On newspapers, wikis, and the local church

I can think of a few instances over the years where we were instructed in church to get our doctrine from just one place- the local church leaders (and the leaders directly above them, of course). They used some analogy about only drinking from one well- I can't quite remember, but the idea was that it was unhealthy to just take in Biblical teaching from a variety of sources. This was back in pre-internet times.

Now in 2009, with the unprecedented freedom of information the internet brings, and the opportunities to not only listen to others, but to connect and exchange stories online- I wonder if this constitutes the end of the "local church" as we have known it. The local church will surely continue to exist as a bricks-and-mortar location for doing church, but it won't exist anymore as the sole provider of community, teaching, doctrine, leadership, etc.

I've watched with a twinge of loss as the major print newspapers begin to fold (hey that was a pun) one by one. To me, they are one of the most meaningful symbols of the pre-internet era, when the news was written by just a handful of people who were part of a defined institution in society. The newspapers' content carried far more weight back then- it was vital for announcing real events to the people: the end of the war, the election of a new leader, or the state of the economy. But now information, rather than funneling through a few highly-trusted institutions, floods into our lives through endless myriad tributaries, rivers and streams. I rarely buy or read a print newspaper. When I do, it's often just for the experience of slowing down, having a coffee and a quiet moment. It's not because the newspaper is a necessary messenger in my life anymore.

I think the experience of belonging to a local church is trending in the same direction. When I consider the "wells" I drink from, they are numerous: the Bible, leaders/friends in my local church, magazines, websites, blogs, books, podcasts, music, television shows- and those are just the so-called "Christian" sources. In truth, I draw much more deeply from sources in my everyday life: the world around me, my loved ones, my children.

In the past, local churches were much more homogenous. If you were an Anglican, you went to an Anglican Church. You sang only Anglican hymns, you read from Anglican prayer books. You might have been familiar with the history of your particular denomination. You would have been familiar with the doctrine of the Anglican Church. The local church would have been close to that sole, vital source, as the newspaper was.

To draw my instruction, encouragement and even faith community from a variety of sources was always painted as a negative thing, but I think it is not. Perhaps this practice could even hold great promise for the future of the church, to finally escape the divisions that have plagued the church since its beginnings. Allow me just to dream for a moment... if all the separate rivers, the denominations and schools of theology start to pool together in a great ocean of thought, people would increasingly hear the thoughts of "others" and realize they're not all that different. I've seen books, for instance, cross tremendous denominational divides- and when the readers find out that the author was Anglican, or Evangelical, or a Christian peace activist- they think to themselves, well I guess those [insert group name] aren't so bad after all.

I can see two distinct effects occuring in this internet-age proliferation of information sources: 1. People are becoming less discriminating of where they get their information (allowing for the emergence of I-Reporters, for example); and 2. People are less likely to put their trust in the simple face-value of that information.

These effects are evident in the growing popularity of online wiki sources, such as wikipedia and wikinews. A wiki is a more egalitarian way of sharing knowledge- anyone is allowed to contribute. This causes the wiki-users to be more alert and cognizant of the problems surrounding the sharing of information. Everyone contributes, and everyone draws, but with an awareness that there are pitfalls involved in any search for truth, and that every piece of information must be considered and tested, and then incorporated into your life if deemed helpful. It moves us away from blind dependence on a small group of highly-specialized, deeply trusted experts to interpret truth for us.

I think this is a good move.

Listening to the Artists

A terrific quote on why we need artists, and why we need to listen hard to what the artists of our time are saying, and the questions they are asking-
it's a good antidote to living in the Land of Already-Having-All-The-Answers that is the Christian experience today.

"Art can warm even a chilled and sunless soul to an exalted spiritual experience. Through art we occasionally receive- indistinctly, briefly- revelations the likes of which cannot be achieved by rational thought.

