Much of what is below is still a work in progress (especially given I just started thinking about this about 3 minutes ago) but I wanted to throw it out there before I forgot it (as I usually do).
I was just youtube-ing at work since the student center is completely empty and I have another hour and a half to work, and I came across a sweet video via my friend Tegan's blog. I promptly sent the link to my sister with whom I was IM-ing to pass the time.
After a period of no response from my sister (not an unusual thing) I asked if she watched it yet? She replied that she hadn't and thus I exhorted her to watch "now." I told her it was great and gave her a few reasons to watch it. After prodding her to watched it I began thinking about the youtube phenomenon and blogging and things of that nature.
I began to wonder how much of this is more the desire for shared experience than actually just the dissemination of cool videos and ideas. I'm sure it's a bit of both, but it seems that one of the driving forces behind youtube and really all the internet fads is shared experience.
As I think about this I wonder if this is need or craving for shared experience has helped to feed into the various popular Christian movements over the past few years. Think about the Emergents. What do they emphasize? They build upon a need for experience and collective-ness at the expense of Christian orthodoxy, even to the point of holding heretical views and ignoring essential Christian tenets. I personally am absolutely dismayed that the emergent movement continues to thrive. This is a cancer growing through protestantism that is causing us to forsake the Christian faith all for some sort of collective experience and liberal idealism. In my mind many of the emergents are no better than the heretics of old such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus, etc.
I also wonder if desire for shared experience helps to contribute to the Rob Bell craze. While I'm still working on reading through some of this guy's books, I do have to say that I'm not a big fan. His nooma videos are junk and I think they are mostly fueled by this desire for a shared experience or a desire to be 'timely' (see my post: Current? and yes I do realize that I'm being a bit contradictory by posting these thoughts so quickly)
The students here crave Bell and the Emergents. They get all starry-eyed when someone mentions their names and quickly bristle when someone like me says that they're not that great and may indeed hold heretical beliefs (emergents). I find it disturbing that students champion these people and drink the proverbial Kool-Aid so quickly. Why must our shared experience be found in the latest fad and not the timeless beliefs of classic Christian orthodoxy? Why do we champion these new thinkers for innovative ecclesiologies when they lack the substance of the faith and are doing nothing more than leading people down the path to hell with their watered down theology and absence of anything genuine?
If these men and women teach something contradictory to classic Christian Orthodoxy and they cease to become "nice" and "slightly misguided" people that we should learn from and they become impious God-haters (to use some of the phrasing for those anathematized at the ecumenical councils).
Just so I don't get misunderstood and get a ton of backlash let me be clear: I am not calling Rob Bell a heretic. I am also not calling ALL of the Emergents heretics. I have, however, had a conversation with one high-profile Emergent leader in which he claimed the Trinity was just Greek philosophical ideals and not really Christian and thus not a necessary or even important doctrine. I also think that Emergent theology down plays Christian orthodoxy to a dangerous extreme and thus runs fearfully close to falling into heresy (like the aforementioned leader).
My concern is that Asbury Seminary students and undoubtedly students, ministers, and lay people across the country and buying into these faulty paradigms because they desire a shared experience. This is absurd. The shared experience should be the Holy doctrines of the Church which help us to partake of the divine essence of God as St. Peter says. I am absolutely disgusted with the hero worship the students around this campus give to folks like Rob Bell and the emergents.
While the same charge of hero worship could be thrown at me and the way I read the saints of the church, I will just say that my hero's have lasted the test of time, and were actually building up and codifying Christian orthodoxy not ignoring it and leading people astray.
- Ben
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4 comments:
You really hit a key point: "partaking of the divine essence" (later rephrased "divine energies"). The desire for shared experience is, like all passions, a misguided desire for a good thing. What is the Good? God himself! Yet the Emergents, in mistaking interpersonal realtionships for God himself, neglect the one thing needful. This is the great irony: that in loosing our lives, we actually find them. Thus, these concepts are not born just out of "Greek Philosophy" but out of actually partaking of God himself.
As always...I shutter when listening to you go on about how Rob Bell and the emergents are "junk". I am not taking a stand on them here at all. I am just simply posing the question...as always...why? Are they "junk" simply because their theology is different than yours? Or, are they "junk" because they have mega-churches which you hate? While I have not studied people like Rob Bell to discover whether or not their dogmas are the same as ours, I wonder if they are different at all? Are we simply getting upset over things that are not essential to salvation? If so, should we be?
Secondly...I find your comments on shared experience very funny. In my opinion...and only my opinion...because I know those who love technology may want to disagree...it is things like the internet, cell phones, blogging, etc. that cause the problem of a lack of shared experience in the first place. It is just funny how many "relationships" we maintain online...and really have no depth to them. All because it is too hard to write a letter, call, or, God forbid, visit someone.
Tony,
As always, you make good points. I think these folks are junk because they have a vapid ecclesiology which down plays doctrine to the point where it is often ignored, even essential doctrines like the Trinity.
The same emergent leader referenced in my post also holds that the bible is a member of their community and thus seemingly has no more or no less authority than other members.
This ecclesiology places "community" (or at least their conception of it) higher than what has been essential to the faith for ages. And that is not to say that community hasn't been viewed with importance. Community has been viewed as naturally flowing from the faith and the casting out from community (cf. Paul and the anethemas) is seen as a means of redeeming the individual.
Rob Bell, while being emergent, seems to me to be a little bit of a different discussion. I'm still working on reading through some of his stuff and thus I can't get on him too specifically. So far my biggest complaint is against his lack of content and depth. I also don't like his delivery (if seems fake) but I can ignore that.
My issue with all this is that it is propagating a weak form of Christianity that raises the individual and the community above God. God is thus made in the image of the community and/or the individual, or rather, the community's liberal agenda.
On the issue of blogging et al. attributing to a lack of shared experience. I agree...at least in part. I think you're right, these things do contribute to a vast lack of communal shared experience especially in the most desired form. I also think that people are feeling the absence of this community (note while I value community I would not elevate it like the emergents do) and are thus trying to repair it through internet phenomena.
With that said, I also believe that blogs, et al. can still be beneficial. I think their biggest asset is helping people to stay connected with an already established relationship group if that group disbands.
This blog is an instance of that. I began it as an effort to share my theological thoughts and musings with my friends from college after I graduated and didn't have anyone off of whom I could bounce ideas. Subsequently, as I've made friends (i.e. you and others at Asbury) they have been welcomed into this dialogue. While I admit that sometimes this blog takes on a life of it's own and may indeed be larger than the original purpose, I think it still is a beneficial tool to have dialogue about various ideas and to in some form (albeit an insufficient one) have a dialogue surrounding some ideas.
Do these thoughts still make you shutter? If so at least we have the ability to get together and talk about them after Christmas break and not merely dialogue over a blog.
Merry christmas!!
Ben
Well...I tend to shutter any time you speak. It is a natural reaction. Plus, just as I believe you tend to over-react to some things...I tend to over-react to your over-reactions.
Anyway...Merry Christmas! Enjoy your time in Pennsylvania. Bring back some bambi to eat. ;)
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