The Heart of Christianity

Thoughts on the book, The Heart of Christianity (Borg):

If I were to put the "earlier paradigm" and the "emerging paradigm" on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being extremely conservative/fundamentalist and 10 being what Borg believes, I would probably be right around a 6. Maybe a 5...or a 7. Depends on the day. :) Borg covers so many things in this book that I'm not going to comment on all of them. However, here are a few thoughts I'd like to share (with anyone still reading :):

*My favorite chapter of this book is Faith. I really appreciate Borg's assertion that faith means a lot more than "intellectually believe," that it has a lot to do with giving our allegiance

*The chapter on the Bible-- I agree with some aspects of this. I agree that a person doesn't have to believe in a literal-factual interpretation of the Bible in order to be a Christian or to appreciate the Bible. Was Jonah really inside of the belly of a whale for three days? I don't know. It doesn't seem that important to me to know whether that is literally true or metaphorically true. However, to believe in God at all, I have to believe that he could certainly suspend natural laws in order to do whatever he wants. Thus, "fantastical" elements of the Bible are not UNbelievable, simply because they seem implausible. On the other hand, I don't see their literal occurrence as vital to my belief system. As far as the Bible being more a product of human tradition as opposed to Divine inspiration, I'm not so sure. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts.

*Two concepts of God-- I don't actually see these two concepts of God as an either/or proposition. I see God as both a personlike being who is up in heaven AND as the One in whom I live and move and have my being. Borg talks about how seeing God as One who could intervene makes the question of his non-intervention problematic. I have to agree with that. I really don't know why God doesn't intervene in a lot of situations. Borg's answer to this is what he calls panentheism [EDIT: I had originally & mistakenly written "pantheism], with no concept of divine intervention. To me, that doesn't answer the problem. Right now, I'm reading Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Yancey), and it addresses this topic too. Still no answers, but some interesting thoughts......

*Jesus-- I disagreed the most with this chapter. My understanding is that Borg basically comes to the conclusion that Jesus was not divine (in any peculiarly special way) but that Jesus was a man who embodied what it means to be Christian. I'm more with Frederick Buechner on this topic (emphases mine):

As everybody knows by now, Gospel means Good News. Ironically, it is some of the Gospel's most ardent fans who try to turn it into Bad News. For instance:
*"It all boils down to the Golden Rule. Just love thy neighbor, and that's all you have to worry about." What makes this bad news is that loving our neighbor is exactly what none of us is very good at. Most of the time, we have a hard time even loving out family and friends very effectively.
*"Jesus was a great teacher and the best example we have of how we ought to live." As a teacher, Jesus is at least matched by, for instance, Siddhartha Gautama. As an example, we can only look at Jesus and despair.
*"The Resurrection is a a poetic way of saying that the spirit of Jesus lives on as a constant inspiration to us all." If all the Resurrection means is that Jesus' spirit lives on like Abraham Lincoln's or Adolph Hitler's but that otherwise he is just as dead as anybody else who cashed in two thousand years ago, then as Saint Paul puts it, "our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). If the enemies of Jesus succeeded for all practical purposes in killing him permanently around A.D. 30, then like Socrates, Thomas More, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so on, he is simply another saintly victim of the wickedness and folly of humankind, and the cross is a symbol of ultimate defeat.
What is both Good and New about the Good News is the wild claim that Jesus did not simply tell us that God loves us even in our wickedness and folly and wants us to love each other in the same way and to love him too, but that if we will let him, God will actually bring about this unprecedented transformation of our hearts himself.
What is both Good and New about the Good News is the mad insistence that Jesus lives on among us not just as another haunting memory but as the outlandish, holy, and invisible power of God working not just through the sacraments (q.v.) but in countless hidden ways to make even slobs like us loving and whole beyond anything we could conceivably pull off ourselves.
Thus the Gospel is not only Good and New but, if you take it seriously, a Holy Terror. Jesus never claimed that the process of being changed from a slob to a human being was going to be a Sunday School picnic. On the contrary. Childbirth may occasionally be painless, but rebirth never. Part of what it means to be a slob is to hang on for dear live to our slobbery.
--Frederich Buechner from Wishful Thinking, A Seeker's ABC...or better yet, Beyond Words (which includes Wishful Thinking and a couple other books)

*Social justice-- Somehow, I think that Christian America has largely missed this point, and in my opinion, it's kind of a big aspect of the Christian life. Another great book I'm reading deals with this topic (on a world level): The Hole in Our Gospel (Stearns).

*Thin places-- I love this description for Christian sacraments and disciplines. It's a perfect visual image. Someone should do a painting with that title & concept. :)

*Pluralism/Exclusivity-- I can best sum up my beliefs on this topic with a quotation from the last book in the Narnia series (The Last Battle):

"Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, 'Son, thou art welcome.' But I said, 'Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.' He answered, 'Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.' Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, 'Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?' The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, 'It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites -- I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?' I said, 'Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.' But I said also (for truth constrained me), 'Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.' 'Beloved,' said the Glorious One, 'unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.'" -C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

"For all find what they truly seek." I believe that. :)