Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking
This is more of a 'rubber-meets-road' post, and I'd love to hear your thoughts/experiences.All this exciting theological insight has a worrying flip-side. I sometimes find myself moving beyond critical thinking and slipping into just being plain critical, and this leads quickly to bitterness. This often happens in conversations with like-minded friends, and what results is generally a "let me tell you all the things that are wrong with the church"-type rant.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on how we can think deeply and critically about how we 'do' church and theology, and apply this thinking to our church settings, without slipping into this kind of unChristlike ranting.
posted by Jamie at Sunday, March 19, 2006
13 Comments:
Is that the case, really?
Where it is, perhaps the fault lies in our assuming, with most of the church, that the church is something other than a familial community. Sometimes we struggle to see past the structures that we so often condemn. If we did this, we would see the church's flaws perhaps more lovingly - though I doubt less sadly.
Indeed, we can reject structures we think are outdated, unhelpful, ungodly - or formats, or meetings, or 'brands' without rejecting people, and we must.
Also, providing a safe environment for expression of worshipful sentiment - which may be also dissident - is part of our function AS the church, and if we're able to do it in some of our relationships (in so much as our relationships are 'church') then that's no bad thing, and needn't be regulated.
We just need to call bullshit when we see it, first in ourselves, then in our immediate 'church', then in our wider church.
In terms of balancing individual frustration with collective shortcoming, we need more Jesus in our discussion and expression. If someone with whom I disagree vehemently about what church should look like, tells me, paints me, sings me something about Jesus, we start from a point of unity that in itself is extremely robust.
Maybe, then, we should start our discussions prayerfully, creatively, meditatively. Or somet.
Good comments box, thanks. Yeah, I think an attitude of prayer and Spirit-led-ness would go some way to keeping our egos in check. And your comments on familial community and a 'Jesus centre' are well worth hearing again.
Has anyone else felt this urge to rant overpowering them? Any more ideas?
Hi Jamie,
Just found your blog from the entry you left on the emergent board on Scottish Christian. Looks interesting.
I tend to be the type who has been negative and critical. I actually think that we do need to do it for a while when we find that we have become entangled in something that we later think lacks legitimacy.
So I would not want to criticise the critical, but I think that once that phase is over, making sure that you build where you have demolished is a necessary discipline.
Simon
I warmly agree. I suppose all I would add is an assertion that what we build must be on Christ, the cornerstone.
To be realistic though, it's rare that we're engaged in demolition, more just graffiti. The big challenge is, having left the building and seen how ugly it is 'at the back', do we:
1, Re-enter, perhaps as painter-decorators?
2, Stay outside with placards and a spray cans, but run inside when it rains? (Probably the easiest)
3, Or start building a new, beautiful building, and then tell everyone in the old one that they're not part of the church until they move in with us? (The Reformation project)
or...
4, abandon the concept of a 'building' and live in tents?
After all, they are firmly anchored in the ground but have flexible 'walls' which can be easily enlarged or moved according to the changing environment.
(But it might mean we have to brave the rain and can't really settle properly!)
Stretch the metaphor anyone?
I could stretch it further by adding the option that many of us have chosen: to live outside with no roof over our heads at all.
I's what happens when what was meant to shelter you, smothers you. You get claustrophobia and getting out and sleeping rough is the safest option.
ok ok enough building analogies! anyone want to take this in another direction - how can we be critical and avoid being mean-spirited? (I'm not necessarily looking for over-theological advice here, more anything spiritual/practical that you have done to keep from ranting)
Well after reading part one of Jim Wallis' 'God's Politics', I'm inclined to say social, political, public action. That will perhaps give us God's priorities for how we direct our critical, prophetic energies.
I'm off to volunteer somewhere!
How can we practice love through living the Christian ethic of generosity without forsaking a critical mind in this context?
Perhaps the assumption behind my question is that practicing generosity in this context means going further - and that example of Christ demands it - than just affirming the 'good' parts of something and rejecting the 'bad' whatever criteria are used to establish those categories.
Hi, I don't know where this should really go so it will have to go here! I'm posting this on behalf of a fried who hasn't worked out blogging yet.
He says....how does the 3 day period after Jesus' death, but before his resurrection, substitute for the eternal death, which is the consequence of sin? This is a question of a non-eternal process Jesus undertook, taking care of an eternal judgement of souls.
Its a good question I thought....any ideas??????
Thanks for the question - it's a good one.
I've been mulling it over a bit this week and loads more questions have come rushing in. Here's 2 of my first questions:
First there's the issue of who Jesus is - since he is himself God eternal, second person of the Trinity, isn't even a second of death an infinite 'punishment' for him?
