Well I want to thank all of you that thought sending funny emails related to my “dread” about fishing would some how be an “encouragement.” I am feeling buoyed, buoyant and simply full of encouragement…
Second I want to remind all of you that are reading this that my only point in sharing this personal story about the beginning of my own awakening and enlightenment is to help you as the reader frame the reason I am so passionate about the the Transformational Trek Tribe. I feel like we are in the middle of a revolution. The church as we know it will not exist in 10 years. The dramatic exodus numerically from the institutional church, coupled with the bend over backwards efforts to tweak and adjust the current system, as well as the huge numbers of Christians admitting they are are looking for life in alternative settings for faith nourishment are only clear indicators just how dire our situation. My hope is in sharing my story and the motivation for the tribe more people will engage a 21st century faith development and transformational organism.
I awoke at Clint’s house and headed to the small airstrip where we jumped on an 8 seat plane to head to the famed Abaco, the Mecca of bone fishing. Of course all of that was lost on me at the time and I had no idea the big deal I had been invited into.
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Let’s say the author and editors of the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) were living in a largely mythic culture, with a mythic view of God as well as a mythic reality and world around them. We might legitimately ask the question, does a skin legion, per the book of Leviticus, actually render you unclean to attend “church?’ I mean literally, does that mean you can’t worship God and he no longer connects to you? Does contact with a corpse disqualify you from being able to worship? All the laws of Leviticus, for instance, come “from God” yes, but within a very particular sort of mythic culture, meaning they are coming from a very particular view of God that THEY had. Does inspiration make this view of God, and these laws “correct” because it is canonized in the inspired text?
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As you can imagine the 4 hours I had on that Nassau bound plane was something of a mini personal crisis for me. The realization I was experiencing in those moments had four hours to sink in. Needless to say that book I brought to read sat in the seat pocket of the seat in front of me as I pondered, brooded and came to grips with the fact I had larger ego issues than I was aware of and therefore up to that moment couldn’t even admit to.
As we started our descent into Nassau I felt like I would try and put this issue behind me for the next few days and just enjoy my time getting to know this new friend a bit better and spend some time in the sun just resting and relaxing. I am not sure what “decompression” meant to Clint but I was quite sure it had to be something like books, beach and beverages. For me that seemed perfect. I could get back to the who am I question when I got home.
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So here is the million dollar question when it comes to reading the biblical text as far as I can tell.
If Gebser is right that civilizations and cultures go through stages of development where their center of gravity shifts as they become increasingly sophisticated and complex then we have to view various biblical cultures through a very different lens than that which says “if the inspired bible says it that settles it, it is truth.” If you haven’t read one of the best summaries on Gebser I have found and you want to here it is, if not I will summarize here what is germane for our conversation.
In Gebser’s developmental framework cultures move from archaic to magic to mythic.
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I was looking forward to heading to Nassau. A few days in paradise to “decompress” after a 17.5 years seemed like a great idea to me.
With all the succession planning and meetings behind me, with good-byes said and my office packed, preaching my last message had what you would expect to be the bitter sweet taste of excitement about the next run of ministry ahead and the leaving behind of the teenager I had birthed nearly two decades ago.
The opportunities ahead of me were life sized. A full year of consulting on the calendar. Numerous conference gigs booked. A two book deal for my second and third books in the conversation process. Lots of things to look forward to, excitement, anticipation and challenge all on the horizon.
I got to the airport, parked, shuttled in, did the normal security line thing and got on my flight without a hitch. Sat done whipped out a brand new book which was going to be part of the reading for the week of “decompression.” Took a deep breath and was just feeling. Feeling full of gratitude for all the years I had gotten to do what I did. Grateful I was heading to a new friends paradisiacal world for what I thought would be a few days of celebration. Grateful that I was getting to transition to an even better sweet spot to use my gifts for the advancing kingdom leaders. Gratitude was the dominant feeling….and then gratitude gave way… and something happened that is hard to describe in words.
I had a slow dawning realization that I had preached my last message in the place I had founded; but that wasn’t the realization that brought a vertigo to my interior world. It was the panic I felt when I realized I had just heard for the last time the kudos, the “Ron that message was so powerful,” the “holy cow that just rocked my world Ron, where do you come up with this stuff,” “Ron that was so insightful, thanks for being a catalyst to change my life.” “Ron you rock,” “Ron you are the man.” Lots of “Ron” in those statements, compliments, and false-self building. And for the first time I realized my weekly diet of ego stroking had just come to an end. And also for the first time I realized just how deeply I had built a sense of who I thought I was based on all of those comments…I was embarrassed, surprised and quite honestly panicked.
