unhealthy theology – the need to ignore reality

So it’s been years now that I’ve been working with the categories or healthy and unhealthy theology in order to decide how to take part in certain theological questions in church. Obviously there is still borders, since at some point I consider certain theological ideas to be unhealthy, to be dangerous to the health or the invididual and/or society.

More and more, an important factor in forming my mind on what is unhealthy theology, is seeing if these theological ideas require those who adhere to it to chuck reality out the door. Obviously I now need to recognize that there are many realities, many opinions etc, but let me point to some of what I consider unhealthy theology, because it chucks reality:

• Obviously creationism. The idea that all scientific research is false and dishonest. That observations must be changed to fit my theological system. This theological position chucks the reality of the scientific world out the door in order to get a theological system that fit. Now, I know that there isn’t concensus on everything in science, but this approach creates caricatures of certain scientific approaches in order to chuck them out the door, so that the theological system can continue to exist.
• Prosperity gospel. Working with the idea that God will bless you financially if you adhere to certain ideas, it ignores a great deal of it’s own theological tradition (everything on the suffering of the faithful in the Psalms for example), as well as the reality that this simply doesn’t happen. Many are people of faith, but doesn’t experience financial blessings. Others get rich from doing the exact opposite than what the Christian tradition stood for (for example dishonesty in business).
• I haven’t had much to do with the New Atheist movement. But the little I’ve noticed from them (see for example Bill Maher’s documentary) is that alsi they need to ignore reality to make their theological ideas fit. They need to ignore the reality that not all Christians, Muslims and Jews are fundamentalists, they need to ignore the exceedingly complex approaches that take the sciences seriously, and yet consider language of faith to be a nessecary component of talking about reality.

Don’t try and take this into specifics, because you’ll soon find yourself calling everything that doesn’t conform to your reality to be unhealthy. I’m still working this out, so help me here, but I guess it’s those kinds of theologies that make absolutely no sense to anyone that’s on the outside or downside of it, because it doesn’t seem to come close to reality, that I’m seeing more and more as unhealthy.

healthy theology

6 Years of studying theology changed my life, I hope for the better.At the beginning of 2003 I found myself in a class with 15-20 other theological students, all of us apparently knowing all the answers, and few of us actually agreeing on them. Nothing new, you might say. Over the years I became very close friends with many of these people, and for some of us, our theology grew closer to each other, but for others, it grew apart.

But in spite of theology drifting apart, friendships remained. And one friend especially, formed my thinking in a crucial way. We didn’t agree on much. On the contrary, we were probably considered the two poles of the class, the two voices challenging each other, talking from totally different approaches. But we were very good friends. And although we differed a lot, and every 6 or 12 months we’d have a long theological debate, knowing we won’t convince the other, we had many conversations where we agreed on more than other might have expected.

This created a philosophical dilemma at some stage, since I definitely didn’t agree with my friend, but on many points wasn’t really concerned with that fact. I remember walking over Herold street in Hatfield, when I started working with the two terms “healthy” and “unhealty” theology. Although I had many philosophical disagreements with my friend, I considered he’s theology healthy. Indeed, there was many with whom I disagreed on some peculiar philosophical or theological point, but who’se theology I considered to be healthy.

Today I still use these words. These categories help me to recognize when to strongly disagree and point to an alternative, and when to engage in conversation, share some thoughts, and recognize that this is another healthy approach to doing theology.

At that stage I said that healthy theology would be that which helps the world become a better place, unhealthy theology would be that which motivates violence, hatred, discrimanation etc.

I publised another version of this post a few months ago on my Afrikaans blog here.

on preaching and theology

What’s the task of the preacher? Is she/he the comforter of the church? Is she/he to be the critical voice of social transformation? Is the preacher the person who is to answer the questions of day-to-day practical life from a religious perspective? Is the preacher the authoritative voice speaking the words of God?

Does my questions reflect the age-old question of a priestly and a prophetic role. Of a pastoral and a prophetic role. I recall that Moltmann said somewhere that the church have become so pastoral that it has lost it’s prophetic voice. But ain’t the church supposed to care for the flock? But which flock? Is the flock that’s paying your salary by default the flock that you should care for? When do we turn prophetic? Is there a danger in being a prophetic voice? Maybe we are too quick to think of ourselves as prophets, to quick to preach social transformation, I mean, do we really understand what social transformation should look like?

