Barnacle theology


The 2006 Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly has passed, thank goodness. There are so many issues that this gathering touched on, but the one for today has to do with theology in general. I slogged through the Report of the Peace, Unity and Purity commission and the 40 page paper on the Trinity, "God's love overflowing", just to name a few, and as I read them I find myself more convinced than ever that one of the best analogies for what makes for real theology is barnacles, or more precisely, removing barnacles. I don't think the primary task of theology is 're-imagining' God or Jesus or anything else for that matter. The task of theology is to remove the barnacles of human tradition and culture that attach themselves to what God has revealed in His Word. Now I don't think theology is just a matter of doing Bible commentaries and leaving it at that. There is thinking and praying and studying that must be done to get the big picture of what God has shown and what it means for us. I do believe, however, that the most important task is to scrape off the elements of the sinful world that we live in that inevitably attach themselves to our deliberations and thinking and communicating. Its not a matter of going back to some golden age when the church was doing everything right. In the early church you have neo-platonism, misogynism (is that a word?) and other isms to watch for, as you do for every other age.
Now as an artsy kind of person I am all for creativity, but I think the place for creativity in theology isn't coming up with something brand new but discovering how to communicate God's truth in a way that is meaningful to the culture that you are adressing yet doesn't compromise the truth that it is seeking to communicate. It may not be as sexy as strapping the gospel on the procrustean bed of feminism or capitalism or marxism and being trotted out whenever the TV networks want something juicy to say about Jesus, but it is closer to what God calls us to.

Thoughts on the Minutemen at 4:28 in the morning

It's 4:28 am and I can't get back to sleep. My wife and I have different things we like to have on when we are trying to go to sleep. I like music, maybe some Vaughn-Williams or a Bruckner slow movment or some Gorecki. She likes to have it on the news. Tonight she won and I woke up to something about billboards the Minutemen want to put up, saying that our troops are not dying for illegal aliens. First of all, I think for a bunch of guys with guns going up against groups of hungry, dehydrated, poverty-stricken Mexicans to name themselves after a rag-tag group of men who went up against the well-armed, well-fed, well-trained army of what was, at the time, the most powerful nation in the world is, to say the least, inappropriate.
Now I realize that not every Mexican who crosses the border illegally is one of the huddled masses yearning to be free. It's not a simple issue. However as a Christian I have to have God's Word as my starting point, and the Bible does have a lot to say about aliens, and what it says is not what we are hearing from the Minutemen. It is interesting to watch Christians (including myself) and see when we like to play the 'obey the governing authorities' card and when we like to play the 'we must obey God rather than men' card. As I said before, it usually comes down to which political ideology we find oursleves in bed with at the moment, or what threatens our sense of security (ie. fear, which I belive perfect love, God's love, is supposed to cast out).
Anyway, as I said, it's in the wee hours of the morning and my brain is not fully engaged, though I will stand by what I have said so far. I will return to this when my resources are fully engaged. Think about this, though.

I am a novice blogger, so I hope you more experienced folks will have mercy on me. A word of introduction is perhaps called for. I am 53, a Presbyterian Church USA pastor in northwest IN, married with 10 children (3 home grown, 7 adopted, 2 with Down Syndrome, 2 with Fetal Alchohol Syndrome, 2 have passed away). My wife is an attorney and we have been married for 26 years.
Now, about the blog's title. It comes from a book by theologian Paul Tillich entitled, oddly enough, On the boundary. You will see as this blog continues that about the only thing that Tillich and I agree on is the fact that there is a divine being and the name Jesus keeps coming up in this connection. Oh yes, and the fact that, as Christians, if we are true to our faith, we can never feel completely at home in any human ideology. The book has chapters like "Between theology and sociology", "Between Lutheranism and Socialism", "Between Religion and Culture". The point Tillich makes is that, while he identifies with some aspects of all of these he cannot totally identify himself with any of them.
As to the specifics we disagree, but the basic premise is sound. Years before Brian McLaren and his pile of mush A generous orthodoxy, I would jokingly introduce myself as a Calvinist evangelical charismatic pacifist pro-life post-trib amillenialist Christian. All of those descriptions are true to a fair extent, but I find if I am with people who identify themsleves primarily by one of them (except simply Christian) I start feeling uncomfortable. It seems that, especially with the hot button ones like pacifist and pro-life, that people who claim those titles tend to become lap-dogs of the political party or ideology that fits their issue into their platform. When I see that there is a statement on some issue of the day from the Southern Baptists or my own PCUSA, I just have to look up the position of the Republican or Democratic party, respectively, and I already know what they are going to say.
Jesus said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kngdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews, but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." (John 19:36) Jesus did not mean that His kingdom had nothing to do with life on earth but that the values, the very nature of His kingdom is totally different from the way our world works. Our sinful nature has the way of this world as our default setting when it comes to thinking and decision making, so as followers of Jesus Christ we have to be on the lookout for this tendency in our life. We have to be willing not to fit in completely anywhere. That doesn't mean we go out of our way to be contrary as some do. It doesn't mean we pride ourselves on who doesn't like us. It does mean that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we become aware when we become too comfortable, too complacent, when we fit too easily into any human category.