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Illuminating the Word

Earlier, I blogged a bit about "The Splendor of the Word," a NYPL special exhibition.  That was just preliminary stuff.

Here's what really fascinated me about the manuscripts: intertextuality.  Or, "how we desperately need the help of pre-modern,  long-dead medieval artists to read the Bible in a modern & post-modern world."

Placing Ourselves in the Word?

If your church could provide Bibles to people with their own pictures inserted into the text, should they?

Why do I ask?  Well...

Paige and I recently took a short trip up to New York City.  One of the things we did was visit a special exhibition at the New York Public Library called "The Splendor of the Word."  It featured breathtaking medieval & Renaissance illuminated manuscripts.  They included Bibles, public worship books, private devotional materials, and secular/ scientific writings.

The artwork is gorgeous and the accompanying text and audio guide are quite informative.  The exhibit raised some fantastic questions about how we honor, interpret, and apply Scripture.  And it also demonstrated that even some very new, very "post-modern" questions really are quite old.

Leaning into the Promises

A while back, I finished reading Out of the Question, Into the Mystery by Len Sweet.  Wow.  I copied page after page of "gems" out of it.  I'm not "sold" on his exegesis of the Abraham story, but that doesn't detract from the value of this book.  Get it, read it.  Let it percolate.  This is a much better book than some of his other recent ones.

I'm going to use a term that I don't believe Sweet uses, but he captures the reality behind it so well: functional atheism.  And the scary fact is, lots and lots of Christians and churches fit into this label.  Here's Sweet: "We've developed more of a faith 'perspective' than a faith 'posture.'  We're there in theory, but not in practice" (p. 14). 
 

What If Christians Actually Believed...? (Blue Like Jazz)

Here's another great one from Blue Like Jazz (Donald Miller):

"Satan, who I believe exists as much as I believe Jesus exists, wants us to believe meaningless things for meaningless reasons.  Can you imagine if Christians actually believed that God was trying to rescue us from the pit of our own self-addiction?  Can you imagine?"  (p. 106)

First of all, "the pit of our own self-addiction."  Now that's a description of sin and death!  I love it.  The description, that is.  Not the reality.  But then this idea that the devil wants us to believe meaningless things for meaningless reasons.  We are wired to believe things, to believe in things beyond ourselves.  We are created for commitment.  No amount of secularization can take that out of the human condition.  This need to believe, this need to worship, is so deeply ingrained that Calvin was able to call the human mind an "idol factory." 

How to Get Radical in Pursuit of Change (Blue Like Jazz)

Recently finished Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz.  I have to say, while I wasn't offended at all, I also wasn't exactly impressed.  The writing style was not pleasant for me to read; sort of a "forced humble hip familiarity."  There were moments when I thought I was hearing Holden Caufield's voice.  And while the book does strive to be thought-provoking, it is vague enough to do just that without providing as much substance as one might hope for.  Perhaps that's part of the mystery and wonder that Miller lifts up.  But I kept getting this feeling that I wasn't sure what was genuinely mysterious, and what was intentionally unclear.

Still, every time I was just about to put the book back on my shelf, I'd come across a great thought.  I'll put a few of them up on here.

Lutheran - Emergent? Shared Realities

I was recently asked by Bob, over at iamachristiantoo, about what "emergent" and "Lutheran" might have to do with each other.  (Here's the blog entry in question.)  Now, I've got to start out with a couple of big disclaimers.  I'm an observer of the Emergent/ Emerging Church movement, no authority (in either sense of the word - my knowledge is not authoritative, nor can I speak in any way for the movement).  I have been greatly enriched by a lot of what I have read/ seen/ heard/ experienced, even as I find some things that I would prefer to leave behind, and some that I fear need great correction.  On the other hand, while I suppose I am pretty knowledgeable about Lutheranism, I tend to have the same spectrum of responses to contemporary Lutheranism as I do to the emergent conversation: some of it strikes me as right-on and wonderful; some of it makes me wonder if we're on the same planet, never mind confessing the same faith.  I think, though, that there are some interesting convergences, some potentially creative tensions, and some opportunities for the mutual exchange of gifts between the Lutheran movement and the Emergent movement.  So, I'd like to offer some outline thoughts here.  If any of these seem especially interesting to folks, I'd be glad to try and expand on them.