It is like the small mirror of legend: you look into it but instead of yourself you glimpse for a moment the Inaccessible, a realm forever beyond reach. And your soul begins to ache... "

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from "the Nobel Lecture on Literature"

Also, I remember reading a review of that Christian movie starring Kirk Cameron, Fireproof. the reviewer said that it was a solid movie, as far as moving making goes, but that it wasn't a great movie, and that no Christian movie could be, because this religion does not allow for the kind of honesty that real Art requires. Hmmm.

feeling desperate

It's quarter to 5 in the morning.
My parents left for Ontario yesterday. We waved to them from the front lawn as they drove away in their UHaul Truck, towing their car behind them. They are now driving thousands of kilometers, over the mountains, through the prairies, past the Great Lakes.
How can the leaving of two make my world feel like it just emptied out of people?
Feel like our little family is surrounded by a great blank ocean.
I wasn't expecting the loneliness to hit so hard.

The last few months, as this day approached, I began taking stock of all our connections- and building these connections up in anticipation of my parents leaving. I realized that the best connection I have is with my neighbor, K. We met in the park last year, and struck up a quiet and gentle friendship. It sort of snuck up on me, but as I look back over the past year, there is a solid history of giving and receiving, of being a support to one another through life's difficulties.

What I also noticed, however, is that I don't have this kind of friendship with anyone in our church small group. My husband and I joined this church 2 years ago. We found church, but I don't think we found real community. The women in the group are good people, good Christians, but our friendship hasn't extended beyond the homegroup or church times, so to me, this is not a real organic friendship that lives where we live, in our ordinary everyday life.

Maybe we will have to go looking again. The only people who seem to understand what is going on with us in our struggles with faith is the online emerging church, and its network of blogs. When I think I'm going crazy- wondering how everyone else can just fit in with church so well- I read some of their writing. and I know I'm not the only one. I hope we can find some people in our area that we could relate with about these things.

I try to reconnect with some of my friends in Ontario, with a similar faith past as mine, who I know have come to question a lot of these things too. But it's reaching across the distance of geography, and time, and the growing apart we've done over the years. I want so much to talk about these things with them, and we do a little, but I can't really express how desperate I feel inside. I have more questions now than when I started, and the more I try to dig and sort, the bigger the piles become. I think this blog might be the best avenue available to me right now, to try to find a way through. To find a faith that makes sense, that we can practice as a family. A faith that is real, and lets us be free and be ourselves and live out the real life inside us. A faith that is good for my children. That will help them to God, not send them down winding side roads of fakery and religion.

I know I started this blog post about my parents, but I guess it's really about transitions and the feelings of anxiety and loneliness that are experienced in those times.

I feel like we are losing all our moorings, one by one- all those assurances I used to possess- the assurance that I knew God and Jesus and right and wrong, my faith in the church to bring us closer to God, my faith in myself as a Christian, in my way of believing. And now my parents. Feels like someone just pulled out the last mooring, and now our tiny family is just drifting.

The Christian Label

For the last couple weeks, I've been reconsidering whether to call myself a "Christian" or not. At the moment, I feel that I'd like to stop using the label indefinitely- but not because I don't "believe in Jesus" anymore, or have decided firmly against the Christian doctrine. I more have an issue with using a label to define my spiritual state. And "Christian" is a very problematic label, I think, because of its huge range of understood meanings.
What does the label "Christian" really mean? If we're in conversation, and I tell you I'm a Christian, then there are immediately quite a few different meanings now in play: there's what you think "Christian" means; what "Christian" means to me; then there's what I actually am; and of course, what God thinks of what I am. And these meanings might be drastically different from each other, so I wonder how usefully, really, is it to call myself a Christian.
In the past, it was always emphasized that we should declare ourselves "Christian" when asked- and to do it firmly and proudly. If I were to somehow deny this label, that was equated with denying Christ Himself- a serious sin indeed. But I wonder if God is so stuck on us using this label. Are "Christian" and Christ synonymous? I think of a few examples in the gospels where Jesus shakes down people's confidence in their labels: when he says that there will be some people who do miracles "in my name" who will be denied entrance into heaven- and Jesus will say he "never knew" them. And also Jesus danced around the label people tried to put on him: Son of God. He almost never gave a straight answer, usually returning the question to the asker, ie "Well, who do you think that I am?"

