Vegas Cohort

Vegas Cohort (Emergent)

1. Evolution of Christianity
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   With the discovery of a 47 million year old transitional ancestor, Darwin has just been fully confirmed, and as a documentary will soon claim, this changes everything.
   
   “'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?...Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.'” These are the ominous words of Frederick Nietzsche's madman, who stumbled into a circle of unbelievers and pierced them with his eyes. Such words have a significant new meaning with the discovery of the “missing link” and the subsequent confirmation of Darwinian evolution, something creationist/author Lee Strobel has said “puts God out of a job”1.
   
   Nicknamed “Ida”, a once fabled transitional ancestor between mammals and primates has been found and will soon be displayed for the world to see in an A&E documentary called “The Link”, which aires this memorial day. Over 47 million years old, Ida has already made international headlines as the “8th wonder of the world”2, and is considered to be the final blow to the creationist campaign against Darwin's theory of evolution.
   
   But have we killed God? Has our search for truth yielded freedom from even the gravity of God's love? Have we finally, as Dawkins would hope, evolved into atheists? What room is there for a Christian in the wake of such a stark and vibrant confirmation of the dreaded theory of evolution? Is God truly dead?
   
   Dr. Karl Giberson doesn't think so. In his book Saving Darwin he writes, “I think evolution is true, its an expression of God's creativity...[but] in deep and important ways we have not dispelled the mystery of our existence at all—we have simply established it with greater clarity.” For Giberson and a growing number of Christians, evolution is our generation's helio-centric universe. Darwin is Galileo, and sooner or later we are all going to have to adapt our theologies to the tidal wave of information that comes as a result of the progress of science. It isn't that God is being ousted by science, its that science is reshaping the way we see God.
   
   Enter the evolution of Christianity. It isn't that God has died, but rather our understanding of Him. As the church in the 17h century struggled to reconsider their faith in the wake of empirical science and its placement of Earth in orbit around the Sun, so also the contemporary form of Christianity must adjust to the now obvious truth of evolution. It doesn't displace God, it merely causes us to wonder all the more at His mystery.
   
   What has died is our hubris. Our babelic tower of over-confidence topples just as we were sure it had reached the heavens. We are forced to remember how small our knowledge is, and how little we actually know. For many this is a hard truth. God is best imagined as a conspicuous, domineering, whiz-bang creator; not as a subtle and indirect guide. Though truth be told we know him better as the latter, somewhere along the way we came to prefer the idea of the former. But this concept has not always been in vogue.
   
   Blaise Pascal, the 17th century scientist and mathematician, believed that Christianity uniquely respected the obscurity of God. "If this religion” wrote Pascal in Pensees, “boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus (God Hidden).” It was the opinion of this intellectual giant that Christians can be trusted precisely because they don't try to rigorously explain what God is, or how he does things. Christians being comfortable with mystery makes them better representatives of the mystery that is God.
   
   Of course, with the tectonic shift of accepting evolution, our systematic theologies are left dismantled. We must again ponder the mysteries of the cross, the atonement, the creation, and now even the fall. But this reconstruction is nothing new. “Theology can usefully be thought of as a science”, Says Dr. Nancey Murphy in Reconciling Theology and Science, “We can think of doctrines as being comparable to theories in the sciences, rationally justified by their ongoing ability to explain the data....However the traffic between theology and science goes both ways, we sometimes have to correct our theology as science advances.” Correcting our theology is something Murphy claims Christians do every day in the wake of their experiences. If a grandmother dies despite prayer and petition, a Christian learns how to interpret the verse “ask anything and it shall be given to you”. This hypothetico-deductive side of Theology is the mechanism we use to conclude doctrines, and at varying times in history it has been used to determine all sorts of spiritual truths.
   
   When the Pope's crusades failed miserably Christianity reconsidered exactly how much say the Pope had as the head of the church, which changed our theology of authority. When Martin Luther decried grace by works it changed our entire theology of salvation. When John Wycliffe ended priest corruption of scripture by printing the Bible in common english our theology of the bible was never the same. Our theology of worship has changed from austere chants to decadent guitar solos; our theology of marriage has changed to consider both wedded clergy as well as pious homosexuals; our theology of purpose has changed from conquering the world under Christendom to engaging the world's pain and fear with the teachings of the Kingdom of God. Not 200 years ago our theology of humanity changed as we realized slave ownership was evil. In the last 10 years we have seen our theology of environment change as we consider industry's poisonous effects on the world around us. It is the way of Christianity's narrow path to twist and turn into directions we could never have imagined, our job is merely to follow that path, not determine where it will go next.
   
   God is not dead, but some of the ideas we have used to describe Him are. For us, creationism now goes the way of the geocentric universe, we must accept evolution as a revelation from nature and adjust ourselves accordingly. But even with Darwin navigating the old church van, God is still in the driver's seat. As G. K. Chesterton once said, “Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'in the beginning God created heaven and earth' even if you only mean 'in the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could himself create one.”
   
