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Not surprisingly, Brian McLaren’s latest book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope has generated a lot of blog-traffic. Some reviews are really thoughtful and well-written, but Helen’s thoughts at Conversation at the Edge have most inspired me to pick up the book and read it for myself.
“I think Brian has done something incredibly helpful for Christians who can‚Äôt help caring a lot about global crises. He‚Äôs given them permission to believe Jesus cares a lot about global crises too. Which makes everything line up way better in their lives. Now they can pursue what they are passionate about without feeling guilty that maybe Jesus doesn‚Äôt want them spending so much time on such things. Also they no longer have to suppress the deeper question: why doesn‚Äôt Jesus care about these things as much as I do?”
Many believers already have a passion and desire to engage the world’s problems and I’m always interested in reading any Christian writer who senses and understands that. Far too many Christian communicators (even well-meaning ones that I might otherwise agree with) assume their audience needs to be convinced of something they do not want to accept or are blind to; with all the implications of stupidity and ignorance that carries.
The most promising word in the above quote is permission – for me permission is a crucial concept in explaining my hopes for church and Christian mission. Permission isn’t just about having approval or authority to act, it’s also about having “…the capacity to act without interference or censure.” Permission implies not just sanction and endorsement, but empowerment and tolerance.
I often find myself wondering what an ecclesiology would like like if we started with permission as the establishing concept (instead of authority, or truth, or liberty) – maybe even playing with a notion like theological license (in the sense of poetic license, a practically beneficial permission to break rules). The idea of permission launches us into the practical collision between mission-mindedness and authoritative gatekeeping that, without putting too fine a point a point it, has been the central problematic in every church I’ve known (any Baptists out there care to disagree with me on that?).
I’ve added Everything Must Change to my shopping cart and look forward to reading it when time permits. Don’t expect a review till the new year though. But, in the meantime, if you are interested in discussing the idea of church and permission, feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment.
Technorati Tags: Brian McLaren, Theological Method, Ecclesiology
Musician, essayist, photographer, cinephile, former resident of Santiago, Sydney, London and Delhi.
Design by Graph Paper Press
Subscribe to entries
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All content © 2010 by Fernando Gros
Hmmm permission.
Maybe this is a sign I’ve been outside the traditional church for a very long time, but I’ve not needed permission to believe something for almost as long as I can remember (and that was thoughts about creation, but not relevant here).
I don’t know though. There’s something about the quote that makes me slightly unhappy – maybe it’s the suggestion that people couldn’t believe Jesus cared for certain things until they were *told* He cared by someone ‘respectable’. Maybe it’s overtones of the attitude that ‘it’s OK, you can feel whatever you like and it’s been justified somewhere in the bible’. Maybe it’s just McClaren – someone I feel I should agree with, yet find things in his words that seem fundamentally wrong – it just rubs me the wrong way and my instinct is to cry ‘bandwaggon’.
Not agreeing with people I feel I should is something I’m trying to work through now anyway.
As for permissions, I’m not sure why people don’t explore things in their own minds? Maybe it isn’t that they have a problem with Jesus and what He feels about things, so much as wanting a peer group, and to be told they’re OK? I guess that not conforming to a standard theological mold is normal for me these days, even if I’m orthodox and conservative.
Fernando, thanks for the mention. I’m glad my review was helpful.
Toni, I agree with you in a number of ways. First of all I agree that people shouldn’t *need* permission and they shouldn’t *need” someone “respectable to validate things. To me that’s one of the cruel ironies of what some versions of Christianity have become. It seems to me that Jesus came to give people permission to be themselves (as in, their best selves, not their worst) and think for themselves – what else can it mean that he came to ‘set the prisoners free’? Yet Christianity often ends up being a system that takes away the permission to be an individual. I’m not saying ‘always’ but ‘often’.
I also agree with you about the bandwagon issue. You sound like you’re not part of the Emergent/emerging crowd; anyway to me, Emergent/the emerging church falls short in that it often simply provides a new trendier bandwagon to jump on. Whereas I think Jesus was saying “Jump off all bandwagons and walk – because as long as you’re on a bandwagon you’re going where the bandwagon driver is going. If you want to be truly free to follow me you have to be on foot, because then you have control over each step you take.
