Julio 2004 Archives

Well into 4 it is fascinating to think about the things my son loves, and to fret a little bit about what that seems to mean about his future...

• At three he loved Backhoes and Fire-engines more than anything. I saw a future in mechanicnal engineering or equipment operation.
  
• At three and a half he started loving anything to do with sharks. I saw a future in marine biology.
  
• Superheros are starting to become more important. Spiderman is a current favorite - even though we won't take him to see either movie. (he says he likes the scary parts of movies).
  
• Ever since he could pick up a stick and point it - he has loved Guns. We've never bought him one, but he makes them out of everything. His fovorite Gun stick has been enhanced with a telescopic sight, and been painted red very carefully. It hangs on nails above the play house just like Pa's in Little House on the Praire. I see a future with the NRA and cringe...
  
• Just now he is saying he loves painting (especially the color red), trains, lions and tigers and bears, or anything outside....
  

In a comment for Gideon Strauss, in a post about whether neo-calvinists were de-emphasizing discipleship in the struggle to be culturally engaged (and relevant), Michael Matkin states:

I wonder if it would be better to seek to be compelling rather than relevant. Better that folks leave our gatherings saying "I didn't really get all of that, but I would like to because I see the effect it has on the people that I know." rather than "Okay, I got all of that. So what's the big deal?" In that sense, the cultural mandate is just Christians being what they are, being truly human. Then the mood might shift from impacting the culture to creating a living culture within the Church. It strikes me that such a community becomes its own apologetic, and challenges the larger culture by its very existence.

This is an excellent succinct expression of my desire for the "emerging" church. The problem is that the word emerging is starting to take more variety in expression than even the word charismatic! Andrew Perriman has an excellent reflection on the time spent with Tom Wright - what is the emerging church? (PS See Andrew's reflection on the movement in general in an 7 Questions Iterview) I do want to see the church as compelling in current culture - a community that is attractive, not becuase it speaks the language or looks just like the current culture at large - but because it offers those things our current culture lacks so desperately: A story that organizes, a mission to motivate, a community that loves in diversity.

The difference between cultural accomodation (relevance) and cultural transformation (compelling) is difficult to tease out, for we must know in order to transform, exmust engage in order to compell, we must participate in order to express, we must open doors in order to be heard. But all that does not sound like appropriating last years popular culture icons and spinning them for the evangelical world.

Someday I'll blog about playing bass in a high school band that sang "Walk on the Water" as a Deep Purple cover - just so we could play in chapel....

Which one of these two extremists will carry the day in our culture? In the 2004 election?
This Moore or That Moore

Christianity Today has a great editorial on the growing economic instability of the middle class family - and the fact that the de-facto solution (two income families) often exacerbates the problem rather than promoting a viable solution.

The traditional marriage debate has made me wonder whether the crisis in our culture emerges more from the economic frailty of our prevailing societal and cutltural practices - or from the moral degeneracy of a the fringe? Here is what I think:

• The essential identity of the american as consumer drives us toward unsustainable economic habits (read greed and debt)
  
• The shrinking global economy (or shrinking American peice of thie pie) only makes this problem more immediate - bringing closer the scenarios that make a fragile lifestyle a chaotic one.
  
• When chaos emerges in family structures - marriage is lost.
  

Mark Oppenheimemer references Umberto Eco's taxonomy of counter-culture - making the point that only when a dissenting movement has viable sustainability can it truly be considered countercultural (ie dangerous to the esablishment) That makes me wonder whether the "fringe" - i.e. activists looking to alter our common and legislated understanding of marriage and family in our country - have found a way that is viable. Are they solving the economic and stability issues that plague our traditional families? Have stable marriage and well-parented kids become such a liability that they have to be sacrificed in order to live in the American middle class?

My intuition is no. The scream and cry of the Traditional Marriage advocates is "they'll ruin our society". But this also seems impulsive and reactionary. I have yet to see evidence beyond the anecdotal ("we don't want to become like Sweeden") that "post marriage" societies are falling apart. (Please point them out to me...)

Now don't get me wrong - I am a proud defender of marriage (i.e. my marriage). I think I have the best possible thing going. But I also know that I have rejected much that is considered "standard" in american culture. Our family lives on one income. We don't carry many of the "standard" financial obligations of the american middle class (Cable TV, High Speed Internet, 2 car payments, Long commutes, Private school tuition). And I think this is where the traditional marriage folks should pay attention. How can we make the two parent household a viable economic reality - so that the counterculture doesn't have to be providing an alternative?

