I'm a Liberal Adventist Pastor. Which means:
1. I'm happily enmeshed in the glorious, dysfunctional religious family whose demographic center is the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Church is my home, my neighborhood, my tribe, my workplace.
2. I question authority--ecclesiastical authority, religious authority, scientific authority, and even the authority of my own personal experience. Which means it's hard to pin me down. Because what I think today may not be the same as what I thought yesterday or what I'll think tomorrow. I laugh a lot at the pompous declarations of church bureaucrats, liberal religious scholars, conservatives, scientists, Jim Brauer, Richard Dawkins, Clifford Goldstein, G. K. Chesterton, Graham Maxwell. I laugh most heartily and frequently at myself. It seems we humans cannot help pontificating about God or about the impropriety of pontificating about God--which comes to about the same thing. Humans are funny. God must laugh a lot. Not with scorn but with genuine amusement and affection.
3. I have a very high regard for human individuals. In my pastoral practice, my first purpose is to help individuals take the next step in their journey with God. (God made people before he made the Church, so people have priority.)
4. My questioning of all authority (see number 2 above), is balanced by my respect for the community of the church. There is no healthy spiritual life apart from community. Healthy family life is possible only when family members limit themselves for the good of the whole, when they practice the counsel--"in honor preferring one another." This means I respect not only my friends but also those who disagree with me, even those who have sought to have me fired. God speaks through them, too.
5. As someone divinely-called to the pastorate, I am obligated to speak up. But since I question all authority, including the "authority" of my own experience, I don't take my own opinions too seriously. I do take seriously, however, my divine appointment to the pastorate. I was unmistakably called. That calling compels me to speak up. In the tradition of the prophets, I attempt to faithfully voice what I "see." And, as was true of the ancient prophets, sometimes what I see runs contrary to the "received" opinions of the larger community. Anciently and presently it is the community which ultimately rules. But those with a prophetic call are obligated to voice what they see.
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2 comments:
Thanks, John. I too, find I cannot believe today that which I was certain of yesterday. And I am hesitant, even unwilling, to predict what I may believe tomorrow. Yet I recoil at being labeled 'post-modern'.
As I try to understand why I question authority, it seems to be on the same basis as my questioning of non-authority.... That is, facts, in any sense of absolute 'Truth', elude us; claims of fact are always tentative, subject to reassessment. But statements of opinion are all we can offer categorically. And when I am thinking clearly, and speaking coherently, the opinions I express are as near as can get to what I believe.. But minutes later, having heard another's opinion, I may have reconsidered, and modified, my own.
You observe that "There is no healthy spiritual life apart from community. Healthy family life is possible only when family members limit themselves for the good of the whole, when they practice the counsel--'in honor preferring one another'."
Indeed. But where is the 'whole' within which someone who questions certainty may safely look for community?
Unfortunately, it seems 'churches' -- as institutions -- or 'religions' as bodies of individuals subscribing to a common creed, are inimical to such uncertainty.
While I continue to attend Adventist services -- largely to not bring pain to my biological family -- I find almost nothing of the beliefs expressed in those services resonating with my own convictions.
I recall as a child, reading textbooks that asserted dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. And upon encountering each such reference, I mentally added a 'marginal gloss', to the effect that the author's woeful lack of an Adventist faith in the flood story was all that required such inconceivable time periods.
Today, as I sit in church or Sabbath School, I find myself listening to others' statements -- offered as certain fact -- and appending my own 'marginal gloss' to excuse their lack of clarity on the age of the earth, or the probable differences in conception of the universe as held by the authors of the Bible, and those who today take seriously the responsibility to weigh the evidence.
Is there a place for respectful uncertainty within an Adventist setting?
Mr. Uncertain, Yes, there are safe places in Adventism for doubtful believers. My own existence as a paid clergyman within the Adventist system is evidence for this.
I have visited congregations where the kinds of questions you ask are freely shared--Wasach Hills in SLC, Palo Alto, CA, Green Lake and North Hill in WA, Advent Hope in NYC, Sligo in D.C.
However, these places are rare. Their "sanctuary" status is sometimes imperiled. And there are many creative, questioning clergy whose stories are very different from mine.
I think it is nearly impossible for anyone who is genuinely curious and a reader to affirm unequivocally the entire content of any theological system--whether "system" refers to a formal systematic theology or to the cultural/spiritual/doctrinal heritage of a church or religious movement. There are just too many places in every system where plausible evidence exists to the contrary. (Recent converts are an expected exception to this paragraph.)
Unfortunately safe places for those who voice their questions out loud are rare in any religious community.
I don't know how to make such safe places common. Humans like others to agree with them. On the other hand, even those of us with the most questions appear to need community.
Perhaps it would be helpful for us who question to embrace the pain of being unwelcome as the inescapable cost of doing our job--unsettling the status quo. "Unsettlers" are hardly ever welcome anywhere (except in entertainment), but they are vital to the forward movement of community life.
Maybe we can use the to create some of the support and affirmation for questioners that is only rarely offered in congregations.
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