(Ir)religiosity

To finish off my United Methodist History/Doctrine course last semester the entire class particpated in a “semester conference.  As students we were required to offer a few things we would change about the church (theology, polity, etc.) and a few things we’d like to see retained and passed on to the next generation.  I won’t mention my “changes” because frankly those took up too much of my floor time and I feel like a could write a book about them.  And I tend to be deconstructive by nature, which means it is good for me to talk about what I am for from time to time.

I mentioned two things that I felt should be kept in the Methodist tradition, two things I think have been abandoned for the sake of institutionalization and bureaucracy and two things that I believe lie at the heart of John Wesley’s legacy:  Christian perfection and the General Rules.  Christian perfection seemed to get a lot of airtime that day so I chose to talk primarily about the General Rules which are 1) to do no harm, 2) to do all the good possible, and 3) to attend to all the ordinances of God (prayer, corporate worship, Eucharist, etc.).  Sadly, most Methodists haven’t the faintest idea of what these are and have probably never heard of them.  Which is unfortunate because I think they provide one of the best and most concise guides for following in the Way of Jesus.

So I was thrilled when I saw the title of Kevin Watson’s new book A Blue Print for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living. Not only does Kevin share my admiration for the General Rules, he is also interested in discipleship, another area in which Wesley was a true innovator, and, unfortunately, an area where the UMC seems to be failing (at least in the US) given its recent decline.

Like any good Wesleyan, Kevin notes the primacy of grace in all stages of ones Christian life, the goal of which is to participate in the divine life for the sake and transformation of the world.  This divine grace permeates Kevin’s appropriation all three of the rules as well as his understanding of Wesley’s strategy for implementing them in practice, in community.  For Kevin, Wesley’s model, which he describes wonderfully in way that is very accessible, is the most effective way to empower persons to transition from “nominal Christians” to “deeply committed Christians” — those who live the radical way of Jesus in their own contexts and communities.  To me, this blueprint for discipleship, as Kevin calls it, is the real genius of Wesley’s legacy.  But unfortunately many Methodists and Wesleyans are unaware of that gift. Kevin’s work is a wonderful contribution toward the endeavor of recovering and reclaiming Wesley’s robust understanding of discipleship.

The real strength of the book is its attention toward Christian practice and affection for the local church.  Like I said, it is very accessible, short (just over 100 pages), complete with discussion questions at the end of each chapter and an appendix guide for small group study.  The book is full of helpful examples and anecdotes that situate the General Rules and Wesley’s ethos within the life of the church as well as Kevin’s own personal journey.  To that end, I think the book is an excellent resource for local churches that are seeking to revitalize or even implement for the first time, a serious discipleship program that takes seriously Wesley’s robust theological legacy.

Much ink has been spilled with the purpose of exploring Wesley’s theology.  And that’s wonderful.  But unfortunately, books like Kevin’s, books that explore the practical ramifications of Wesley’s blueprint for discipleship, are a rarity (in my estimation at least).  Folks tend to forget that that area was Wesley’s speciality.  It is my deep hope that his legacy can be recovered.   I think Kevin’s book represents and important and helpful effort to do so. An effort that indicates a robust understanding of Wesley’s theology at a theoretical level, but is very much rooted in the life of the local church as the most significant arena in which discipleship takes place.

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• A Blueprint for Discipleship [review] (hackingchristianity.net)

We like to dichotomize things.  It makes our lives much easier when things can be easily compartmentalized and divided.  But the problem with that tendency is that it creates unneeded — and often blatantly false — polarities and bifurcations.  These type of constructions are endemic in the modern church and some of the more common and noticeable ones are the divisions between conservative and liberal, evangelical and progressive, traditional and contemporary, and so on.  Even within the latest renewal movement which aims to rethink and re-imagine “church” and Christianity we see a division between emerg-ing and emerg-ent.  This penchant to create fissures and fractures seems to be a natural one.

Nevertheless, I think something is missed in doing so because no group or category has a monopoly on Truth (capital “T”) but each one has a certain part, a certain important piece, of the truth (little “t”), a piece that is lost when its counterparts jettison it altogether.  So I like the tension and the dialectic.  To me, that’s the real sweet spot.  It can be painful and messy, yes, but I think that makes it all the more beautiful.

