Review: Missing the Point
For my birthday, Sarah and Dave (and Ellen and Isaiah) gave me a copy of Adventures in Missing the Point by Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo. It's an easily readable book, so even though Todd and Cindy were over for the week, I finished it quickly in late night and early morning stints.
Both of the authors write well, so I found myself agreeing with a lot of what they said, though not everything, just as they agreed with each other for the most part, but not on every detail.
These are the topics they covered: Salvation, Theology, the Kingdom of God, the End Times, the Bible, Evangelism, Social Action, Culture, Women in Ministry, Leadership, Seminary, Environmentalism, Homosexuality, Sin, Worship, Doubt, Truth, and Being Postmodern.
I thought they hit some of the topics pretty spot on - Salvation, Social Action, Culture, Women in Ministry, Seminary, Truth, and Doubt were all handled pretty well. The framing - "Missing the Point" - allowed the authors to offer some guidance correction to Christians without pointing any fingers. In other Chapters, like the Kingdom of God, I thought they were on the right track, but did not take their case quite far enough - the Kingdom of God is within you, so Eschatology that focuses on a physical New Jerusalem and Second Coming are bound to disappoint as much as they have for 2000 years, and people who hold tight to the belief are missing the point as much as did the original Jews in Jesus' time.
I thought they handled Homosexuality especially well for a book that still concluded Homosexuality is a sin - they pointed out some very obvious discrepencies (like Homosexuality, if a sin, is to be grouped among the hundreds of other sexual immoralities that are winked at or glossed over in Christian Culture, not in the least divorce and remarriage, which are specifically condemned by Jesus.
In my opinion, Tony missed the point on Theology by claiming that everyone is a Theologist. That's like saying everyone is a Biologist because they eat food or know the names of some animals and vegetables. Expanding the meaning of a word to include everything is almost always, by definition, a misuse of the word, and I think he did a real disservice to the idea that every Christian should actually study and know some Theology. It doesn't happen naturally any more than someone becomes a Physicist naturally.
I would have liked to see a chapter on the Personal Relationship with Jesus. I think that's an area a lot of modern Christians have really missed the point. I think a lot of people have deluded themselves into believing that conversations with their own conscience are conversations with Jesus; this can be quickly disproven with a conversation with a Buddhist or Moslem who has the same internal dialogue without involving Jesus. If people want to have a relationship with Jesus, they should at the very least get to know him better the way one might get to know Augustine or Einstein better - by heavily studying the things they said and did and trying to get inside their head. I will not get to have any deep relationship with Einstein by thinking about gravity, unless I'm guided by and reviewing his thoughts on gravity. I think many Christian who claim to walk with Jesus know him more by his "Footprints" than any of his sermons, and that is a travesty.
I also think McLaren missed the point on PostModernism, and Campolo caught him in it, but let the issue go. Modernism, is a bloated, arrogant corpse, and those who cling to its promise for a Cartesian future are like Soviets waiting for Russia to recollect her satellite states. A little postmodernism is a necessary thing. However, Modernism, though it ultimately missed the point, was built on the principles of a Christian society, and to completely reject it, as is the trajectory of formal PostModernism, is to reject some necessary Christian principles. It's important to understand the good reasons behind PostModernism, but to cling to any philosophy based on the rejection of another is to hope in a shot in the dark. What Christians should strive for is the Christianity of Christ, not a philosophical stance. I don't think Jesus would ever claim to be a Modernist or a PostModernist, so let that be an example.
Of course, the book is intended for a Christian audience, so if you aren't a Christian, it's not going to convince you of anything. I do think, however, that if Western Christianity as a whole were to take many of the course corrections to heart, their living example would be a better ministry than any Evangalistic missions in effect today.
posted by Wray Davis @ 5:41 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Hey, Dave - no problem on the name spelling - especially if you're going to to spell your own name wrong! ;)
Perhaps I don't have as strong an understanding on Modernism as I'd thought. I had a pretty good idea of what I thought it was, but when I went over to wikipedia.org to make sure I was right, and I wasn't. Modernism is based in science and the real, and abandoning tradition in favor of what can be proven, and it is a tenent of fundamentalism, but it is just as easily leveraged by athiests.
So post-modern rejection isn't a rejection of Christianity, but it does reject tradition and "metanarratives like religion" (per Wikipedia) - it's point is not to return to the traditions abandoned by modernism, but to reject the things "proven" by modernism while equally rejecting the pre-modernist traditions. I think CS Lewis, for example, is pretty much a Modernist.
I'm no expert on either modernism or post-modernism, but post-modernism in particular seems more like a game than anything real - it doesn't take much seriously beside itself, and its main point is to deflate the egoism of modernism - not really to prove or add anything. Some of the synonyms for post-modern on the wikipedia are relatvist and nihilist.
So, I don't know if that answers anything, but I hope it starts.
Bryan--are you and Kim okay after all the rain and wind that hit you?
Mom said the town right by yours was on the news because it was hit so hard.
Thinking of you two...
Yup - we're fine. There was quite a bit of rain, but like many houses here, ours is on an incline, and it all ran off down the street. There are quite a few leaves and twigs to sweep up, but that's no problem.
Thanks for asking!
i've meant to comment for quite a while, but just haven't taken the time. and now i'm afraid several of my original thoughts are gone - but here's what's left. and it has mainly to do with the postmodernism bit.
my understanding (and the only bit i know comes from reading various mclaren books-so it only has to do with the religious aspects)is not that it seeks reject modernism, but to build upon it. you can't have postmodernism without the modernism. and that millions of good things have come out of modern way of looking at things (like all the scientific advances for example). and that it seems that lately, people aren't looking at things so much in linear, instruction book, do a and b to get to c ways - but people are thinking in a more holistic, story like way. so it's almost that there's been so much emphasis on the 'scientific' (for lack of a better term) that now the pendulum is swinging to a more 'artsy' view. and it will most certainly swing too far, but it's quite helpful to me to see this other side and realize that without being aware of it, i've been thinking a lot like that and that has a lot to do with why i can be so unsatisfied with so many of my 'church experiences.'
and i agree that jesus wouldn't claim to be either - i'm not sure its so much a decision to be a modern or whatever as it is just the way you see things. i dunno.
i think mechanistic is the word i want instead of scientific.
While I think it's fair to say that the post-modern culture (the progressive portion of the culture we're in now) has not rejected modernism, but instead has simply blended in a more holistic - even New-Age-inspired - approach to the world, I believe that's because the majority of the people in the culture are not really post-modernists, but simply have post-modern voices in the background chorus. The aspects of post-modernism that are the most agreeable are the ones that get blended in, because, naturally, they are the voices of the chorus that aren't choked out by dissenters.
While I'm certainly no expert on the subject, I think post-modernism truly is represented by deconstructionism - the kind of study that leads to classes like "The Bible as Literature" or teaches that Jehovah is a sky-god borrowed from the Philistines. While I don't necessarily think that those kinds of studies are bad (though by their nature non-authoritative), I do think they intentionally undermine Christianity by working from the starting point of a Christianity equally valid with Greek mythology.
The post-modernism that we see in our day-to-day life is Post-Modernism Lite, or pre-digested post-modernism, and while that sounds like a slight, I don't mean it that way - perhaps we've already gotten what good can come from the philosophy, and rejected the majority of it as trash.
I do, however, think that it is counter-intuitive for a Christian to identify as a Post-Modernist unless they have radically changed the meaning of one of those two words (like being a Christian as one who literally follows Christ, not the Church or the rest of the Bible, or just being someone who comes after the Modernists).
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