The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. An e-version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.
If
a relevant and progressive Christianity is to survive and bear witness of God’s
love to the world, the adherents to such a faith, those who seek to follow
Jesus, must embrace a critical approach to the Christian faith. Critically thinking about the faith is not
equivalent to criticizing the faith, as some may think, although that may be
part of critical thinking. Rather,
thinking critically about the faith is to continue to ask questions, to inquire
about the history of the faith, its present relevancy, and its future
hopes. It is also to admit its flaws and
weaknesses with honesty and transparency.
For
this to happen with any degree of success, any question about the Bible,
theology, and the practice of faith must be taken as a valid question. In dealing with the mysteries of God, we
should never be completely satisfied with the idea that if the Bible says it,
then that settles it. Nor should any of us be entrenched in our own
interpretations of scripture. We should
always be open to new ways of thinking about the Bible and theology, for to do
so leads us toward the truth and the realization that, in the words of Jesus,
the truth will set us free.
I
have no doubt that many readers of this book will quickly identify with what I
have to say. At the same time, I have no doubt that just as many others will
find what I have written to be difficult to accept, and they may even reject
these ideas outright. I am not so bold as to think I have figured it all out.
However, I would like to offer my own story that has led me to many of the
ideas I am arguing in this book.
Readers
of this book will find out rather quickly that I am a person who seeks always
to ask serious questions about faith. I
don’t ask these questions to be provocative, and I am not simply playing the
“Devil’s Advocate”. I am also not
seeking to create a straw man that I can easily attack. I am asking such questions with a great deal
of honesty about my own interpretation of the Christian faith that has evolved
over many years. There are specific
reasons why I asked such critical questions, and why I encourage others to ask
challenging questions.
One
reason for my determination to raise critical questions about faith, and why I
encourage others to do so, is that I grew up in a fundamentalist tradition in
which queries about the Bible and faith were not appreciated. This was particularly true when one tried to
ask questions about the inconsistencies found in the Bible, or when one tried
desperately to harmonize a belief in a good God with the reality of
suffering. As a teenager, I was told
that such questions are not important, and even heretical to ask; only knowing
Jesus and believing in him were necessary.
I was satisfied with this answer until a later time when I began to
discover the intellectual obstacles one encounters when approaching the Bible
for definitive answers. It was then that
I returned to ask those serious questions, which opened more questions, and
which eventually led to evolutionary, and indeed revolutionary changes in the
way I view the Bible and the Christian faith. I can say with all honesty that
this shift in my thinking did not come easy and it took time. In
fact, I fought this for some time until I realized that venturing into
unchartered waters, at least uncharted for me, led me to a deeper and more
satisfying faith.
A
second motive for my critical look at the Bible and Christian faith is that I
have perceived an insufficient education in our faith and in the Bible on which
our faith is based, particularly in churches.
By this I don’t mean that churches are doing a poor job at doing
Christian education. Many churches are
doing a fantastic job at providing training in the faith to their members. But there may be a bit of shallowness to the
education we provide, in the sense that we are not always struggling with tough
questions. There is no doubt that asking tough questions may lead us down paths
that we dare not want to travel, but such questioning may be necessary if we
are to make our faith our own.
This
deficiency in the kind of Christian education that promotes critical thinking
has led not only to biblical illiteracy, but more tragically, to ignorance when
it comes to biblical interpretation and theological thinking. Many Bible study groups do not seriously
consider the complexities inherent in reading ancient texts. Rather they focus only on what these texts
say to us as individuals, as if the books of the Bible were written with our
needs in mind. Furthermore, churches are
not providing tools to help folks think theologically. Instead, theology becomes a separate box of
propositions we always believe, without critically assessing their value for
our context.
Of
course, much of the fault lies with those who print such materials for church
groups. Some materials produced for the
purpose of Christian education are often so insipid and limitedly focused that
they only serve to heighten our emotional experiences without moving us into a
deeper and more thoughtful understanding of God and humanity. While finding
personal meaning from the Bible and from our faith is vitally important for
Christians, it is secondary to and flows from delving deeply into the text of
the Bible to discover something outside ourselves and our own narcissistic
needs. The popular idea that God wrote
the Bible for me needs to be stamped out.
Failure
to do so will only lead us to assume what the Bible says, or will cause us to
make the Bible say what we want it to say without giving careful thought and
attention to the text itself. Moreover,
such Bible readings will limit our understanding of our faith to simply a
personal spiritual experience.