But saying that we should be slow on the prophetic voice closes a large portian of the text that we hold sacred for preaching. Can the preacher do anything but preach the text? Open the text? Well, we are sure busy doing more than this…

in the beginning…

I’m reading Genesis 1:1-2:4a. The first creation narrative. Written later than much of the Old Testament, in Babilon (remember that most Jews in later times lived not in Israel, but in Babilon). And it’s the most brilliant story! Imagine with me, how a Jewish father would explain faith to his little son, who have to listen to his Babilonian friends speculate about the universe and about the different gods in existence. Keep the picture to the right in mind, this is how they pictured creation.

What was there in the beginning? Nothing? No, in the beginning there was darkness and water. Darkness and water: In the beginning there was only chaos! Nothing good can come from darkness and water my son. We know that the see is the host of choas, the way to the underworld. It would have been hopeless my son, but God was there. In the beginning, all that was, was chaos and God!

The heaven of heavens did not exist, the firament of the stars did not exist, the underworld, pillars of the earth, nothing existed. That was, except for the darkness, the water and God. God and the chaos.

But then, God said, this wouldn’t do. Let us create light to take away the darkness. Let us get rid of the chaos, so that we can create a space where life can exist. God spoke, and the chaos started receding, because now the possibility of hope was there, the possibility of light, op hope! Where was the light? Well, we don’t know yet, but light was now possible.

But the water was still everywhere, everything was still water. So God said: This wouldn’t do. Let us create space for life to exist. God moved the water around. Some he sent to the underworld, some he sent up to the heavens. Suddenly, a space started to appear where it was visible that God was at work, because the chaos was moved out of the way.

But there was still no place for life to exist. There was space, but the sea was still everywhere. So God said: Let us move this sea out of the way, so that we can have some ground for life to exist on.

Finally, to really nail the chaos, God created two lights. One for the day, and one for the night. Now the chaos was really moved to the underworld, between the pillars that God created for the earth to stand on.

Then God bursted out! “Let’s make life! Earth”, God commanded, “spawn living beings”. Plants, birds and animals, big and small, let us even make fish to swin in the sea, to populate the remaining chaos. And then, my son, God made people, and God made us to look after everything that he created.

So my son. It is true, in the beginning there was only chaos, water and darkness, but in the chaos, there was God. And God got rid of the chaos, to make some space for life. And we are too look after this life. And on the Sabbath, the seventh day, we stop to remember the God who created, we stop and lister to the Spirit of God, the same Spirit that was there when all that existed was chaos.

Oh, and by the way, my son. All those gods your Babilonian friends talk about, that’s just things that God created, not gods.

Acts 15-20 for South Africa today

I’ve spent the past 2 days with some 15-20 reverends from the Dutch Reformed Church, Smith, Reggie Nel, Gert Steyn, the lecturer that taught me exegesis (although maybe he don’t want to be linked to that), and Scot McKnight. We started a discussion on the theology of Acts and what that might mean in practice for the church in South Africa today. The final reports was done by myself and three others that also blog, so we’ll be giving some thoughts on our reports. I’ll add the links as the posts come in.

Reggie Nel on Acts 21-28

Our group worked on Acts 15-20. Between 11:00 and 12:00 today, we identified the following as the most important theological thread for South Africa today:

Looking at our text, but also at the whole of Acts, we notice that Acts tell the story of boundries that was crossed. Of course, we didn’t notice this first, the scholars that introduced he discussion also pointed us to this.  However, what we believe is important is that the boundry crossing always caused the Jerusalem church to change their theology. When Peter visit Cornelius, the theology change. At the meeting in Jerusalem, the fact that boundries have been crossed changes the theology.

That we need to cross boundries is commonly accepted in South Africa today. But crossing boundries need to change the theology of those on the inside. The Dutch Reformed Church need to cross the racial and economic boundries (among others) that form our context, and this need to deeply change the theology of our church.

Missiologists call this contextualization. Contextualization should not be misunderstood as mere translation. Bosch pointed to this in Transforming Mission. I’ve written some thoughts on this about 2 years ago (check page 4 about of this document). Translation would imply a rethinking of symbols and language. Contextualization would imply a rethinking of theology, a transformation of our reflection on God and what that would mean for this day and age, within a differing context.

The core question for our church today: How would our understanding of God and the gospel be transformed when we cross the borders of our community? How would this changing reflection on God impact the practice of congregational and church life today?

Thoughts?

