As some of you may know I've been thinking a lot about the issues of faith and more so how do I deal with the multiple manifestation of Christianity within my home. My mother has gone from her strict Baptist roots through rebellion in the 70's and 80's to moderate/vanilla to full on to a version of weaping and wailing, evil is all around us Christian. Her polar opposite is my C.S. Lewis addicted, but will not attend service brother. She scares me and he worries me and about me? I would have to say I could see myself becoming my brother in an effort to distance myself from my mother's faith. So I've decided to follow my head, not a conventional, or maybe even "correct," but with life morphing, what can I do? And so it begins...
We are not a generation of feeling; we are a generation of thought. We have been lead to believe that education above all else will solve everything, that everything from a few more hours on Google to a university degree will provide us with answers. This perceived lack of feeling/emotion/passion has contributed to the way we (current Christians) view our faith and how we enter into a discussion with our peers. It is not longer a method of passionate pleas, revivals and alter calls – been there, done that, that was then, this is now. More accurately translated, we are a post modern society. There are those that argue post modernism is more a euphemism for the end times than an actual event shaping how we interact with each other and our faith. I would have to disagree. Post modernism has been a live in its de-structured, unassembled self since the mid 60’s (give or take) according to the literary world. Everything over or under thought composed into works with out specified meanings due to the very nature of post modernism, “a deliberate mixing of different styles and draws attention to artistic traditions.” (For more on post-modernism – just ask). In the end there is no defined structure, all is accepted, modified, and rearranged. This format is troubling for those who prefer the traditional format of Western Christianity – black, white and repeated. Questions and doubt were present before, however disillusionment and a bizarrely God infused culture were not. The Simpson’s would not have been the source of doctrine for previous generations, nor would Beyonce or Britney Spears been used as Christian role models. All while our own churches look the same as a stadium on Super Bowl weekend. What happened? How are we different? From all this they have emerged, or it emerges… I’m not an expert on the Emergent Church, but I am interested.
Why? Well, I would like to find a place for me, my faith and “Mennonitism,” my passion for social justice to grow within an organic setting. I am a thinker, a writer, as we are after all the Internet/Blog/University Degree mandatory generation. http://www.ginkworld.net/ states:
“welcome to the evolution. we are an emerging/evolving site exploring what it means to be an apprentice of the jesus in today's world. we are striving to be a place where our faith and our lives are hyper linked to the organic; we are connective, missional and relational. our desire is to move in the conversation, to be an active voice while not dominating the conversation.”
Works for me. Community? Yes. Missional? Yes. Relational? Yes. Organic? Yes. Conversation? Yes (we know that I love to talk....) Yet Brian McLaren’s talk of paradigm shifts in Christianity and other loaded phrases that have sparked comments referencing the movement to the end times, heretics and even the church being the work of the anti-Christ has made me wonder. It appears the entire body is polarized between the thinkers (Don Miller etc), and the “feelers” (those yelling heretics at the social justice advocates). What is so wrong with social justice, organic community, discussion or re-evaluating our faith and the Church? Is our doctrine, our faith our Churches so fragile that we can not move and grow within it? It seems to be that Christianity is becoming more of a tow the line, hand over your money for a bigger Church and vote Conservative, instead of feed the hungry, ignore monetary gain and remove the barriers within and outside the Church. Our Church is looking more and more like the first ones, lost in their culture. The sad thing is we should know better.
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