From Brian McLaren’s The Story We Find Ourselves In, paraphrased unless in quotes:
1. Substitutionary Atonement - God’s wrath, directed at us because of our sin, could only be satisfied by the death of Jesus (who replaced the OT sacrifices with his perfect self-sacrifice).
2. Ransom - because of our sin, we belong to Satan, and God buys us back with the death of Jesus, then turns the tables on Satan with the Resurrection.
3. Christus Victor - we are dead in our sins, destined for the grave, but Jesus’ death and resurrection triumphed over death itself, enabling us to be made alive with Christ.
4. Perfect Penitent - we are all in need of repentence (God will forgive us out of the goodness of his heart if we do), but we can’t really repent perfectly - we always hold back, we always fall into sin again. Jesus is the perfect penitent (or “repenter”) in our place, and so secures our forgiveness (CS Lewis’ favorite theory, according to McLaren).
5. Moral Influence - Jesus’ self-giving love, expressed in his death on the cross, leads us to love God and love others fully, giving our lives back to God.
6. Powerful Weakness - by becoming vulnerable and submitting to death on the cross, Jesus shows us God’s love for us, as well as the nature of His Kingdom (sacrifice, not violent victory).
7. Embodied Betrayal - our sin is a betrayal of God, and he showed us that in the only way adequate - through his physical torture and death at our hands.

Which of these contain elements of truth? Which rely on misconceptions? Are all of them partly right? Which has the most potential for helping us understand the Christ-event today?

Christianity as a package deal

I can’t help but feel that my previous posts have not done justice to Dave Tomlinson’s The Post-Evangelical. Another quote:
…the evangelical gospel tends to be much too “refined.” In other words it is a systematized “A-Z of Everything You Need to Know about Life, Death and Eternity” - it is a “big story” approach to the Christian narrative. It is generally assumed that this “package” represents New Testament Christianity, and yet nowhere was it presented in this way, either by Jesus or the apostles. The pre-packed gospel is really a systematized stringing together of lots of little pieces which in their original context were presented as they stood, without being fitted into a coherent scheme. For example, the young ruler asked what he might do to inherit eternal life: a question almost designed for a modern evangelistic response. Yet Jesus told him to keep the commandments and sell all that he had and give to the poor (Luke 18:19-22). Not a very well rounded gospel messge! No mention of faith. No mention of salvation by faith and not works. No mention of “making a prayer of commitment”!
We need to take seriously Brueggemann’s idea of “funding the postmodern imagination”. He says that when we offer a full alternative world to people, we are acting in the imperialistic style which postmodern people are actually rejecting. Rather than offering truth in the form of a dogmatic grand scheme, we must offer “a lot of little pieces out of which people can put life together in fresh configurations.” (p142)

This is what I was trying to paraphrase earlier, but couldn’t, so I just decided to quote the whole page. Perhaps this is one of the most valuable insights of the whole book, that we need to fuel the imagination and assist others on their journeys, rather than try to sell them a package deal. After all, the gospel is not “Repent and be baptized and become a republican and get married and have kids and own your own home.” It’s “Follow me.”

Providing Godbearing worldview pieces

Below I referred to Tomlinson’s idea in The Post-Evangelical that the Church can no longer offer a comprehensive “Christian” worldview that must be taken in all-or-nothing form. Instead, he says, we must offer pieces which people can put together themselves; we cannot put everything together for them.

The evangelical in me says our theology has to be consistent and coherent. We must give people pieces that make sense together, not a vague mass of mismatched doctrines and practices. I would like to reinterpret Tomlinson’s thoughts (more correctly, I think) along these lines: we cannot sell Christianity as a prepackaged worldview, as a complete way of thinking. Christianity is a story for all times and people, but it is not a “theory of everything.”

We need to present the Christian story as coherent, and provide pieces, Godbearing pieces, from which people can construct their own Christian worldviews.

The US government does something about AIDS

From the Washington Post: The US Senate passed a bill on Friday, May 16, that provides $15 billion in funding for programs to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa, including programs aimed at altering societal views of women. The idea is that
challenging the way men view women in Africa would make it easier for women to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases. They would be better positioned to insist that a sexual partner wear a condom, for example, and men would be more likely to be faithful — or abstain from sex before marriage — if they valued women more highly.

