Messy Spirituality

About ready to crumble under the (in many ways self-imposed) pressure of living by all the Do's and Don'ts we often mistake for Christianity, I was desperately seeking a messy (incarnational*) spirituality, though I didn't have the words for it at the time.

I read Mike Yaconelli's Messy Spirituality in college; it was part of an onslaught of Holy Spirit two-by-fours the Lord used to dislodge my legalistic blinders so I could see that I am the prodigal and the one who has been forgiven much.

Messy Spirituality is about exactly that. It’s a humble, unassuming story of and guide to rightly rejecting neat, sanitized spirituality, breaking out of the plastic shrinkwrap of systematized religion, and embracing abundant life with all it’s messes, failures, complexities, questions, joys, triumphs, tensions, and paradoxes. A messy spirituality truly embraces our constant need of God's grace, which turns us into people of Grace, people of God.

Romans 12:2 warns against allowing the world to squeeze us into a particular pattern, a box that doesn’t let the Light in and keeps us from real living. Yaconelli recognizes we aren’t only in danger of the world trying to make us into what the world wants us to be, but that all too often our various Christian subcultures try, often with good intentions, to squeeze us into one-size-fits-all patterns of spirituality. This small book says big things about what it means to simply walk with God. No formulas, no four-year plans. Just one foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

While a messy spirituality rejects the boxed-in legalism found in certain churches, it does not reject the Church. Messy spirituality is not a lone wolf spirituality. It is a life lived together. The more the messier! (Well, okay, not necessarily---I just couldn't resist.) Incarnational spirituality does not reject the Body of Christ (though it might shake the dust from a particular church off it's sandals).

Yaconelli helps us look at life as a rich and enriching sort of muddling in the middle---the narrow path between legalism and libertinism that leads toward wholeness and freedom. He does so with pastoral patience and humility, humor and earthiness, wisdom... and grace.

If you find yourself struggling with I'm not good enough at x, y, z spiritual discipline. If you find the Gospel truncated and irrelevant to your friends, neighbors, coworkers, or in your own life. If you could use a reminder, an affirmation in the midst of the seemingly constant struggle against our culture's/human nature's pharisaical spirituality.

This book is for you.


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* "Incarnational theology [affirms] Jesus Christ as the human expression of [God,] the second person of the Trinity. Incarnational theology can also refer to the belief that Christians are to function as Jesus Christ to humanity and represent the incarnated [embodied] Word of God to all people." We are His hands and feet. We are His messengers. (Source: http://carm.org/dictionary-incarnational-theology)

Postmodernism is Your Friend

"Postmodernists are just wrong - they say there's no absolute truth!" I said to my friend, Mark.

"I didn't know Postmodernists felt that way." he replied, confused. "Which philosophers have you read that say that?"

"Well...I, uh..." I couldn't think of anything. "I'm sure I've heard that, somewhere. I mean, I think people say that." I suddenly remembered that he was a philosophy major, and I was studying history.

"I disagree with those people," he told me, " I think that is an abuse of postmodernism."

I never forgot those words. I had certainly heard people say that postmodernism is about not believing in any sort of truth, and plenty of people have tried to use it to oppose Christianity, but I discovered that these people were wrong and that the leaders of postmodern philosophy would be the first to disagree with them. So, what is the right way to understand it?

Postmodernism is best defined as follows: incredulity towards meta-narratives.

I know, that probably doesn't help.

The idea is that a postmodern mind does not easily accept any truth. Is the world spiraling into chaos as each generation embraces more rebellious ways? Is science leading us to happier frontiers? Are we living in a more enlightened time than our ancestors, or have we lost something? A postmodernist does not accept any of these over-arching ideas (meta-narratives) and tries to find the truth without using any of these assumptions as a starting point. (Read here if you want more of the philosophical stuff. If you'd like to read a post that explains postmodernism with pictures of kittens then click here.)

Does this sound obscure and useless? Some people think so, and that's fine. It's also harmless to Christianity. In fact, no one learns the truth until they put aside their preconceptions and really question everything they've been told to see if it's really true, and that's at the core of postmodern thought.

Sound familiar?

"Test everything that is said to be sure it is true, and if it is, then accept it." 1 Thessalonains 5:21

Why Did Jesus Weep? (An Introvert's Guide to Acting Human)

Was Jesus an introvert? I like to think so. Of course, I like to think that He was a Libertarian who would have enjoyed Star Trek, too, so my opinion is a little biased.

Something that stands out when reading the Gospels is the way Jesus really cared about people. That might sound obvious, but it's neat to read about him having compassion for people, or being moved to tears by their plight, because in movies He's portrayed as a vulcan-esque figure (speaking of Star Trek) with no emotions and no passion. The Bible tells a better story.

While traveling with his disciples, Jesus got word that his friend, Lazarus, was dying, and that He should come soon to heal him. The letter is from Lazarus' sisters, Mary and Martha, who had seen Jesus heal others. To the bewilderment of His followers, Jesus waited a few days before going, saying He was on his way to "wake" Lazarus from his sleep.

When Jesus showed up, Mary and Martha were upset since Lazarus had passed away. The strange thing is that Jesus didn't say, "Calm down, I'm about to raise him from the dead. It's cool." Instead, he cried. Jesus wept along with them in their misery - even though He was about to resurrect Lazarus.

