remember those reporters had an affair, and one critisised their spouse on air, they got the sack, about 3 years ago?
on anther note; Kutz, what would you say is the biggest division, between the conservative calvanist right wing Church and the lefty hyppie emerging church. ( I use generalizations here, many people fit in between, no offence to anybody) AND, how would you bridge these two communities.
The shift in topic surprised and to certain degree fascinated me. Being me, I could hardly resist the opportunity to gives my (entirely off the cuff) thoughts when asked.
Kutz Kutuzov @Francis: Dude. So you want me to have a crack at that in an off-topic comment on Facebook? Sure. Afterwards I'll send you a text with the solution to the problems faced by indigenous Australian communities. (smiley face demonstrating that my tongue is in my cheek and joking without implying that the aforementioned is a laughing matter. You know, that kind of face.)
Seriously though, if you asked me to have a guess, I'd go for something like:
Post-modernism rejects the idea of an over-arching metanarrative due to its view of truth claims as means of controlling people. I can understand why this is, particularly from the perspective of those who've suffered hurt from churches where this has been the case. Most of the major leaders of the emergent church movement have come out of fundamentalist churches, often the minister's son.
Certain conservatives (remembering the massive generalisation stuff you were referring to earlier) have left behind their Christology and theology of the incarnation, forgetting that the truth was a person and personal (even before he become a human person) and want to defend abstract truths without reference to the person to which they testify. As a result, phariseeism and a lack of love can result, with little resemblance to Jesus' habit of connecting with the 'sinners'.
For me, the challenge for the emergent guys is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't throw out objective truth claims simply because these have been abused by some. Even if that abuse hurt you. I want to be there for you in that hurt and to be a part of the healing and growth that comes from being a part of the body of Christ.
In this, though, I don't want you to think that someone's abuse of the Word of God makes God's word always harmful. It's not the fault of the truth, it's the fault of those who used Scripture to control and get power for themselves. (I'm preaching on John 5 tomorrow where Jesus tells the Jews they're using the Scriptures to get glory for self, not to love God. That didn't make the truth wrong, it meant that they were abusing the truth instead of believing in it.)
So my plea to my emergent brothers and sisters is to love in both word and deed, not deed only. Because it's by speaking that we know each other, and by God's speaking to us that we know about the loving thing he did for us on the cross. God doesn't just love us, he wants us to know we're loved.
My plea to my conservative brothers and sisters would be not to take yourselves or your religion too seriously, but instead be willing to love people enough to give up your culture of religion so that people from other cultures will be able to connect with Christ as people from their own culture. They need to convert to Christ, not to middle-class anglo-saxon norms.
Well, that was all shooting from the hip. What do you reckon, bro? Not sure I solved any problems there, just outlining a few of the things I've seen happening. Did that even make sense?
