The Christian Imagination

So, after 20 years of Bush/Clinton, we now have a new figurehead, one from a younger generation, by the name of Barack Obama. His campaign was brilliantly run. It wasn’t just about change, but empowerment. The focus of his website is largely on how WE can bring about change. In a world that increasingly makes us feel so small and powerless, that is a welcome, and true, message. That is also going to be the focus of this post.

There are certainly questions about the real character of Obama. Do some digging on Google, and it won’t take long to get beyond the obvious lies about Obama (such as him being a Muslim) to valid concerns about who he has associated with and what causes he has supported. I have a degree in speech communication, so I really appreciate his communication skills. Do I think he lies or covers up things? In my opinion, yes. Did McCain lie or put spin on anything? Again, in my opinion, yes. Obama is just much better at it. We’ll soon see what Obama is really like as President, and whether he is really as evil as some say.

My faith, though, is not in a presidential messiah. My faith is in Jesus Christ, and his body. There are seeds in the body that give me hope, though not as many as I’d like. In an election year, there is a sense of urgency for people, one that often goes away after the latest messiah is elected, because then, we can relax and let the messiah do all the work. Obama’s campaign has inspired a lot of people to get involved, many of them from outside the Christian faith, though he has inspired a number of Christians as well. Since a lot of Christians, perhaps the majority, don’t like Obama, I’m hopeful that this will keep Christians from being apathetic and lazy. During the Bush era, many Christians seemed to support almost every action of the Bush Administration. Now the challenge will be for Christians to move beyond being defensive and reactive.

The real power, though, is where it always has been…in the grassroots, locally, regionally. Washington will do what Washington does, and we certainly need to prayer for our leaders. But we can act locally, being Christians wherever we happen to be, creatively serving our communities. The politics of the Kingdom are centered on Jesus Christ, in saving our lives to follow a King who is not of this world. ALL systems of government are flawed because money and power ultimately get in the way. The change Jesus Christ brings is a revolution of the heart, and His Kingdom stretches across borders, nations, people groups, languages. And my allegiance is to that King first. My hope is in that King. And the body who makes up that Kingdom is multicultural, multilanguage, multicolor.

Whatever the new administration brings, we, as Christians, can proactively bring about positive change. As Christians, we can let our faith transform our values, and be Christians. We can serve the poor, feed the hungry, point out the false idols in our culture, and let our faith affect how we choose to live our lives. My hope for the next four years is to see Christians wholistically engaging the culture around us. That hope begins with me turning my own words into actions. It always begins with the person in the mirror.

I’ve referenced Richard Foster and Celebration of Discpline before, and may talk about the Spiritual Discplines at some point. I was introduced to Foster at my Anabaptist college (who are very different from any variation of Baptist), so perhaps I didn’t realize just how many people really don’t agree with him.

I came across a very Baptistic website who counters all things emergent and contemplative at http://apprising.org/. It seems to come from a perspective that God only speaks through Scripture and there are no modern charasmatic gifts and such. Uses the word heresy a lot. His logic isn’t as good as he thinks it is, but he does raise some good questions. So, before discussing Celebration of Discipline, I thought I’d reference the opposing viewpoint.

There are a lot of people in the Christian tradition over the last 2000 years who have practiced what Foster calls The Spiritual Disciplines. Some would say that some of these have weak Biblical support, or none directly. The inward disciplines are meditation, prayer, fasting, and study; the outward disciplines are simplicity, solitude, submission, and service; and the community disciplines are confession, worship, guidance, and celebration.

Now, whether Foster’s explanation of some of these is Biblical is one discussion, especially as to the importance of these means of grace, as they are called. On the surface though, it seems to me there’s sufficient mention of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study in the Bible for their practice to be Biblical in some fashion. Confessing to another person is Biblical, as is worship. The outward disciplines are not mentioned as commanded acts, though there is mention or modeling of each to a degree. So, if I continue this post series, I’ll refer to the Bible as the primary source.

It’s good to look at the Bible and ask how Biblical things are. We should question things. What confuses me is that a given conversative Christian may be quick to condemn a more liberal Christian for being unbiblical, but it less willing to be open to being called unbiblical themselves, as if the status quo of a given denomination must be defended at all costs, because everything else is heresy. Honestly, that kind of logic scares me.

Now, with over 200 varieties of Baptist, it’s hard to use that term to generalize, plus I know some awesome Baptists! But if we’re going to talk about extra-biblical practices, I’ve seen plenty in Baptist churches I’ve been too. Is wearing a suit or your Sunday best Biblical? Does the Bible say we can’t drink alcohol? Is Sunday School a Biblical command? Are we commanded to sing hymns? Is the pulpit commanded? Are pews commanded? Some would say that even some of the elements of modern church services have pagan foundations. Yet, what a pastor wears from a pulpit is a big deal to guys like John Macarthur. And in fairness, some people are too ready to condemn the so-called traditional church for things like these. And so it goes.

So, from the introducation to Celebration of Discipline, I find these encouraging words:

“The moment we feel we can succeed and attain victory over sin by the strength of our will alone is the moment we are worshipping the will. Isn’t it ironic that Paul looks at our most strenuous efforts in the spiritual walk and call them idolatry, will worship? Willpower will never succeed in dealing with the deeply ingrained habits of sin.”

I wrote the following on my personal blog after reading that: It dawned on me, recently, in simplicity, that if I don’t have a close relationship with God, born of time spent with Him in honesty and humility and joy, that I won’t serve Him very well, that I won’t be as holy as I could be, that I won’t be as loving as I could be. And so I’m intent on doing that, spending time with God for like an hour a day, for the purpose of, spending time with God, and letting Him do what He does, cause my efforts just don’t seem to amount to much, even my efforts to be good and be better. I’ve had times where I’ve felt close to God. Recently, I really haven’t, except for a few moments. And it’s all seemed more like work than joy. Maybe we have too much of an end in our religion. Maybe the means is all that matters. We throw the words “relationship with God” around, though our prayer lives show how much we mean those words. But prayer too, is too often focused on the end rather than the means.

I just stumbled across Hayhow’s Review, which has the tagline: Welcome to Steve Hayhow’s Blog, where we talk about what we’ve been reading and thinking about lately.

He has a long post with notes on Christian Imagination which is a good read.

Steve also has some quotes about Christian Imagination, including ones by Douglas Wilson and G.K. Chesterton.

I like this quote from Wilson: “We need to take a special care to tell stories that are “not suitable” for modernists. The Bible contians dragons, giants, principalities, satyrs and unicords.”

The We Are Not Strangers blog has a post quoting an article by Clyde S. Kilby published in 1969 called The Bible as Imagination.

Kilby makes these three assertions:
1. The first is the Bible belongs to literature; that is, it is a piece of art.
2. The second indisputable fact is that, because one—and possibly the greatest—ingredient of literature is imagination, we must say that the Bible is an imaginative book.
3. The third indisputable fact is that the greatest artist of all, the greatest imaginer of all, is the one who appears at the opening of Genesis.