McKnight on conversion theory and deconversion

Scot McKnight is visiting South Africa again. It’s been just over a year since last time he visited. Running a search on “McKnight” on my blog revealed some interesting things on how the emerging church scene changed since then, and Scot’s role in this from my perspective. I gave him an article David Bosch wrote about 25 years ago partly in response to the Lausanne Covenent today, and on it thanked him for the role he plays in keeping different voices together. I really respect the way in which he talks about some of the voices he differs with in private conversations.

Last night he talked with our church council on the Blue Parakeet, and I’m kicking myself for not video-taping it. Afterwards we had dinner together. Today he talked on conversion, and from tomorrow we’ll be discussing acts with him.

I’m not going to try and repeat all that was said, but this is the image that we used in the discussion:

Conversion is this process of moving from the context where you are to the “church”, the group where are are moving towards. This may be a megachurch or small group meeting somewhere that won’t ever call themselves church. Conversion is changing my story to be told through the lens of this new self understanding I now have, which is formed by this group.

Part of converting is a crisis that is addressed. For years now I’ve been getting more and more uncomfortable with the fact that we have been creating a crisis in our attempts of evangelism. This crisis have usually been by painting a vivid picture of how someone might just burn in hell, or in lighter forms convincing someone of the severity of his/her sins, and this warthful God that really cannot help but punish us, that is of course just. Scot mentioned Brian Mclaren’s moral question: How can a just God punish a lifetime of sins with eternal torment?

But what Scot was actually talking about in the end was how people deconvert from Christianity, how people become non-Christians. What is the crisis moments that lead to this?

In his book Finding Faith Loosing Faith he talks about a number of crisis that leads to deconversion. I’ll order the book sometime, and will mention them more when I get the book, but form today’s talk Scot confirmed one thing: Fundamentalism creates extremely good soil for atheism to flourish in. I’ve been saying this for a long time now. The crisis that fundamentalism creates is that an expectation on infallability of the Bible is created that cannot be met, and the text never intended to meet, when that realisation dawn on someone, it has the potential of leading to atheism.

Of course there are other reasons for deconverstion as well. But I’ll skip them for now. This is a model that I believe I’ll use again, and would love to know more about.

language for God

I teach a confirmation class. With all the problems involved with that (being part of a Christian culture where confirmation class is a way of reaching adulthood). The 12-15 17 year olds that entered my class this year are just like any class. They have very little knowledge of church history, the Bible, spirituality. They know many Christian words though, as part of this culture. But they struggle with language for God which resonate with the worldview that they are developing.

What I like about my confirmation class is the honesty that we have. They will regurarly remind me that they have little knowledge on issues of faith. This is the space where we search for language for God. A question like “where was God before creation?” can be interpreted in a number of ways. We could quote a Bible verse for them, using the religious terminology they are familiar with, but which is exactly the terminology that cause the problems, the reason for their needing to ask the question. This answer would be: “God is the beginning and the end, he that was and that is and that is to come”. This is theology that I agree with, but language that I struggle with. The 17 year olds in my class seem to be in the same situation.

So let me put some assumptions on the table. I believe that language for God and faith and trancendence is not set in stone. The Old Testament “El”-terminology and Jahwe terminology was Hebrew language, language that doesn’t translate exactly into the Greek “kurios” and “theos” language (if you don’t know the Hebrew and Greek, don’t worry). And the meaning attached to these words change over time. I simply admit that language refer to something else. The word “God” refer to something, the word in itself is nothing, and with English being my second language I don’t use this word when I talk about what English speaking people call “God”, I use an Afrikaans term. Admittedly, these two terms are spelled the same. The Belgic Confession article 1, one of the creeds of the Reformed tradition that I’m part of, point this out when writing:

We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God — eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good.

God is a word, it refers to something which this confession tries to put into words, while knowing that it’s impossible, that this single and simple spiritual being is inconprehensible. But still we look for words to talk about this single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God. One way of doing this is to talk about that which is “more”. The language of “more” points to the fact that the physical reality is not all there is, and the measurable time is not all there is, there is more. This more we call God. 

We read Psalm 8 in the class. The glory of God being higher than the heavens. Creation ended at the heavens, God was found beyond the edges of creation. God was the more for Psalm 8 as well, I think. And so we continue, we look for language to talk about this reality that many call God, that I also call God at times. And sometimes I see a 17 year old, one that seldom if ever read the Bible, get a glitter in his/her eye, recognize language for God which resonate with their hearts, and just maybe they will make the more more and more part of their lives.