Of all these petty and unnecessary binaries the division between orthodoxy and orthopraxy is one of the most important, or at least one with greater implications.  It’s also one of the most divisive that will almost always incite inflammatory or emotional reaction from someone.  Really, when you think about it, where stand here has implications for just about everything.  It’s serious business.  And the usual arguments are so…tiresome.  Conservatives insist that orthodoxy trumps everything and that it must be vigorously defended against heresy.  Likewise, liberals, quoting Matthew 25 no doubt, rebut that praxis must be emphasized over (and sometimes against) belief.  But both poles have blind spots, blind spots that their counterparts love to point out.   And so goes the endless deadlock and debating round and round the circle.

I think both of these points are hopelessly unimaginative and helplessly beholden to a modern mindset that is very quickly becoming outmoded.

I want to suggest that it is not either/or and that placing doxis (belief) and praxis (action) against one another misses the larger movement.  I think it is and/both.  And rigid hegemony of either is dangerous if not destructive.  Belief is deeply important to me but only insofar as it transforms the very fabric of my being, rupturing my comfortable and conventional way of relating to the other, with something wholly Other, something I otherwise thought to be impossible, even absurd, but now made very possible via my response to God’s grace and Jesus’ to call to radical love.  Similarly, those tangible actions and that palpable praxis, because it is so radical and beyond predictable possibility, simply cannot be brought to full fruition without a grounding narrative or belief, a reliance on something beyond my own finite human capacities.

So both belief and action are inherently interdependent and mutually interactive.  And both are understood differently.  Belief is not simply something to which I submit my mental or cognitive assent, neither is action, like some sort of fetish, something I do in order to avoid guilt or shame.  Both of those usual conceptions avoid real transformation.  As much as we might argue otherwise, they just don’t alter our being, our person-hood, and our relations with God, self, and the other.    And for me that is the ultimate point.  That is what we are striving for:  individual and collective transformation so that we are realigned according to God’s purposes, restored of the Imago dei so we can responsibly participate in God’s alternate reality (what Jesus called the kingdom of God) and graciously increase the love of God and neighbor in our various contexts.

Belief and action, doxis and praxis.  Both are very important and both are contingent upon the other, but neither can be allowed to crust over into tired dogmatism because when they do we run the dangerous risk of slipping into idolatry. And when we do that, well, we’ve really missed the point.

Doxis or praxis?

Hint:  this may be a trick question.

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• We Cannot Speak of What We Believe (blakehuggins.com)

Peter Rollins has an excellent post on why/how he denies the resurrection that has been bouncing around the blogosphere over the last week or so.  If you haven’t read it you should, he has some good food for thought.  Ultimately, insisting on rigid assent to the factuality and historicity of the resurrection misses the point.  Indeed, one could assent to such propositions and still unashamedly deny the very existence and power of the  resurrection. The point is not so much what may or may not have happened in the past, but what is happening now in the continued present and on into the im/possible future.

This strikes to the very root of belief.  Todd Littleton offers a great comment:

We cannot say what we believe. We only do what we believe.

Jonathan Brink has two excellent posts that address this very thing.  Our true, and often hidden belief, it seems to me at least, lies not in our creedal propositions or our elaborate systematic theologies (though those are not without some merit) but in our naked encounters with the other and our willingness to allow oursleves to be transformed by such a meeting.  It is in that moment and through that event that our true belief, birthed through vulnerability and empathy and with complete disregard for dignified formulation, is laid bare for all to see.

We simply cannot rightly speak of what we truly believe.  It evades the very extremities of our language and discourse.  For true, transformative belief — and in theology I cannot think of any legitimate belief except that which truly transforms — can only be made known within the realm of relationship and the sphere of praxis.

After two weeks of interweb percolation, Kevin Watson has posted the results of the UM Social Media experiment.

