Magic (defn): The power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces. Authur C. Clarke is often quoted: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". That is, of course, true. The corollary, that anything that appears to be magic is therefore advanced technology, is not logically true. Yet, when trying to debunk the supernatural, so often the inference of this corollary is applied to the transcendent desires all humans have. The implied meaning is that one must of course be a fool to believe there is a transcendence to our existence. "The eyes are the mirrors of the soul" (Cicero 106-43 B.C.), is a common phrase. Most people have some sense of a soul, there is a magic in all of us we'd like to believe. Deep inside we all want there to be a transcendence to our existence, however rational or scientific we might think we are. I listened to a talk the other day, it was one of the best I've ever heard for communicating Christianity to people who think its all crap. It was about Harry Potter and Christian magic. The talk highlighted the hunger for magic in our lives. This hunger is fairly obvious if one thinks about it, everyone is attracted to the mystical and magical. Just look as our movies and books. How many books and movies are there about the Holy Grail? And as for fantasy novels, and Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and so much more, almost all novels appeal to some deeper sense of transcendence that shapes our lives, and we drink it in. Even in real life contexts, people are readily gullible to stories of amazing happenings. People have a deep hunger for the transcendent. Of course the hunger does not prove there is a transcendent. However, we all continually try to rationalize scenarios where magic is real. I was talking with someone last year, and they were wrestling with whether there was meaning to life. Their conclusion, after reading a range of literature that stroked their desires with arguments based on emotions, was that there is a universal force from which we come, and to which we will return. This person had concluded that the universal force is a bit like electricity, there is power but no personality. Its a comforting view, because a mere force is less threatening than a force with a mind that might choose how to use the force. A mere force can be tapped. A personality has to be related to. Like the prisoners in Plato's cave, we all feel shackled and unable to perceive the true reality of our existence. "If only", we think, "we could see the true reality". Yet at the same time we desperately hope there is no personality behind the transcendent, because that would remove it from our potential control. As 2018 begins magic is in the air. More than ever perhaps, the world is desiring the mystical. This is a natural response to uncertain times ... Brexit, Trump, North Korea, Middle East, Nationalism, Climate Change, etc., etc. In such times as this we naturally look for something to give meaning to it all - a power above. We want a magic we can tap into, a power to help us face the future. Christianity (not the religion) holds that Jesus is "magical", a person embodying magic. Yet Jesus only makes sense if you take the whole package with the magical. Strip Jesus of the magical, and he is not even a good man. So my thought as we begin 2018 is this: if you're a Christian, are you able to talk to a secular relativist about the magic of Jesus in a way that is not wrapped in opaque language and confusing concepts? And if you're a secular relativist who says its all crap, have you examined the evidence, because if the evidence is compelling and you ignore it, you're a fool. Deny it after examination and I'll respect you. Deny it because you don't want it to be true, and I'll say you're an idiot. I suspect 2018 is going to be a turning point that moves the world in directions we don't even yet understand. We are moving into the unprecedented. If there's nothing transcendent, its all meaningless and let the chips fall where they will. But if there is reason to believe in the transcendent, then the most critical question of all is whether there is a personality behind it.
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This is a continuation of writings that muse about the nature of church in a post-Christian world.