I would like to see better awareness among the Emergent/emerging crowd that the problem isn’t that people are on the wrong bandwagon but that people are on bandwagons at all. Then maybe they’d show up on foot instead of with a replacement bandwagon of their own.
Having said that I do believe Brian’s book could lead to people doing more about global crises and if it does, that would be a wonderful thing and we’ll get to the bandwagon issue later. People are dying – if other people on bandwagons are driving out to help then I’m not going to be out there blocking the wagons or saying “No, jump off” because that would be getting in the way of people being helped and I would never want to do that.
Toni – I’ve encountered folks who don’t feel they have “permission” to question what they hear from the pulpit for example. Moreover, I’ve frequently encountered situations where people “feel” that God might want them to do something about an issue, say third-world poverty, but struggle with getting permission to enmesh that with their church existence. I probably didn’t make my point all that well, but the issue is to some extent about permission to believe, but far moreso about permission to do and be.
Helen – thanks for stopping by and I agree with you on “needing” permission. You are right about Jesus’ permission-giving. My interest in the word is about reserving authority in the sense of parental permission (there’s far too much of that around and we need to unmask it). Rather, I’m interested in the sense of permission that works in healthy adult relationships. For example, I don’t *need* my wife’s permission to play golf, but in a sense my passion for the game is possible because she permits it and in permitting it doesn’t just tolerate it in a minimal sense but participates in it and encourages it. There’s a similar sense in which permission is an important part of healthy working relationships as well.
Thanks for your response Fernando. Yes I agree that that type of permission is an important part of healthy adult relationships, both professional and social.
In a way maybe it’s related to trust. Where there’s trust we trust the other person will give us freedom rather take advantage of the relationship and be unnecessarily controlling.
I prefer a picture in which Jesus encourages people passionate about the environment to work to conserve it, rather than one in which Jesus commands people to do this and that and they must obey.
One of the things that has fascinated me lately is – why do Christians so often opt for the parent-child analogy when thinking about their relationship with God rather than adult-adult? I think the parent-child is risky because it can often give the wrong answers about, say, how much should people think for themselves rather than rely on leaders to ‘tell them the answers’.
When Jesus said ‘follow me’ I don’t think he meant ‘mindlessly’ but rather, follow me in being a mindful leader who is intentional about the steps he/she takes and aware of the likely consequences.
Thanks F, i like the idea of permission as an exercise of love, in being for the other, in recognisising our uniqueness and respecting that uniqueness. I guess i feel more concerned about assuming persmission for myself, it feels kinda selfish, altho i desire it for others. What do you think about self permission vs enabling permission?
Hey Helen, I followed you here… hehe… I love the idea that God trusts us, that is great… as for the parent-child analogy, I must confess, I like it so much because of the end results. A parent-child relationship has the endgoal of an adult-adult relationship (“I no longer call you servants…”)
Fascinating swarm of issues coming out here!
Steve, thanks for stopping by and commenting. I agree that we should look at the parent-child relationship as important, transition and focussed on an adult-adult goal. The Biblical imagery of faith has a lot to draw us to the initial, but temporary stage of childhood in the faith and maturation towards greater adulthood and freedom.
Helen, this speaks in part to your question about the appeal of the parent-child metaphor. But, of course, it begs the question of why so many church contexts perpetuate this stage. In part it happens because being spoon-fed can be comforting since it is less demanding of us, intellectually, morally and socially. Moreover, there is always the seductive temptation of power in various forms.
But, the really big issue is trust. Sadly, clergy don’t always trust their congregations and congregations don’t always trust the clergy. It’s palpable how clearly this dynamic is broken in some contexts, especially when folks can’t imagine a future that doesn’t have a rigid clergy/laity divide.
I suspect that trust also comes into your question about self-permission Paul. I’d love for you to unpack the idea of self-permission a little more, since it is a little ambiguous to me. However, if I could wax Baptist for a moment, the notions of soul competence and liberty of conscience do look a lot like self-permission and they were supposed to work within a context of community and trust.
Perhaps if our community is one of adult-adult relationships, where the background assumption is thinking “well” of others and their passion to live the mission as best they can, then the question of self-permission becomes more viable? If we have a context of suspicion and mistrust, where the background assumption is that everyone is just “in it for themselves,” then won’t self-permission tend to look like selfishness and deviance?
