Prisoners of Passion, Part 1: Random Inception of an Idea at 3 AM

I read several blogs regularly. Some are expositions on religion, some are general philosophy, and some are thoughts on life from a subjective point of view. When I read something, I think about a few things. Mainly, I think about this person's thought process. I think about what beliefs I can imply they have based on what I am reading. I think about what they're really trying to say and why.

This has begun to really disturb me lately.

It's as though I am seeing a trap that so many people are falling into. This is ironic, because I feel I'm in a completely different kind of trap, so I don't feel I have the right to look down on a single person stuck in this. In fact, I feel that I end up worse off than the lot of them because of my skepticism. It's tough having something of an "anti-passion." In intellectual discussions, 99% of the time you feel like you're just being an arrogant jerk.

"You want to know if I agree or disagree? Define your definitions first."

"I disagree with your personal beliefs, but can't tell you mine because they are so few and not relevant to beliefs you are passionate about."

I end up annoyed with myself half the time because I can't sit around and say I have strong beliefs on things like morality, the Bible (relevant because I'm a Christian and read a lot of theology), politics, or religion in general.

So regardless, on to the trap.

I think people are becoming prisoners of their passion. They have such strong beliefs, become foundationalistic about them--"if you don't believe [x belief] then you aren't really a [y label]," and suddenly everyone's got something to say. Great for discussion, but poor for discerning what is actually going on.

Even the non-foundationalistic are in trouble. They criticize points of everything and make their own way, but they end up creating a structure anyway. Perhaps they're not as far along as more established foundationalists, or perhaps they simply can't decide on anything. Regardless, it's easy to get entangled in labels and rhetoric, and it's very hard to stay committed to finding the truth.

Now I'm doing it. Aggravating people. Maybe it's because I've been accused of not caring about the truth that I notice this, or maybe it's because I know what gets under other peoples' skin. Regardless, it's extremely vexing to note how hard it is to separate oneself from the context one either grows up in, or from one's reactions to contexts they grew up in, or from personally based beliefs.

Is objectivity possible? I'd say to a degree it is, but it requires a kind of dispassionate nature that not many have.

Maybe I'll talk about more of this when I'm not being kept awake by an itch to write, and when I have more to say than a reaction. Which is, yet again, an example of what I feel is a problem. Clarity has just gone out the window. Whoops.

Later.

Christianity - What is it?

I recently had a conversation with a friend regarding forms of this term. It is loaded, probably moreso than most terms you come across in your everyday life. Today I will aim for clarity, in the hopes that you the reader can understand that when someone says "I am a Christian," they are telling you next to nothing outside of a huge context.

Politically speaking, there are notions in the U.S. of being a "Christian nation," typically vocalized by movements such as the Moral Majority, associated with people that some would call Evangelicals and some would call Fundamentalists. Regardless, of what you may think of this, nearly every U.S. President has to answer the question of whether they are an "Evangelical" or "Born-again" Christian. Christianity, as a term, has political implications, and markedly different ones in Europe, especially with terms like "Evangelical."

So, let's look at the evolution of the term. Historically speaking, Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism that began in the 1st Century A.D. It grew and became what it is today through many different periods, and the most notable distinctions in Christianity tend to come from its' splitting. 1054 A.D. saw a massive schism into the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity, and the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century, which schismed the Western Church between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. There is also the Anglican Church and countless "denominations" of Protestantism. This, in broad strokes and extremely simplified, is the religion we are attempting to define by the term "Christianity."

To the modern Western mind, the easiest way to unite these is in terms of common beliefs. In other words, if you put Christians from all different sections of their faith in a room and tell them to talk about what they agree about, you'd come about several beliefs, which have been collectively referred to as "orthodoxy." This is not to be confused with Eastern Orthodoxy, which is the Eastern branch of Christianity. More on this later. For now though, it is helpful to understand that orthodoxy means "right belief."

The way historic orthodox Christianity is generally defined by a reading of several creeds from early church councils. Namely, the Nicene Creed is generally the most agreed upon creed of faith to understand what Christianity is. Some people, particularly early fundamentalists have seen fit to define orthodoxy in 5 points based on this creed, as follows:

1. Belief in the doctrine of the Word as applied to the Bible. That is, that it is divinely inspired and reliable. Some use the term "inerrant."

2. Belief in a Triune God. That is, he is one God in three manifestations, or persons. God the Father, seen mostly in the Old Testament through demonstrations of power, God the Son, seen in the figure of Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit, present in a real sense in some fashion within believers in Christ's teachings.

3. Belief in the dual nature of Christ as fully God and fully man. That is, Jesus Christ, present on Earth, was completely human, and yet was simultaneously completely God. There are many theologies that explore how this is possible.