   Christian theology is not meant to declare God's truths, it is meant to discover them. In this sense it is the truest nature of Christianity to evolve.
   

   
2. Ponzi Prosperity Gospel
   

   Today we shriek as we hear of financial scams, corporate greed, and virtually anything money related that isn’t entirely on the up-n-up. While religion has generally been a help in these economically difficult times, there is one segment of Christianity that is scamming as many as they can. Those who have ears (and debt) let them hear.

   The Prosperity Gospel, which is manifested in the “Word of Faith” movement (a louder voice in Pentecostalism), has been writing checks with its lips that’s its theology can’t cash. Last year’s Pew Foundation mega poll, which surveyed nearly 35,000 people (one of the largest religion polls ever accomplished), revealed a few interesting facts about Christians in the Pentecostal tradition¹:

   • Pentecostals have the lowest incomes of any other Christian denomination.

   • Pentecostals have the lowest education of any other Christian denomination.

   The results show that Pentecostals have the most high school dropouts, the fewest college grads, and also the fewest post graduates. But the most interesting thing is that they earn the least annual income of ANY other Christian tradition polled. This is shocking, considering that a main feature in popular Pentecostalism is the Prosperity Gospel, where church members are promised that God will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams if they tithe generously and believe that they will receive the money.

   The trouble Ive seen...

   These Pew findings fly in the face of the main tenets of the Prosperity Gospel. Not only do Pentecostals fail to out-earn the regular “non-spirit filled” Christian, they make less. For me, to read such information is heartbreaking. I am a teacher in a private school that’s part of a Word of Faith church. The church is doing very well for itself, as most Pentecostal churches are, but the people are suffering.

   Frequently I speak with coworkers and church members who are slowly slipping into despair. I watch helplessly as their hopes dim, and their pennies fade. When I attend a service at this church I hear the Pastors declare that God will make everybody rich, if first they will throw what little they have into the offering plate. Loud confident voices echo off the palatial walls of the sanctuary, while weary, struggling believers bristle with the hope of God’s "promises". My once weeping friends gleefully dance down the plush expensive carpet to the altar and pull out their dollar bills (not their food stamps and government checks, though they have those also) and cheerfully give. The Pastor nods approvingly as his hands are folded in prayer (a shiny Rolex on his wrist) and his eyes tear up.

   Say what you want about the corruption of the pulpit, or the decadence of the minister- that’s not my issue. My point is that while the world howls at the scam artists who make big promises then don’t deliver, Christianity has its very own Ponzi scheme that’s alive and well. At least when Bernie Madoff promised big returns he initially delivered, the prosperity gospel doesn’t even do that much. When Joel Osteen, Ken Copeland, Paula White, or Benny Hinn take your money, you’ll never see it again (unless you happen to glimpse one of their private jets leaving a runway for Bermuda)²

   Creating “The Least of these”

   When a major tenet of your theology is that people who invest in your church will experience wealth, but then the facts show that your congregants are among the poorest and most disparate in the country, you have just been falsified. Further, when the national economy is in shambles, it should be criminal to continue to avoid taxes as a charity, yet earn immense amounts of capital on the promise of a better future. When we see such things in the business world, we rightfully call it a scam and send those people up the river. Why are we so silent while this happens in every neighborhood in America?

   Another concern that the Pew Poll raises is the type of person that is being taken advantage of in these churches. The Pentecostal tradition holds more uneducated people than any other denomination, making them a prime target for would be millionaire pastors. In many ways I am as green with jealousy as these prosperity preachers are with greed, in that the scammed believers have more faith in their little finger than I will probably ever know in my lifetime. They would give the shirt off their back if they believed God wanted them to, and many of them have. These people, while simple, are in essence the purest of Christian hearts, trusting like children the intentions of their Shepherd, and being led as lambs to the slaughter.

   If not for the absurdity of the scheme, or the arrogance of the theology, then for these poor, benevolent, mistreated souls our hearts must break. That these people, who would be the very first to give of themselves to please God have been allowed to flush so much money into the off-shore bank accounts of so few is a travesty. While their pastors make a spectacle of themselves these poor faithful who are the least able to earn a decent wage in our society run to the altar with everything they have as an act of worship. If even a tenth of what they have given had been redirected to the charities that truly do serve God, our country and our world would be substantially better.