Secondly, there's the question of how the "taking care" of our sin actually works. Is the notion of a legal penalty actually the way it is, or is it a model/metaphor? Is there some kind of REAL "legal code" that God has to 'stick to'?
I know that's really more than 2 questions. In fact, there are so many questions related to this that we need more than a few blog commments to do it justice. We need a proper conversation. Over coffee perhaps? ;)
So check out the Coffee Shop Theology page sometime in the next few days and I'll put up some discussion pointers to get us started. Time & Date TBC.
The question posed by nut's friend is a good starting place for rebiblifying evangelical notions of atonement.
Let's take, as a starting point, the courtroom model. Humanity stands in the dock, guilty of transgressing God's perfect justice. Despite God's love, justice requires that he punishes the sinner with death. Jesus steps up to the plate and says 'punish me instead'. The Father agrees.
Nut’s question is one of a number of problems this story contains – if the crime is infinite, and the penalty must fit the crime for God to be God, then why is Christ sitting at the right hand, not suffering still? Meanwhile, it is a lens through which John 3:16 sounds as if God’s love for us exceeds his love for his son. At the very least, God sounds like he’s ended up in a corner, forced to do something he never wanted to do but has to, because of the existence of a transcendent penal code.
Penal substitution is a powerful image in the western legal rational era. The idea of the rule of law - justice as sovereign - means we don't balk at the idea of a God bound by his own justice. There are problems with this however. In Green and Baker (Recovering the Scandal of the Cross) they cite an alternative ending to the Prodigal Son parable which fits with a penal substitutionary idea of atonement, taken from Robin Collins.
“When the son returns and recognises the error of his ways, [the Father responds] ‘I cannot simply forgive you…it would be against the moral order of the entire universe…Such is the severity of my justice that reconciliation will not be made unless the penalty is utterly paid. My wrath – my avenging justice – must be placated.’ The older son offers to do extra work in the fields and pay his brother’s penalty. And finally, when the older brother died of exhaustion, the father’s wrath was placated against his younger son and they lived happily for the remainder of their days.”
The point of the original parable is how scandalously ‘free’ God’s forgiveness is. Of course, for other models of 'how' we are saved, similar questions arise. Jesus says, 'I lay my life down a ransom for many'. If we take this with an 'Aha!' and think we've found the way in which we're saved, we are immediately confronted with the question, to whom is the ransom paid? Satan? Making him the key protagonist in the atonement plot. God? God pays God a ransom?
Still they're words of Jesus, so we take them seriously. His death, metaphorically, is a ransom. It is an immense cost paid by someone perfect out of love for the imperfect, that - here's the rub - sets them free.
Penal substition enters with a dissatisfied scowl and says, 'but how? How?!' and seeks to fill in the bits it thinks the Bible missed.
Firstly, the appropriateness of the cross as punishment is that it 'means' something - shame, exclusion, abuse, ultimately death. It is never a question of degree. The Bible never says that Jesus died death as a penalty commensurate with the size of the problem of sin. This is already accounted for in the fact that everyone who sins dies. It is rather the nature of sin in its ability to exclude, alienate and ultimately kill that makes the cross appropriate. The oft repeated courtroom model makes this difficult to remember, because we understand justice in terms of the fixed penalty for x is y.
Secondly, in its pursuit of the last word on atonement, penal substitution dispenses with a variety of metaphors for understanding the reasons behind, and nature of Christ's, death and resurrection, and tries to turn it into a step by step, scientific process.
Thirdly, it reduces Christ’s sacrifice to performing a function for us, and deprives it of acres of meaning. Of course, we can agree - if we believe in the Bible - that there is a theme of substitution that exists in both Testaments. No-one, however, suggests that the sacrificial lamb bears a penalty commensurate with the sinner's sin. Within the sacrificial slaughter however, we are reminded of how sin outworks itself. Its gravity. Its terminal sickness. Its - metaphorical! - wages. It’s horrendous ability to shame and exclude. In the cross, we see the same things, but with the finale ‘It is finished!’
The real danger of penal substitution however, is that it dispenses with most of scripture and embraces culturally specific justice concepts. We are now left with something that is not only unbiblical – a narrow understanding of sin, the Trinity, justice, reconciliation, ransom, ‘positive’ atonement (salvation into something not just from something) – but also meaningless to many today.
We can learn a lot from Jesus - he didn't go to the poor and lost and say 'Turn or burn you rebels!' He did say this to the religious elites. To the poor and lost he said 'You're already lost, even in this life, because of your sin-sickness and that of the oppressor. Be healed, be free, heal others.'
That is Good News!
Very well put box. Couldn't agree more. Of course there's still Moral Influence Theory, Government Theory, the Victory motif.... all makes for a great big complicated picture - a Mosaic even ;)
OK. This will be the next SFT. Check the website for details.
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