There were 759 views of the YouTube video promoting Reclaiming the Wesleyan Tradition: John Wesley’s Sermons for Today There were 44 hits to the video when I discovered it and posted it on the Methodist blogosphere. At the end of the first week there were 619 views. This means that the momentum slowed down significantly after the first week as there were 140 views in the second week. (On the other hand, that is still more than three times as many views as the video had in its first six months of existence.)

About a week ago I posted a comment on Kevin’s update of the traffic.  Maybe it’s because I had really low expectations going in, but I was surprised at the results.  I still am to some extent, especially with the increase of views in the first week.  A mere twenty-five blogs generated almost 600 unique hits.  I think that is pretty good.

Others have expressed some disappointment with the results.  That’s understandable.  The video itself  has been criticized; both the production and what it was plugging were lifted up as possible reasons behind why more persons didn’t participate and why the traffic dropped off after about a week.  The production/content problem looks to be true and the traffic issue may have more to do with the dynamics of viral marketing than anything else (though, this was not at all a true viral phenomenon) I think. A small number of initial participants necessarily limits the spread, especially after the initial peak in traffic.

Which lead me to my main disappointment of the whole thing.  Only 25 bloggers participated.  Just glancing over the MethoBlog I can see more than 25 links.  So why such a small number?  Is the actual number of active Methobloggers much lower than what has been compiled at the MethoBlog?  Or did most Methobloggers think the vido simply wasn’t good enough to be promoted on their blog? Or, are Methobloggers simply not effectively networked with one another?

I’m not sure.  Of all those questions, I think the third is really worth reflecting upon.  Especially since connectionalism one of our tradition’s most heralded hallmarks.  How does that translate into the online, social media-oriented world?  Are we really capitalizing on those resources?

What are you thoughts?  How can Methobloggers be more effectively connected and networked with one another?

Kevin Watson, who blogs at Deeply Committed, has started an experiment to see how much social capital Methobloggers have. This experiment was prompted by the feeling among some Methobloggers that United Methodism does not always do as good of a job as it could at getting the Wesleyan message out there, particularly online. So, Kevin wants to see how many views a YouTube video can get if Methobloggers work together to promote it. The experiment is to see how many hits the video will receive in two weeks.

If you want to participate you can: First, watch the video below. Second, copy and paste this entire post into a new post on your blog and post it. Third, remind people about this experiment in one week.

Based on the results of the experiment, Kevin will get in touch with the folks at Discipleship Resources and let them know the ways in which Methobloggers are often an underused resource.

I think this is an excellent idea.  And I’ll be interested to see what comes of it.  The sooner us Methodists improve our presence and ability to mobilize online the better.

You can find the other participants in this experiment here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here and here, and here. And here. Oh…and here.

I know it’s a little late for Holy Week fodder, but I’ve been busy over the last week and a half. The following is the text of a devotional I gave Wednesday of Holy Week at Village United Methodist Church, as part of a Holy Week breakfast series. The text that morning was John 15:1-17.

Today’s text is very interesting and even a little puzzling. This section of John’s gospel (chapters 15-16) is part of a larger section scholars have labeled the “Farewell Discourses.” Now, John’s gospel is known for its long, abstract, philosophical discourses and monologues wherein Jesus describes himself as “the bread of life,” “the good shepherd,” and so on. But today’s reading where Jesus likens himself to “the true vine” is the longest monologue in any gospel lasting until 16:17 when the disciples stop to question Jesus.

But even more puzzling is the fact that this section and the whole excursus about the vine and the branches seems to repeat and expound upon everything Jesus said in John 14. In John 14 Jesus says that he is the way, the truth, and the life, that in order to know God one must remain in him, living a new type of imperially subversive life, and he promises that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, will come when he is gone to help. So, why would Jesus repeat himself in John 15? Why would he go out of his way to further explain himself with the image of the vine and the branches? This happens right after Jesus washes the disciples in John 13 and just before he is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. These are, according to John, Jesus’ last moments with his disciples, his closest friends with whom he has spent the last 3 years. Why would he spend so much time on this?

The fact that Jesus spends so much time here making sure he has made his point tells me that this was very, very important. This was essentially the last time he spoke to his disciples, as a group so whatever he told them here, I believe, is likely the most important part of his message.