   Bankrupt Prosperity

   Imagine that there was a brand of theology in which people were taught that God has promised to give followers an additional arm, say right from the center of their chest. It taught that scripture had everywhere indicated that this was the case³, and that by believing this “fuller” version of the gospel, you were opening up the as-of-yet closed off area of blessings that Christians have forgotten about (ie growing another appendage to better do God's work). After about 50 years the movement has spread worldwide and followers number in the millions, and you look to see how many of these folks have in fact grown that “arm of the Lord”. Upon inspection you find that the vast majority of them have lost an arm, leaving them worse off and less able to even serve God than even two-armed folk do. The irony would be overwhelming, that while it was said that God would give these people more for realizing this secret truth, somehow they have ended up with less than they perhaps even began with.

   Despite the fact of statistics, and the continued empirical evidence of devastated human lives (Pentecostals also have the most divorces⁴), few if any Christians have plainly spoken against the Prosperity Gospel, or raised awareness that measures any merit. While high level corruption, and financial disrespect are the soup de jour of each week's media cycle, this prominent and aberrant theology has been allowed to wreak havoc on a mass of people who are grasping at economic straws.

   Prosperity Gospel theology is bankrupt. The debate raged for years about how much sense coveting money made in the context of biblical principals, but now the fruit has been born and the numbers don't lie: those who attend prosperity gospel churches are in fact worse off for it.

   1http://religions.pewforum.org/reports/detailed_tables

   2All except Osteen have been suspected by the Senate of Tax Fraud due to their ostentatious lifestyles on the backs of non-profit “charities”

   3Maybe John12:28 would be their anthem (This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: "Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" )

   4Of all major denominations Pentecostals had the highest amount of divorced members (16%). While the “Reformed” group was higher (18%) it was only a tenth the size of most every other denomination.

   
3. Apocalypse
   
   I find it interesting that every sensibility of man, even from his most primitive reflections, has pointed to the sudden and terrible end of the universe.
   
   Before men knew what the lights in the night sky were, before they could comprehend the sun or our place in its orbit, mankind seemed to universally know that at some point these things would pass away.
   
   Despite the absolute reality of natures consistency, seasons never failing to come and go on schedule, dawn endlessly rising in the morning and fading into dusk in the evening, animals and trees bearing new life in the spring and withering in the winter; despite all this near nauseous repetition and pattern, primitive man knew that it would end.
   
   It is incredible to me that ancient literature records even more ancient oral traditions in which people commonly believe that the universe (whatever their understanding of it at the time) would in one fell swoop close curtain and be dim forever more. Science had at one point believed the universe was static, endlessly looping from rising states to falling states, but then learned of the 2nd theory of thermodynamics, which states with solemn infinity that all energy in the universe is slowly being extinguished.
   
   Upon realizing this our future seems very sober. No matter how many galaxies we one day explore and conquer, no matter how wide the universe actually is, or whether our species numbers in the trillions as it colonizes and evolves into new and exciting complexities; one day all of sentient life will hold its breath as the cold dark wave of oblivion comes to rest upon it. Death; still, frozen, vapid and unintelligent death will be the final word no matter how far our science or our biology takes us. For mechanics and medicine are governed by a deeper magic: physics.
   
   One day Paley's watch will tick its last tock, and this is as unavoidable and irreversible as the sun setting in the west. Try as I might, I cannot now or ever pluck the star from the pink and purple sky and place it back in the east. Darkness, desolation...death, will be the last word for all known reality, and somehow, remarkably, humanity has known this all along. Discovering that the universe is winding down wasn't shocking, it was the validation of a knowledge we have stragely had all along.
   
   Ironically though, for just as long as mankind has intrinsically known that time itself will come to an end, it has also believed in a transcendent being who has the power to resurrect. A Governor of life and death, an unquenchable source of light and power. Perhaps when the universe has dimmed to only a faint glow, when the light is all but extinguished, finally we will be able to clearly see what was there all along, diminished by the pollution of so much other energy closer to our observation. Perhaps we will see the far off but brilliant light of a new dawn, a new universe, the ever present hope of a future, and life everlasting. Perhaps we will then know, as we have always suspected, that while death will be the final word in our reality, there is another word that comes after that, a word that must be spoken by the being that created us whom we have always suspected was there. He will speak again as He did in the beginning, and we will all come into new life; "Let there be light".
   
4. Getting De-Baptized
   
   I read about this story and it added to my ongoing concern for the divide between secularists and theists. I am currently reading the book "Saving Darwin" to try to understand the middle ground between the volatile atheists like Richard Dawkins, and the staunch creationists that line the fundamentalist ranks.
   
   Part of our calling is to reconcile with people, I think we need to consider the implications of that, and at least be willing to find a way to reach into these lives that have become so separated from us.
   
   
5. For Nana
   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Today my grandmother called me and shared terrific news. She has been given the honor and privilege of sharing the message Easter Sunday at her Unitarian Church in Arkansas. She called because she had a very unique question to ask me, a question that captured my thoughts for the rest of the day and left me tossed in endless directions. Her question was: If Jesus had been here in the 20th Century, how would he have interacted with American Society? How would he react to things like the Vietnam war, or to communism, or to the plight of the urban sprawl? Imagine that Jesus had been there, what would that be like?
   
