Uneasy

I’m looking forward to reading Yancey’s new book, Rumors of Another World. Yancey says that he had to throw out about a quarter of the book after a trip to Denmark and Sweden, which are some of the least churched countries in the Western world. He realized that a lot of his book was completely irrelevant in a country in which only 1% even go to church. I’ve posted quite a bit about an in-house issue in our denomination recently. I’ve been a little uneasy about it. It’s not because I don’t want to air dirty laundry, because I don’t think anyone is served when we hide issues or pretend to agree when it’s obvious that we don’t. This is an important issue (but not the most important), and it does deserve our attention. I’m uneasy for two reasons. It’s hard for me to put this into words, but I’m going to try. If it’s unclear, feel free to ask me to clarify what I’m saying, or maybe you can express it better than I can. First, I hate theological discussions for the sake of theological discussions. Some of us like a good fight. I don’t have time for that. In other words, I’m increasingly becoming concerned with faithfulness (orthopraxy) and less and less with correctness (orthodoxy). Of course you can’t separate the two, but we sometimes forget the first. Secondly, not everyone who reads this blog has a Christian commitment. I love that. I always want it to be that way. Honesty is so important to me that I don’t mind you knowing about my/our struggles and hang-ups. Hey, I’m a pastor and I have more than my share. But I wonder if we’re missing the missional questions in this and other debates. Jesus never went around debating finer theological points. He seemed to spend more time hanging around people who didn’t know much theology. When the theological issues came up, he seemed to push right past them to deal with the heart. Is there something to be learned from Yancey, who edited in light of his context (a post-Christian world), and Jesus, who pushed past issues to the heart? Yes, there is, but I can’t quite put it into words. But it’s got me thinking.