4. Belief in the Resurrection. That is, when Christ was killed, he bodily resurrected three days after he was buried, overcoming death. Resurrection can be seen as a metaphysical concept of God overcoming evil, personified in death, but the basics of this belief is that Christians believe in Christ's resurrection.

5. Belief in the Virgin Birth/miracles. I cite both of these together because there have been numerous lists of points made defining Christianity's core beliefs. Believing in a Virgin Birth (and indeed, in most of these points), is to believe in miracles. The Virgin Birth simply states that Christ was born of Mary (Mother of God, blessed among women, etc.) while she was still a Virgin.

As you can see from this list (and possibly from my discussion before it), there have been many attempts to define Christianity's essence, most recently by the Fundamentalists. Though this term is loaded today in more ways I can count, the original Fundamentalism movement within Christianity stated that all Christians should focus first on what they can agree on, and then move beyond it with generosity into discussion with regards to other beliefs (baptism, communion, sacraments, etc.), which became known as Adiaphora (Greek for "indifferent things," generally understood to mean the non-essentials).

There have been many other sets of beliefs that people have counted as essential, most notably the Reformation "Solas," which are extolled mainly by Protestants, and usually by Reformed Christians, who usually also believe in most of the 5-7 points of Calvinism. For more clarification on the Reformation Solas and Protestantism in general, you can read my earlier post, The Inadequacy of Labels, and Frustration. If you want to know more about Calvinism, I suggest you look up the acronym TULIP for a good start.

However, suffice it to say, there is a huge amount of variance as far as beliefs go within Christianity. As one of my favorite authors put it, there is a "wide stream" of Christian belief, and almost no one has the same set of beliefs as anyone else.

Those of you reading precisely will notice that I have yet to define just what Christianity IS. The problem with doing this may be self-evident by now, but to be as explicit as possible, I will explain. Even those 5 points above are inadequate to define a two millenia old religious movement based on an even older religious movement. They also happen to be dependent on a very specific type of culture, namely the modern Western culture, which is largely a result of the Enlightenment.

To a postmodern world, this type of defining of a movement appears largely restrictive. Other definitions have come about, defining Christianity as a lifestyle. In other words, being a Christian means being like Christ, going through life in such a way as to live the lifestyle that Christ did, in the way that he did and Christians believe he still does. This is usually explained as involving the "Fruit of the Spirit," love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In general, the most emphasized trait here seems to be love. There are advantages to seeing Christianity as a lifestyle as opposed to a set of beliefs, especially for action-oriented individuals. In general, this replaces "orthodox" (which they almost always still affirm) with another set of core beliefs, which are generally referred to as orthopraxis, or "right practice." The intention is to separate Christianity from its' religious nature, citing Christ's opposition of organized religion as an example. The problem with this comes when one has to confront hypocrisy in Christianity. After all, what is one supposed to believe about two millenia of history if the person in front of them is saying something different is the "true" nature of Christianity? Is most of Christian history a bunch of garbage brought about by misguided people then? Troubling, to say the least.

There are also movements to try to "recapture" what happened in the first century, viewing it as a "golden age" before Christianity became corrupt. Instead of moving forward, they look to understand the culture and happenings of the First Century, or sometimes use a radical form of "Sola Scriptura" (Reformation Sola, means Scripture Alone), to reject all historical tradition and instead "just use the Bible." The problem with this is the assumption that the first Century Christians had their beliefs correct in the first place. One read-through of Acts (the fifth book of the Old Testament) should cure this assumption, as the early Christians were already shown to be establishing systems or authority and dealing with disagreements. Sola Scriptura falls off to the wayside when one realizes that many church councils were convened to conclusively state the Church's position on things like the Trinity, to compose the Bible, and to set precedents for other Church beliefs before the Great Schism of 1054.

So, in the end of this survey of Christianity, we're left with a lot of questions, and we're left with people in different places. Some of you are asking questions like why I am still going on about this, why I would bother outlining any of this when I obviously know which one I believe and should just affirm it. Some of you are confused by this entire thing because Christianity is weird to you, and synonymous with negative or at the very least dissonant and confusing cultural, religious, and personal implications. Some of you are asking what Christianity is philosophically, and that is where I intend to go next.

You see, in the midst of this confusion and with so many branches of Christianity all screaming something different, some new and some old, and with many differing presuppositions about life and people and God and the universe, what I would propose is the question: what is a Christian?

Philosophically speaking, Christianity is nearly undefinable because of how many different cultures have their own take on what it is. Off the top of my head, there are the two sides of the coin of Modernism, Conservative and Liberal Christianity, the former with huge emphasis on right doctrine, and the latter with huge emphasis on right practice, there is Postmodern Christianity, which is a progressive lifestyle movement, there is Roman Catholicism which remains very rooted in tradition and Western theology, there is mainline Protestantism and Reformed Protestantism, which in general butt heads constantly over Free Will/Predestination and other theology, there is Eastern Orthodoxy, with emphasis on the culture that is perhaps the most alien to me, growing up in the Southern U.S., but tends to be much more metaphysical and with differing perspectives on some very key things that are emphasized by most of Western Christianity, such as the way Christ atoned for sin on the cross, the way in which Salvation works, and the way Church is practiced, and there are many other cultural movements present in Christianity that I will not even try to account for here.