And what does he say? He uses the image of a vine and its branches to illustrate the relationship of his followers and himself to God. Now, this is an image we have a hard time relating to, but Jesus’ disciples would have been very closely attuned to it. Grapes, vines, and vineyards were an integral part of their culture. Wine was a staple commodity. So Jesus uses the visceral image to convey his message. Jesus is the vine, God is the vine grower. The disciples—then and now—are the vine branches. God is the source life and ground of being. Jesus serves as the conduit of that life exemplifying and embodying the best possible way to live life. Our trajectory emerges from that, from the life of Jesus. Through Jesus’ example, were are enabled to participate in God’s life and God’s process of creativity and restoration. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches and God is the caretaker. Through relationship with Jesus and synergetic interaction with the divine life, we in time bear fruit.

This was Jesus’ final message to his disciples. This is obviously very important. Finally, to cap it all off Jesus says we are to above all, love one another. Love one another. The last message that Jesus gives to his disciples is about love. It seems so easy, but it is so hard. It is especially hard for us because we use the word ‘love’ to mean a number of things from a personal preference, as in “I love pizza,” to a strong feeling of affection and commitment, as in “I love my wife” to everything in between. We have so many meanings for love that we don’t even know what it means anymore. But Jesus had a very specific meaning for this higher type of love and the best example of that is Jesus’ willingness to nonviolently confront the powers that be knowing that he would likely be executed. To say of his executioners “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” To turn to the terrorist being executed beside him and say “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

When you look closely you see that Jesus entire life was an example of this higher type of love and what Paul Tillich called “ultimate concern for ‘the other.’” Jesus exercised radical love and concern with everyone he came in contact with: tax collectors, prostitutes, the unclean, the damned, the broken hearted, the neglected, the outcast, and the marginalized. Those that society holds at arms’ length, Jesus welcomes with arms wide open (insert cheesy Creed song here). Jesus’ message, at the core was about love, love for God and love for people, because after all, God is love. As the great activist and preacher William Sloane Coffin wrote:

“God is love as Scripture says and that means the revelation is in the relationship. God is love means God is known devotionally not dogmatically. God is love does not clear up old mysteries, it discloses new mystery. God is love is not a truth we can master, it is only one to which we can surrender. Faith is being grasped by the power of love.”

So for Christians love is a verb not a noun. Which presents us with a problem because we Christians like to preach, we like to talk and we like to listen (at least most of us do). We like to read and write books about this gospel business. We like to come up with cute curricula.  We like to plant churches. We like to play the game. But this life of love that we are called to live as branches of the vine, this love that we participate in with God is not something to be heard or talked about. No, instead it is something to be seen, something to be done. It is, as Jesus showed with his life an action and a relationship. “They will know we’re Christians by our love” is much more than a songs title, it is the essence of our faith. If we fail at living out love with our actions, we have failed the entire Christian project. It has become quite cliché to say “actions speak louder than words,” but for disciples of Jesus there isn’t a more powerful truism. Indeed, love wins, but love cannot win if love is not alive. We must bring love alive. We must give love a body, and a face. God grant us the courage to bring love alive.

About 15 years ago, controversial historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan wrote a book about Jesus’ life. It’s a more accessible digest of his much thicker, much more provocative book on the historical Jesus. Rarely, if ever in scholarly, academic books like this do we ever hear about the author’s personal faith journey or catch a glimpse of their spirituality. I think that’s unfortunate. I wish they would write about themselves more often. I understand why they don’t, but I wish they would. Anyway, in the prologue of this book, we catch one of those rare glimpses. Dominic writes a hypothetical dialogue with himself and Jesus about his book that I think especially speaks to the Christian problem of speaking without acting and the tension of love as a noun versus love as a verb. It goes like this:

“I’ve read your book Dominic, and it’s quite good. So now you’re ready to live by my vision and join me in my program?”
“I don’t think I have the courage, Jesus, but I did describe it quite well, didn’t I, and the method was especially good wasn’t it?”
“Thank you, Dominic, for not falsifying the message to suit your own incapacity. That at least is something.”
“Is it enough Jesus?”
“No, Dominic, no it is not?”

Let us pray.