“You sound like you‚Äôre not part of the Emergent/emerging crowd; anyway to me, Emergent/the emerging church falls short in that it often simply provides a new trendier bandwagon to jump on.”
Interesting that my emergentness might make a difference. However I agree that EC is often a bandwaggon, and its adoption *feels* to me very much like singing new worship songs in traditional church services did 25 or 30 years ago. To go off on a tangent a little, a lot of the guys I heard talking about EC a couple of years back were all in completely ordinary traditional churches and living a dual life. EC was an add-on rather than a radical world view.
But I’ve observed in some traditional lines that although some take their faith very seriously, many also see it as an add-on to reality, and rather than press into deeper understanding and faith, prefer to hold back with minimal understanding and rely on the faith and knowledge of others. This is likely why we see a continuation of the parent/child relationship instead of people establishing their own theology, and therefore dealing with theology in a peer to peer way. The peer to peer thing IS important in this context because reviewing ones theology in the light of wider understanding *should* provide some safety against wandering into the extremes. I am sure that many extreme liberal and conservative theologies would crumble if they were truly open to evaluation against wider orthodoxy instead of starting from a point of ‘this is where the permission to believe lies’.
Arrogant? Yes, i probably am.
Permission to believe things shouldn’t need approval, but often it IS hard to continue in faith if we don’t have a peer group and encouragement.
Fern – I’ve noticed from online discussions that, possibly because of the manner in which the church in certain countries has developed, there is much less trust than one might hope.
I’m not sure I’m happy with this post, but my coffee break is over.
Fernando, you said “Helen, this speaks in part to your question about the appeal of the parent-child metaphor. But, of course, it begs the question of why so many church contexts perpetuate this stage. In part it happens because being spoon-fed can be comforting since it is less demanding of us, intellectually, morally and socially. Moreover, there is always the seductive temptation of power in various forms.”
Exactly. Steve S, you talk of the parent-child analogy as if it leads to adult-adult but in my experience it often doesn’t; people stay at parent-child.
Fernando, the seductive temptation of power is is actually one of the major themes of Brian’s book: that Christians have been seduced way too much by power and still continue to be to this day. Brian says Christians have wrongly interpreted the gospel as another ‘domination’ story (we are God’s chosen) even though that’s the very story Jesus came to subvert.
Perhaps if our community is one of adult-adult relationships, where the background assumption is thinking “well” of others and their passion to live the mission as best they can, then the question of self-permission becomes more viable? If we have a context of suspicion and mistrust, where the background assumption is that everyone is just “in it for themselves,” then won’t self-permission tend to look like selfishness and deviance?
I often see this misunderstanding between Christians and atheists (or other people who aren’t Christians). The other people reject the parent-child paradigm because they’re adults. But they are perceived as being arrogant/selfish/rebellious for doing so. In fact this is one of a number of ways in which Christians misunderstand why other people reject their message. Another one is that they recognize it’s being told as a dominant story and intuitively they know that domination is wrong. (Now I’ve read Brian’s book I can put this in new words)
Hi Toni, just to clarify – your Emergentness doesn’t make a difference to me. I was just noting that you didn’t seem to be emergent, which probably was unnecessary of me.
Btw – this is to anyone interested in all things Brian McLaren – I have more Brian McLaren stuff up on my blog today because I heard him lecture last night. I posted my lecture notes which are fairly detailed and will give you an idea what the book is all about.
Hi F, thanks for the opportunity to comment more on self permission – I feel that i often give myself permission to do most things in my life, given that it is MY life and actually voluntarily restricting what i do is something that i don’t like to do. So for example you mentioned your golf game and how your wife giving you permission to play means you enjoy it – you could say I want to play golf, i give myself permission to play golf and therefore i will play golf but you are prepared to suspend your golf in order to seek the permission of another and thus get a lot more enjoyment in the long run (unless you are the sort of person who likes rowing!).
I feel the same way that restricting my permissions can actually be about enabling/giving permission to others – that voluntary exchange of my right to do/be is restricted in order to allow others to fill that space/time/activity that I would otherwise have flowed into.
If that makes more sense?