[By the way: If you're wondering, "What does this mean?" when it comes to the term "emerging church," I'd encourage you to click on over to Tall Skinny Kiwi's recent post here.  Andrew will take care of you nicely.  Will Samson's blog is a good place to go to get a "flavor" for it, as are Emergent US and a great book by Doug Pagitt.]

Saruman, Blink, Modernism, the Whole

Thoroughly enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.  And of course, I have to relate part of it to The Lord of the Rings.  Many have seen in Tolkien's "epic fairy tale" deep and profound critiques of modernism.  I have admittedly not researched this to great depth, but I have never seen my favorite "anti-modernism" scene ever included in such an exploration.  What I'd like to do is lift up an exchange between Gandalf the Grey and Saruman the White, and compare it to an episode described in Blink, to see what they say, together, about modernism and suggestions about faithful Christian response to it.

Fractal Life

I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink right now.  It starts out wonderfully, but gets a little scattered towards the end.  It's as if he had all these great ideas that he had researched, but he couldn't quite fit them into the narrative path that he started out with.  But definitely a worthwhile read!

One of the really interesting aspects for me was research into watching married couples interacting for extremely brief periods, but knowing what cues to look for in order to find predictors for the long-term health of the relationship.  If you know what to look for in these "thin slices," then you can see the big picture captured in a very small segment, sort of like those gorgeous pictures of graphed fractals.  There's a recursive property to them; no matter how far you "zoom in," you still see something that looks very similar to the "whole."

I think this is an example of an extremely useful paradox for congregations in a post-modern context.  As we become more aware of the interconnectedness of all aspects of congregational life (thinking systemically and holistically, rather than in terms of segments and autonomous units), we can get powerful insight into the realities of a church's big picture by knowing what kinds of details to examine.  Similarly, a systemic understanding allows greater meaning to be found in small slices of observation.  You want to see what's really happening in the big picture (and not just what the articulated goals, values, structures, etc. are)?  Zoom in.  Know which "thin slices" to go after.

This is helpful to me, because thinking holistically and systematically can often feel overwhelming.  There's just too much data to process!  The narrative is just to broad and complex!  But looking at things in terms of an interdependent system doesn't mean holding everything in your head at once.  It means seeing how individual details, points, and events are related to the whole.

Gilead and This Lovely World

Another tidbit from Gilead:

"I know this [whole world] is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that.  There is a human beauty in it.  And I can't believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us.  In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets" (p. 57).

Wow.  What a way to connect the value of this life with the all-surpassing beauty of the world that is to come.  What a way to preserve the conviction that although there will be a new heaven and a new earth, this creation, and how we steward our lives within it, still matters, even in a way that is eternal.

Gilead and "Strained Interpretation"

Recently finished Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.  It is a slow, gentle read.  The prose is just gorgeous.  I really had to decide to read it, though.  It isn't a book you devour.  But every now and then, there are these absolutely magnificent gems.  Here's one, with the narrator (a preacher) recollecting about his grandfather (also a preacher), who counted his eye lost in Civil War combat a blessing:

"He once told me that being blessed meand being bloodied, and that is true etymologically, in English - but not in Greek or Hebrew.  So whatever understanding might be based on that derivation has no scriptural authority behind it.  It was unlike him to strain interpretation that way.  He did it in order to make an account of himself, I suppose, as most of us do" (p. 36).

Straining interpretation in order to make an account of ourselves!  Certainly a post-modern look at how doctrine is formed!  But how true it is...  I think of some of my seminary classmates, remarkable folks whom I love dearly, but who would engage in remarkably self-destructive behaviors and brush away any questions in the spirit of Lutheran anti-legalism.  Yes, in Christ we are free.  But Jesus didn't die so you could indulge every selfish impulse you ever had!  Or pastors who construe "faithfulness" to mean "frankly, we're not very attractive to people."  Yes, faithfulness means not simply appealing to the self-indulgent appetites of the world.  But it also means incarnating the love of Christ that draws the wounded in search of healing.

How much would our theological disagreements be enriched if we could be honest about how much we are straining interpretations in order to give an account for ourselves, or our traditions?