Emerging or Diverging? by Brady

I’ve got to admit that the new Mac commercials are a brilliant piece of marketing. Apple® is doing such a good job at this that their computer sales are actually up 54% from this time last year. The commercials feature a young, scruffy, quasi-Emo guy and a nerdy, overweight, middle aged man. Of course the young guy represents the Mac and the old guy represents the PC. One of my favorites is the newest one with the support group that contains four other nerds and the one that begins to repeat, “I’m pleased to report that I’ve been error free for nearly a week.” What Apple® has done is market to a younger, hipper audience of trendsetters and it has translated into success across the board.

If you are involved in church life at all right now, I think another commercial could be made with the same characters but having them representing “Traditional Christianity” and the “Emerging Church.” Right now, the Emerging Church is led by people such as Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Tony Jones and Erwin McManus who have a “Hipper-Than-Thou” attitude and are in touch with the cultural climate. What the Emerging churches are doing, at least the one I have had extensive involvement with, is defining their churches by what they are not instead of what they are. Most leaders and members of these churches would say that they have been scarred by “Traditional Christianity.” Christian bookstores, church structures, and even the “fruits of the Spirit” are made fun of as disgusting to these new trendsetting churches.

The problem I am growing to see with the theology being put out by this movement and taught in these churches is that they are overcorrecting problems and diverging from orthodox Christianity in many cases. C.S. Lewis was quoted once saying that Christians are like drunks, who get up from one ditch only to fall into another ditch on the other side of the road. I believe this is happening once again as the pendulum begins to swing back the other way in Christian practice and thought.

For instance, Rob Bell says in Velvet Elvis that he believes, “I affirm the truth anywhere in any religious system, in any worldview. If it's true, it belongs to God.” This sounds cool and was actually appealing to me personally for a while until I examined this train of thought rationally. Roger Olson explains better than I could why this is incorrect and actually damaging. He says in The Mosaic of Christian Belief, “If “Christianity” is compatible with any and every truth claim, it is meaningless. It would then be indistinguishable from, say, Buddhism or atheism. Truly it would be chaotic, shapeless and devoid of identity.” So, while saving enough money to build a house in order to not incur debt is a good principle and a Muslim practice, it does not need to have Christianity’s stamp on it for you to practice it.

What tends to happen with guys like Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren is that they use the argument that “blank” word never appears in the Bible. I have either read or heard both of these men say that the words “personal relationship,” “spirituality,” “second coming,” “Trinity” and “eternity” as a timeless state are not in the Bible. (Side note: neither does the word “recycling.” While I am going “green” more and more daily by downsizing to a car that gets 34 mpg and recycling, I can do this in the name of being a responsible citizen and human rather than because God commanded it in Genesis. It’s just funny that they will throw out the second coming or eternal life, but say that the Bible tells you to recycle. See my blog called “Changing of the Guard” for more on this topic. Side note is now over.) In fact, it has gotten so bad that one Emerging Church leader reportedly called the Trinity B.S. This is what happens when Scripture is not the lens through which you gauge experience, reason, and tradition. What I fear is that the Emerging Church is actually a Diverging Church. This is no more obvious than in McLaren’s book title called Everything Must Change. Really ? Everything? And just listen to other titles by Emerging authors: The New Christians, A New Kind of Christian, and A Christianity Worth Believing. That sounds a little drastic and more than slightly arrogant to believe that in 2000 years of Christian history, our forefathers and foremothers have screwed up everything.

So the question becomes, what do I do as a Christian who wants to stay sound biblically and traditionally while also being relevant to the current cultural climate? I’m not talented enough to be like Paul, “all things to all people.” So I guess the only other option is to be the dorky PC guy from the Apple® commercial because I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater while also being a compromising letdown to the fundamentalists on the other side. Or maybe there is a group of Christians who will rise up that will continue to follow orthodox Christianity while reaching the world around them with the love of God. I believe the guiding principle of people like this will be what a mentor of mine told me once: “It is better for your ministry to be warm instead of cool.” Is that what you believe?