Today we celebrate 110 months of marriage.
There are still moments when I look at Marialice and think, "I can't believe that this amazing woman is my wife." When I first met her, (me fresh out of college, new in a new town, with a project but full of uncertainty and wavering self confidence; her successfully professional, active in church ministry, seemingly very self assured) any connection seemed like such a long shot - an impossible dream. I have always been impressed by my wife's spiritual grounding, by her very present listening and obedience to the holy spirit. But at that moment - I felt such a gulf between the place where I found myself and what I percieved in her that I thought it surely could never be crossed.
In addition - my project was taking me away, overseas, to Spain for two years. I had never been able to maintain correspondence or relationship at a distance. (Part of my heritage as a missionary kid) I just knew that I would return after two years in Spain and find her happily married to some other guy.
So I wrote mournful poetry that year - frustrated that a friendship seemed destined to be only that. Growing accustomed to the idea that I would say goodby and sail into a isolated lonly sunset.
But God had other plans, breaking down walls in me, challenging isolation within Marialice, and drawing us together over the two years I was in Spain. And then he gave her back to me. In true fairy tale fashion, the prize I thought far beyond me, the dream I felt would never come true, the woman of my dreams ....
she became my wife.

Kris Timeraus expresses some similar thoughts as I have when it comes to conviction and politics.

Conversation with Phil Lohr last week was on a similar vein. I wanted to bring up the "which pocket is the potician interested in" trope (Republicans want governmental control of your sex, but want to take hands off your wallet, while Democrats want the other way round). Phil expressed, "Isn't law all about legislating morality? Isn't prohibition against Rape essentially legislating an intuitive moral convention?" Hmmm... Then I followed Gideon Strauss to J Budziszewski interviewed at Acton - who basically says the same thing. This is a good challenge to my intuitively liberal thinking.

While I have a fairly intuitive objection for the Traditional Marriage movment (Protecting Marriage Ammendment) on the grounds that cultural change occurs in personal conviction and interaction. I cannot get away from Phil's point that there is a legitimate place for the government to leglisate moral convention. Even if that legislation is directional - ie providing a direction for culture to move - even if the culture is not there yet.

But what seems to be happening in our culture is that the cultural conventions are moveing so widely apart as to make that legislated convevntion difficult, if not impossible. Christian History recently pointed to the epic victory of christian activism that was prohibition - lasting all of 13 years before it lapsed into laughable irrelevance. Is Traditional Marriage a similar situation? I do believe there is such a complete lack of consensus in our culture - that legislated solutions to the problem will be irrelevant.

Does that absolve us from taking action within the situation? Absolutely Not! But I think the actions need to be personal, communal, relational and loving rather than legislative, activist, political and aggressive.

But there is still this question - whither natural law?

Jim Wallis (Sojourners) debated Jerry Fallwell on Tavis Smiley 's radio show last week. Look here and I cannot help but think that Wallis expressed a richer vision of faithfulness than does Fallwell. There is a post brewing on how christians choose political topics that become definitive for political decisions rather than taking a wholistic view.

Keep thinking.

Recent pictures of the kids...

Antonio with his best friend - Oak

Liliana on the slide

Elena with her good friends the Picketts..

A quote passed on by my Aunt Lydia Munn. From Dallas Willard's book Hearing God:

“We are hindered in our progress toward becoming spiritually competent people by how easily we can explain away the movements of God toward us. They go meekly, without much protest. Of course his day will come, but for now he cooperates with the desires and inclinations that make up our character, as we are gradually becoming the kind of people we will forever be. That should send a chill down our spine. God wants to be wanted, to be wanted enough that we are ready, predisposed, to find him present with us.”

BTW - someday I need to post a reflection on Willard himself, someone whose combination of professional philosopher and deep and reflective spiritual guide I find very compelling.

The Reedemer Neo Calvinist crowd is asking "can a priority on cultural engagement cause a deficiency in personal piety." Here is a thought that hopefully advances the conversation...