I like that approach. I'd rather have people draw their own conclusions; look at the "stuff" of my life and decide for themselves what they think I am. If they think I'm a "Christian" (according to their own definition), then fine, that's what they think I am. If not, that's fine, too. Because really, what does it matter whether people attach me to a certain label?
In other spheres of life, I think it matters more what people think you are- the labels they attach to you. But when it comes to my spiritual state, I think it only really matters what I really am- underneath all the labels- and what God thinks of me.

It might seem at this point in the post that I'm completely ambivalent to the label "Christian"- but this is not quite true. I think I've actually become somewhat resistant toward it. At this moment in my life, the label Christian stands for a lot of things that I don't want any part of. For me, Christian means being "different" from others- "separate"- "better than"- with a special "calling" that sets me above others- having "the answers." I really detest this kind of thinking now- and don't want to see myself as above others. I want to look in the mirror and see a human being- just a human being.

Problems in our approach to Scripture

1. Over-familiarity:
--so used to reading a passage and glibly finding the meaning. Easy. God meant this, here's the lesson, here's the moral, la-di-dah.

2. Reading Selectively:
How many times have I heard a preacher skim over a bunch of problematic, confusing verses to get to the one palatable verse that he wants to talk about? Or how about whole books of the Bible that are never talked about? Really, we get our working belief system from a very small slice of the Bible.

3. Selective Literalism
--Christian teachers take some passages literally, word for word, and then painstakingly explain why other passages don't literally mean what they seem to be saying.
-- for some passages, preachers/teachers insist that we don't question or challenge one word of the verse- but then those same leaders will "soften" the interpretation of other passages when it seems necessary. For example:
In one passage, Jesus says that the only way a woman could divorce and still be right with God is if her husband is "unfaithful." But how about domestic abuse? And you'd be hard pressed to find a pastor who would counsel a woman to stay with her husband under these circumstances. Clearly the pastor is applying Love and Common Sense to his reading of the scriptures. If we're just to be literal, then "unfaithfulness" is the ONLY justifiable reason for divorce. So pure literalism seems highly problematic as a way of reading the Scriptures...

4. Schooled only to understand, appreciate, revere and obey the Scriptures- not how to ask questions- real questions.
-- I think the practice of asking questions, of being confused by what the Scriptures say, is a healthy practice. The more we open our eyes and acknowledge how difficult and complex the Scriptures can be- this will help us avoid over-familiarity, and over-simplifying of God, and perhaps also over-simplifying other religions as just "wrong" and Christianity as so "right"

So how am I supposed to approach the Scriptures?

I don't know.

Questions

What's so wrong with "just trying to be a good person"?
As Christians, we always slammed that idea down. If someone said, "well, I try to be a good person," we'd pontificate about how they're trying to live life without God, trying to be righteous in their own strength, that they're denying their need for Christ.
But really, if a person says that, and genuinely means it- what a beautiful statement it is. And there is such a greater ring of honesty to this than a Christian's brand of "goodness." With a Christian, when they do something good, it's more than likely not because they just want to; they're doing it because they're a Christian and that's what Christians do, or to gain status in their Christian culture.

More Problems with Evangelism

Evangelism is not just about undertaking certain efforts to communicate a message to others. It profoundly affects the way we see ourselves, and ourselves in relation to other human beings.

Evangelism teaches the Christian that he is the sole agent of "truth," called by God to put down every other religion or belief, that he is God's "ambassador" on earth.

Is this really a healthy and humble way for a human being to view himself?

I remember those first conversations with A., thinking in utter amazement to myself: This Muslim has more understanding of God in his baby finger than I have in my whole being.
It threw me... at the time I really did think that I was the expert on God because I was the Christian, the messenger of truth. ha ha. get a life.