make a moral judgment on alcoholism (or any other issue for that matter? Whether our position is “compassionate” enough? And who determines what action is “compassionate” or not?
When it comes to your closing thoughts on postmodern positions, I’d have to say we are called to a both/and approach rather than either/or with what you said. Truth is found both through boundary-watching AND in the lived experience of the values of the kingdom of God. Something that deeply impacts my perspective on this issue is the constant self-reminder who’s the boss. There are a variety of things I would never suggest are “natural” or “common-sense” that God expects of his followers (enemy love to the point of death, constant and vigilant pursuit of what is “unseen,” a deep sense of compassion and patience even when situations aren’t being transformed, etc), yet God’s pretty insensitive to my complaints about the structure of the good life as He’s determined it; and I’m finding over the long-term that He knows much better than I what the good life’s all about.
I agree with you about some of the failures of the church (right intellectual belief as more important than right behavior as one you highlighted), and the need to have a healthy dose of compassion. All I’m suggesting is that this call to compassion is not totalizing; it’s not the whole picture. It’s important, but only as a component of the bigger lifestyle of discipleship.
In terms of enforcing, I was not speaking of folks standing at the borders with guns taking out people right and left who don’t line up with their conception of truth. I’m talking specifically about Jesus’ prescription to the disciples in Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 18:15-19 about the need for discipline in the church. The central part of those prescriptions is that God backs up the decisions to exclude when the decisions are made faithfully. You could add into that conversation 1 Corinthians 5 where Paul specifically addresses expelling those engaging in unrepentant immoral behavior from the midst of the church.
In regards to lifestyle choices, there are many sections in the gospels where Jesus fills in what a healthy life looks like within the borders of the kingdom of God. Matthew 4 in the temptation narrative shows Jesus consciously grounding his choices in “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” and in the centrality of God as definer of what is healthy or unhealthy. Matthew 5-7 is all about boundaries, whether anger or lust or divorce or retaliation or loving enemies or giving to the needy or money. Jesus teaches in Matthew 7 that the gate to life is narrow and broad is the road to destruction. That is a comment that begs for details about what that narrow way looks like; because clearly there are boundaries to that narrow way that separate it from the broad. And as Jesus is talking about the pursuit of righteousness in his ministry, he continually sprinkles in that not everyone will inherit the kingdom of heaven, but only those who put into practice what he has taught (and you could faithfully say that since Jesus is a firmly rooted Jew, the expectations of the people of Israel that he does not contradict or intensify are a part of that conversation).
I should say that the goal of boundary watching is not exclusion as an end, but exclusion for the sake of the individual or group recognizing their error and taking the necessary steps to live within the guidelines of the community in order to return.
hey nate!
i recently decided to register a domain and shift to Wordpress (he he - seems about the same time you did...)
i've copied our comments over onto my new blogsite - seethroughb.com
see you there!
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