Still on about the "Who Cares?" Comment
I still find myself put out by my friend's comment of "who cares?" from a few weeks ago (two posts ago). I find that I feel the same way I did in high school when someone would make fun of a favorite television show or comic book character.
Actually, I think of it more in terms of this: in high school, I and some friends were walking into a McDonalds. There was a television on and it was playing MTV Unplugged. Don Henley was singing, and it was one of his mournful ballads from his album The End of the Innocence. I happened to like the album as did my friends, but as we walked by in a rush for a cheeseburger, one of my friends said, "Doesn't it suck to be singing your heart out to a room that just doesn't care?" He meant, of course, the audience in McDonalds. But that stuck with me.
Now I find I feel the same apprehension and sadness I felt that day. I love the Bible and what it represents, and I have dedicated my career and life to its study and proclamation. Yet I find that people aren't interested so much in what it actually says as they are hearing what they already think, believe, or have heard from their favorite preacher. So when another preacher says to me, "Who cares?" I suppose I fear we are losing the fight to fundamentalism, radicalism, or (and perhaps worse) to vapid, self-help, gospel of prosperity, Christian-lite (or Christian-less) proclamations that have more to do with keeping people happy than engaging the texts.
These kind of persons and proclamations have no root. They are un-tethered from the Christian community that struggled, argued, fought and died over the interpretation of the texts. Because for these kinds of people, history and depth are only useful if they strengthen a particular point or can be shown to "prove" some conclusion the preacher is seeking to make. So many non-denominational churches have severed their ties to the ancient church and traditions that the past means less and less. As such, the proclamations of those churches is, to me anyway, suspect. They have no root, they have no weight, and they have no connection.
At the same time, I find that the resistance to orthodoxy and historical interpretation is a staple for religious renewal. My concern is that in the purported renewal found within these churches, there is only the tendency to reinvent the wheel or to revisit orthodox or heretical positions that have been claimed and articulated before.
Perhaps what I find most frightening is that when preachers don't care about Biblical scholarship. why should those that listen to them care either?
Where does that lead us? Where does that leave us?
Actually, I think of it more in terms of this: in high school, I and some friends were walking into a McDonalds. There was a television on and it was playing MTV Unplugged. Don Henley was singing, and it was one of his mournful ballads from his album The End of the Innocence. I happened to like the album as did my friends, but as we walked by in a rush for a cheeseburger, one of my friends said, "Doesn't it suck to be singing your heart out to a room that just doesn't care?" He meant, of course, the audience in McDonalds. But that stuck with me.
Now I find I feel the same apprehension and sadness I felt that day. I love the Bible and what it represents, and I have dedicated my career and life to its study and proclamation. Yet I find that people aren't interested so much in what it actually says as they are hearing what they already think, believe, or have heard from their favorite preacher. So when another preacher says to me, "Who cares?" I suppose I fear we are losing the fight to fundamentalism, radicalism, or (and perhaps worse) to vapid, self-help, gospel of prosperity, Christian-lite (or Christian-less) proclamations that have more to do with keeping people happy than engaging the texts.
These kind of persons and proclamations have no root. They are un-tethered from the Christian community that struggled, argued, fought and died over the interpretation of the texts. Because for these kinds of people, history and depth are only useful if they strengthen a particular point or can be shown to "prove" some conclusion the preacher is seeking to make. So many non-denominational churches have severed their ties to the ancient church and traditions that the past means less and less. As such, the proclamations of those churches is, to me anyway, suspect. They have no root, they have no weight, and they have no connection.
At the same time, I find that the resistance to orthodoxy and historical interpretation is a staple for religious renewal. My concern is that in the purported renewal found within these churches, there is only the tendency to reinvent the wheel or to revisit orthodox or heretical positions that have been claimed and articulated before.
Perhaps what I find most frightening is that when preachers don't care about Biblical scholarship. why should those that listen to them care either?
Where does that lead us? Where does that leave us?
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