We need some new metaphors. I think it is quite clear the two bucket theory is untenable, and the owners manual for life metaphor reduces the bible to a behavior manual. Both the theory and metaphor generate so many problems that it is time we start searching for an alternative approach to the text.
This is always how paradigm shifts occur. When a paradigm is initially adopted it answers a variety of questions very well. Those adopting the paradigm realize it doesn’t answer all questions and those unanswerables go on a shelf for further reflection and research. No paradigm is perfect, no model can answer all the questions.
Eventually the current paradigm, always historically and contextually rooted, answers fewer and fewer questions well and the shelf with the unanswerables becomes overloaded and near collapse. This is when a new paradigm begins to emerge. We are undoubtedly living in such a new paradigm time.
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?
Len was a mentor and became a friend. I have traveled with him internationally and he has had me speak with him at architectural conferences. This video is vintage Len. And it raises the very issue as to why we need a trek tribe. While I talk a lot about us needing to have a model of spirituality that is post-Gutenberg and more Google, I do not share his optimism as to how the current container we call the church can ever navigate these new waters we find ourselves in. Mention church to the Google person…I DON’T think they light up like Len does. I think they tell you they can Google better content than they get in the church. We need a new transformational trek tribe that is committed to transformative practice and not dispensing information.
Can we grow to the place we are comfortable with our knowledge limits and open to what others can teach us? Are we open to the idea we do not have all the answers and much of what we hold is simply wrong, we just aren’t sure which parts?
I am not sure we are. Taking this position would seem to fly in the face of the very system the church has engaged where mythos has collapsed into logos. Where the power of the story and narrative (mythos) is overshadowed by the rules, rationality and certainty (logos). Another word use for this by experts like Karen Armstrong is “fundamentalist system;” rules, doctrines and lifestyle statements to insure as much conformity and uniformity as possible. This is the essence of the socialized mind we have been discussing.
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