Is Our "Good News" as Big as God?

About a year ago, I enjoyed an email correspondence about religious diversity with one of my theological mentors and former professors, Glenn Hinson, who now teaches at Baptist Seminary of Kentucky. Glenn said, The God of a universe of 150+ billion galaxies surely does not have such little candlepower that God can illumine only those in the Abrahamic tradition. He went on to say that, The future of humankind depends on a very different attitude toward other faiths than we have shown in the past.

We've missed the point of John 14:6 if it becomes a truth-claim to be defended rather than a cruciform call to live/follow Jesus' path. The Johannine claim that Jesus is the “way, the truth, and the life” isn’t a rational truth-claim to be defended, it is a way of life to be lived. It’s not a truth over against other truth claims. It is simply true that living the way of love, self-sacrifice, service, and reconciliation (i.e. the way of Jesus) is the way to God. Or, better yet, it is the way to awaken to the reality that God is already here. Once we start defending this statement as “a truth” we have, ipso-facto, denied the very truth claim that we want to defend. Our defensive posture contradicts the way of the cross, that is the way of love, self-sacrifice, service, and reconciliation.  One of the most grievous sins of the Christian faith is that we have made “truth” into sets of propositions to be defended rather than the Jesus-way-of-life-truth to be followed. Jesus reveals living truth and we Christians tend to reduce him to propositional truth. Holding fast to propositional truth while failing to live out Jesus-lifestyle-truth is a primary way in which Christianity becomes a force for evil rather than for good in the world. Too many Christians are more concerned with what happens to their precious truth claims than what happens to their precious neighbor, with what happens to their dogmas than with loving neighbors and enemies.

 Evangelism is living and sharing God's good news. Sometimes this means that someone will be converted. Sometimes it means that people of different faith traditions can work in solidarity to create a better world while remaining faithful within each tradition. Sometimes God's good news happens when we learn from someone of another faith tradition. Sometimes it happens when they learn from us. Always, living God's good news is cruciform, living in the form of the cross. This is to say, living sacrificial love while trusting the power of resurrection; losing life and--good news--finding life. 

Glenn emphasized, The future of humankind depends on a very different attitude toward other faiths than we have shown in the past. What if God's good news mandates taking on this different attitude? What if all of our exclusive defending of Christian belief has created bad news in the name of God who seeks to bring good news to all? What if we are more faithful to our beloved "evangelism" by working in solidarity with faithful people of other traditions rather than trying to convert them? The God of a universe of 150+ billion galaxies surely does not have such little candlepower that God can illumine only those in the Abrahamic tradition.

Dialogue, Theology, and Growth

Expanding the Circle: Dialogue, Theology, and Growth

Poet Mary Oliver wrote, Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? As my 54th birthday approaches, I am keenly aware that my response to this question is a process, a journey, a bundle of additional questions, a vocation (calling) that ever-beckons and never ends. Gregory of Nyssa said that the essence of sin is the refusal to grow. If I understand Gregory correctly, his affirmation included this life and the next; death is but a new chapter in the ongoing narrative. Theosis, according to this view, never ends. In God we live and move and have our being. There is infinite room for us to grow within the infinite Life of God. 

I'm starting this blog to challenge myself to grow in theological reflection through dialogue with others. Hindus talk about different kinds of yoga, spiritual disciplines to help one to be yoked to God ("yoga" = yoke). The different yogas are, in part, for different personality types: devotion (Bhakti), meditation (Raja), action (Karma), and knowledge (Jnana). One size doesn't fit all. Analogously, I'm practicing Jnana yoga. I don't claim an exact parallel with the Hindu practice. My point is that, for me, theological inquiry, reflection, and dialogue are spiritual disciplines, ways of connecting with God, not just academic exercises. 

I hope that portions of this blog will eventually become a book. The discipline of blogging will help to keep me responsible to others as well as myself to keep my writing fresh, critically reflective, and consistent. 

I want my reflections to be reasonably accessible to people with or without formal theological training. Simultaneously, I will use some technical jargon, below, to build a conceptual foundation to explain the purpose of this blog.  

Theological reflection at its best is an ongoing conversation, a generative dialogue, among the faithful of a religious tradition. A so-called hermeneutic circle or arc (think Gadamer and Ricoeur) develops in dialogue. This circle is an interplay of questions; I question the other and the other questions me. Insight, understanding, truth, and meaning tend to emerge in the synergy of dialogue. Moreover, the horizon of one world of understanding (in this case one religion) can fuse with the horizon of another. Analogical understanding across religious traditions--what theologian David Tracy calls similarity-in-difference--can emerge. In this light, my theological purpose is two-fold: (1) dialogue with Christians to contribute to Christian theological discourse and, perhaps, a constructive theological project and (2) dialogue with people of any faith tradition, or no faith tradition, to help construct an approach--yet to be discerned--to theologies of religions (plural intended). By the way, no worries if you aren't familiar with Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Tracy. The central point is that dialogue is a back and forth, synergistic dynamic--richer in questions than declarative answers--in which understanding, meaning, and truth have the potential to emerge. 

So, I invite you into a conversation. This form of learning is not only an academic exercise; for me it is a spiritual discipline. I don't know where the conversation will lead, but I trust that we can learn and grow together. 

Peace,

Mark