So when someone tells you they're a Christian, what are you supposed to believe about them? Or perhaps more relevantly, what do you believe? Do you look at that person and think you've found a like-minded individual, are you suddenly wary of this person who seems to have admitted to being a religious nut, or do you simply not care altogether?

In my not-so-humble opinion, I will tell you what I believe a Christian is, and what I think a Christian should be.

A Christian is a person that finds solace in the religious movement of Christianity in some way, shape or form, whether it is the theology, the movement itself, the psychological satisfaction of being religious, the people they interact with every day in the religious community they've involved themselves in, the actions that they feel make them a good person, or the life they feel they are living, whether out of fear of punishment from a divine force, out of self-loathing, out of respect for the God they believe in, out of love, or out of many other motivations.

I think a Christian should be a person that seeks the truth in all matters and presupposes that that is through God, who is expressed in the figure of Jesus Christ, no matter what route one takes (reason, history, science, philosophy, religion, conversation, etc.). I don't believe this should be motivated by any other thing than what a person believes is correct, what a person believes is true. Because of this, I believe any person that is honestly seeking the truth about life is worthy of respect, and any person not seeking it and keeping others from seeking it should get out of the way of those that are. This, of course, diverts from what a Christian is to my beliefs about how people should act, so allow me to digress back to the original topic.

Christianity - What is it? It's a lot of people all trying to seek something they believe to be worthwhile through their belief in Christ, that have formed a fractured, imperfect, and multi-faceted religious movement with countless branches and unbelievable amounts of influence in worldwide culture.

I am satisfied to call myself a Christian because I seek truth in any form I can find it, and believe this all to be a seeking of Christ, the primal meaning of the universe, the Word, Truth.

Reminiscence, Mythology, and the Will to Power

To my readers, I must apologize for my prolonged silence. It was at once unintentional and a product of things that are now no longer the case in my life.

I am experiencing something similar to what happened to me when I wrote a previous post, one that I just read over. Lately I have experienced loss, a sense of being divided and broken, frustration, anger, and genuine grieving. At the same time, I have also experienced freedom, the feeling that I am moving forward, contentment combined with ambition, and a sense of well-being through all of it. What a complex array of feelings and thoughts.

I've thought lately on all of the wills I have experienced. Wills of other people, their methods of imposing power on the world and other people, and of proving they exist. Some people don't even know they do it, and some people are aware and control it in ways that benefit themselves or others. Some people, like myself, tend to fool themselves into believing they have no power at all, and thus end up recklessly causing harm, or perhaps a lot of good at their own expense. I still have much to learn.

Some of my experiences with the will to power lately have reopened some old wounds, things I didn't even know still exist.

I'm not anti-traditional. I'm not hostile toward peoples' beliefs, nor am I of the belief that I am better than any other person. However, I am genuinely offended by intellectual, emotional, and religious bullying. It is an irresponsible and damaging use of the personal power that people possess, by virtue of being human.

I'm not anti-categorical because I think it's cool or because I enjoy it or want to justify my actions. Those that know me know I am harder on myself than anyone else can hope to be, and I reject notions of morality imposed upon me for what they are: yet another expression of the will to power. No, if I am to be convinced of something, I will be approached as an equal. Perhaps that is why I have been told I have a problem with authority.

I don't wish to hurt people, and I suppose I have every time I embrace an ideal instead of looking at things how they are. The notion that sometimes you must obscure the truth to spare someone's feelings is faulty at best, wantonly destructive at worst.

When I see a person embrace a category for themselves, I see them wielding a weapon, a lot of times with consequences they do not even realize. By nature of wielding a weapon involving other people, one must do damage control constantly. For example, if one embraces the label "Christian," they must constantly explain the incredible amount of sexism, racism, and genuine disregard for human life that comes with it. They must explain how they feel about how damaging religion is and they must explain why they don't necessarily participate in all of the good that goes with the label as well.

Categories are extraordinarily useful, but they make poor labels for people. A person's beliefs are much more than any category, their faith, whatever it may be, is much more than a creed or a set of beliefs they deem necessary. People are rarely so static as a solid set of beliefs unless they are afraid, tired, or simply the sort of person that hasn't met the challenges their beliefs will afford them. It does not matter what those beliefs are, everyone's deserve to be challenged because no one has the corner on truth.

