My wife and I were laying down with my super, fantastic, aggressively cute, spirited, stubborn, manipulative, beautiful four year old first-born son Alexander. He had found a leftover sheet of six little Spiderman valentine's cards and pulled them apart. After examining each one carefully (when you tilt them Spiderman moves so it's really cool) he then proceeded to reconstruct them as they were together in the sheet before he pulled them apart, but in different configurations.
Four year olds and a bit younger are very particular about creating structure. They find random events and objects and find some way that makes sense to them to create an order of their experience. When they create by organizing, they do so intentionally, but also haphazardly. The plan develops as it all happens until things seem right. Then it's off to the next thing.
Not only was I watching this cute little kid create order out of disorder, intelligibility our of chaos, I was watching him as he pulled the pieces together with a story. His vocalizations told us and his own self what was happening. There was depth to it all. There were reasons for why he was doing things and it was all governed by the little seemingly nonsensical story he was telling himself as he put those little cards into an order, then pulled them apart, then handed out to my wife and I, and then he would instruct us to put in different locations. The kicker is that if what we did did not conform to the image he was trying to make, he would re-instruct us like a mildly annoyed teacher telling a student the same instruction for the second or third time.
My son was doing something very human – he was creating a world. He was developing an order of random things to make his life a little more satisfying. Without order and structure where we can predict what is going to happen next, everything is unintelligible and a mess. It is why human suffering as a reality is a problem for us becuase suffering is a sign of disorder, of something that does not make sense with out innate desire to have a sense of well-being and comfort with the environments that we inhabit. However, as Robert Jay Lifton has argued in his fantastic book The Protean Self the resilience in the human mind and self is to construct order in the midst of even the most awful disorder.
This is what theology is at its very root: theology is world construction. Theology is the mental projection of trying to make sense of a world in which there is a sacred and sublime presence that continually tosses everything comfortable and predictable asunder and into disarray. It is a human construction to control that which is utterly alien to what we can fully grasp in our daily experience. But because it is a fact of human living that makes sense, of a human experience that is intelligible to create order and create a world that feels like home, it is natural to rely on theological systems to make us feel "at home" with God.
The heart of idolatry is when we confuse the world we create with out theology with the God that these worlds exist only to serve and love. Theology is a medium for our world creation to meet the world that God is trying to create with us. the goal is for the worlds that we must create if we are humans trying to know God to conform to that same world that God is trying to create with people as the media for that world to taek shape among all of the people of the world.
Orthodoxy or, "right teaching", tends to boil the elements of faith down to a fine set of human created propositions that were constructed in order for one social group to make a world in which they felt "at home" with the world and God. The problem is when those structures of orthodoxy no longer feel like a world worth living in or that they actually interfere with the experience that persists between humanity and God. Now orthodoxy as "right teaching" should not be confused with "liberal" or "conservative" for every group of people will contruct its own version of orthodoxy at some point.
The question is, to borrow from Marshall McLuhan's aphorism, is the medium of the world that you have constructed in whole or in part viewed as a tentative medium for God to communicate and commune with you and others, or has that structure become the message itself? If we truly invite God into our presence in earnest, we must be willing to give up the worlds we have constructed and be willing to allow God to deconstruct our worlds as God wishes to do. Yet it is human nature to resist such disruption and deconstruction. However, this is what God demands of all of us if we are to say that we are faithful. Orthodoxy is useful, but it is faulty. Until those of us who hold to orthodox "non-negotiables" allow God to deconstruct what is comfortable and normal in the worlds we have constructed, we will only worship a hipper, sexier version of what we want to be; and that, is the heart of idolatry.
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Yes yes yes!
I wanted to add that i see theology as an "art." It's creative in its essence, not the unpacking of predetermined meanings in endless repeats. Theology at its heart is a creative endeavor that does just what you wrote here – decontructs and reconstructs… in as many ways as there are people who want to engage with unseens and mysteries.
right. i like the art theme. medium is a techne which is indeed an art! so good on ya.
