Delightful Terror II

Following up on comments from Delightful Terror (below)...

In response to Merton's question, I began to ask myself: what do I fear and desire that is keeping me from pursuing God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind?  I feared that others would think badly of me.  I feared being wrong about God.  I feared that I would need to give up certain possessions and habits that were distracting me.  I desired that others would admire me.  I desired that the beliefs that had guided my formation up to that point could be proven true with absolute certainty.  I desired to keep possessions and habits that made me feel safe and comfortable.

I was using all of my heart, soul, strength and mind to protect myself from what I feared and to grasp after what I desired.  And all of this striving was precisely what was keeping me from desiring and fearing God alone.  The process of spiritual transformation that followed began with an awakening to the realization that I can never achieve the good life for which I longed with my own finite power.  This led to a long period of purgation (which is assuredly not over), in which I increasingly came to give up my dependence on my own power and to rest in the dynamic presence of the infinite power of absolute love. 

When I am attentive to this presence (to its attentiveness to me) I experience the world in a different way -- its fragility and deceptiveness is illumined.  I find myself invited to give up my unhealthy attachment to it; not only material goods, but the structures of space, time and energy are interpreted in a new light... the light of Eternity.  Finitude and death are no longer threatening, and particular pleasurable objects lose their enticing pull.  As I feel myself united with the infinite love of God the world no longer seduces or repulses me in the same way... I am able to give all because I receive all as Gift.

Well, that's how it looks in theory.  In practice, it is a messy process mixed with successes and failures.  And for me, theology should be brought into this process.  So my theologizing becomes part of my struggle to articulate this experience of being transformed... part of my longing to love and fear God alone so that I can courageously show compassion to others in my world.

Actually, this is one of the reasons I have tried to integrate theology and my life on this blog... the medium facilitates the message... theology is not a set of propositions detached from lived experience... even the experience of wearing a goofy hat on a Mexican beach.  Embracing the delightful terror of reforming theology means facing one's own need to be reformed in relation to others... including one's desire for those others to like one's posts and one's fear that they will not.  ;) 

Comments

[Sara Worley]

LeRon, thanks once again for affirming the voice of God within me - for giving my intuitions a voice. You are beautiful and I'm so glad you exist in the world!

[Matt Wiebe]

Hmm, now I have a good excuse for the unfocused nature of my blog: all-of-life-theology!

[David Worley]

LeRon- Thanks for sharing intimately with us. You are a gift to my life, the Academy, and the world.

[Alan Carter]

Wolfhart Pannenberg's, Trinitarian Panentheism: the religious underpinning of the Emergent Church.

Let me translate what Mr. Shults is writing for those who believe the Bible is the objective word of God. The enemy that Shults rejects is foundationalism. Anything that is a foundational “given” like the Bible, or basic logical categories that tie human reason to the observable world such as the law of non-contradiction, causality, and the basic reliability of sense knowledge are rejected. Christians used to debate between evidentialism and presuppositionalism. Shults and other Emergents reject both. They first accepted the same foundations as science (the three I listed) and from their built evidence for the truth of the Bible (usually arguing for the resurrection of Christ based on evidence and then accepting Christ’s teachings about the Bible). The later made the Bible itself foundational and developed a worldview starting with the Bible. But the postmodern approach is to reject all foundations. The replacement for this is coherence. Any system of knowledge that can be shown to be internally coherent is accepted as “true” by the person holding it, as long as it can be held together coherently. What this does is delink our beliefs from the real, tangible world. Many possible coherent systems may be “true” simultaneously as long as they serve their function of providing a system of knowledge for any given believing community.