I look at the authority that my companions I graduated with appeal to constantly, the scriptures of Christianity (AKA the Bible), and I don't see anything they do. In fact, I have barely read it for years because of my experiences at a Christian college. The idolization of the book did nothing short of drive me the other direction as fast as I could go. Perhaps this comes from my problem with authority, or perhaps it comes from more than that.

Such a deeply flawed book by modern standards, and yet such a beautiful book to the eye of someone looking for metaphor, story, and genuineness, deserves nothing short of its' proper category: mythology. Not mythology as in "this isn't true," mythology as in "this is more true than simple facts." What I mean is, if you read the Bible as a history book, as a set of moral imperatives, as a textbook, or as a end-all guide for truth, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, or you will fool yourself by the end because of your philosophical and emotional orientation. I've found beauty in thinking of it as more of a story regarding ultimate reality that is a fusion of the divine and the human. It is a story about how humanity is, how God is, how we relate, how it all fits together, and there are a lot of flaws, mistakes, and a lot of prejudice and other problematic things along the way.

That does not make it any less true of a mythology. I do believe in the historical Jesus, but I do not believe most of his ideas were brand new. I also do not believe there has ever been or ever will be a person like him. Because a person isn't their beliefs, and isn't their categories. They're more than anything we could say about them.

Jesus understood his own power, and used it wisely, even to the point of laying it down and refusing to use it when he could have, all to say "this is a little bit of how to be truly human."

In light of this, I see a lot of work I have to do to have a better life, to be more satisfied, more content, more of a benefit to those around me, and a better person. I'll not pretend to be happy right now, but I do have a purpose.

Perhaps if we can get over our use of power to impose ourselves on others we can stop misunderstanding each other but wishing people understood us, and we can let go of the belief that the only way to be understood is to be louder, faster, more forceful, and to obey the urge to use our power to acquire what we seek.

There is more than passion, more than logic, more than our past. There is a better us that exists in the future that we can run toward. The Will to Power can never succeed in the end, because it ignores part of who we are.

"What is your hand for? What is your heart for?"

"You're the weak one. You'll never know love or friendship, and I feel sorry for you."

Love. Think on it.

Shalom.

Elegant Simplicity

Centuries ago in Greece, there was a man named Plato. He lived in a time where many called themselves philosophers, and they sold their wisdom on street corners. In many ways, Plato's writings of this time revolutionized and created what we call philosophy today. His teacher, Socrates, opposed the peddlers of wisdom in the most backwards way possible: by claiming ignorance, by asking questions, by logic. In many ways, philosophy began as simple logic, and branched into many disciplines, math and science, logic, rhetoric, ethics, and became a foundation for Greek and European philosophy to come.

Two millenia later, we go into a classroom and study philosophy, which is considered to be dead. In the postmodern era, it has turned to deconstruction and into being an isolated study. No wonder it is considered to be dead, it has become a discipline turned in upon itself. Logic has been shown to be a wonderful tool, but even without its' many abuses, people have begun to recognize the inability to arrive at the truth of all matters through logic alone.

Whether it is religious presupposition, untestable scientific hypothesis, philosophical precommitments, or the belief of any person you talk to, you will never find the "unbreakable" belief. Descartes was the most famous for attempting this, with his famous Cogito Ergo Sum, the privileged presupposition in his beliefs. In other words, "I think therefore I am," became his foundation for proving reality, and from there he logically proved everything else regarding his system of beliefs.

As brilliant as he was, Descartes' Foundationalism still falls prey to language (what does it mean to think? what does one use to think? what does it mean to exist?) as well as other questions (can you prove you are not a brain in a jar being fed sensory inputs, a la The Matrix?). This does not make him any less brilliant, it makes Foundationalism flawed. Descartes' purpose was ultimately to logically prove everything, to make an unbreakable system, and he failed to do so. Had he not, modern Philosophy would look very different.

So we are left with the inescapable fact that logic is a tool, but not the whole picture. One can apply reason to anything and come to conclusions based on one's data, but there are many other factors to a person. Their emotions also play a part, as well as their morality, their circumstances, and their convictions about the nature of reality.

So is meaning constructed? Should we despair and create whatever meaning is convenient for us? If the Western world's logic focused philosophy has self-destructed, where does that leave us? Living on a whim?

If so, then we fail to do so on a daily basis. People have meanings and reasons for how they are, no matter if they are twisted or genuine or whimsical or trivial or beautiful. Everyone has a morality, and it is often more complex than a set of things that one should do. They live how they feel they should, sometimes burdened by the expectations of others and finding they've created their own burdens in life, sometimes allowing themselves to run over anyone in their way, and finding they have done the same to themselves in the process.

Intelligence is not limited to logic alone, it applies to one's emotions, to one's sense of what is right, to one's actions, to one's words and phrasing, to the way one treats others and the way they treat themselves. It is not a concept for subjugating oneself, it is a path to freedom.

