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.
Furthermore we have seen that the cultural stage of development in which the author is writing has a tremendous influence on how they see the world. An author writing in a magic or mythic culture will always write from a magic or mythic perspective. There is no way someone writing in 1500 bce for instance, could write from a perspective of a sun-at-the-center cosmology or quantum worldview. Furthermore the fundamentalist explanation that an inspired text somehow suspends or mutes these cultural specificities has been proven in countess texts to be incorrect.
So what options are there for replacing the two bucket theory (the academic issue) and the modern metaphor of “an owner’s manual for life” (the practical issue?) My guess is there are dozens of options that would empower us to get at the text in a way more faithful to it’s writing. In my latest book I suggest three different options. See the biblical text as an inspired classic, a musical jazz score, or a drama writer’s script.
In preparation for these next posts ask yourself this question. Where did you inherit your approach to the biblical text? From who or from where did you learn to ask the questions of the text you ask?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I find it interesting how we cling so tightly to these metaphors when they are not answering the questions we pose. Instead of finding a new explanation or heaven forbid questioning our old paradigms, we just ask different questions and mute the voice within ourselves that longs for more, for depth and richness and nuance and maybe even not having everything figured out. We wouldn’t settle for simply changing our questions to fit into our current model of viewing anything else in reality, so why do we with spirituality? There was a time when we felt that the Earth was the center of the universe, we have learned through studying and changing perspectives that the Sun is indeed the center of what we know as “the Universe.” Imagine what life would be life if we hadn’t ever questioned our assumptions. If people hadn’t been willing to be labeled as heretics for what we now know as the truth we would be living in a world where the Earth was the center of the universe, in a state of denial of the obvious truth right in front of us. We have evolved in science but not in spirituality. In that area we are underdeveloped and not simply stagnant, but dying and ooh so unattractive and not experiencing shalom. I’m super excited about ttTribe
. It’s gonna be good!
AMEN AMEN AMEN!!!!
The Amen above was for both Ron’s post and Toni’s comment, which were both very resonant within me….
Toni, what is your name on the Tribe, ws looking for you to make you friend but say no Toni? If you have not aligned up yet, when you do,look me up under SEEWARD? I am tracking with your ideas and you passion for moving forward…… Loved the comment about how we wouldn’t put up with a ‘broken’ or ‘unusable’ model of anywhere else in reality but then again, I guess a lot of the problem lies in the fact that, we have put Spirituality in the “If you touch this God will burn off your finger!” category. I am with both of you, let’s learn from the past, show respect for our tradition, but honor it by helping to push it into the future rather than being the musicians playing on the deck of the sinking Titanic. (although, Ron, I choose the Jazz score metaphor for handling the text in a new way, I am thinking the score is more Thelonious Monk than Krieg).
Life is improvisational in our post-everything world so why don’t we have a “living and breathing” text that helps guide our improv? (sorry I honestly just realized I was using your new book’s metaphor… It’s still early in the morning here in the Bahamas…)
So sorry to post three comments but there is no way to edit old comments…. One, I am still learning the auto-correct on this new bit of tech so sorry if I my arising sounds a bit disjointed and clunky… Second, given what we are discussing, there is a great book that you might have read call “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that really shows that even in science, new paradigms are slow to emerge and become mainstream. So let’s accept that we are doing early practical work for future paradigms and mostly we are best to focus on the questions that Ron called “practical” because the academic question a are rarely convincing to the people in the pews, or stacking chairs, or coffee house sofas….. (all examples of shifting deck chairs… To return to the Titanic metaphor which I think presses the urgency of the situation)… Third, there are some wonderful writers and thinkers who seem to be pushing into. New paradigm, writing in our time, I am thinking of Albert Nolan’s newest book “Jesus Today : A Spirituality of Freedom” it is fantastic as well and one that should be considered as a book of the month discussion in the Tribe, if only because he is. South African (Dries are you listening?)