There have always been churchless Christians ... those too scared to dig in deep, twice-a-year attendees, culturally Christian, use-it-when-it-suits-me Christians. There have also always been a few individuals who, for whatever reason, have a deep and rational faith, and yet stay on the fringe of church community. However, there is a new breed (re-)emerging. These are individuals who are a consequence of this era where the church is increasingly disconnected from society. They are mature in their faith, learned, have a solid theology, in real relationship with God, moved by compassion for a hurting world, and yet now outside the institutional church community. Those that I personally know have all at some point in their lives been deeply involved in church, usually in some form of leadership. These are not Christian wimps. In my circle I am increasingly seeing the emergence of more and more of this breed of Christian. I suspect this has always happened in history, whenever the institution of the church has failed to recognize and engage with the fundamental shifts happening in society. The churchless mature Christian is a paradox, for as Christians we are made for community. Yet the traditional expression of community has failed these individuals who seek to wrestle with the complex realities of real-world living. These are Christians pulled to engage with the dynamic and fundamental shifts going on in society, and their institutional homes are increasingly archaic structures of preference preservation. The churchless mature Christian is depressed, resourceless and vulnerable. For where are they to find conversation that is meaningful, where are they to receive and give, how are they supported? It is tempting to toss out critique or begin with "You should ...", but that approach only serves to further alienate. Until the leadership inside the church can stand in the shoes of the mature Christian who is now on the outside, no meaningful discussion is possible. At the heart is this question: what will the expression of Christian community look like in this new relativist, fragile, deeply interconnected, exposed, polarised, and post-modern world? And the root of the response begins with "who will I talk to now?" Meanwhile the world turns, leaving Christianity behind.
Consider:
(a) The functional stability of society is now deeply dependent on a fragile global connectivity of goods and services, so much so that this is now seen as a national security threat and/or an opportunity to project power. For example, undersea fibre-optic cables carry more than 97% of all communication traffic - the UK sees this as a national security threat. Couple that with trans-border dependence on energy, food, water, and more, add a dose of climate change, and we are critically vulnerable. (b) Individuals are finding an increasingly steep hill to climb as they try to become adults (see here ... scroll for the story). The minority with resources leverage their advantage with the result that those with limited resources find it ever harder to find security. Oxfam estimates that the 8 richest people now have the same wealth as half of humanity combined. Yet more evidence to the growing divide. (c) Around us culture is changing faster than most people are even able to comprehend. The norms of behavior jump from one year to the next, it is expected that one should tolerate everything but intolerance. At the same time we have fading privacy, tracking of individuals is pervasive, people's live are being commodified in the interests of commercial transactions, and lifestyles are normalised as any personal choice becomes acceptable. (d) Technological fluency is a livelihood imperative. If you cannot get into the mind-set of technologically supplemented living, you're lost from the mainstream of society, disadvantaged, and vulnerable. Who reading this knows how to buy a bitcoin? To help people overcome these challenges new apps and aids are pushed to shield people from the complexities they're engaging with, and at the same time open the door to being used and abused. You have a cell phone? You're being tracked whether you have GPS on or not. You use gmail? Your messages are being scanned by artificial intelligence programs with the intent of supplying you with "value added" services while your life is simultaneously mined and stored to optimize advertising and manipulation of your choices. You have a Facebook account? You're being marketed! And the list goes on. Watch the movie "Gattaca", or "The Circle", or any one of a myriad of similar plausible futurist scenarios. Consider how Trump is able to become president, and that enough of the population are even willing to vote for him. How does all this make you feel? What is your assessment of the cost-benefit? And if you're a Christian like me, have you ANY rational formulation of a response of how the church should engage? Regardless of where one stands, the deep issue is that of human relationships. How we interact continually changes (not always for the worse by any means). The stresses on daily living are fundamentally altered. Time has shrunk. My greatest concern now is this: where is the Christian thinking that can help transform the church into an engaged and functional expression to speak for the absolutes of God in a syncretist and relativist world? Conversation. It has to start there. But conversations of the general Christian ... not the leadership (although of course that is important) ... between the Christians who tomorrow will battle traffic, labor under debt, wrestle with the ease of lifestyle relativism, and struggle to find functional relationships of meaning. Jesus worked in thoughtful, objective, and relevant conversation on topics of eternal importance. Today our conversation is our about complaints, critique, and pleasures. Postscript: I wrote the above before listening to this talk: if you have the time I can strongly commend it: Welcome to the resistance The emerging generation is unusual.