Life is more complex than the logical mind would admit, and far simpler simultaneously. For when we come down to it, humans are not purely logical beings, nor are they bags of emotions or robots that always do the right things. They are not their words, not their reactions, and cannot be measured by what one chooses to look at.

With such complexity so evident in life, we have to ask ourselves a few questions. How do we even handle every day situations? How can we ever understand another person if they are such complex creatures? How can people even connect at all, how is communication possible if we must take so much into account? Why do people form patterns, why do social groups occur, what is the reason for existence and how is harmony possible with such dissonant complexity?

The answer seems to lie in intuition. Or perhaps more basically, instinct. There are times we know things with no explanation why, and even our explanation is an afterthought to something a part of us perceives. The simple truth is that there's more, that the complexity will all converge into something more simple, more basic, more visceral and more elegant.

Perhaps the universe itself is not the design, but the aftereffect. Perhaps under what we see, what we experience, what we think and feel, there is a way it all ticks. Perhaps the elegant simplicity we can sometimes find in silence, in simply being, is what we look for when we try to construct a belief system or surround ourselves with comfort or do things just so we can live with ourselves or be accepted by others. Perhaps the design is actually a Designer, and when we get caught up on the methods or specifics we are missing the point, that there is a spark of Him in all of us and that we're carriers of meaning, bearers of light, and we see truth without even trying.

Perhaps life is a lot simpler than we think, and the way to weather the hard times (and the easy, for people like me) is to simply be and reflect and live as rightly as one can, refusing to let ego or shame slow you down in your quest for how to make one's life full and beneficial to all around you.

Perhaps the dissonance we find when the complexity gets overwhelming is a reminder that we get caught up and forget to live practically, forget our intuition and what our hearts and bodies and minds tell us naturally. We get burned out and lose our strength because we do not live elegantly, we do not allow ourselves to simply enjoy and simply live. Perhaps this post will be a reminder of what you have forgotten in the narrative, and a catalyst for contemplation.

Shalom.

Generosity as a Struggle

A good friend of mine once told me, after reading my writing, that I lack generosity toward Evangelicals. He accused me of this and called me out on it as only a true brother could. I haven't been very grateful to him all the time, and he and I definitely have different views than he does, but that does not stop me from respecting him, and hopefully it doesn't stop him from respecting me. However, one need only look one post down on this blog to realize that I have not learned my lesson.

I did mean what I said, and I meant it in the sense that I disagree with movements. However, here's where things get sticky: I have friends that are likeminded, philosophers, unaligned Christians, and we tend to talk very easily. Then I have friends that are radical Atheists, traditional Christians (Reformed, Baptist, Christian and Missionary Alliance), agnostics, and everything in between. Some find their sense of "religion" in politics, some in a particular Church branch, some in other religions.

But these are all people. A blog of views can lose sight of that, and being generous is a difficult task, especially when one must take everyone into account and disagree in an attitude of generosity and good-will.

Because sometimes, the disagreement is in the words used, but people get upset. People lose it when confronted because they take it personally, they think it's about them when it's not. I speak, of course, of myself. I must constantly work to not take things personally that people say about me, and it'd be much easier to cut all ties and hide away from everyone and everything.

Easier, and totally inhuman. Not correct. Because sometimes the fact that someone's mad about what I've said means they care. Maybe they care about me as a person or about something I've attacked or something I've done. And it is so, so human.

I'm not an easily offended person. If someone tells me my beliefs are wrong, I'm all for discussing them. Very few things will cause me to lose my generosity in person. However, in writing it seems, I am just as susceptible as others I've seen on forums to "hiding behind my keyboard" and saying things in too drastic of a manner. It comes from being a philosopher, one writes strongly. However, philosophy and generosity need not be mutually exclusive.

Just because I've been taken the wrong way does not mean that was my intent.

Just because you think people are stupid for believing in God does not mean that they are, or that you have less "faith" and more "reason" than they do.

Just because my words have failed does not mean I will stop saying them.

Let us not forget, friends, that people will do wrong to each other just by existing, we are not the center of the universe, and other perspectives exist apart from what we think of as truth. The trick is to keep a spirit of generosity, conversation, and a love for the truth in our dialogue.

Friends, I write this in a spirit of repentance. I only wish to make myself and my writing better, and I wish to ask forgiveness for the rashness I have taken toward the traditions I am familiar with that is all too common of my generation, and for being all-too-often a representative of the type of religion that makes those on the other side of the looking glass point and say "that is why I am not religious."

I also must ask forgiveness for all of the times where my perspective has been the only thing I've considered, and I've failed to show proper respect and honor in my pursuit of life. I ask forgiveness because I am human, and always trying to do better. Release me if you wish.

