Velvet Elvis - Part Two

I now have finished chapter one of Velvet Elvis and there's so much I could write. I simply don't have the time to do a big polished post, so I'll just kind of give a stream of thoughts and see if anything snags attention and maybe a dialogue. Please freely post comments!

• In my opinion, the "postmodern", "emergent"...thing...can often be mainly understood solely as a reaction against modernism. Hence the word "postmodern" - if there wasn't modernism, post-modernism could not exist!
  
  
  
  
• Now, that's not a bad thing in and of itself - I'd agree that "modern" Christianity has a bunch of weaknesses which often result from one-sided, reductionist thinking. The problem is that post-modernity then can quickly react to those weaknesses by a counter-weakness, taking the opposite of the weakness to an extreme, thereby creating a new problem! Here are a couple of examples which I find in chapter one:
  
  
  
  
• Modernity tends to value answers more than questions: I remember hearing about one pastor who swore to himself he'd never be stumped by the same question twice. What that implies is that questions exist solely to be answered, and if you don't have an answer to a question, that somehow is a negative thing which needs to be remedied.
  
  However, questions are NOT a negative thing! See for example the fact that some of Jesus' last words were "WHY have you forsaken me?" Jesus himself is asking a question without receiving an answer. I think Velvet Elvis brings this fact out wonderfully in chapter 1.
  
  But the problem I see in the postmodern, emergent reaction to that weakness is the tendency to do precisely the opposite: Suddenly, questions are valued above answers, and having doubts becomes something positive. Some of the remarks in Velvet Elvis go in this direction. "What if tomorrow someone dug up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry - would your faith fall apart?" Planting doubts is NOT my definition of asking healthy and honest questions.
  
  What I wish is that moderns would learn from post-moderns, and vice versa, and we'd hold questions and answers in tension. That we'd keep the line drawn between questions (good) and doubts (bad) - very often, Jesus says "Do not doubt". James says we "must not doubt". BUT Jude 22 says "Be merciful to those who doubt." Can't we take all those facts and hold them in a healthy paradoxical tension?
  
  
  
  
• Modernity tends to value doctrines above actual living: I remember a "Fact, Faith, Feeling" train - doctrinal fact needs to lead the way, our faith needs to be connected to that fact, and our feelings, a little red caboose, will follow...sometimes. ;) Now I agree with that image, but I think it's easy to then go and define faith as simply "believing" said doctrine. But that's not enough. True faith means living out the doctrine. So often faith was seen in "modern" Christianity as an all-in-your-head deal of "Yeah, I choose to believe in my head that God loves the world.", but never living it out practically, which is what "true" faith is.
  
  However, again, I see the postmodern reaction to this weakness is to do the opposite. Suddenly, doctrines of truth are no longer the foundation of our faith, but rather it's all about whether or not we "live in the way of Jesus", which is how Bell defines what Christianity is about. After planting some pretty intense seeds of doubt about the virgin birth, he asks that "if" the virgin birth was drawn into question, "Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live?" In other words - as long as you live in the way of Jesus, you're OK - "the doctrines are simply the springs" that help you jump higher on your "trampoline", as he puts it. And he ends with the pointed question "If the whole faith fails apart when we reexamine it and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?"
  
  Again, I wish for a healthy tension of these two thoughts, not taking it to the extreme either way - I feel Bell is definitely taking it to the extreme by drawing the virgin birth into question. And it's not a healthy "Did the virgin birth happen?", it's a dangerous planting of doubts by asking "What IF the virgin birth DIDN'T happen?"
  
  Sorry, but certain doctrines are FAR more than a single spring in my trampoline. They're the frame, the ground on which my trampoline stands, the legs of my trampoline.
  
  Those certain doctrines include the virgin birth, the Trinity (both of which are drawn into question by Bell, though he finds the easy way out by saying "...but I'm not saying it's not true!"), the resurrection, the substitutionary death of Christ.
  
  
  
  I think Paul answered the question of "Could you still be a Christian if the doctrine of the resurrection needed to be 'rethought'?" quite nicely in 1 Corinthians 15. And I'll close with that, 'cause this is getting long:
  
  

  "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless."
  
  - 1 Corinthians 15:17