Generational differences have always existed, most visibly as the youth challenges the authority of adults. Yet commonly one finds that most youth eventually grow into their parents. However, the current emerging generation reveals something that I believe is uniquely transforming society. I can only talk in generalities of course, and exceptions will abound. The defining difference of the emerging generation is a deep confidence to be publicly honesty about self, and the expectation is that the older generation should be likewise. This has nothing to do with spirituality or secularization. Again and again I encounter this frank honesty regardless of whether the person is deeply religious, hedonist, ambitious, egotistical, philosophical, or living only for the moment. We live in a post-Christian age where relativism reigns and the adoption of values through a cultural religious upbringing has all but vanished. So it is astounding that the emerging generation values honesty so highly. This is building a society in which a new form of ethics is being elevated. Although the relativism demands that one allows for multiple ethical framings: so long as one is honest about the values one holds, then that is deemed “right”. This is a “toleration of differing values” so long as one is honest about the values. This brutal self-honesty makes demands of society. For example, that LGBTQ+ be accepted alongside the fundamentalist Christian missionary alongside the environmental activist’s passion. The paradox is that this demand is made as long as the agenda of one person is not being imposed on another, and that everyone subscribes to the ethos of relativism. I can hear objections already: what about the corruption and polarization in society, or the violence by one people group visited on another, surely that's the opposite of what I've suggested? But our leaders are not characteristic of the general population’s views. It is dangerous to assume that because democracy votes in its leaders, that the leaders then reflect the values of the emerging generation of voters. In a democracy the elect succeed by playing to, or playing on the vested interests of an engaged population minority -- usually voters with single issue concerns. Nowhere was this more evident than when Trump was elected; those for whom self-honesty was deeply important did one of two things, they gravitated to Bernie Sanders or abstained from participation. As a result honesty lost the election. One may speculate why this change is emerging. A key driver is surely the growing loss of privacy and how the emerging generation is comfortable with that. Snapchat, Facebook, and suchlike have inculcated a comfortableness about the nakedness of the inner individual; what was once hidden or shocking has become acceptable so long as people are honest about it. There is something here that the older generation could learn; own your values and live them. There is a challenge here for the church; own your values and live them. This raises a critical question: what does it then mean to desire that others believe the same? This question is equally important for the vegan, the environmental activist, and the Christian. The world is awash with one value system seeking to influence another, and it is a world of relativism. Hence appealing to an absolute truth carries little weight; few accept there is an absolute truth. Instead the arguments try to build a weight of evidence, play on emotions, and seek to sway perspectives through an appeal to be honest about “doing the right thing”. Yet at the root of it all is a non-negotiable necessity to respect an individual’s right to differ. This is a contemporary cultural paradox; this desire to convert a persons value system ones own lies in tension with the demand that each respect the right to differ. The church does not get this. The church see’s a battle, and in the eternal sense it is a brutal battle that has to be fought. Yet the church does not know how to engage when the battlefield is a post-christian society that demands honest respect for the right to be opposed. How do you engage in a battle of values when those opposing your view ignore you and walk away? The church is pushing its agenda while simultaneously its members fatally undermine it by not understanding the shifting realities that surrounding them. How then does one live a value in this strangely fluid landscape when is contradicted by the values of another? The operative words are knowing “how to live”. Contested values feel threatening when one’s confidence is weak. Many pew-attending Christians have weak confidence because they believe in a system of behavior rather than believing in the person who embodies those underlying values. This means confidence becomes rooted in the institution, rather than the person the institution represents - Jesus. And so my central question. As our generations age and society fundamentally shifts to a technological determined, relativistic and public