I think we need to exapand the notion of piety beyond the traditional evangelical models.
1. Piety does not only mean: "avoiding the more flagrant and scandalous sin." We have to recognize the meaning of IS 58: 6-8. Piety has a social and justice component that must be recognized if we "expect our voice to be heard on high"
2. Piety is not only limited to doing "christian things" but also must include "doing well simply what you do". My artist friend Ed Kellogg (Who apparently doesnt' have any images online - which is a shame!) spoke of a time with a group of Dutch artists who said "We don't want to talk anymore about integrating Art and faith - we just want to do good art" and they went off and painted. We cannot reserve the approval of piety to "the sacred callings" and not remember that living well includes all walks of life.
3. Piety can not be defined only as a rich emotional experience of intimacy with the Holy Spirit. I am convinced that God created us all different for a reason. Some respond deeply to his spirit in emotional connection - others respond in a more intellectual fashion - others in a aesthetic fashion. If I were to think piety only was viable with emotional expression - my life would simply be emotional constipation. Like Dr Koizis I love the Daily Prayers and cycles of psalms. I am getting over the notion that I am less pious because I don't well up in prayer, or intuitively move to the word God has for me.

This expanded definition of piety puts it in a realm of the impossible - exactly where God's calling should be. Without faith - the pious life is impossible - and without faith none of these callings and expanded definitions are impossible. And this is the message of the Gospel - you are more screwed up than you could ever immagine (which includes the piety of all neo-calvinists), but God's grace is more amazing than you could ever imagine.

When I can start to explain how to live a pious life - than I worry that it actually might be feasible on my own terms. It is when my significant limitations and his outrageous demands force me to his cross - that is when Gospel happens.

More thoughts later....

When in Colorado last month I was riding in the truck of an a acquaintance who said "Do you know Shane Barnard?" I said no - and he put on a mix cd of the best praise music I have heard in a long time. Very simple instrumentation, elegant harmonies, familiar songs put together in thought provoking combination, and original songs that spoke to my heart of passionate desire to know the wisdom of the holy spirit.

Shane (really it is two Shanes) is profiled on several sites: here, here, and here (which is thier page). As usual - the moment I get plugged into something, I realize that they are a top ten artist with a rabid fan base, and I am far, very far, from discovering somthing unique or cutting edge. But nonetheless - I have enjoyed what I have heard.

But what has intrigued me the most - especially about thier live music - is the speed with which they strum! Even on a very slow - reflective peice (ie: he is exalted), these guys are banging away - double and triple strumming all the time! This is something that would only work with good guitars, correct mixes, and large crouds. When I play for the 10 or 12 in our small group - I have to be so much sparer!

But last night when I was playing and singing for Elena - I found myself strumming harder!

From the comments to my recent post "Am I a Neo-Calvinist?" Gideon Strauss comments:

Two little pieces of information to add to your considerations. The Christian Labour Association of Canada is not a political party or movement, but a labour union - structurally similar to the Teamsters, UAW or IBEW - inspired by a Christian social vision that has its 19th century roots in the thought and action of people like Abraham Kuyper, Pope Leo XIII, Maurice and Kingsley. The Work Research Foundation is an economics think tank that is inspired by very much the same social vision, but that seeks to cooperate with business owners and leaders, policy makers, academics, and journalists in particular to promote a Christian view of work. So my work with these two organizations is not inconsistent with my profession and promotion of neocalvinism as a global cultural movement.

Who am I missing?

I'm following a discussion of whether ours might be called a postmodern age or not. Whether the basic systems of belief and understanding are radically changing in our day I cannot conclusively say. I am suspicous of those who claim that the fall of the Berlin wall, or the implosion of high rise social housing experiments in St Louis brought about a paradigm shift in our consciousness. However, I am convinced that there are significant differences in the way folk are convinced today.

The death of reading as a common cultural language is responsible for growing congnitive differences, differences in the way we think, and differences in the way we are convinced that some tradition or way of life is appropriate, true. My contention is not that particular theories or ideas are no longer true or relevant, but that the way we talk about them, the way we discuss them, the way we convince others about them must change.

This notion was first exposed to me by Father Walter Ong (see Books and Culture July/August 2004 - not yet online) who exposed the differences in cultures and ideas as man became a writing creature, and then as he became a book culturs. His Orality and Literacy is a profound book, and worthy of any Christian who is worried about our culture.