Guys, let’s not paint ourselves into a corner by exchanging one incorrect paradigm for another incorrect paradigm. Sure, we have learnt that the earth is not the center of the universe, but neither is the sun! The sun is the centre of our Solar System. Our solar system is part of a billion other solar systems that make up our Galaxy – the Milky Way – and we are not even near the centre of that! Our galaxy, in turn, is part of billions of other galaxies that indeed do make up our Universe. The universe as we observe it, however, is expanding in all directions.
Einstein talks of learning to “accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something.”
What lies beyond the outer limits of our known universe? Is it possible that there may be billions of other Universes? Then there are scientists that seriously believe that there are “Parallel Universes”, and that there is a mirror, but opposite, image of everything that exists. Let us be honest and admit that we don’t have the mental capacity to really visualize and grasp these concepts, and even less to even begin to grasp the essence of our Creator God who has created and cares for all this!
Also, please don’t fall for the story that advances in science have made religion redundant. To further illustrate how little we know, scientist now believe that our known universe is made up of roughly 60% Dark Energy, 35% Dark Matter, and only 5% Observable Matter. They do not know what this Dark Matter is as we cannot observe it. It permeates the universe and everything in it, ourselves included, but is evidently not subject to the same laws of nature as Observable Matter. They only know Dark Matter exists because of the enormous forces of gravity it exerts on Observable Matter. Think on it. We are overwhelmed by the vastness of what we observe, but i is only about 5% of what really exists!
I think it is imperative to ponder these things to bring into perspective how insignificant we really are in the larger scheme of things. Before we are tempted to elevate ourselves in our meditations to some imagined exalted levels that in the end may be just figments of our imaginations. There is no question that our spirituality needs to be enhanced. I have already experienced the benefits of learning to attain inner stillness, and am looking forward to learning and experiencing more.
I am fully convinced that a paradigm shift in our time is imperative. It is important that ways be explored to enhance our influence on developments and ideas in this direction. Let us, however, help each other keep our facts straight.
May our journey be blessed and endowed with wisdom from Him who made us!
Carol,
Respectfully, Toni wasn’t saying that the suns was the center of the universe jut that it was assumes the new paradigm when the old “earth-centered” paradigm exploded or was rationally deconstructed through experience and the tools of mathematics.
I think you might have this idea of Vertical Development and the way it is meant to be held incorrect. You make a classic statement, first made by Freud, that in our meditations we might not be moving up into exalted states and it all may be figments of our imaginations. That is true all meditative experience may be interpreted as adolescent regression or you could go the opposite Jungian route and say all childish fantasy should be interpreted as archetypal and profound to our existence.
I think what you are missing is “the map is not the territory”, no one is presenting vertical development as a proven map of reality, it is just a map, to use your example from science (it could be the mirror of what we experience as reality) these ideas, maps, developmental models etc need to be held lightly. I think the problem you seem to be expressing when you say “let’s not exchange one incorrect paradigm for another” implies that someone is holding onto new ideas and models or maps of reality tightly. That’s not what I am hearing in Ron’s posts or Toni’s comments, or the Tribe’s interaction. What I feel is that in the midst of what most honest people within the church would admit, we are NOT transforming people to be more like Jesus, some people are willing to “try on” conceptual frameworks and practices (ancient and progressive) that could create a better map of reality than the one we have been using so far. But we all must hold these new maps loosely. They can be helpful and will be for a time but they will never prove to BE the reality that they are describing. You comment above about our experience of only 5% of what exists proves what I am saying. We must go forward with humility and never assume the new paradigm that we are a part of creating, that is sorely needed if the church is going to survive, and that involves experimenting with the implications of new ideas and practices, will be the new paradigm for eternity. History teaches us that paradigms always shift in epochs of time, so ours will one day become unhelpful for transformation just as the churches current one has. I have to say that as passionately as I will engage these conversations, I am still unconvinced, and I am a pastor, that the church will survive into the future in any form we can recognize (except maybe a mystical AA group).
I am not alone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQsauf0s4uQ&sns=em