lifestyle, what is the church’s response to be? Who in the church can teach how to live out a love for the hedonist neighbour, be a true friend to a LGBTQ colleague, and hang out in meaningful relationship with the syncretist vegan activist. Who understands what it means to live the Christian relationship in a world that esteems the value of relativism. I don’t know the answers. I suggest it has to begin with living honestly about what one really believes, living to what I knows to be true. That someone else calls my truth a fiction changes nothing, I need to live to the truth as I know it. And here’s the rub; the vegan, the hedonist, the fluidly sexual, are already doing that better than many Christians! They are effective in living according to what they honestly believe to be true. That I differ on what is truth does not negate the admirable quality that they live by their view of truth. This creates “a bit of a situation”, for in doing so the beliefs that lie at odds with Jesus are being lived in an honesty that is effective in changing others to their point of view. Meanwhile the Church hedges their bets in compromise and with little understanding of what is changing in society under their very noses. We, the members of the global church, have much yet to learn about living our faith in this new age. Its always dangerous to try and put a structure to God's work, in doing so we run the danger of (re-)making God in our image. In fact, we all do this to some degree or another, ranging from projecting our parental experiences onto our understanding of God, through to selective construction of a god from all the elements we like (the buffet god), or like the good post-modernist we simply hold the contradictions of syncretism without apparent discomfort. However, in my current disconnected status from the church I have been forced to think about new ways to view what it means to live in Christian relationship with the world. There's the human side, there's the spiritual side, and then there's the complication that all is fluid and changing. When all around is unstable, when one is adrift, what constants can one find? What framework can help me sense the sensibility underlying these shifting sands? Of course there is the alpha-omega narrative of God's progressive work. Of course there's the "same, yesterday, today, and forever". These are amazing realities, and I do not want to belittle them. But what do these mean on a Sunday morning? What does this mean for the new year. So I search for a shape to help me put words to the mystery of God's work. I search for a useful epistemology to bound the possibilities of decisions, and for a helpful ontology to bring clarity. The global institutional church, as a generalization, is mired in rigidity, slowly working its way into obscurity. Of course there are exceptions to the rule. And of course I can trust God to never stop acting. But on the human level the institution of the church has, in the space of a few decades, lost its connection to a deeply relativist society, and has instead become a defensive circling of the wagons around its rituals and traditions. What does this mean? Throughout history the church has undergone seismic structural shifts as the surrounding society fundamentally changed. Just think back through the ages of empires, the reformation, or the industrial revolution. In parallel with these changes the church has painfully restructured, splintered, altered, both in form and expression while retaining its core of orthodox theology. In the recent decades, more so perhaps than ever before, society has been fundamentally altering in ways few ever imagined; a globalization of culture and economy, deep dependence on technology (with attendant vulnerability), a fragile global connectivity of trade, information, knowledge and culture. Each generation is now more different in their views and values than any two generations have been perhaps in all of history. We even label the children by the decade they grew up in. So it is not unreasonable to expect that the church MUST undergo seismic change. But the church wears a skin that has calcified over the centuries, an exoskeleton of rigidity. Changes are thus necessarily difficult and accompanied by much cracking, dust, and damage to the shell in order to allow the living interior to shape-shift into a new position. There is a useful concept called the Cynefin framework which helps me make sense of this fluid landscape. God is a God of order, however in a time-evolving world there are different forms that his order can take. For decades at a time the church operates in the order space of "Simple" (lower right quadrant in the figure): we sense developments, categorize these within an unquestioned theology, and develop a proportional and measured response. Best practice is the order of the day, and the church for the most part keeps pace with the changes in the world. We can see this stable state evident across the different ages of history.