It was no great coincidence that the reformation followed Gutenberg, or that the first philosophers started working immediately after Homer - when the texts started being written down. These changes in technology broung significant changes in the way man thought and what cognitive tools he valued. I'm sure that after Homer wrote down the Illiad and the Oddessy - poems that had been memorized and recited through generations - his culture decried the loss of memory in language that would sound much like Niell Postman. So I wonder what changes in church will be following the multimedia - hypertext - decentralized technology that has emerged in the past 30 years. There have always been losses in tradition and skill experienced when technology changes - it is for us to work through them, understand what the changes are, and understand how our message and rhetoric changes in that light.

This morning pastor Randy spoke from Hebrews 11:23-26 - The life of Moses in the parade of faith. I was so impressed by the appropriateness of the passage and Randy's exposition.

24By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. 27By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

Then Randy spoke of Moses decisions being informed by Faith, rather than by Fear. Of course these are the two dimensions of any of our actions - we either are driven by our fear in decisions or we act in faith - realizing the presence of the Invisible Christ and acting decisively in the confidence of his presence.

Good things for me. Good things for all.

Spent all day yesterday between painting and feeling ill. Even when I lay down to read (Newbiggen -Gospel in a Pluralist Society) I realized that my eyes were just scanning the page and not really reading at all.

So I shut the book and listened to the Braves beat the Expos. Sometimes you have to do that.

My job is not what I was called to do. What I do from 9 to 5 has very little to do with any deeper interests, loves or dreams. But I see clearly how God has provided the job, as well as the calling outside of it. My question is how to reconcile these two realities?

Gideon Strauss's legthy review of Calvin Seerfeld's 5 directives for christian artists has been giving me plenty to think about. Seerfeld states:

2. Conceive art as work and undergo its training like a trade.

For the past ten years I have been through some significant vocational upheaval - and consequently I have not settled on a "trade" that would be worth training. I reflected about that upheaval with the intention of submitting to Re:Generation quarterly the month before they folded. What I wrote is attached in the next post.

But within the last year things are starting to become clear. Much like the Collegiate range in the picture at the top of this page, a reality is starting to emerge toward which to hike. The path ahead down this mountain and into the valley is clear, but then there is a choice and a fairly clear decision.

In the clear notion that questions of "being" are so much more important than questions of "doing" - we are embarking on the world harvest "sonship by phone" discipleship process. We are setting aside the vocational questions and picking up the more essentail spiritual questions.

And then the question in the valley becomes: Do we choose a vocational change and move toward the pastorate - going to seminary (training in the trade) and moving ahead in life that way? or do we continue expressing cultural leadership in corporate web service building and management, and more fully start pursing apprenticeship in that trade.

I'm looking forward to the path that God takes us up the Collegiate range

My life doesn't have a lot of "both and" in it. You can either do one thing or the other.
I can either paint my house, or I can write. Not both.
I can either pray about my life or write about my life. Both together has never worked well.
I can either improve the design of my site, or I can write my site. Not both.

So last night I stayed up tweaking the design of this front page.
The new image in the title is of the collegiate range taken from the top of Mt Democrat (which I hiked with a bunch of Republicans) in June. First 14er. It speaks to me of several things:

• What is far away growing clearer with the perspective that our God brings.
  
• The everpresent challenge that God brings into our lives - and his help to get through them.
  
• Collegiate - intellectual - life. What my heart yearns for and my life so often does not allow.
  

In the interest of disclosure I need to add a "friendly links" section to my sidebar so that all can see who I am reading. I need to add the "who am I" document - so the anonymous web becomes a little less so. And then on to the writings and photos on this site - which could desperately use some improvement. And the css for the page doesn't look too good in Netscape or Firefox. I used to browse only on IE, but now have been using Firefox - so I need to fix this...

As you probably can tell - this blogging thing has been fits and starts for me. There is a journal blog that is not publicly available that has more consistency - but writing for the world has been on again / off again. My committment now is to post every day. But sometimes it has just got to be simple housekeeping, rather than serious dialogue.

I have long discounted the tendency in the evangelical church to "pine away for the good old days" whether that be 1950 or 1780. David Koyzis thoughtfully comments:

The old cliché has it that we cannot turn back the clock. Too often this is an excuse to do nothing about a particularly odious development commonly, albeit erroneously, thought to be progressive. Yet a number of biblical scholars and commentators have noted that while paradise began with a garden, redeemed humanity will live in a glittering city. As my esteemed colleague, Al Wolters, puts it, redemption in Jesus Christ means the restoration of creation, not its repristination. We should not wish to repeal millennia of cultural development, even if it has occurred under the influence of pagan and secular worldviews. This is why I believe neo-Calvinism represents such a significant advance in our understanding of God's world. We cannot simply be content to drag our feet in conservatistic fashion. We cannot return to the old ways -- at least not all of them. God's world is an intrinsically dynamic world; creation order includes within its very structure the possibilities of further development, under the obedient guidance of his image-bearers.

