Misappropriating the Incarnation?

I'm not really in the mood to blog right now, so this post (as have so many others) may be lacking in coherence and a well formulated argument, but I will post it nevertheless because it helps me to process things verbally (or in this case through typing).

We recently had Kingdom Conference on campus which is basically the Seminary's attempt at a four day mission conference nestled in the "church season" they like to call KingdomTide. (We'll avoid my soapbox diatribe against KingdomTide for now).

The topic of this conference was rethinking short-term missions and how we can do them well. I think this is a very important topic because so often short-term mission trips turn into vacations with just enough 'ministry' to ease the guilt of taking a vacation. We also want to avoid what my friend Eric Iverson from Youthworks calls "pimping poor people," or in some cases 'pimping the nationals' we go to work with. We want to make sure we do some good and we want to make sure that we are not only sticking a band-aid on the infection, but that we're treating the cause as well. We want to make lasting changes and almost work ourselves and our missionary friends out of a job. I'm not sure if I explained that well, but either way it's more of an aside and not the topic I wanted to discuss. (Don't you just love my flow of consciousness writing style?)

Given the topic we had a speaker in chapel that lectured on improving short-term missions. Our speaker was Dr. Miriam Adeney, a professor at Seattle Pacific, who was a fairly good speaker. I liked most of her points but during one of her lectures she said something that I remember thinking was a very poor analogy at best. In her effort to emphasize making long-term connections through short-term missions she said "What if Jesus had dropped in on earth for only two weeks?" This seemed to me to be an odd analogy and I remember taking some issue with it when she said it. I didn't really get too worked up over her comment until I saw it listed as the "Heard Around Campus" quote of the week from last week. I guess it seems that someone (and since they put it in there, I'm assuming multiple someones) thought that it was a very profound statement.

While it is a good point in that Jesus didn't just "drop in" and we should cherish that because the incarnation is absolutely essential to our salvation and for knowing the mind and the heart of God. It seems to me that she is just citing an extreme case to make a small point about missions. Maybe this is just a type of logical fallacy (and as I type this I think it is, but I can't remember it) or maybe this could be a form of Godwin's Law. To be sure, I have been guilty of such errors (regrettably too often in conversation) but this analogy just seems wrong to me and I'm having trouble articulating it. Maybe I'm not making sense but it just seems to me that placing relationship building in short-term missions (or in any sense) on the same level with the Holy Incarnation is just too extreme of an analogy. It bothers me even more that students (or at least one student) thinks this to be worthy of the quote of the week. Doesn't it bother anyone else that we just use the incarnation as a means to justify almost anything. The incarnation is one of the most glorious things and we treat it as though it were just an example that we should draw from when we want to make our argument fool-proof.

I'm not saying that I disagree with Dr. Adeney's points, I'm just disagree with her argument style/example. Maybe I wouldn't be so quick to point this out if I didn't think that we deified community here at Asbury. Maybe you're thinking that that last statement may indeed be the exact same fallacy that I'm arguing against, but I don't think it is, because I've heard some discussions (many of which come out of the chapel office) that make it seem (and I really think it is the case) that the seminary is more concerned with making sure our students value community than it is that they value and rightly think on the incarnation, the Trinity, or a plethora of other essential doctrines of the Church.

Maybe I'm making a bid deal out of nothing, but maybe these comments by Dr. Adeney and their glorification by the student(s) is just the tip of a bigger problem that is well entrenched in Western Christendom.


- Ben