Then something fundamental shifts in society, and the church finds itself in a space of societal "chaos" - the context changes so fast that order is seemingly lost, traditional modes of response fail, comprehension of what's happening is lacking. In this space the church has two choices; to look inward and isolate itself in the impossible hope of protectionism, or be forced to experiment with change and endure the pain of many failures. Perceptions trigger response, and many times the perceptions are wrong. In time the chaos settles and new emergent forms appear into a space of complexity. Here there comes a growing recognition of a new face to the church, a collective surprise as if another creature is emerging from the same chrysalis, although there remains ambiguity of what is a butterfly and what is a moth. The former will eventually fly over the landscape of society, the latter will burn in the flames of the world's many attractive candles. Then, this space of complexity ... this space of unresolvable dynamics ... settles into a new semi-stability of something that is now merely complicated. In this space solutions are tested, refined, and solidified. New understanding helps frame theological orthodoxy into a different expression, and the church morphs into a new age of function and engagement with a lost world. But when one enters the stage of chaos, it is hard to see where the cycle will end. In our current time we have lived in simple stability for decades; the Roman Catholic church, protestantism, and the strands of evangelicalism. Each generation in the 20th century largely succeeded the prior with near total adoption of church culture and practice. I would argue that in the 1990's we began to enter the space of chaos. The church has been slow to recognize this. Today as we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, I suggest we're moving through the chaos and into the complex space where emergent forms begin to show through. Some areas of the world lead or lag others, but it is my suggestion that shadowy forms of a new church expression are becoming apparent. The core remains unchanged, orthodoxy is a strong and vibrantly beating heart of faith in an unchanging God. But the skin is changed, changing, forming, settling. There are some moths, but there are also butterflies. I don't know what that the final forms will look like. But I do believe they will be effective in becoming what they need to become in order to reach our transformed society. This excites me. God is doing something, and the question I face is whether I will pull back in search of the rapidly vanishing "simple", or in faith step into complex emergence of God's relevant church. I like to think that what I do reflects what I believe. Sadly we're all a little irrational but hopefully what I do is mostly shaped by what I believe.
The statement "the rest is religion" refers to that side of life where we go through the motions for the sake of some societal, cultural, or relational pressure. But we don't really believe it. 2017 began with my leaving my church ... a decision a long time coming and for multiple reasons, and partly documented in blog posts leading up to my departure (if anyone is interested). I had been pro-actively engaged for a long time, and after leaving presumed I would find a new church in due course. It is now nearing the end of 2017, and I still have not found a new church home. Leaving a context allows one the privilege of reflecting on it from the outside. More and more I find the institutional church dysfunctional. More and more I find the relational expressions so saccharine and wrapped in "this is how I think a Christian should behave" that real expression is in limited supply. More and more I see a church focused on preserving its internal culture and not equipping the pew-sitters to engage the real world. Of course there are exceptions, but an exception means it is exceptional to some norm! This is a familiar theme. I touch on it repeatedly. But my stepping back from direct involvement in church has opened a space to think more about the issues of people "outside" the church culture - the majority of the world. I make no claim to be a great thinker. Frankly, most "thinking" seems to be a rediscovery of what has been lost. In the prior post I characterized three individuals ... amalgams of the people I meet daily. I posed the challenge of imagining a scenario where one has to fruitfully engage such people. I truly believe that if I was to put that challenge in a church, the response would be dominated by deflection, platitudes, or statements of judgment. So do I have anything to say? Am I just repeating myself? In part I am. In part I am frustrated. Yet in part I am changing. My conditioning over the years has been truthful, yet constraining. God is a mystery, and so my conditioning has bounded my thinking. We're trying to know the unknowable, and to build our societal relations around this. Orthodoxy to known truth is paramount, but we cannot say this is the fullness of truth. There is truth that we've yet to know, it doesn't contradict the orthodoxy, it augments the orthodoxy. I believe: God, Jesus, Spirit ... Trinity directed living. I believe we are all fundamentally damaged goods. I believe it is not for us to judge others, that it is for us to judge truth. I believe grace is in short supply, and that listening hearts are barricaded behind conventions. I believe society is growing a generation of egotists living in bubbles of relativism. I believe that as a result loneliness is the worlds biggest disease. And I believe the church as a whole is by and large clueless on how to engage. So what? Well, it means a healthy redirection of faith, one that shifts from acting to enhance the profile of an institution to a focus on conversations with those who differ from what I believe - in whatever forum, wherever it can happen, virtually, literally, and sustainably. That is extremely difficult to do. But I believe it. |
Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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