Remember the wheel?

I was thinking today about the difference between "Emerging" and "Emergent". Mark Driscoll seems to have defined the two terms very differently, and noted that "Emerging" is the group of people who are thinking differently about how to do church, considering how to become relevant yet still keep with the past, while "Emergent", explains Driscoll, is the group that is questioning everything from relevancy to theology.

I will be brief but to me its sort of like the car industry right now. On the one hand you have the industry that is trying to put new paint on the old things, produce new models of the old tried and trues. They are asking the question: "How can we sell this in the new market?" The same is true for Emerging churches. They are asking themselves how they can sell their church in the new market, how they can appear relevant in a world that is quickly changing, how can they stay on top?

Of course what these churches, and that end of the auto-industry, are missing is that for some reason their surges of buyers are getting smaller and smaller. Quickly they are being overtaken by the other end of the spectrum, those who are rethinking their philosophies all together, the Hybrids.

Instead of putting new paint on old ideas, the Hybrid industry and those who are leading it are asking entirely new questions. Not "how can we sell this?", but more "why is this?". They aren't just seeking to stay on top, they are seeking to recreate the way we view transportation, burst through the old molds and create something altogether new. Something, ironically enough, that if successful makes fully irrelevant all previous molds and models. Who wants the gas guzzling diesel when the new 100 mpg truck comes out? Who will care about land speed and maneuverability when cars can fly?

These are the Emergents. They are the side that is rethinking everything they thought they knew about church, God, theology...everything. Instead of asking how they can make their church more relevant, they are asking why they do what they do in the first place. Their changes are coming from the inside out, from deep shifts in their ways of thinking, that far surpass a simple new coat of paint...they are a whole new concept. They are reconsidering the old fuel economy of ideas, and inventing new sources of power, new balances and new measures of success.

Where once speed and power were the trophies of a ministry (and the auto industry), now environmental impact and long term resource allocation are fast becoming the new badges of honor. A few decades of this new thinking and we won't even call what we drive churches (or cars) anymore, because they will just be too different from what that word describes.

Emergents are not trying to reinvent the wheel, they are trying to make it obsolete in the wake of what comes next. What if one day people turn to one another over coffee and say, "Remember the wheel?"

Agnostic Christianity

I wonder sometimes if there is such a thing as the sin of certainty. If knowing and not knowing are actually the same thing, only the latter is more honest. What can we actually say that we know? Do we know ourselves, do we know each other, do we know our faith? Are we 100% sure that we know the things we think we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt? And if we can affirm that yes we do know things this well, should we be committed for having too simple a view of reality?

I was considering the word Gnosis the other day, wondering at the very first heresy Christianity ever birthed within itself, the group that became known as Gnostics. Gnosis, I learned, means "knowledge", and that band of heretics were so named because they believed that God had given them a special knowledge about himself, a knowledge that if attained could make one a more perfect Christian. But only those who realized this knowledge were speical, only those who obtained the gnosis would live forever.

Do you see where I am going with this? If the first heretical Christians were called Gnostics because they believed in a supernatural knowledge which saved people, I would imagine that would make the other Christians, the Orthodox Christians, the Agnostic Christians.

Today we use the word Agnostic in reference to the certainty of there being a God. We see it as the middle ground between Theism (one who believes that Theos, God, is extant) and Atheism (one who does not). But this assignment is arbitrary and out of place, sure the word can conveniently convey that there is an opinion of not knowing which is correct, but the word itself I think expresses a much deeper meaning than this mere position can provide.

To be Agnostic about something is to profess unknowing. Its to say that you have been well informed about the various side's theories, have measured and weighed them but feel there is not enough to lead you to firm conclusions. Yet despite this seeming lack of confidence in a particular direction, you are comfortable in your unknowing, content with floating along the waves, unsure which coast these ultimately lead to.

Back again to the first Christians, I wonder if there is an irony in their clash with the Gnostics. The first heresy was believing you had a special knowledge that others didn't have, something in your version of faith that was better, higher, and more enlightened than the rest. These heretics were excited to proclaim their special understanding, but the true Christians were content to remain Agnostics, unable/unwilling to deduce the wonders and marvels of God.

The irony is in how that group of orthodox Christians who were once happily agnostic, morphed to become the various tribes we see today, each claiming to have found something others haven't. Protestants telling the Catholics that they don't understand salvation, Eastern Orthodox telling everybody that they don't get worship, Catholics telling the others that they don't have the knowledge of the Pope. How ironic that the very first heresy, gnosticism, found its way into each faith tradition. Sure the form has changed, but the concept is clear: some have the special knowledge that others don't.

In this light it would seem that the Christians who might be willing to admit how little they actually know, would be the one's returning to true orthodoxy. The one's who would be willing to drop their systematic theologies and monopolies on truth might be the one's closest to the humble beginnings of our sacred story. I'm sure that would seem ignorant at first, but perhaps like Socrates, being confident about what one doesn't know will actually prove how wise one actually is.

"We all want progress, but progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man." - C.S. Lewis

I wonder if there could be Agnostic Christians again. Christians who don't bask in their high and lofty understanding, but follow as if their souls depend on it; who judge not others lest they be judged by the same measure. I'm sure at first these Christians would be seen as "liberal" or "progressive", but wouldn't they actually be regressive? Wouldn't theirs be a departure from the well accepted heresy of special understanding, and a return to the discipline of humility and trust in Christ?

I have no idea.

"If this religion boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus (God Hidden)."

-Blaise Pascal