Integrating Missionally

The following is a two part series on the images of knowing. Today I look at the images that form the idea of truth.

The message education should convey is not identified by words like “fact,” “theory,” or “objective”. Instead, the message is called “truth.” The English word for “truth” comes from a Germanic root that also gives rise to the word “troth,” as in the ancient vow “I pledge thee my troth.” With this word, one person enters a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in a mutually accountable and transforming relationship. To know something or someone in truth is to enter troth with the known. To know truth is to become betrothed, to engage the known with one’s whole self. To know in truth is to allow one’s self to be known as well, to be vulnerable to the challenges and changes any true relationship brings. To know in truth is to enter into the life of that which we know and allow it to enter into ours. Truthful knowing weds the know and the known; even in separation, the two become part of each other’s life and fate.

Therefore, truth has nothing to do with manufacturing a world, keeping it at a distance, or manipulating it to suit our needs. Truth involves entering in to a relationship with someone or something genuinely other than us, but with whom we are intimately bound. Truth contains the image we are seeking – the image of community in which we were first created, the image of relatedness between knower and known.

Educating towards truth does not mean turning away from facts and theories and objective realities. If we devote ourselves to truth, the facts will not necessarily change. What will change is our relation to the facts. Truth requires the knower to become interdependent with the known.

The following was adapted from Parker Palmer’s book To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey

Popularity: 2% [?]

The following is a two part series on the images of knowing. Today I look at the images that form the idea of objectivism.

The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living. Seeing people as thinkers requires that we acquire knowledge in a certain way, a way much different than seeing people as lovers. It also shapes the knowledge we trust and value.

If we are thinkers, we value worlds like “fact” and “theory” and “objective.” The images and metaphors developed from these words give us insight into not only on the knowledge we value, but also in how we understand our world and shape our lives.

The word “fact” is vital. Finding the “facts’ marks the turn from primitive superstition to modern science, from subjective knowledge based on feeling, intuition, and faith to objective knowledge that can be tested by our senses. Fact comes from the Lain facere, “to make.” This image of “making” suggests that a fact is something created by the human hand – meaning that is most clearly seen in our words manufacture and artifact. This tells us something interesting about our way of knowing: we are busily engaged in trying to construct a livable world with our facts.

Another key word is “theory”. Our facts do not arrange themselves automatically into structures we can inhabit. So we spin theories, webs of connective logic, to order and integrate our facts. Theory is the thread that weaves our factual world together.

“Theory” comes from the Greek theoros, or “spectator,” one of a complex of Greek words having to do with the sort of viewing and observing that characterize a theatre audience. This image suggests another feature of modern knowing: we regard what we know as “out there,” on a stage, and we relate to it from a distance. Our knowledge does not draw us into a relationship with the known, into participation in the drama. Instead, it holds us at arm’s length as detached analysts, commentators, evaluators of each other and the world. The Greeks regarded drama as integral to life, not a spectator sport but a soul-making force. We, however, made a rigid distinction between the observer and the observed for the sake of objectivity. Where Greek audiences were able to put themselves at the center of the play – literally allowing it to “play” upon them – we hold ourselves apart for fear of distorting the objective facts with our subjective needs. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 3% [?]

James Smith new book

I have been reading Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies)by James K.A. Smith. Smith sees Christian education as really spiritual formation. I wanted to note his ideas, of which I’ve interjected my own of what he calls philosophical anthropology.

How we think about education is linked to how we think about human persons. Too much of our thinking about education sees it as a matter of disseminating information precisely because it assumes that human beings are primarily thinking things. This understanding has moved into the Christian educational process. Christian education has adopted a picture of human beings that owes more to modernity and the Enlightenment than it does to the holistic, biblical vision of humans. In particular, Christian education has adopted a philosophical anthropology that sees humans as primarily thinking things. The result has been an understanding of education largely in terms of information; more specifically, the end of Christian education has been seen to be the dissemination and communication of Christian ideas rather than the formation of a peculiar people. This has been most articulated in terms of a Christian worldview.

A Christian worldview is primarily a set of doctrines or a system of beliefs or a set of implicit ideas. This construction creates a Christian faith that is dualistic and reductionistic. It reduces the Christian faith primarily to a set of ideas, principles, claims and propositions that are known and believed. The goal of this is to create “correct” thinking. This relies on the description of Descartes: thinking things that are containers for ideas. This generates a rationalistic view of self where we are not only reduced to thinking things but are seen as things whose bodies are nonessential containers for our minds. This also creates our dualistic approach: There is a distinction between our bodies and minds and neither affects the other.

Humans, however, are fundamentally desiring creatures. We are what we love, and our love is shaped, primed, and aimed by liturgical practices that take hold of our heart and aim it to certain ends. Humans are primarily lovers, not thinkers or believers. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]

Joshua Harris' new book

Dug Down Deep: Unearthing What I Believe and Why It Matters is the new book by Joshua Harris. Joshua Harris is senior pastor of Covenant Life in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which belongs to the Sovereign Grace network of local churches. A passionate speaker with a gift for making theological truth easy to understand, Joshua is perhaps best known for his runaway bestseller, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which he wrote at the age of twenty-one. His later books include Boy Meets Girl, Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is), and Stop Dating the Church. The founder of the NEXT conferences for young adults, Joshua is committed to seeing the gospel transferred to a new generation of Christians. He and his wife, Shannon, have three children.

Content
In Dug Down Deep, Harris sets out to tell his journey toward orthodox theology. He also describes why it matters. In the book, Harris discusses the major doctrines of the church. He looks at the Bible, Jesus, Sin and the crucifixion. He looks at who God is, who the Holy Spirit is, and the second coming of Christ. The first part of the book tells his journey from a teenager in a seeker-oriented church in Oregon to his role as senior pastor of Covenant Life Church in Maryland. The second part deals with the doctrines and his theological underpinning.

Thoughts
I really enjoyed the first part of the book. I appreciated how he told with great transparency the journey from a consumeristic, attractional youth ministry in Oregon to a theology-soaked heart in Maryland. I also appreciated the story of how his soul longed for the depth of a relationship with the Godhead. The background of his life was revealing and mirrors many folks today who grew up in an attractional youth group. However, after I got past the autobiographical piece, the book just became a bit ho-hum. While it didn’t read like a systematic theology, it really was just an espousal of reformed theology along the lines of more readable, though not so hefty Wayne Grudem.

I do appreciate that he called on his readers to bypass the attitude that theology doesn’t matter or that it is only for those in ivory towers or in the ministry. In addition, I also appreciate how he made the doctrines a bit more accessible. For a younger audience, or for those who have little exposure to theology, I’m sure it might be an interesting reading. However, for me, it was not motivating or engaging.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give it a 2.75.

The book retails for 19.99 and is available at all major online retailers and local Christian bookstores.

Watermark Press provided this book for review free of charge.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Introduction to Paul

Dr. Michael Bird is Lecturer in Theology at the Bible College of Queensland. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Queensland. Michael’s research interests include the Gospel of Mark, Pauline theology, New Testament Theology, and Evangelical Ecclesiology. I started reading Michael’s blog after reading something on Michael Gorman’s site, and after a interview by Trevin Wax and a recommendation from Todd Littleton. Bird has written a couple of other books, Are You the One Who Is to Come?: The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question, and The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification and the New Perspective.

First, let me say that Michael Bird is quite the jokester. Watch this video on the most authors and books that have most influenced him. It’s hilarious!

His book, Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message, looked like a fascinating read and with recommendations from two New Testament scholars I appreciate, Michael Gorman and Scot McKnight, I felt I could not go wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7% [?]