Sorry Hans, you asked where we've been...traveling across Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming! But we're home now.
Lately I've been asking a lot of questions about how much of what we do is Kingdom of God stuff, and how much of it is our culture. Eric likes to say that he thinks he's 97% culture, 3% biblical. This first came up a few years ago when I heard a preacher say that to wear baggy jeans, have piercings, or blue-dyed hair was looking "like the world." Immediately I wondered who he thinks he looks like when he wears his suit and tie? He still reflects a good portion of "the world," but of course it's the respectable part so it's much more like Christ...(This will continue to happen until Christians become so good at separating themselves from the world around them that we have truly Christian hairstyles, Christian clothes, and maybe even a Christian language to go with our music, movies, and jewelry. I hope I'm hanging out with Jesus by the time this happens.) I don't mind culture--in fact I love studying and being a part of different ones--but I react strongly when people assume that what they do culturally is biblical. Eric and I have been reading a book called Pagan Christianity? (a warning: don't read it unless you're ready for some really challenging thoughts, and unless you are able to read something that you don't agree with 100% but can take the good parts from), and it details where we got most of our church culture. I won't go into it, but most of it wasn't from the Holy Spirit, Jesus, or the Bible, it was from the pagan cultures of the day. I could give example after example of this, but will spare you. That doesn't mean we can't do some of these things--I'm all about contextualizing the Good News--but it does mean that they aren't sacred, they aren't commanded, and they aren't guaranteed to please God. I can't wait to see CREATIVITY reemerge in Christ's Church, the kind that actually NEEDS God to pull off the Christian life, and can't survive a single day without Him calling the shots.
Leila
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Nice to hear from you Leila! If you ever have time I would like to hear more from you on this topic, giving examples of some of the pagan sources of our christian rituals. Do you have some recommended reading on this subject?
The best thing I've read to date is a book called Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of our Church Practices, by Frank Viola and George Barna (I think Viola wrote 99% of it, but Barna's name got it into more of mainstream Christianity). I don't agree with everything--though I agree with most of it--or at points I think he's too strong or sometimes even argues from silence, but overall it is a VERY well-researched book with tons of sources and historical references. I think you'd like it a lot. You can get it off Amazon for about $12 plus shipping.
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