Shults mentions dialectic. His system holds the idea that apparent opposites (love and fear in this case) are like the thesis and antithesis of Hegelian dialectics. The idea is that the opposites, through the processes of history, will synthesize into a better reality. One would think that with the massive failure of Marxism that was based on similar ideas, this fantasy of a better future emerging from polar opposites would be seen for the romantic dreaming it is. But that is where Pannenberg and also Moltmann’s theology comes in. They have a very immanent view of God. God is “in” everything (thus panentheism). Thus with God involved immanently in the creation, there is hope because God is in the dialectic process thus the hope of a better future. God is drawing everything into Himself and obviously He has the power to do this so why not believe that the theses and antitheses will synthesize into something better? That is why the Emergents hate what he calls “fossilized” theology. In the old approach, the truth is the truth and it does not change because God who does not change has spoken it. Anything antithetical to the truth is rejected outright as theological error. Seen that way, there is no room for the dialectical process to “emerge” into a better future. The categories are rigid. So, for example, if the substitutionary atonement and the necessity of the Blood of Christ to atone for sin and avert God’s wrath against sin are “true,” then “dialogue” as they call it about the existential meaning of atonement is finished. All who reject the substitutionary atonement are labeled heretics and ignored. Shults and his Emergent buddies HATE that. If anyone wishes to make a theological truth claim (like the substitutionary atonement) I am betting that Shults would label the claim “foundationalist” or “18th century rationalism” and dismiss them and their ideas without discussion.

So by jettisoning all “static” truth claims and positing instead a dynamic approach that believes truth synthesizes as history marches on, the Emergents create a mystical approach that is reminiscent of romanticism. It is based on feelings and coherence rather than from data from the real world. In the real world opposites do not synthesize into anything. A square and a circle remain as they are. If there is a real contradiction, then either both ideas are wrong or one of them is; but not in emergent thinking. They loath any idea that is stated “either/or.”

All of this fancy talk is nothing more than what theology looks like once all foundational categories have been rejected. Change for change’s sake is seen as good because God is the future drawing everything into Himself. The enemy to this process is static categories of truth and error that cannot be synthesized into a better alternative. This is confusing to ordinary Christians because we are stuck with our rigid categories. Poor, but blessed us.

It was creepy to have once believed all this when I was a New Ager but see it disguised as a form of Christianity is deeply disturbing.

[LeRon]

Dear Sara and David,

Thanks so much for your kind words... your comments made me smile as I thought of your faces and your passion and commitment. You two are really a gift to me too!

Dear Alan,

Your comments made me smile too, though not for the same reason. And you are a gift as well.

Those who have read my books will know that most of what you have written is not accurate, including your understanding of my approach to truth and epistemology. If interested, see The Postfoundationalist Task, especially chapter 2.

Your reading of Hegel, Pannenberg and Moltmann leads me to wonder if you have read the original sources, or only what others have said about them? For a list of their major works, see Reforming the Doctrine of God, Part II.

I certainly agree with you on two points... I have many "Emergents" buddies and my theology is deeply disturbing.

Alan, I understand why many people do not want to or are not ready to embrace the delightful terror of reforming theology. They see only terror.

I am still smiling... because I remember that early in my own educational process I made comments very similar to yours about those that threatened my interpretation of the Bible.

I wish we could spend time face to face to discuss these issues... blogs do not seem to be the best way to facilitate transformation.

I hope you will decide to stay in the conversation, but if you do, may I ask you to refer to specific page numbers in my work, or in the works of Hegel, Pannenberg or Moltmann, so that others can check out your interpretation?

This blog cannot be the primary place for the facilitation of holistic spiritual transformation, but at least we can engage in the hard work of thinking critically about what we believe, why we believe it and how it shapes the way we treat others.

Thanks,

LeRon

[Fount]

LeRon,
My first reflection while reading this post was to think of Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart is to Will One thing. We simply must purify our hearts from the wrong attachment to things of the world as well as supposed rewards for righteousness.

My second reflection was personal. I had a flash-back to a time when I was about nine years old. Stretched out on the lawn of our home in the Panhandle of Texas I was looking up at the multitude of stars. The thought came to me that the stars might be "nail holes in the floor of heaven." I imagined myself climbing up a laddar to look through the nail hole to see God. When I looked in He was looking at me. You wrote, "When I am attentive to this presence (to its attentiveness to me) I experience the world in a different way...." I affirm that insight. That experienced caused me to view all things, including God, differently.

Thanks for wedding your theology to real life in the world.

Dad

[Benji]

I remember the night I decided to see what would happen if I was wrong about everything. I tried to think about the things I believed and consider what would happen if they weren't true. At first, my response to the thought was, "but it *is* true!" But that didn't satisfy me. So I tried again. What if that belief is just false... really, completely false. I forced myself to sit with that idea.

The world didn't end. Everything was still fine. I was still alive and the world kept spinning. I still had friends and family and things to do.

Since that time, my relationship to my beliefs has changed. I still have a lot of beliefs that I can't prove (though fewer) but I hold them in an open hand. I can talk about them and have them contradicted without feeling nervous.

