Sustainable Faith: Defining the Term (4)

March 5, 2008

I was thinking this morning of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator that’s scheduled to go active in Switzerland in May 2008.

This thing is a beast, and I don’t mean that pejoratively. Its construction has taken years, cost into the billions, and involved an international consortium of physicists and engineers; its deployment will give scientists an unprecedented look into the particles of which our universe consists. I’m personally jazzed about how it might speak into string theory, but what I was thinking about this morning was the absolutely staggering amount of human life, energy and money that went into its creation in order to squeeze out a little more energy so that scientists could peer behind the curtain, so to speak, just a little deeper. Without a doubt the next advance on the LHC will require unimaginably larger expenditures to go even just infinitesimally deeper. You can only have a handful of these “big deals” in a lifetime because of the high cost attached to them, yet many leaders within the church have, I think, believed or hoped it would be the norm. In moments of unfaithfulness we’ve lusted after a church version of the LHC. But few are asked to wear the ring, because few can wear it. (And here it’s worth noting that a few people probably can wear the ring.)

So this was part of my morning reverie, but I promised we’d go down a different path, so let’s talk about sustainable faith and holism. Many authors, too numerous to name, have spoken incisively of the way western Christians has been entrenched in a very strong dualism: there’s spiritual life and then there’s everything else. Spiritual life has been seen as non-material, non-corporeal, and “the flesh” as that poverty-stricken thing from which we’ll some day escape. But even within the so-called spiritual life we sometimes speak of separate lives. Richard’s Foster’s wonderful book Streams of Living Water gives evidence to that compartmentalization, as my friend Jeff Cannell pointed out to me. So we have the incarnational life, the disciplined life, the word-centered life, the compassionate life, etc. Now, I know that Foster sees all of these “lives” are mere tributaries of the one life flowing from Christ (The Really Big River). For him it was simply a convenient way of grouping and talking about the various ways the church has expressed herself throughout history. Nevertheless, it still reflects the way our minds — his, mine, yours — have been trained to operate: this, not that; that, not this. It’s a language of distinction and quantification and compartmentalization, and we’ve been heading down this road ever since the ancient Greeks, so we have about 2,500 years of practice in the west. But things are changing. Synthesis is becoming all the rage.

We’ll still make distinctions. After all, it’s hardwired into us and useful for our existence: this mushroom (which can kill me) is different from that mushroom (which I can sautée). That’s a difference i want to know. But the emerging church, thank God, is more interested in connections and synthesis than in disjunctions and analysis. Einstein showed us that space and time are connected. Quantum mechanics showed us the connection between the observer and the observed. People now understand that hurricanes and butterfly wings are connected thanks to Chaos Theory. The current generation is completely familiar with six degrees of separation. In short, the world for them has become more fluid and plastic and connected. Consequently, they’re looking for a radically holistic faith, one that embraces the body as much as the mind . . . which is the body as well. The current renaissance of experiential worship didn’t arise in a vacuum. It’s a natural push toward a very physical, multi-sensory, eyes-wide-open experience. Personally, I rejoice in its arrival and believe this holism is an essential part of vibrant, sustainable faith. The radical dualism that has permeated western Christian thought creates an interior dissonance that the emerging church finds not only repulsive but unsustainable.

The other day while I was waiting for my wife to finish up some grocery shopping, I went into the McDonald’s fast food shop nearby to try their “new and improved coffee.” As a habit I avoid all fast-food chains, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I ordered my small cup and simultaneously handed my mug (which I carry with me) to the employee, asking him if he could rinse it with some hot water because it was dirty and cold. He looked puzzled but did it. Then he put the mug down, pulled out a large styrofoam cup and walked to the coffee pot. “Excuse me,” I said, “but is that for my coffee?” “Yes,” he answered. “But I don’t want my coffee in that. That’s why I gave you my mug.” He paused and said, “I’ll do it this time, but we’re not allowed to use your mug. It’s against company policy.” I was really exhausted that day and very much on the cranky side. If I could have a re-do, I’d say “I understand. Don’t bother, then. I’m happier to go without.” But what I said (with thinly veiled sarcasm) was, “So McDonald’s would rather I take their styrofoam needlessly and then clutter up some landfill with it for next gazillion years?” And then the hammer fell. Handing me the mug he said, “Well, it doesn’t really matter because God’s going to give us a new heaven and earth anyway.” A wire tripped in me, and my reptilian, emotional response came gushing out: “So it really doesn’t matter if we piss all over the earth — yes, I’m afraid I said the word piss — and pollute God’s gift to us, because, you know, God’s going to give us a new one after we’ve mismanaged this one!” He backpedaled and stammered, “That’s not really what I meant,” but I ended the conversation with a crisp, “You know what, you need to get yourself a new theology.”

So he had a theology that made no connection between stewarding creation and loving God. And I, in my fatigue and “righteous indignation” showed a theology that, in the moment at least, made no connection between loving God and showing respect for another human being. May we close the gaps, Lord, wherever they exist.

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