The Inadequacy of Labels, and Frustration

If there is one thing regarding my religious endeavors I regret, it is calling myself an "Emergent Christian."

Let me explain why.

I live in the south, and have experienced religion in a very limited context. Evangelical Protestant Conservative Christianity. I can also never be part of this religious movement/branch/label because of my experiences with it. Not because I'm bitter, not because I've been hurt by some people that represent it, but because of what it is. So let's talk about this label a little bit.

It is defined firstly by the points of Evangelicalism, which are crucicentrism, biblicism, conversionism, and activism. In other words, the Cross is central, the Bible is the ultimate authority (whatever that means depends on the specific denomination/beliefs of the person), a desire to proselytize/"spread the good news", and being active in one's community. At least it's equal parts doctrine and practice.

To be Conservative in the Christian context is nebulous at best, but it generally refers to holding to certain doctrines of Christianity where Liberals supposedly do not. It has political implications, but in a strictly religious sense, it need not be political. In the South, it usually is. However, more to the point Conservativism accuses the Liberals of buying into the "Spirit of the Age" and allowing doctrine to suffer for it. Sadly, they bought into Modernity in a different sense than doctrine, as it now argues on the same playing field as the Liberal Modernist Christians. In other words, to be a Conservative is to hold to a Philosophical Orientation that argues in the mode of pure reason. Being an Evidentialist is a good example of this, and faith almost exists outside the realm of Conservativism, as a presuppositional and purely practical means. Liberals tend to embrace this more fully, becoming practical to the excess.

To be Protestant is to follow the tenants of the Protestant Reformation, and to have a "spirit of Protest" about your religious convictions. This explains why Protestantism has more branches than any other in Christianity...Protestants enjoy arguing. The Protestant Reformation was a Protest against the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, and Reformed Christians are the most radical, and perhaps the most true, form of Protestants.

If you wanna get really ironic, this post is probably protestant in some form. *cringes in horror*

To be a Christian is to venerate and follow the teachings of Christ to the best of one's ability. That is, of course, to follow according to one's understanding of what that is. Christians come into disagreement because Christ was in many ways a mysterious and contrary figure, and we know about very little of his life, probably less than 5%. What is recorded in the Scriptures is enough to confuse, it seems. That is, if you read it according to a certain set of Philosophical Presuppositions and as an isolated work.

I can't be this set of labels because I disagree with over 90% of it and because of the abuses it naturally falls into, but moreso because the underlying Philosophy is one of categories, Foundationalism. Foundationalism starts with privileged premises, things above reproach in an argument, and argues to natural conclusions using rigorous logic from there. This is correct if one's logic is not flawed and if one's presuppositions are correct. If either of these things are broken or wrong, then the whole thing is monstrous. Furthermore, if you question a presupposition, you are a curse upon a community of Foundationalists, and they will be threatened and respond reasonably according to the way they are. Ostracization is a way of putting this lightly. Being called a heretic is not uncommon, even if one is asking questions or reframing. See: Rob Bell.

So, in comes Emergent Village, which came to be called the Emerging Church movement, which is now supposedly called Hipster Christianity. Unfortunately, this last label is all too fitting.

The Emerging Church in its' prime was a Postmodern form of Christianity. That is, it came to a much more Coherentist view of Truth, viewing it as multivalent and grand. It was also ambiguous to the logical Foundationalist, and hence it was jammed into categories. Postmodernism by itself is a category, though the closest definition one can come to is a suspicion and disdain of metanarratives, which are stories regarding Ultimate Reality. So Postmodern Christianity, depending on who you talk to, is a suspicion of the metanarratives told by people, usually the Conservative Evangelical Protestants in my area, and it tended to look to more ancient roots of Christianity, trying to find the "correct" metanarrative, and usually adding the qualification that one can never get there fully.

Unlike the Neo-Reformed and Reformed, who insist their 16th Century views are 1st Century originated, the Postmodern Christian looks at other Church fathers (or hip dudes that write about other Church fathers) and deconstructs and reconstructs continually according to one's Philosophical orientation, trying to get back to what Christianity "really" is and what it can be today in a form that is more true.

The problem is, of course, they gained more and more labels for themselves. Because labels are easy, and they communicate faster than explaining and leaving ambiguity where it should rightfully be. So we come to Hipster Christianity, which is another step in Emergent solidifying into another movement in Christianity, just like Evangelicalism, that will probably be called something that has a meaning by the end.

Because Emergent became hip, and the younger generation likes it. Their theologies became shaped by finding the obscure writing, the theology that no one gets, and that makes them hip and deep. The mystery became a fad instead of a given, and it became about what is cool rather than trying to find Christianity's roots.

Yeah, I'm getting old. Moving on.