So then the question becomes what we make of our current situation? How do we react to the modernism around us? Again Koyzis makes a helpful distinction:

I believe it is necessary to distinguish between what might be called spiritual and structural components of modernity. The former category would include the likes of the social contract, with its assumption that all communities and the obligations thereto can be reduced to voluntary associations; the idolatrous esteem for human autonomy and the concomitant denigration of all heteronomous authority; the belief that human beings are capable of saving themselves; and the deprecation of creation as a source of evil. This spirit of modernity we must definitively reject.

The latter category would include the rise of political democracy; the post-westphalian consolidation of national states; technical advances in the fields of communications, transportation and economics; and the softening (but not the elimination) of gender roles. These structural components we can cautiously affirm as products of legitimate cultural development, even if such development has occurred under the misguided influence of a secular worldview.

I agree - In so many structural ways, the cultural (structural, political, technological) developments of our day represent advances that I do not want to turn by back on - even if they were brought about through spiritual means I can no longer accept. However, and this is where the teasing gets tough - I see the evangelical church reacting very strongly to the postmodern theorists who are trying to move beypond the limitations of a modern spiritual construct. WHY? Evangelical pining for the good old days will simply not move us positively toward viable cultural change. The desire to see pristinization of our culture that seems to emenate from cultural organs like Focus on the Family (just thaink about the logo!) seems completely implausable.

My standard line has been that this rejection usually emerges because of postmodern treatments of truth and authority. Evangelical language is still structured to fight logical positivism, and anything that sounds different gets rejected. While I agree that the destructive postmodernism of - say Foucault - simply advances the negative elements of spiritual modernity toward total skepticism. But others, even the Christians (Newbiggen formost in my mind) says lets move beyond autonomy and recover community.

So -- How the church teases this apart, how the neo-calvinistas move this forward - that is the blah blah blah...

Tonight Elena spoke up at dinner about being made fun of. She talked about kids at Day Camp that were laughing that she was still using a car seat (really a booster) when they went from church to the ball fields for sports. They called her a baby and generally made her miserable.

Now you have to understand several things are going on. Our day camp probably is 60% children who come from several subsidized housing projects in the neighborhood around the church. The inclusion of our “covenant kids” in a summer educational supplement program for the “community kids” is a very intentional part of the ministry and vision of our church.

So we work through the cultural and class issues emerging from the fact that these kids families don’t have the money to get a booster seat – to say nothing of so many other reason their family culture are different than ours.

But we get to what a child should do when made fun of. What is the truth about you, Elena? “I’m not a baby” Are you obeying what we’ve asked you to do? “Yes Papi” The truth is that you are a mature child, you have been very obedient and we love you. So what do you try to do when they make fun of you. “Well I try to ignore it”

Is that a viable strategy? What happens when the jeering is moving her toward sin? We talked about a time her friend told her to hide even though Marialice was calling her to come home. Her friend said “I won’t be your friend if you go…” and so Elena stayed.

How do we move our children toward being comfortable with themselves, no matter what is said and done around them, what is jeered and what is prodded. And how can we be more sensitive to the damage in their souls when they do have to stand on their own.

I strongly believe that we cannot keep our children from these influences. Yet experiences like these make me really want to try. Oh Lord – and she is only 6.

Reading Seervelt via Strauss brings to mind the question about where my cultural leadership should be expressed. This is of course a question of vocation, training and apprenticship. I am currently contented to wander along as a daytime corporate web site project manager, weekend church leader, morning writer, part time house remodler and gardener and generally bad father. The "jack of all trades, master of none" approach hasn't lead to much excellence. It makes me yearn for specialization, further training, excellence.

But where...

These questions have been floating around my head for the past months and I finally decided to get them down ano out. Let me know what you think. Show me the errors of my ways.

My hope is that today, being born in the small towns of the third world are those who will become the Pablo Neruda of tomorrow.

