Categories: uncategorized
Date: 11 November 2007 08:31:45
At the moment I am in that strange place where part of one of the syllabus' I am teaching requires me to talk about stuff which is part of my real life or only a step or two removed from my experience. During this part of the course I am always careful to be completely objective and not give anything away about my real life, but am glad to be able to give some relevant contemporary examples which aren't necessarily the ones in the text book.
This means that to some extent I am able to step outside and look at stuff from a different place to the one I'm normally in and also to think about the responses the students make as outsiders. I have to say I find this challenging at times, not because of the objectivity but rather because I am disturbed by how I'm challenged when forced to look at aspects of Christian practice (which in another context I will accept as perfectly normal) from a rational point of view.
The two most challenging aspects for me this week were:
Explaining aspects of the neo-pentecostal and charismatic movements and realising exactly how bizarre some of the things we do in church are (even when we are only moderately in this direction).
When one of my brighter students was looking at a website which is aimed at people who are, for want of a better term, church exiles and said these people aren't Christians they're agnostics. I explained the fact it all linked to post-modern concepts of identity and they were largely people who would still strongly self-identify as Christian but didn't tend to buy into traditional ideas of church or the largely conservative norms and values of the church.
What that student made me realise though was that in seeking to be authentically Christian in our practice and living in a late modern (or if you insist post-modern) world we are so moving away from the picture of church that many people inside, and particularly outside, have that we are no longer recognised as Christians. Doubt and inner conflict have been taken as the identifying features of the agnostic rather than signs of people on a spiritual journey with God.
Yet, if I look at my bible I find that using this measure practically every great figure in the bible would have been classed as an agnostic in modern culture (if they hadn't been defined as a lunatic and locked up or doped up to they eyeballs) despite the fact they were on amazing and inspirational journeys with God.