I’ve been thinking a lot about the question “what is the gospel” as is evidenced by a few of my recent posts.
I feel like I’ve given up on the epistemological (confess Jesus as your savior) leg. Not because it’s not true, but because it is the leg we’ve seen abused our whole lives. Like televangelists or even evangelists who just get you to confess that you believed a certain story line was true 2000 years ago. I like how my friend Lanny puts it. It’s about insurance and it is difficult to have a relationship with insurance.
The power and the notion of the epistemological leg has been redeemed for me recently. We hired a new ranger at work who has been a Christian for three years. He uses some of the language I despise, but something incredible happens when he tells me his conversion story. I’m deeply moved. I think I’m moved because though he uses some of the language I don’t like, I get that for him the language means something genuine deep within him. His words aren't coated with the baggage of the church. He describes or better yet has trouble describing the weeks or so before he decided to pray the prayer.
I ask the question about knowledge. “Was it really that you just didn’t understand the story of Jesus and someone told it to you and then a light bulb went off and you believed?” Knowledge is the problem, but it’s not propositional knowledge…it’s belief knowledge and the way that belief knowledge changes you. Empowers you from the inside. Stirs your soul.
He throws out these powerful lines like, “well I guess I started to read the Bible and I just couldn’t put it down…I don’t know why I couldn’t…I just couldn’t.” And I ask him, when you actually decided to pray the prayer did something happen? He hesitates, “yeah, this peace came over me.” So then my smart ass, and yet curious ass asks him that if he thinks he would have been saved had he died five seconds before he prayed the prayer and he gives a response that reminds me of what the faith used to be about before I spent years bogged down in seminary and theological questions, “I guess only God knows that.”
I like his story. I like it because he wrestled with this “decision” to become a Christian for weeks before he did it. I like because as awkward as it was, he and his believing mother sat down and prayed about how he was feeling when he started to think about becoming a Christian. I like his story because when I asked him about who he was before he was a Christian and he said, “well I guess I always believed in God, I just didn’t want to acknowledge Him because then I would have to admit there was a problem with me.”
I take that kind of statement and Romans seems alive for me again. I think my problem and it is problem I’m grateful for is that I grew up in Christian home knowing the power of believing knowledge my whole life. But perhaps I forgot or even don’t really know what it was like to struggle to believe and this is why my friends words are so enchanting.
Well I’m not sure this helped, but at least it’s out of my head. I can sleep now.
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8 comments:
It helped me.
-Tom
These are great thoughts, Josh.
Its amazing what happens when the theoretical meets the actual. I'm reading Practicing Theology, edited by Volf and Dorothy Bass and its smoking my grits (how's that for a good, country-fried expression?).
What you describe I've experienced several times in my local church context. It blows me away every time, reminding me that God's still in the reconciling business, even if I get up-tight about the words people use to describe it.
Grace for today, Josh,
Emily
Josh,
This is more than just a theological question, but genuinely a practical one; wherein does the Holy Spirit factor in your epistemological leg? I mean, without swallowing wholesale Calvin's internal instigation concept, doesn't it seem that faith, epistemologically speaking, demands an awakening from the Holy Spirit? This peace, that your friend described, what is it? Certainly not just some psychological comfort, but a genuine peace that passes understanding, yes? Where does that come from? The Holy Spirit?
I think giving up on the epistemological leg would be ill-advised, but perhaps filling it out with a robust pneumatology might make it more attractive, more gospelish, no? That makes it good news to me because God is pursuing me, wooing me, compelling me to believe, to genuinely say, "Yes," to his gracious Yes to me. That is the Holy Spirit bearing witness to Jesus Christ for me, and that opens this whole new world of reconciliation, compassion, justice and grace, in a word Jesus Christ (your ontological leg, if you will). Again, I guess I come back to the idea that the gospel is both of these legs, working in tandem, because the gospel just is God's new reality (the kindgom) breaking into our world in Jesus Christ.
Erik,
I would answer that the work of the Holy Spirit is a presupposition in the process of regeneration. Why does anyone participate in God's kingdom? Because the HS empowers them to. My caveat is that, in the spirit of Wesley, grace is not irresistible. Sometimes tragically people say no after having been confronted by grace.
carney
Josh,
I've enjoyed stopping by your blog recently. Very engaging and challenging. Thanks for your thoughts. I've really struggled in my first few months in the pastorate visiting with younger kids about "praying the prayer" Your words on "belief knowledge" or however you put it helped sort things out in my head and heart. Good word.
Josh,
I'd agree with what you say, and only add that tragically we all say No, from time to time, when confronted with grace, but the irresistability of it is God's continuing work of God's Spirit to bring us again and again into an encounter with Jesus Christ. Of course, that's a different kind of irresistability than Calvin talked about, but I think it captures the dynamism of God's personal grace quite well. It is my hope that this continual pursuit of God in God's grace eventually might even sway us all.
I like how you put it erik.
thanks matt
carney
Uh, it's pretty much impossible to have a relationship with insurance.
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