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People Who Live in Glass Cathedrals Shouldn't Criticize Stone

Sharon Stone recently commented that the Chinese earthquake was the result of bad karma for that country's treatment of Tibet. I'm not sure if I find it refreshing or frightening to see that people of any religion or belief system are capable of saying stupid things when trying to explain suffering in the world.

So here's a question to ponder: Why do explanations like these seem so obviously ridiculous when phrased in another religion's vocabulary, but perfectly sensible when expressed in the vocabulary of our own? Most of us find detestable any claim that some force in the universe would arbitrarily kill thousands of innocents to maintain some semblance of cosmic justice. Yet many Christian theologies of God's sovereignty claim just that - directly or indirectly, through God's action or inaction. (Yes, I know I'm not bringing up anything new here.)

Sure, some of us Christians may have cringed at Falwell and Robertson's over-the-top claims of God's use of meteorological weapons. Yet we have no problem "comforting" victims of tragedy with phrases like, "It's all part of God's plan." We share praise stories in our worship services of how God spared us a tragedy that befell our neighbors. (Rarely are the not so fortunate present at the same time to give the other side of the story in their anguished prayers.) What if a Hollywood celebrity said the same thing using some Eastern or New Age wording? Would we be repulsed? Somehow couching it in Christianese makes it all OK.

It's not that I think we should do away with talking about God's plan or not express thanks for coming through a near-miss with death. It's just that we need to wrestle with these issues and their implications more deeply in our churches. It should be OK to say how senseless this all seems. It should be OK say the traditional theological explanations aren't working for us. Deep questions shouldn't be dismissed with platitudes like "Well, it's just a mystery." Sometimes those traditional ideas about how God works seem just as insipid as Sharon Stone's red carpet comments. That doesn't mean, we don't believe in God. It just means we don't accept some of the explanations for how God works.

I am encouraged that Stone was moved to apologize. The Tibetan Foundation responded with compassion and asked her to help the quake victims. Although spoken in a different vocabulary, I believe that was God at work.

Beware

This piece ran in the Emergent/C newsletter today. There's an "illustrated version" on the Emergent Village Website

Beware - by Don Heatley

I never knew our church was emergent until the people in our town starting warning one another that we were.

The newspaper ads for Vision Community Church tend be thought provoking and irreverent, but rarely controversial. The closest we came to scandal was a few years back when we ran an ad featuring a patient in a dentist's chair with a headline that read, "Let's see, church? Root canal? Church? Root canal... for some people it's a tough choice." That one spurred a nasty email, though not from a church person. It came from an offended dentist. Turns out, I am truly an anti-dentite.

So I was a little surprised last week when a friend in town showed me an email that was circulating through his church. The writer warned that "the Emerging Church is sneaking in all around us" and that we must "follow Jesus alone" (apparently emerging churches do not follow Jesus). Attached to the email was a scanned copy of one of our newspaper ads. Scribbled across it was the frenetic warning, "Beware the Emerging Church." The image of a reptilian creature rising from a latte swamp, sporting an algae soul patch and a graphic tee, comes to mind.

While my friend thought I would be upset, instead I was hysterical with laughter. I kept picturing a "Beautiful Mind"-like scene of some guy in a shed clipping out church newspaper ads and mumbling, "Must stop emerging church. Must stop emerging church." Frankly, the amazing thing about this incident, is that most typical churchgoers cannot figure out how to attach anything to an email. Just my luck one of the few who can targets my church. Don't believe me? Scan your inbox for how many messages you have from your church or denomination with the subject line "Oops! Forgot the Attachment."

Oddly enough, Vision has never used any conjugation of the verb "emerge" in any of our ads. My theory is that this fear of Vision all began in someone's inbox. Sandwiched between warnings of hypodermic needles hidden in the coin return slots of pay phones and claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim, this person read an email claiming that different Christianity equals Emergent, and Emergent equals dangerous. Informed only by anti-emergent websites, they went looking for an "Exhibit A" and found it in my church.

How ironic that Emergent, which is often criticized for not defining itself, can be so easily defined by its critics. I propose a new tag line for, to use a New Jersey term, "this thing of ours." Rather than "Emergent: A Generative Friendship," I propose "Emergent: We're like pornography. You know it when you see it." When I attended a Christian high school in the late seventies, anything deemed different or threatening to the faith was labeled "Secular Humanism" (including, believe it or not, the Bill of Rights). Like pornography, you knew Secular Humanism when you saw it. The ability to know it (heresy) when you saw it is what defined a true belief. For many Christians the working definition of heresy is "things I didn't already think about God." It seems the term "Emergent" has now filled that function of apostasy accusation du jour, the theo-porn whose books wayward believers hide under their mattresses and whose web sites are deleted from their browser histories. No need to explore it. You know it when you see it.

To be honest, I don't mind my church being labeled "Emergent," especially when used as a term of derision. My heroes have always been heretics; Wesley, Luther, Galileo... Jesus. I am proud to pastor a church that invites questions, and embraces the deep complexity of truth found in a life of following Jesus. Since my denominational colleagues give me little attention or support, I value highly the friendships I have made in the emerging church community. Although I am not quite ready to break out into a chorus of I'm turning E-mergent, oh yes I'm turning E-mergent, I really think so, my life has been enriched by this conversation. Uh oh, I used the word "conversation," a telltale sign of emergents. Only talking devil-snakes and gay men have "conversations." You know it when you see it.

After asking around town, I discovered that the email "emerged" from a member of a local Precept (more-Bible-verses-makes-it-more-truer) Bible study. No surprise that a group that views biblical truth as a fill-in-the-blank proposition would find our church so dangerous. In contrast, Vision sees following Jesus as more like an essay question. Uh oh, open-ended answers. You know it when you see it.

Yet I must empathize with Vision's critics since we are always in danger of being like them. Just when they caught up and installed their video screens and rock bands, Christianity morphed yet again. Someday, we may find ourselves in the same position, fearing an unknown future. Hear the cautionary tale of Grandpa Simpson when he told Homer, "I was with it once. Then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it. And what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you!"

Hmmm, that's sounds like a call to humility, another one of those Emergent heresies. You know it when you see it.

Beware.