Postmodernism, as a natural development out of the rational Modernism, is merely another thoughtform. The moment it took itself too seriously, began to solidify into something with coherent answers, it was no longer Postmodernism. It was another step in the Modern world. This is because people have not changed, and they still want answers. The problem is, Evangelicalism and "Emergentism" are both irrelevant.

Labels are irrelevant to people and the way they move, grow, think, question, believe, doubt, feel, and think. They are inadequate, and should be treated as such.

Don't get me wrong, labels are not evil. They are inadequate. I could not speak to you without labels, but I guarantee you you are not thinking the exact same thing I am from reading this post. This is why conversation is more important than labels. People are naturally disconnected, and this is not the state we long for. Hurt comes from the connection with others being disrupted, dissonance flowing down it, and something in us being broken or battered. To disconnect, and to make things easier, we create labels, systems, theologies, philosophies, where conversation, intrigue, Theology and Philosophy are more helpful.

Let me explain. Conversation as opposed to labels. Connection as opposed to disconnection. Intrigue as opposed to systems. Wonder as opposed to apathy. Theology as opposed to theologies. Philosophy as opposed to philosophies. A practice, a way of life, as opposed to jamming our souls into labels. Wielding labels as inadequate tools that lead to connection, as opposed to being defined by them.

Because no one likes it when someone defines them as "just an Evangelical."

"Just a conservative."

"Just a foundationalist."

"Just an adherent to [pick a system]."

"Just an Emergent."

"Just a heretic."

It hurts, because we're more. When we are told we don't care about something we desperately do care about just because our approach is different, our label is not the same as another's, and our Philosophy, our Theology, our way is a little different. It is at this point that people are refusing to understand and are disregarding us. People become irrelevant because their philosophy is the only thing relevant to them. Naturally, one wants to lash back out, but these people deserve pity. They isolate themselves from anyone not like them, and the more rigorous they are with their definition of themselves, the more alone they are.

No matter how in love a person insists they are with rejection, they do not want it. They simply convince themselves they do because it's easy. It's the way out of feeling weak and taken advantage of, of a hard life that is worth it for the chance of being understood, of being accepted despite one's blunders and faults.

I regret calling myself an "Emergent Christian" because I am more. People still think I don't believe in the Trinity, people still think I believe in the idolization of community, and I'm more than any of it. So are you.

Emergent was a movement of Frustration, and I fear that people have missed the point. I fear that with everyone mad and jamming public figures into old labels, we are simply. Missing it. We no longer interact with people, we interact with demons or angels, drastic moralizations of constructs of things that were once people, because we can't see past our prejudice.

When safety and understanding at any cost become an idol, it becomes prejudice. And prejudice means lack of seeing. Blind people cannot help but run into each other, not because they're stupid, but because they can't see. What's sad is, for some people to stop being blind, all they need to do is stop being stubborn and open their eyes. A scary thought, considering people can run from themselves much more easily with their eyes closed. Regardless of running into things, they can cast blame on themselves or on anyone but thesmselves, simply because they won't open their eyes to who they are, the power they have, the responsibility being a person implies, and the beauty of all of it.

There's a better way than this. There has to be.

On Universalism and Love

Warning: this post is very specific regarding the book "Love Wins." If you haven't read it yet, go read it before reading this post.

I wrote a review recently for Rob Bell's book "Love Wins." This will be the third post inspired by that particular book. However, as you can see from the post, I'll also be talking about Universalism, which many other reviewers have decided to write about, and I have yet to.

So, Bell writes his fifth book, after being largely left alone aside from the occasional heretic or false teacher accusation since his first, and the result is nothing short of spectacular. People are mad before it even comes out, writing scathing reviews with many implications regarding him as a person, his church, etc. People are also raving and excited about it from before it comes out, and all of this craziness is still continuing. Some people are still writing scathing reviews and talking about how Christianity is in danger, and some people are still writing in defense of Bell's book. The funny thing is, the groups tend to talk past each other, and in the cases of direct engagement, they're passive aggressively, often condescendingly, hostile toward each other.

So, let's try to make sense out of one particular of this, shall we?

One of the things you'll hear in every negative review and almost no positive reviews is the accusation of Universalism. What's interesting (and ironic) is that this term itself is ambiguous, as it refers to many different movements and a whole array of theology.

In its' most basic form, Universalism is a Philosophy or Theology with implications for everyone. For example, most Christians tend to hold to a Universalist view on sin, that is all have sinned, universally.

So let's narrow this down then. Obviously, we have a book regarding Christianity, religion, God, spirituality, etc, and it talks about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person that has ever lived. Most criticism tends to come from the view presented of the afterlife, or of the existence of good and evil in a metaphysical/eternal form. So, the Universalist accusation most specifically refers to someone's fate in relation to God, usually after death.