Felicidades a los Guerrico Hatch's de Atlanta por la grata y bien esperada noticia del nacimiento de un hijo baron! Pudimos estar en Atlanta con ellos Domingo por la tarde y ver al gran hombre, de nombre Pablo Nicolas Guerrico Hatch. Pensaria que es Pablo por Neruda, (que cumple centenario lunes que viene) y Nicolas por Guillen, por su fanatico poeta padre. Pero bien se que Nicolas por dona Nicolasa que en pas descanse.

De nuestro tiempo alli, unos requerdos:

Y las encantadas mujeres - abuela, hermanas y prima.

Un abrazo para Carlos y Madelle.

I've heard the criticism that blogging is a virtual attempt to replace community and therefore it somehow is less than is should be. I agree that the bloggers I know couldn't come over and help me move a sofa, and I'd be hard pressed to give them any of the abundant cucumbers overrunning our garden. But for me, the blogging interaction is all the interaction I have in areas theological and philosophical. The long standing struggle for me has been maintaining interactions of depth in theological discussion and philosophical interaction. Work at the insurance company, results oriented church involvement and a character that doesn't relish debate (sinks my head in the sand actually) have all conspired to keep thinking to my head alone over the past 8 years.

So now a discussion with fellow bloggers presents another alternative. One I look forward to. Thank you gideon strauss for involving me in your conversation.

Gideon Strauss challenges me with his story. And expresses several convictions that I feel are worth reflecting.
1. Christian conviction being the spirit born resonance as "my story" intersects the story of the gospel expressed in time and space in the person of Jesus Christ ministering amonth the 12 and others in first century galilee.
2. Salvation is not just a "point in time" accomplishment that can be hung like a diploma - but the beginning of a life long process (Journey, Battle, choose your metaphor here....)

Of course, my story is much different:
A covenant child - faith and faithfulness has been modeled for me since I can remember. The process as a university student became one of taking that story I saw in others, and reconciling it with the world I saw around me, and making it my own. The resonance was slow growing, I can't point to a singular moment of vigil or surrender - but a the end it is my own - and I work forward in the process toward being a faithful follower.

But story nonetheless - and worth more than the two minutes telling I can steal from paying work.

In my reading of discussions of worship and the emerging church there is a central question that I keep coming back to. Is the critique that typical evangelicalism has “over-accommodated ” with the consumer culture resulting from liberalism’s end game, or is the critique itself “over-accommodated” with contemporary youth culture, with a nefarious brand of post-modernism. In other words, is the emerging church movement a vital example of contextualizing the gospel, or is it a syncretism like I saw in the catholic church in rural South America.

Examples of my concern:
Are discussions of authority and knowledge in the emerging church influenced by Derrida and Lyotard just because those thinkers are hip to the academy, or is there legitimate critique expressed there that merits serious review by the Christian (regardless of cultural orientation). Are there other voices that are expressing the same critique of modern epistemology without the same cynicism and skepticism (Plantiga, Alston, Woltersdorff come to mind).

Is the emergent revision of “primacy of the word” an appropriate contextualization? The reformation appropriately put the sermon in front, but postmodern culture would seem to challenge that centrality with its interest in image, in sensory experience as preferential ways of learning. Len Sweet talks about contemporary culture as being “EPIC” – experiential, participatory, image based and communal, and you see churches moving to teach followers in these ways. Yet we also hear grave concern about the impact of moving away from a word based faith to a spectacle based faith. See Ralph Wood’s critique of Peter Jackson’s Rings Trilogy. Pat Rolleston told me that he felt the emergent church was retuning to the sort of romanticism that through history inevitably become apostasy. I’d like to see that teased out concretely but I have feeling he’s right.

Along the same lines, in as much as the emergent church places emphasis on experiential learning they are exposed to Michael Horton’s diatribe against contemporary worship – where he says we misunderstand god when we try to create experiences where he will act in power. He advocates a return to the sacramental and the traditional – tools used for centuries to draw our hearts close to god. It reminds my of my theory of the evangelical banal – where there is an intentional disinterest in the aesthetic, so that any powerful expression of goodness and beauty has to be performed by God alone – “Lest we make the mistake of thinking that God did something that in fact was done by our own hands”

I am not so naive as to believe that the traditional evangelical church has the corner on biblical faith – and I even have a strong conviction that the evangelical church has accommodated to contemporary liberalism and modernity in deeply troubling ways. But teasing apart the syncretistic from the biblical, and then turning to face contemporary culture with a vital contextual faith that doesn’t just fall right into another syncretism – will be a great challenge.