It's very freeing.

[LeRon]

Hey Dad,

You are the one from whom I learned to integrate theology and real life! Thanks for sharing that story... made me think of my own little experiences of transformation at around age nine... they never leave us, do they?

Hey Benj,

Thanks for your story too... I completely understand and went through something very similar.

For me it was the struggle with realizing that other people (from other religions, for example) believed things that were opposed to what I believed and they believed just as strongly as (perhaps more strongly than) I did.

We couldn't both be right. But it didn't seem to work to say: "I know I am right because I feel it so deeply... I am just sure" or even "God has revealed to me that I am right." Because they could say exactly the same thing.

So, if I couldn't decide between competing beliefs based on the loudness or obstinance of shouting fundamentalists, how could I decide?

Indeed, that is the delightful terror of theology, and the transformation of one's self along with one's way of holding onto one's beliefs, and being held onto within one's believing, is really the point of theologizing.

[Tony Mills]

Ah yes, the sweet cacophony of dualing fundamentalists, is there anything more delightful? That was a funny image, I just had to say something.

In a different key, I also thank you for sharing the things which you have so far about your personal faith. I have two questions related to that. First, have you noticed how similar your ideas are to original Buddhism? I think specifically of the idea of letting go of desires. In Buddhism the goal and path is to become desireless when it comes to finite attachments. It is actually one of the tenets of Buddhism which I have always appreciated most, but then it raises a second question for me.

If we truly desire God alone, what about all of the finite things to which we should be attached or at least which have been beautiful? Maybe this is renewing the whole finite-infinte delights question again, but your comments lead me there. For me, I don't know how I would have survived a troubling home life as a child without video games and cartoons. I certainly did not have anyone speaking into my life who operated within your sort of categories. Or what about all those things which may not be necesssary, but which for me were strangely salvific and glorious, like long nights of Dungeons and Dragons in college or waiting in line 10 hours to watch "Revenge of the Sith" in an otherwise relatively lonely life? Now that I have totally outed myself as a complete nerd, maybe you can at least respond to these :)

[Pete]

I think Tony brings up an interesting point about Buddhism, and I have this to add: In Buddhism, the purpose of becoming desireless is to free oneself from suffering. (The first of the four noble truths is that all of life is suffering; suffering originates in attachment [second noble truth], and freedom from suffering comes from cessation of attachment --dispassion [third noble truth].) While one may easily see parallels with Christianity in acknowledging the reality of suffering, I'm not sure that Christianity sees suffering as quite so bad. In fact, I would posit that it is in suffering where we really meet God--where we begin to see things as they really are (the first of the eightfold path, which is the fourth noble truth). (Ex: Isa. 53; 2 Cor 4:7-12; James 1:2,3; 1 Peter 1:6-9; Hebrews 11:36-40). While I think I understand LeRon's point--that there are a great many things that we are easily attached to that do not deserve our attachment, or even our attention--I'm not sure the parallel to Buddhism is as strong on this point.

To that point, though, I also wonder, with Tony: What about things that we become attached to? Or, taking things to a more complicated level, what about people we become attached to? (It's one thing for me to think about abandoning my beloved and well-used acoustic guitar, and a far different thing to think the same way about my spouse or children.) I am attached to things, and to people. They (both categories) alternately bring me joy and sorrow and shades between. Here's where I think things get tricky, too: Can I be dispassionate towards people whom God has called--actually, commanded--me to be passionate towards? In the end, I think that the problem is not so much that I need to choose to be more devoted to God than my family, but that I need to be more devoted toward God who has called me to devotion toward my family.

Am I way off on any of this?

[LeRon]

Tony and Pete,

Yes, I'm happy to note similarities. Actually Thomas Merton was deeply attracted to Buddhism toward the end of his life. Have you ever read Siddharta by Hermann Hesse?

Anyway, the difference, I think, has to do with the way we "don't" hold on to possessions. For me, the infinite is mediated through the finite, which means in some sense through things that are more or less possessable.

The goal is not merely detachment for detachment's sake (nothing), but to learn to receive the infinite presence of divine love in and through each and every finite thing, including those that make us "suffer" (Cf. TS, ch. 4).

Then one can embrace and enjoy infinitely more fully those finite things. Because nothing is mine, everything is mine, only differently.