The problem is, this is still simplistic. What does any of that mean? Does it mean that everyone will be in this realm called "Heaven," no matter what they do or what kind of a person they are? Does it mean that universally everyone will end up in the same place, whether that's heaven, hell, or neither one? If so, does that mean physically, spiritually, or in some other ambiguous form? Or does it perhaps refer to something besides the typical conception of Heaven and Hell being one of two destinations after death? Could it refer to a present reality? How would universalism fit that?

Here's the problem with this accusation.

The Reformed/Conservative/Negative reviewer states that "Love Wins" downplays God's Wrath by getting rid of Hell. They insist that God can only be brought full glory and honor by conscious, eternal torment of those that do not accept Jesus. They speak constantly of life after death, and they speak of this life as the only opportunity to make that decision.

The Emerging/Postmodern/Positive review states that "Love Wins" brings us back into focus with who God is, and states that God can only be brought full glory and honor by insisting on his power and Love, and speaks of Heaven and Hell in present terms, usually leaving ambiguity for what happens after we die, after the Eschaton (End of the Age), and such.

As you can see, both of these views not only have ambiguity, but they are talking past each other. This is classic because it speaks not only of two groups with two different ways of reading the Bible, but it speaks loudly of differing Philosophical Presuppositions.

The focus of present reality vs. future reality. Potentiality vs. Actuality. Love vs. Wrath (though both groups strongly emphasize that they take both into account). Most importantly, however, we are looking at an attack on the Western, Enlightenment spawned, mindset by a Postmodern/Eastern understanding of how things are.

The truth is, regardless of theological claims, both groups are well represented in the Church, and have been for a long time (many centuries at least). Both groups also had ancient predecessors that lead up to the Postmodern group, the Enlightenment group, the East and the West, and all of the other groups.

Obviously, I am simplifying something very complex for the purpose of discussion. There are not only two sides to this issue, there are as many sides as there are people. However, when a revolution happens, an old philosophy comes under scrutiny by a new one. That is the context of our discussion, and it's been happening for years.

The Enlightenment crowd need not be so shocked that a book like "Love Wins" came out. It's been a long time coming.

Now, in light of this, let's come back to Universalism.

To the Enlightenment thinker, Universalism means that nothing matters in this life, because everyone goes to Heaven. That is the emphasis, and that is dangerous to them.

To the Postmodern thinker, Universalism means that we're talking about an old category. That's why none of them mention it: it's simply not relevant to the discussion. To them, old thought patterns are what is dangerous, so of course Universalism is dangerous.

This is why Rob Bell is not writing Universalism. He is not speaking of the Classical Liberal movement, nor is he speaking of a life where nothing matters. His thoughts have come to shape and be shaped by many Postmodern Christians, because that is the way he speaks and writes.

Heaven and Hell do not mean what you may have heard them to mean in this work, they mean something different. Universalism cannot apply to that, and when it comes to life after death, things become very mysterious very fast. Bell speaks in definite terms regarding his theology, regarding what is happening right now in this world, regarding the clear and present Kingdom, and the present realities of Heaven and Hell.

Salvation is no longer defined intellectually, because it never has been. It's a matter of the whole person, and it's nearly impossible to define, and yet it is so simple. The Enlightenment definition, the Sinner's Prayer, the need to intellectually affirm certain points, those things are fading as a definition of Salvation.

It totally makes sense to me that a lot of people are threatened by the movement that "Love Wins" represents. However, to label it as Liberal or Universalist is to completely miss the point of what it is. If Bell wrote that everyone definitely comes to God, goes to Heaven, and the physical domain of Hell is emptied, then I think Universalist would be a good definition. Instead, he writes with hope, speaking from his understanding of God (an understanding coming from Scripture and the historical and cultural Jesus), and says what he believes about it (which people have been screaming for for a long time). Could it be wrong or unbalanced? Sure. But it is what it is, and no amount of swords desperately stabbing straw men of it will change that.

However, one thing is clear: Universalism, Liberalism, Conservativism, Evangelicalism...these words will all become memories or be redefined by necessity in the coming years, and Philosophically, we will move on, hopefully to a better place.

Opinion Section: I have believed for a long time in a Theology of Love. When I look at Jesus, it is the only thing that makes sense. To me, this book was a breath of fresh air, an affirmation that all of the years of being misunderstood/having to hide so I could get a break from accusations of heresy were worth it. Like Bell, I will say I believe in the historic, orthodox Christian faith, and I'd very much rather call it the "New Humanity," the way all humans can be what we were made to be. The Kingdom is Renewal, and I do my best to be a part of that. I'd like to think that even my Enlightenment brothers and sisters are trying to do that as well, and regardless of backlash, criticism, or anything else, I will continue to think the best of them. Love is not about who agrees with you, nor is it about how you are treated. It's an action, and a way of life, that I choose to call "Heaven," and I'm trying to figure out how to bring that around me as much as possible.

What's your story?