Authors are always enmeshed in a culture, it cannot be otherwise, and I think we have observed that the idea of an author penning an inspired text does not mute, overcome, or diminish there cultural-ness. Abraham and child sacrifice, Moses and ordered genocide, Paul and slavery…
Jean Gebser, writing early in the 20th century, noted that civilizations go through stages of development that represent actual ways of seeing and viewing the world. His observation was that humanity’s stage of consciousness and development was reflected in their meaning making as a culture. A magic/tribal culture will make sense of their world, with sun and rain god’s and the corresponding dances to invoke those god’s activity differently than a postmodern pluralistic culture makes sense of it’s multicultural, rationalistic way of explaining a drought. Gebser’s contribution is in noting that over the course of thousands of years cultures have undergone slow but marked evolutionary development.
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I haven’t done a book list of important reads in the last 6 months and apparently some of you pay attention to that because I have gotten quite a number of info@ emails asking me to post some of my current reading. I have read 92 books 2010 let me give you a couple that are from the best of May list.
You are Not a Gadget (kindle version) by Jaron Lanier.
Lanier is the one of the early stars of Wired Magazine and known as the father of virtual reality technology. This book more than any other gives a chastened and sober look at our obsession with all things digital and the depersonalization that is subtly and quietly overtaking us. From his observations about Wikipedia to his irritation with stupid youtube video posts, he has a critical insight and way at getting the underbelly of things that is refreshing and at the same time disquieting…he has been prophetic on more than one occasion and it is why his book is getting so much attention. More than one person has said this might be one of the most important tech books of the decade.
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I want to announce the good news that God, the God in whom I believe, never calls anyone to playact or pretend or silence their concerns about what’s true. I want to break through mind-forged manacles that render us incapable of seeing truthfully for fear we might let in the wrong information. God is not made angry and insecure by an archaeological dig, a scientific discovery, an ancient manuscript, or a good film about homosexual cowboys. Nor would I imagine God to be made angry or insecure by people with honest doubts concerning his existence. God is not counting on us to keep ourselves stupid, closed off to the complexity of the world we’re in.
That is the sort of thing you will find in the next book you need to read this month, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. (kindle version) David Dark has become something of a public theologian/philosopher. He is insightful and thoughtful. He does a great job at helping us realize the inherited stories that are storying our existence at an unconscious level. I think this is one of the main issues in our own personal growth and transformation. In fact it is one of five issues we are addressing in the new tribe that is coming together in cyberspace from all over the world.
I hope you get both of these books and dig in. And I commit to doing a better job of giving you my best reads.
What are the implications for the biblical text’s author being enmeshed within a particular culture vastly different than that of the readers?
For instance in Genesis 22 God in the inspired text says to Abraham go offer your son as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah. We could bypass the question of culture and time period, as most readers of the biblical text do, including most conservative scholars, seminarians and professors. If we do that we are left asking a couple honest questions.
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In January of 2004 I was invited to Orcas Island to be the guest of Len Sweet at one of his “Advances.” If you haven’t had the opportunity to be at one of those…well…you need to. All I can say is it is a unique experience and the way group conversation and coming to “learn together” ought to be done. Len told me he was inviting a pastor and some of his staff and elders from a church in the Bahamas. He went on to tell me that for some time he felt that we needed to meet and he was looking forward to brokering that connection. I had come to know Len over the previous several years and had come to know that when he says stuff like this there is usually some weight behind it.
So the Orcas Island Advance is unfolding. I meet Clint and a number of his elder board and staff. A sharp, compassionate, wrestling-with-the-real-issues type of group. Great questions, great interaction, great connection. Who knows what it was that Len thought would happen. But there is no doubt something clearly did. It was two and a half days of spirited learning, deep conversation and memory making. On the last day of being together Clint said “Hey you are leaving your church in June after nearly 18 years, why don’t you come down to the Bahamas and spend some time decompressing this last run of ministry as a lead guy?” Decompressing….hmmmmmm….those were his words, they sounded good to me so I said “sure I will come hang out for a couple days.” And hang in the Bahamas…? I might have been born on Thursday but it wasn’t this Thursday. Sounded like one heck of an idea!
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What happens when we claim the text and the author have a very specific cultural location that 
makes some of what is in the text “no longer correct?” Ouch, I know. For some of us we have been taught and trained to hear those as fighting words and to remind the offender this is the inspired word of God they are talking about.
What if each culture being written to and each author writing is at a particular stage of development or stage of cultural progress and we HAVE to take THAT into consideration as we think about the bible? That was the suggestion at the end of our last post.
This is of course one of what might be several possible solutions. I think some in more traditional church contexts as well as seminaries and more technical hermeneutics texts have tried to make it sound that because the text is inspired there is a muting of the culture boundedness of the text. If we continue to maintain that position we have learned nothing from the most glaring example where we tried using that line of defense. (a “defense” we don’t need)
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