Important Post

If you haven't had a chance to read this yet. Please do. I was moved to tears several times reading this series by Natala about her friendship with a porn star. Be sure to check out the comments on Part 8.

Absolute Interpretation

Turns out my post titled 100 things I've learned about church caused quite a stir. It was picked up by a church leadership blog and a pastors.com forum and debated by a number of people more qualified than I. One commentor took issue with much of what I wrote, particularly my views on absolute truth.

I wrote the following (minus a few edits) to that commentor. Though I haven't heard back, I thought it might make a worthwhile post:

I've really learned a lot through the various conversations about "100 things". I certainly wasn't expecting to see the post go beyond a few friends. It was just a way for me to journal a few thoughts on church through my eyes. What I could never prepare for was the context in which my remarks would be read.

Unlike a mainstream journalist or academic writer, I sacrifice context for immediacy. I leave it to the audience, whoever they might be, to discern the context in which I write.

So regarding my thoughts on absolute truth, maybe I can fill in a bit of the context. I've grown up around evangelical churches all my life and I'm currently watching one disintegrate. At some point I started considering what was causing evangelical churches to loose their effectiveness. I saw how people were reacting, how some of the best things about evangelical churches were becoming the most hollow. One thing that I saw was how churches were splitting on ever more obscure theological issues under the guise of absolute truth. And not just churches, people, friends, families (my extended family included), communities were breaking up because they were convinced that each other were parting with absolute truth.

That's so sad! It simply cannot be that all sides were right. There had to be another answer. I'm not so sure my answer to that is right yet, but at least it's a start: There is absolute truth, but not absolute interpretation. I know this looks for everything like a major step back into a sort of quasi-relativism, but I'd love to see another answer.

By interpretation I mean, I've seen people make the most amazing cases for the smallest of issues. I've seen people make what seemed like air-tight cases for a single style of worship music, only to see someone else make just as tight a case for another style of music.

I've heard some of the most obscure references in scripture used to back up some of the most trivial preferences. All I can say in the face of these is, our interpretation of scripture is as fallible as we are. At the same time though, I firmly believe that scripture is true and authoritative. I'm just not sure I can say the same for people.

I just wanted to clear that up so you know where I was coming from in case that's of any help.

about the name

In this culture, we've been conditioned to assume everything has a black or white answer. We're not really satified with a shade of grey. So we work tirelessly to draw lines between just about any issue. When it's proven that something is neither black nor white, we accept, but think that somone, somewhere must have clear answer that we just haven't heard yet.

No more is this style of thinking prevelant than in many Christian circles, where biblical teachings are applied with mathematical rigor to every area of life. No matter what your problem, someone will be ready to find a verse in the Bible to answer your question, once and for all.

The only problem is, this doesn't work. Not like it used to. I applaud the theologians for attempting to build a systimatic theology -- one that makes sense on as many levels as possible. It's good to do that, but how do we know when we've gone too far?

A man walks into church. Long before the time he crosses the threshold, the elders have worked out exactly when, why and how they might exclude him from their church. They know which sins are too repulsive to allow, which philosophies are too dangerous and which behaviors to watch out for. Before they shake his hand, they've encoded his future into the airtight language of beurocrats. Love one another as you would be loved? Yes, but.

They'll say, "I'm sorry sir, this church isn't for you," and go on to recommend a good christian counseler who can help him with is problem. In most churches, he wouldn't need to be told. The message would be loud and clear, "don't come back until you're one of us".

The problem with love is that it is grey. It is never black and white. No policy can describe it, no book of law can contain it. Every effort spent trying to formulate love ends up circumventing it.

So instead of assuming something is black or white until proven otherwise, maybe we can begin with grey.