Drew – I saw you commenting over at Tony Jones' blog and followed your link here. Your post here resonated with me because at some point a few years ago I began to feel like I was making an idol out of scripture and that I was doing that because it made me feel more in control than allowing the spirit of God to lead me (he's so unpredictable). Actually, I was making an idol of a particular interpretation of scripture and that was what I considered orthodox. The problem was my faith had become a barrier instead of a bridge and I had to examine it and ask "why wasn't it working the way I knew it should". Needless to say it was scary and lonely at times but now that I am living with a much more chastened epistemology I believe that I am becoming more connected to God, what he is doing in the world and others. As I listen to what people are saying across the world I am amazed that the experience I had personally seems to be going on globally. It really does seem that the spirit of God is deconstructing something in order to create something better…and I believe that he will continue to do this over time again and again.
This makes for a much more fluid faith rather than a straight line. Journeys never go in a straight line. They curve around, take 2 steps forward, 1 step back, go in circles, et al. G-d is absolute in certain things i am finding and flexible, fluid, changing in other ways. If we are really having a relationship with G-D, doesn't it mean it should be fluid, growing, changing rather than staying stagnate? If a relationship stagnates and will not move forward, that is usually a good sign to me that it has completed its purpose for me and i move on from it.
Thanks for the thoughtful post, Drew!
Also, Liz – this so goes along with the guy on your blog calling McLaren a heretic! Maybe we should link to this post in your comment section. In fact, i think i will do that now!
Warm Regards,
EP
true liberation is scary because it calls us not to be the center of our own worlds. it is also scary because when we do participate in the construction of our world with god, it makes it an object that can and should hold us accountable. it means that we are always to hold ourselves into account and be willing to change at all times. thanks for stopping by!
to stretch the journey metaphor, contrary to fundamentalist doctrine which is about as rigid a structure that you can get, there really is no road map for it. there never was. everyone who tries to follow god in the bible is mostly lost and doing the best they can. if jesus gave us a roadmap, the disciples were certainly failures at following it and they were right next to the guy. we are not even so lucky. so a-wandering we go…
Drew – I saw you commenting over at Tony Jones' blog and followed your link here. Your post here resonated with me because at some point a few years ago I began to feel like I was making an idol out of scripture and that I was doing that because it made me feel more in control than allowing the spirit of God to lead me (he's so unpredictable). Actually, I was making an idol of a particular interpretation of scripture and that was what I considered orthodox. The problem was my faith had become a barrier instead of a bridge and I had to examine it and ask "why wasn't it working the way I knew it should". Needless to say it was scary and lonely at times but now that I am living with a much more chastened epistemology I believe that I am becoming more connected to God, what he is doing in the world and others. As I listen to what people are saying across the world I am amazed that the experience I had personally seems to be going on globally. It really does seem that the spirit of God is deconstructing something in order to create something better…and I believe that he will continue to do this over time again and again.
This makes for a much more fluid faith rather than a straight line. Journeys never go in a straight line. They curve around, take 2 steps forward, 1 step back, go in circles, et al. G-d is absolute in certain things i am finding and flexible, fluid, changing in other ways. If we are really having a relationship with G-D, doesn't it mean it should be fluid, growing, changing rather than staying stagnate? If a relationship stagnates and will not move forward, that is usually a good sign to me that it has completed its purpose for me and i move on from it.
Thanks for the thoughtful post, Drew!
Also, Liz – this so goes along with the guy on your blog calling McLaren a heretic! Maybe we should link to this post in your comment section. In fact, i think i will do that now!
Warm Regards,
EP
true liberation is scary because it calls us not to be the center of our own worlds. it is also scary because when we do participate in the construction of our world with god, it makes it an object that can and should hold us accountable. it means that we are always to hold ourselves into account and be willing to change at all times. thanks for stopping by!
to stretch the journey metaphor, contrary to fundamentalist doctrine which is about as rigid a structure that you can get, there really is no road map for it. there never was. everyone who tries to follow god in the bible is mostly lost and doing the best they can. if jesus gave us a roadmap, the disciples were certainly failures at following it and they were right next to the guy. we are not even so lucky. so a-wandering we go…
[...] God and human beings, theological propositions include and exclude often very specific behaviors, social structures, and even entire persons in the process. Without such a function, theology is a blind and dead [...]
[...] theology as world making… and world deconstructing (Notes From the Off Center) Theology is the mental projection of trying to make sense of a world in which there is a sacred and sublime presence that continually tosses everything comfortable and predictable asunder and into disarray. It is a human construction to control that which is utterly alien to what we can fully grasp in our daily experience. [...]
Thanks for sharing your stories. Very inspiring and refreshing. I was able to watch a music video that is co-related with your story. The seminary would love to sight this as a true to life example to their students.