The most important finite reality in my life is my wife. I do not possess her but receive her daily as absolute Gift. This receiving is passionate indeed, and all the more so because her presence intimates eternal love to me.

I have learned that when I use my power to try to possess or control her, the delight of this reception begins to fade. When I try to become the basis of our mutual attachment, the result can feel constricting or alienating.

It is frightening NOT to try to be the foundation of this relation, because I don't want to lose her but the only way I can really "have" her eternally is if the basis of our being-attached is eternal, and so absolutely beyond my control and received only as grace. Then suddenly every aspect of her finitude has its own special beauty.

In other words, fearing and loving God "alone" is not exclusive of other finite things because God is not a finite thing competing with others. Fearing and loving God "alone" allows one to delight in all things inclusive, but this is not simply a really big extensive delighting, but an intensive finding one's self delighting and delighted in, and so able to freely let go of all finite things because one is liberated into a passionate reception of all finite things... or vice versa.

LeRon

[Pete]

Beautifully stated.

And I'm a big fan of Merton--I grew up in central Kentucky, about an hour and a half from Gethsemani. I used to go there from time to time while I was in college to get some perspective.

[James]

LeRon,

I really enjoyed your honesty in this last post and the chain reaction it caused in other posts. I think what I fear most for myself is somehow losing myself in God, which seems contradictory because we are to find our life in him. Yet, I think lately for me there is a need to find some space, something that is my own. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I think there was a time in my life when God (or perhaps church, ministry, etc.) became about so many different things like santification, how many times did you pray?, are you believing the right things, that faith became somewhat suffocating. There has been a desire to just be and breathe without getting lost in everything else that seems to come with church life. Maybe I need to read some more mystics

[LeRon]

Hi James,

Thanks for that. I know what you mean about being lost in God. For me it has helped to reflect on a more differentiated relational understanding of "sharing" in the divine nature. And struggling with the mystics was definitely part of that adventure!

LeRon

[Jeff Hyatt]

I hope I am not too late to join this conversation. I also appreciate reading more of LeRon's journey. The post by Alan reminded me of two specific situations.

For those of you who don't know me, I am a pastor in Duluth, MN in a 114 year old church. We have been trying to align our hearts and life together in community around the mission of being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. It all sounds good, doesn't it? This new direction was unanimously approved and off we went. For the past 2 years we have been talking and thinking a lot about transformed living. But recently, in our growing honesty, it has become clear that we really don't want to engage in the terror of reforming our theology. We want to believe what we've always believed simply because it's comfortable. The social dynamic is interesting to me. In community we openly affirm one set of 'truths,' yet we live a different 'truth' individually. In this way, the social context is actually working against the transformation that we say that we want.

Second, my wife and I have begun talking about the hope of the resurrection and how it differs from dispensational/rapturist theology. This too has been difficult for us, because as I share how my theology has been going through a reformation I have been causing angst in her mind and heart. She said that "I am tearing away at her hope for life after death." (I remember that feeling while studying in one of LeRon's classes.) It seems to me that this destablizing effect is inevitable if we are going to expereince the transformation that comes through the Spirit who is the Lord.

ps - For those of you who know Brian W. who participates on this blog, please pray for his family. His father passed away on Friday after a 10 year battle with cancer. Thanks!

[LeRon]

Hi Jeff,

Never too late (until the comments are "closed")!

I can completely relate with both of your stories. I have had similar experiences of being in community with others who are more or less ready to embrace the delightful terror than I was (or am).

Part of my own journey has been learning to be patient both with others and with myself in the process.

Purgation really is painful and scary, and it takes space and time. Rushing the process of "illumination" can be destructive.

This is why I try to use the language of "invitation" and "welcome" as much as possible, rather than pushing people toward transformation. There is a time for pushing, but this takes a lot of discernment, and depends on the nature of the relationship.

The "destabilizing" is inevitable, as you suggest, and it is a fearful thing to play a role in this process!

But also delightful... they always go together... the deeper the one, the deeper the other, but always "in" the Spirit.

[David Worley]

LeRon- What a great conversation strand. Would you be willing to start a new strand on the topic of purgation? I think it is a natural transition for us and I believe it might provide continued vibrancy for this fabulous conversation.

[LeRon Shults]

Good idea, David. Maybe I can do one first on purgation, then illumination, then union...