Session #7 - Strider returns :)

1) How have you domesticated the gospel?
Domesticating the gospel in my life (and, I suspect, in the lives of many in the American church) meant turning Jesus from the revolutionary figure that he was and is into someone who fits nicely into suburbia. He's white with wavy brown hair and an angelic pose even as he agonizes in the garden. He would attend church on Sundays, be considered respectable by the community, eschew certain movies and questionable forms of entertainment, vote a certain way and, most of all, not make waves. The Jesus I have been discovering for the past number of years is anything but that. He is grander than that. If there's a wrong, he will make waves to make it right. People in his community (i.e. the Pharisees and teachers of the law) didn't consider him respectable at all. We might even guess that he would go to questionable forms of entertainment for the purpose of reaching out to others who are in desperate need of his message that the kingdom of God is at hand. Yet, I have to be careful that I don't overcorrect my initial domestication of Christ by turning him by focusing solely on those parts of his character that seem to be missing from "suburban Jesus" - and there have been times I have caught myself doing just that. For example, I can't become so focused on his insistance to help the poor that I forget how he taught his disciples.

2) What is your reflection on the gospel as public truth? (p. 23)
In some ways, the gospel is a public truth and, yet, in other ways it is not. As Newbigin describes, Darwinian theory is easily accepted into the school system while creation (or intelligent design) is not. We can easily see other ways in which the gospel is excluded from the public discourse. In a few weeks, schools will start planning their graduation ceremonies and, inevitably it seems, there will be a story in the news about a student who wants to include a prayer in her speech, but is forbidden to do so by a school district afraid of the also seemingly inevitable lawsuit. Similarly, you can bet that every Christmas there will be an argument about a town manger scene. Digging below the surface a bit, we can see the gospel as private truth only in a society that devalues its members whether they be the poor, the marginalized or the unborn and leaves working with these people to the church or (in some cases) to government programs.

In a similar vein, however, we can see that there is a degree of surface awareness of the gospel as public truth. I am writing this entry on Easter (yes, it is indeed late) and it strikes me that it would be impossible to pass by this holiday without hearing some version of the gospel. Granted, it may be a distorted version on the evening news, but generally when the stores are all closed and church services are on television, it would come to the attention of the public at large. We also can't ignore the fact that the stores are closed. Many in the public may not have a clue why this holiday is so very important, but they have at least a surface idea of what is happening. We can also look to our laws and see a superficial understanding of the gospel as expected norms of behavior in society.

What is missing in the gospel as a public truth is that more in-depth knowledge that takes the gospel for societal norms to a truth that so invades the soul of an individual that they can never again live their life in the same day as the call of God beckons to them.

3) Apply Newbigin's perspective about paradigm shifts to the ECM.
It may or may not have been obvious in my posts, but I have been curious about the ECM for some time now. It's a curiosity born out of my ministry with the youth and from interaction with other youth workers particularly at youth workers' conventions and by reading youth worker blogs. In the youth I see some of the questioning that comes along with postmodernism, but in fellow youth workers I see the sense that something is happening. Five years ago, I attended my first youth workers' convention and even then I heard youth workers talking about how "things" just weren't working anymore. The assumptions on which youth ministry had been built for decades wasn't working and something else had to be developed. In 2005, when I attended the last youth workers' convention I was able to get to, the talk was more pronounced. Seminars were available from teachers like Dan Kimball and late-night theological discussions were held with people like Tony Jones. The sense was even greater that there was a change underway. These memories came to mind as I read what Newbigin wrote on page 44 about how a paradigm shift begins, "It has much more to do with intuition and imagination - the intuition that there is a problem waiting to be tackled, a configuration of things waiting to be discerned, an orderliness not yet manifest but hidden and waiting to be discovered."

What has been happening in the ECM, as I have followed it, is a quest to discern what exactly the problem is and how to creatively address it. And, to be frank, my theory is that many of these answers will come from those who work with college students or youth. Just take a look at some of the people already considered leaders in the ECM and you find that a background in youth ministry - even if only for a short time - is not uncommon.

4) Discuss your theological reflections on the logic of election and the Bible as universal history. Differ, critique, or affirm as you process these thick and rich chapters.
Election has always been a curious thing to me, so I really appreciated Newbigin's insights. Hearing arguments about election over the years, I always had difficulty with the idea that God would have chosen some to be saved and others to be condemned. I couldn't make that fit with other passages that indicate that his will is that none should perish. So, Newbigin's statement, "God does not chose to save some and to destroy others. (He has consigned all to disobedience in order that he may have mercy upon all.)" came as a clarifying statement for me. In the end, to paraphrase a statement I read in magazine once, we are all freakish people living freakish lives. God's mercy is what makes us comfortable in our freakishness and brings us into his story to be part of his mission in the world.

The key to the Bible as universal history is, I believe, found on page 91 when Newbigin talks about how the loss of hope and vision makes everything meaningless, causing publicly held norms and values to disappear. In some ways, I see this as happening before our very eyes when we look at the postmodern culture. I see it, for example, in the continuing violence in the inner cities of our nation where some youth have grown up without a vision for the future. Even in a moderately sized city, you can see the results of the lack of vision in the disregard for life that causes one teenager to gun down another on a city street corner. Newbigin talks of his Hindu friend even understanding that the Bible held the communication of the "secret" (that is, the point of everything in all of history) to those who had been entrusted with it. This truth is available to all and results in a hope that stands out even in the darkest places when the world around us seems hopeless. In a sense, that will ultimately draw people to us, and, more importantly, to Christ as we share this "secret."