Monsignor Charles Pope, “Keep it simple with the kerygma” at Aleteia = http://aleteia.org/2015/09/03/keep-it-simple-with-the-kerygma/. What a delightful article that (1) suggests we try not to unload the entirety of Christian doctrine on every seeker or even new believer and (2) articulates simply and clearly what is the basic message of the Christian faith. Remember that I am on a Quest for the Truth of the Gospel! Which is to say… looking for clear and simple statements of the heart of the Christian faith and mission.
The basic curricula of the kerygma emphasizes that Jesus is the chosen Messiah of God, the one who was promised. And though he was crucified, He rose gloriously from the dead, appearing to his disciples, and having been exulted at the right hand of the Father through his ascension, now summons all to him, through the ministry of the Church. This proclamation (kerygma) requires a response from us, that we should repent of our sins accept baptism and live in the new life which Christ is offering. This alone will prepare us for the coming judgment that is to come upon all humanity. There is an urgent need to conform ourselves to Christ and be prepared by him for the coming judgment….
That we are lost in our sins, that those deep drives are destroying us, and that God has sent the Savior, Jesus Christ, who died to set us free and offer us whole new life. It is he who calls to you now, who is drawing you to himself, that he might save you and give to you a whole new life. He died to give you this life, and having been raised from the dead, he ascended to the Father, where he is drawing you to himself even now, calling you by name, and offering you deliverance from every sinful and destructive drive, establishing you in a new, more glorious, and hopeful life. Come to him now, the repent of your sins, and let him begin the good work in you.
This is the basic Kerygma. It is the starting point, the initial proclamation, the summons, the invitation: the conviction of sins, but the announcement of loving hope.
Jake Meador, “Class and the Benedict Option” at Mere Orthodoxy = http://mereorthodoxy.com/class-and-the-benedict-option/#more-126994. A good piece that asks some hard questions that have crossed my mind. I get a little frustrated sometimes with the… obliviousness… of some upper-middle and upper-class Christians. Private schools… SUVs… mission trips to Africa… homeschooling… I think, That’s all well and fine for you but some of us just do not have that kind of money. Meador recognizes that many aspects of the coming(?) Benedict Option require… money. And that most middle- and lower-class Christian families either cannot afford or cannot afford them easily. My only mild critique of the article is Meador clearly assumes that sending your children to public schools is not part of the Benedict Option. Maybe he is right. But it still makes the focus of his article a bit narrow.
So the primary reason for withdrawal must not be defensive, but must come from a conviction that the Gospel empowers God’s people to do a superior job of educating children by furnishing them with the tools and resources to create a superior curriculum more in accord with the world as God has made it. To put it another way, the first reason to pull our kids out of the government schools is that we’ll do a better job of educating them then they will. And in a happy twist, that superior education will actually make our childrenbetter citizens. Concerns with protecting our kids from the culture of the schools, though a completely valid reason to withdraw, must be secondary to that.
Yet this brings us to a second problem raised by this proposed withdrawal. Private schooling does not come cheap. Homeschooling likewise is expensive in that it essentially requires that the family get by on one income so that one parent can stay home with the kids. So the options being proposed as alternatives that must be embraced to avoid “the corrosive effects of modernity” are options accessible to only a small percentage of the population, namely those people who can afford to send their kids to private school or to homeschool.
Wesley Hill, “Eve Tushnet’s spirituality of humiliation” at First Things = http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/09/eve-tushnets-spirituality-of-humiliation. Hill discusses the newly published novel Amends by Eve Tushnet. (Hill and Tushnet are both gay… and celibate… because they believe in a traditional Christian understanding of sexuality and marriage.) What caught my attention is “spirituality of humiliation”.
The closet also offers a lot of temptations to sin; I’d say for many people it just is a near occasion of sin. There’s the obvious temptation to lie. There’s the temptation to throw other people under the bus to make yourself look more hetero, or butcher or whatever. There’s the temptation to deny or speak uncharitably to openly gay friends (or, for that matter, enemies). There’s the temptation to cut yourself off from other people so they don’t get too close—to avoid friendship, and avoid help. Being in the closet makes it harder to act rightly. To the extent that being out involves humiliation and lost opportunities (although it is also extraordinarily freeing and opens a lot of doors you may not have realized existed) I would say that sometimes you have to journey through what Spenser called “the Gracious Valley of Humiliation.” [quoting Tushnet]
The implied positive here—that coming out is a way of surrendering a more presentable version of yourself in exchange for a more relationally committed one, and that that surrender is best described with the category of “humility”—is one that Tushnet has returned to over and over again.
And what if one is in a different kind of closet?
Addendum 9.12h – Morgan Guyton, “Why millennials don’t want to be Methodist pastors” at Mercy Not Sacrifice = https://morganguyton.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/why-millennials-dont-want-to-be-methodist-pastors/. Came across this post from 2013 looking at the comments to a post by Alastair Roberts. Guyton is a Methodist pastor. I can tell – from rummaging around his blog – that he is probably somewhat to the left of me theologically and politically. But he makes some excellent if disturbing points about the condition of Protestant Christianity. He is dead right about how irritating it is to hear from older and retired pastors how we need to come up with “creative solutions” (= bivocational and volunteer ministry). Although for the record… yeah we do need. One thing I appreciate is how he seems to challenge both liberal and conservative expressions of Christianity in an effort to articulate a vision of disciples as “those who breathe kingdom air”.
Something like personal holiness would make a lot more sense to the “young people” if it were pursued in the framework of fresh kingdom air. It’s not terribly inspiring to exhort kids to stay away from porn and cigarettes so they can grow up to be yuppies who don’t really hurt anybody but aren’t contributing anything to the resistance of the life-sucking forces of our age. The reason to pursue personal holiness is so that God can make us revolutionaries, because sin is a debilitating distraction that takes us out of combat. The revolution of God’s kingdom means finding ways to meaningfully resist the assumptions of the world that are actively dehumanizing us. It means the foolishness of taking up real crosses which are the repudiation of social respectability and not just our world’s socially sanctioned expressions of charity and sacrifice….
A disciple is someone who breathes kingdom air. It is someone who is ready for anything that the Spirit asks. It is someone who responds like Peter when Jesus asks the twelve if they’re going to ditch him like everyone else: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). A disciple is someone who would be completely screwed if it turned out this whole Jesus thing was a myth, not somebody who could calmly substitute a Sunday of massage appointments and yoga classes for church if Jesus stopped feeling like a compelling messiah. Disciples are not just trained in doctrine and Biblical literacy; they must be inspired by having the kingdom breathed into them.
My only minor quibble is the role of Scripture and tradition as central means of testing and evaluating this “anything that the Spirit asks”.