The Emerging Church

Over the years, the emerging church has garnered a variety of reactions, seen by many as a drift away from the historic Christian faith. It has grown to a large movement, comprised of a variety of unattached groups of various beliefs across the world.

It is true that much in the emerging church has liberal Christian and charismatic streams coming together under a mottled New Age spirituality—although that is not so new anymore. Especially the “Emergent Church” is a specific organization, that has veered in that direction.

This digression from the Christian faith has been fostered by a postmodernism that maintains there is no fixed truth: we all carry our own truth with us. The idea that intuition is the source of truth is fertile soil for accepting one’s belief about God as relevant as anyone else’s!

However, the common thread in all emerging churches, whether espousing evangelical or New Age views, is seeking ways to engage the postmodern culture with the faith, and disillusion with a church that seems increasingly out of touch and irrelevant to the culture.

So it’s unfair to label all emerging churches as departing from the faith. Do they distort the truth to a package the culture will accept? Or are they endeavouring to address the historic Christian faith in terms a postmodern culture understands.

The first denies the faith, the second retains its integrity. Let’s be discerning and not reactionary!

The Natives are Restless!

Ishmael, the Bible says would be “a wild donkey of a man.” The attitude of Islamists the world over, and their actions in killing and destroying anything that disagrees with the Quran, forcefully fulfill that prediction.

Yet, Ishmael was cared for by God, as He cares for all humanity. The conflict that resulted and continues today was the result of Abram and Sarai’s momentary lack of faith in the promise of God for a son. Whatever shenanigans brought him to be, God cared for Ishmael as He did for Isaac

That does not mean that God approves of Abram’s or Ishmael’s actions then or their descendants now. It simply means that He has no favourites. The nation of Israel is not “teacher’s pet,” but a chosen vehicle to proclaim His glory—which Israel has failed to do much of the time.

The problem now is how to deal with the conflict so produced: by lack of faith in God on the one hand and the ongoing resentment and enmity it causes on the other. But this scenario is not limited to that between Israel and Islam which continues to plague the world.

In fact, Canada is facing the same dilemma. The treatment of Indians by so-called “Christians” and the stigma attached to natives is the root cause of the current conflict between natives and Canada. Now, native resentment outlasts any reparations Canada might make to them.

Although some attempts at reconciliation have been made by both sides, recent actions reveal smouldering anger continues to dominate First Nations’ approach to Canada. It is doubtful that appeasement will placate this. Both anger and its cure come from within.

As long as an aggrieved party considers itself victimised, it justifies its actions, absorbing and demanding ever more to rectify the pain. It will also turn inward, hurting the very people reparations are meant to help.

The fact that hundreds of millions of dollars given to the Indians was not used to improve their living standards is designed to maintain a victimised appearance, which can be used to exact more concessions—something they have learned from Ishmael’s descendants.

A better lesson can be learned from South Africa, where Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu formed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to bring healing after a period of violent apartheid. Is it possible this can happen here? I pray so.

Hockey Hurrah?

News today that the NHL lockout was over had about as much effect on me as my neighbour’s cat having kittens. Although for some, perhaps the Mayan calendar was right about the end of the world.

The newscaster assumes hockey is everybody’s game, and we are all waiting breathlessly for it to start again. I’m breathing quite normally thank you, even though the media hype suggests that this makes me almost un-Canadian; perhaps not even really human.

It seems to me, the more virulent the raving over the game, the shallower that individual’s world is. After all, it’s not playing the game but winning at all costs that counts—so much so it incites violence on the rink and riots outside, aping soccer riots in worlds other than our own.

Hockey is one of several things that make me different to the average. I remember buying my wife a card which had a cartoon guy standing on his head. The caption sums up how I feel: “Maybe it’s the world that’s upside down. We’re the ones who are the right way up.”

2013: What's the Point?

As the old year dissolves into the new, I am drawn to the revolving cycle of life, the hatch, match and dispatch process that all nature seems bent on. Watching the magnificent BBC series Planet Earth I am struck by the incessant and urgent quest for food, reproduction, and safeguarding the young.

All nature, including human nature, lays primary stress on these clearly important issues—the fight for survival—not just personal, but for each species; the all important reproduction of the next generation.

Given the importance of the continuation of life on the planet, I am led to ask: what’s the point? I am sure you have too. Is all this frenzy just to ensure the next generation? And is that coming generation simply there to ensure the next?

This begs the question, Why is this important? Which leads me to another question: Why do we even consider this? It appears only humans have this dilemma on their minds; dogs and cats and the remaining animal world seem content with just staying alive, eating and reproducing.

One answer, often given, is that our life here is to ensure we leave the world a better place than when we came. Certainly, to alleviate suffering and improve living conditions is a laudable cause. But this simply means we continue human survival in greater comfort; the question of purpose remains unanswered.

Reading Genesis 1 on January 1 this year is probably what half of Christendom does to light the way into the New Year. God created the heavens and the earth and it was formless, empty and dark. And until we come to grips with some meaning to all this survival frenzy, our minds remain the same!

Before order was created out of the chaos, God created light—necessary for functioning of the world yet to appear. It seems logical that we need some transcendent light in our souls if we are to find meaning for the life we’ve been given.

Jesus Christ came into the world. His life was the light of men shining into our darkness. But the darkness mostly seems to reject it. If we are to have any light on the meaning of life, the only starting place is the light God brings us by his earthly appearance in Christ

“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’

And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God.’”

Minnie Louise Haskins, 1908

What better way to find meaning in 2013?

Hope for 2013?

 

It’s natural as we approach the end of one year to try to peer into the next. As we cannot know the future, it seems the most we can do is hope for the best. All those wishes for health and happiness for the coming year are just that: wishes!

Britain is known as the “Land of Hope and Glory,” sung with gusto at the Royal Albert Hall in London every year at the end of the Promenade Concerts. For many this memory has a ring of truth, although hope is diminishing in that country and the glory has been fading for a long time.

Of faith, hope and love, the greatest may be love, but the least understood is hope. Hopelessness is the cause of suicide; hope is an essential ingredient of life. But hope according to its general definition—the probable/possible expectation of something desired—is no match for life

So why does the Bible put so much emphasis on hope if hope is that precarious? Because the Bible has a different idea of hope: It is certainty about the future, as certain as the love of God and assured by our faith—faith that is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

That evidence for the unseen is more sure than the evidence for the life we experience here. “For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Thus, we will continue to put my trust and hope in God through 2013. 

Will you?