AIDS in Africa

Read this article, or as much as you have time for.

I have an automatic response to these things that says, “It’s their own dumb fault for doing what they did to get AIDS. Don’t bother worrying about it, because it’s their problem. They could have prevented it, but they did the dumb thing instead, and got themselves infected with a death sentence.” Whatever truth there may be in this statement, it pales in comparison to the lack of compassion present. This is real life and death, and it is a daily reality for tens of millions of people. There is little reason to think the spread of HIV will stop unless we do something about it.

One effort that really seems to be making a difference is Bono’s recent tour across the US to raise awareness and get the American church to do something about AIDS in Africa. His organization, DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa), is working to get African debt forgiven and trade increased so Africa will have more money to fight AIDS. The statistics are there. The action, especially from American Christians, is virtually non-existent so far.

Perhaps this is because many others share the initial response I posted above: AIDS is the result of a personal moral failure, so any individual affected by it is pretty far down on the “worthy of help” list. How comfy we are making our armchair ethical judgments against people in other cultures. For example, the Seattle Times article linked above explains that women do not have a choice: their husbands sleep around, then refuse to use a condom when they come home, giving their wives AIDS. The Gates Foundation is investing serious dollars in giving un-empowered women more ways to protect themselves, such as developing cheap female condoms that can be worn all the time in case of rape (hard for us to imagine that, but in some places a third of the men have HIV/AIDS, so the risk is real).

Finished the post-evangelical

I must say that this little book is less comprehensive than I would have preferred, but on the other hand, it’s an easy read, and it does address some central issues regarding the ecclesial implications of the modern to postmodern shift. The last half of the book focuses on a more pomo concept of truth, especially as related to scripture and morality. You can tell from the chapter titles: 6) “Let me tell you a story;” 7) The truth, the whole truth, and something quite like the truth; Is the Bible the word of God?; 9) Positively worldly; and 10) Christianity for a new age. Frankly, the last two chapters were lost on me, but maybe that’s because he was explaining things that I already agree with or understand.

I think Tomlinson’s aim with this book was to help evangelicals understand post-evangelicals better (and define that term, since it’s a new one for most people). I think he probably does a fairly good job of that, though it’s not comprehensive enough to be a full apologetic. The problem with explaining postmodernism to modernists is that it sounds really horrible from a modernist perspective; you have to explain it from a postmodern perspective, which doesn’t really work, so…Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian is pretty good at bridging the gap. My dad read it, and realized that, not only is New Kind of Christian about postmodernism, it’s written in a postmodern way, so it kind of sneaks in an explanation of itself. Pretty cool.

There is value in Tomlinson’s commentary on the use of the Bible. Go ahead and read the book. It’s short. Comment if you have thoughts on the book.

crank yankers

One of my students just tried to prank-call me at home. I recognized his voice, said “Hi, [his name], how are you doing?” and he seemed to change the tone of the call in the innocuous direction rather quickly. Hehehe.

providing fuel for the emerging culture

Tomlinson suggests that the church can, under postmodernism, no longer attempt to provide a prepackaged metanarrative. Instead, we must change our role to that of providing pieces out of which individuals can construct their worldviews. Making a cohesive, universal, all-or-nothing view that is defined as “Christian,” and telling people basically to take it or leave it, does not respect the free intelligence of the individual, so most will choose their own path rather than walk down a narrow Christian corridor.

Will people develop mishmash theologies? Yes. Despite this, though, there is a tremendous emphasis in the emergent culture upon being holistic in outlook. I think we have, under modernity, made the mistake of having a consistent, holistic theological system without having consistent, holistic lives. Postmodernism would have us reverse this, and I would support such a change.

What kinds of fuel can we provide? What building blocks? At a science workshop tonight, we used K’Nex pieces to build a roller coaster and cars. Is the church in the business of drawing up plans for people to follow to the T, or providing pieces for them to freely explore solutions?