This behavior seemed odd, until I remembered this:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. -Romans 12:14-16

This is tough, for me, because I'm not naturally emotive. When someone's having a bad day I realize how rough it must be, and my mind starts thinking about the situation and the possible outcomes...meanwhile I forget to interact with them because so I'm busy thinking about their issue. Telling me about your problems is like talking to a statue.

How do I learn to do this better? It turned out to be easier than I thought. By simply telling people that I was concerned (or, just saying anything) I found that I could make people feel less alone. (Like when Data pats people on the back and says, "There, there.") The importance of Jesus' weeping became more clear to me each time I found a way to express my concern.

This sounds silly to some of you. I have friends who are ready to tear up a box of tissues at the start of someone's sad story, but it's not something that all of us do naturally. I'm learning. Until I'm good at it, accept my slight smile, or beard stroking, as evidence that I care.

How I Learned to Love Evolution (Confessions of a Theistic Evolutionist)

After hearing about the "dangers of evolution" for so much of my life, I later learned that I could embrace it, or at least ignore it. I think the church's battle against scientific progress is misled, just as any person of science should not be using their work to campaign against Christians. It's OK with me if we disagree on these things, but I want to tell you how I arrived at this conclusion.

In church, I had always been told that the earth must only be a few thousand years old because The Bible Says So, and anyone who says otherwise is just trying to rebel against God. I wasn't so sure about that last part until I met several people who only promoted evolution as an anti-church message. (I realize, now, that most people who care about science are not fighting the church, but if you're a Christian you'll run into people who want to insult your faith with Darwin's theories. Immature.)

Suddenly, I was caught in a fray. With creationists on one side of me and evolutionists on the other, I had to choose a side. Or, so I thought.

This changed when I attended a lecture by a leading Darwinian scholar. I expected him to trash Christianity, but he didn't. He pointed out that Charles Darwin never thought his ideas were at odds with Christian theology (which he knew better than I realized), despite what I had always been told. I found out that the speaker was leading an effort to end the animosity between churches and scientists, and this gave me great respect for him. Most importantly, I learned that Darwin did not oppose the church - that was fascinating. Also, this was the first time anyone ever explained how Darwin came to his conclusions, and they seemed sensible to me.

I had work to do. Hadn't I been told that the Bible was opposed to evolution? But reading the Scriptures didn't give me any obvious answers. The book of Genesis simply tells us that God made man "out of dirt." That's not very specific. Studying traditional theology didn't help, either. In the fourth century, Augustine said, in his Confessions, that God could have created the world by making a seed and letting that seed grow into the planet we know, over time. The word "evolution" did not exist in those days, but Augustine seemed to have understood it.

But evolution takes millions of years, and the earth isn't that old, right? Again, I looked for proof of this in the Bible and found none. The Bible says God made the universe in six days, but it's not that simple. In those passages, the word used for "day" is the Hebrew word "yom," which can mean anything from a 24-hour period to an indefinite amount of time. (For example, one passage in the Bible uses that word when discussing what will happen in "the day of the Lord," which is certainly not a 24-hour day.) I had no idea how long God spent making the earth.

Of course, I'm no Hebrew scholar - I needed help. So I found as many Hebrew readers as I could. All of
them were fluent in Hebrew and came from conservative Christian churches, and all of them told me the same thing: the book of Genesis does not tell us the age of the earth. In fact, they confirmed that the creation story was written like a song and not a textbook. I was told that I could hold to any view I wanted to about the age of the earth and no one would be able to definitively prove me wrong, since the ancient Hebrew didn't include those details. (Scientific tedium apparently just wasn't important to the author of Genesis.)

Then I attended a lecture about the origin of life given by a biologist who is currently working to fight cancer. He explained that the leading theory was that some sort of tiny organism(s) originated in a primordial ooze on our planet that slowly evolved into something we recognize as a life form. He admitted that this was very speculative, and that little was actually known about the origin of life - but the facts pointed him in this direction. I had no argument. He didn't claim to understand it - he gladly admited that it was a mystery - he was just following the data he had gathered from looking into countless microscopes.

I was reminded, again, of God using dirt to make the first person. The biology teacher was saying that life started from dirt on the ground, and that's exactly what my Bible said. Did He do it by using primordial ooze? Do our scientific instruments point us to the ground as the source of life because that's where we came from when God made us? From this point of view, evolutionary science was only confirming what the Bible said - life began miraculously from the ground.

Of course, I have no idea how the events of Genesis took place, exactly. We're only told the important parts - that the world was made by God so He could have fellowship with us - which leaves a lot for us to fill in with scientific discovery. God made gravity to organize the heavens and keep our planet in orbit around the sun, and maybe He made evolution as a way of ordering nature.

We're left with plenty of questions, as my fellow blogger told us a while back, but there is no view of Christianity that does not leave us with unsolved questions. Young earth creationists are still trying to sell me on the idea that dinosaurs lived with the ancient Romans; as a historian I can tell you that is certainly untrue.

If evolution is someday dismissed by science, then so be it. I have no stake in it. But as long as it's the reigning theory I will have no problem with it. I've left behind the idea that evolution is a threat to the church, and I look forward to a day when the supposed conflict between faith and science is put away.