Stuck in the middle…with you?

I’m starting to think that there is very little middle ground in North American Christian circles.

It seems that you are either a social and economic conservative, intent on ‘keeping to a literal interpretation of the Bible,’ and espousing a very strong set of convictions (see my posts on Evangelicalism),

or

you are a social and economic liberal, with a low-view of Christ (e.g. not divine, etc.) and God (Deism),

or

you are a part of a Christianity that is primarily cultural (i.e. family-tied) and is very closed on almost every respect.

I’m not any of these. And I feel alienated because of it.

It’s difficult, because for the last 3 years I’ve had a exhilirating time delving deeply into the Word: learning the original (or as close as we can understand) languages, defining contexts – both historical and literary, redefining my theology to align with what I truly and utterly believe is the biblical theology. But, because of this, I’ve had to make some concessions.  Concessions like, maybe the Old Testament isn’t entirely a factual, scientific document; maybe only the Gospel of John calls Jesus divine; Maybe the Rapture doesn’t exist (ok, that was an easy one); maybe there isn’t a soul separate from the body and that heaven and death and end times as we commonly understand them have little to do with each other?

I’m not a Liberal. I believe in the Creeds and all that they entail. But, as you see, I’m not a fundamentalist by any modern sense of the Word. I can’t adhere to any determinist view of God, but I can’t hold to any true open theism either.  I’m stuck somewhere in the middle. A magical middle that doesn’t entirely seem to exist.

I’ve said from the start that I keep finding the Jesus and the Christianity I’ve always been looking for – a robust, intellectual, revolutionary, ancient and transcendent Christianity. Sadly, I’ve been losing a hold on how to understand our Church – its culture, place, and meaning. I see so many things that are contrary to what I now hold to believe the Bible is saying, and that people are creating part of a cycle that has little to do, and is often contrary to, the call to usher in the Kingdom of God.

So why am I worried about this? Why couldn’t I just start ignoring other Christians and live my own life, apart from them? Well the thing that I’ve learned more than anything else from God this year is how important faith community is to the Christian life. We need each other, consistently and constantly. We need to eat meals together, join in praise together, mourn together, hold each other up, hold each other accountable, save each other from trials and tribulations and be unified in love, because I believe that these things are good and well for our beings and our walks with the Lord. Strike that, it is imperative to our Christianity.

So how do I do that when I’m not sure about most, if not all of it, any more?

Suggestions would be great.

WK

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This entry was written by Will, posted on December 30, 2008 at 9:24 am, filed under Christianity, Church and tagged Church, Disillusionment, Evangelicalism, North America. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.