   When I got home I made myself a cup of tea and sat in my recliner in the living room. Sunlight slipped through blinds, rays visible from the glass of the window all the way to the curled up kitty cats on the floor. I leaned back in my chair and listened to some music playing on my stereo, I tried to imagine Jesus in the 20th Century.
   
   My first thought was John Lennon sitting behind a white piano, a well lit room and Yoko Ono sitting at his side. John was singing his song "Imagine", and I couldn't help but wonder if Jesus wouldn't have held a lighter in the air at a Lennon concert. "Imagine there is no country" says the former Beatle, "and no religion too" I drifted in the waves of thought, the image of Jesus with a fire in his palm, swaying back and forth to the music.
   
   The 20th century was characterized by war, by oppression, and by evil. In the 20th century we saw two world wars, and countless smaller ones. We saw the rise of super-powers, and the first abuses of the popular media. We saw the creation of the ultimate death machines, and the radiation poisoned, half melted faces of their victims. In the 20th century we saw the results of colonialism, the prestige and power of sovereign nations dominating the weaker, the exploitation of everybody from the factory worker, to the dark skinned farmer suffering under Jim Crow. Yes, the 20th century saw the evil in Hitler's eyes, the massacre of 10 million people, the haphazard destruction of the environment, and the disaster of saber rattling hawks with power. For those that lived through the last century, one would think they would recall a literal hell on Earth. However most will tell you that days were not always so dark, that even in the thick of despair, somehow hoped shined through, and things got better. When I consider that I think I realize why that is, and also the answer to the question my Nana asked me; Jesus was there.
   
   Jesus was there with the Jews starving in a prison camp, giving them strength to last until rescuers arrived. Jesus was there when the American economy collapsed, and honest men and women found themselves penny-less and without a bed to sleep in, but somehow managed to forge the bread line in to a better future. Jesus was there when dust bowls ate the crops and lungs of weary eyed farmers, who summoned the courage to leave behind their history and their lives in the name of survival. Jesus was there when a burst of light flashed over Hiroshima, Jesus wept over Nagasaki. Jesus was there with Neil Armstrong as he stepped toward the bleach white surface of the moon, floating in the infinite darkness of space. Jesus was there when a young black preacher rallied millions of men and women of color to demand equal rights, when those people chose non-violence over riots and terrorism.
   
   When Titanic was found, when King Tut's Tomb was found, Jesus was there. When soldiers from Vietnam were buried in Arlington Cemetery, Jesus was there. And during 14 Presidential funerals, Jesus was there. The reason I know that, the reason I know that Jesus was there during the good times and the bad, the reason I know he is that flicker of hope that inspired the greatest among us to rise up and illuminate the darkness is because Jesus' grave, unlike the rest I have mentioned....is empty.
   
   The vacancy is notorious, outrageous, and the source of the greatest debate in human history. This conspicuous absence is also the reason we celebrate Easter, it is the day we reflect on Jesus' rising from the dead, and consider whether his presence has been observable since.
   
   When my Nana asked me if I could imagine a 20th Century with Jesus in it, my first thoughts were a Jesus who protests wars, and marches in the streets with John Lennon. But soon I realized that despite the brokenness, conflict, and savagery that colored the last 100 years, there was an ever present light that guided humanity to a new dawn. A star that lead us over the turbulent seas of misfortune and agony, into the terra nova of God's Kingdom. While humanity continues to grapple with its iniquity, I still am compelled to notice that star shining above us, that great light by which all things are seen, hovering steadily, loyally, by our side helping us to see. Though this light may set, it rises again and brings with it a new day, a new age, and the bright hope of a future. Christ, is this light for me. He has set and yet risen again. When we see our world in horror, when we sense the vacancy again of the Son of God, when hopelessness is its most potent, this is when our Sun rises again, giving us new hope and new life. This is the essence of resurrection.
   
   I see Jesus in our common history, I see our need for him in terrible times, I see our inspiration through him in times of human victory. I believe that it is by seeing his presence in so many stories, that I can embrace the romance of this thing called resurrection, that I can celebrate a day like Easter. On Easter we remember the King who came back for us, who still comes back for us, who's love will not cease, until it is on Earth as it is in Heaven.
   
   Resurrection is the promise of hope, and the reality of Jesus. Seeing his fingerprints in our time, helps me to remember that he does indeed live on, that the grave could not hold him, that victory will yet be his, and that because he has risen to new life, I also may find new life through him. For that is the promise of the light rising in the east, with each new day we hear it say to us, "Fear not" and then with hope and light, “Because I live, you also live” (John 14:19) .