It is not a rigid underlying belief system that leads to unity, but rather our works lead to unity in a diverse belief structure.
32 Metronomes
I saw this video on Kissing Fish, a Facebook page and book by United Methodist Minister Roger Wolsey. Here’s the original link and here’s the video.
Watch it, it is mesmerizing.
The 32 metronomes start out discordant and none in sync. But over the course of barely over 2 minutes, they all find their way together–even the last offbeat guy on the right column around 2:30.
How did it work?
How did this work? The science is that the surface holding the metronomes is not solid but moves with the metronomes. The tiny transfers of force between the moving metronomes and the wobbly surface eventually even out all the metronomes–even the right column rebel.
If the 32 metronomes were placed on a solid, unyielding surface, unity would be much harder to accomplish.
Unity without Uniformity
I share this video because I think the analogy is helpful for conversations about Christian Unity in a world full of differing and discordant theologies.
Let’s run with an analogy. If the metronome beats are the actions taken by Christians in the world, then the surface must be the beliefs held by those Christians. If the beliefs are rigid and unyielding, then they cannot transfer the energy to bring our works into alignment and more beautiful to the Creator.
Metronomes marching to their own beat may never find unity on an inflexible surface. Given the diversity of the Christian Church today, broken mostly by differences of belief, and it is clear that unity built on belief will not be likely found.
Loss By Rigidity
We lost our way over time by believing that Christianity needs an increasingly-large set of beliefs for people to be Christian–commonly called “Historic Christian Teaching” or perhaps “orthodoxy.”To some, “Historic Christian Teaching” refers simply to “historic,” referring to what Christians have collectively believed for the longest time. There’s two main sources of historic teaching:
- Decisions by the Ecumenical Councils: While one would assume Christian teaching has been flat over 2000 years, that’s not the case. It took Seven Ecumenical Councils over 700 years after Jesus Christ to come to some consensus on doctrine–and even that consensus is rejected by Eastern churches.
- Doctrines articulated by the Creeds. The three main Creeds were solidified 300-500 years after Jesus Christ, with some tweaks since then.
If that’s all that “historic Christian teaching” means, then that would be fine because none of the Councils or Creeds make any statements about human sexuality or women’s ordination. Even if you throw in the whole of the Patristics and Church Fathers, one only finds a handful of statements related to homosexuality and women’s equality.
Instead, what we’ve seen over the years is a creeping set of social values that are fused with orthodoxy, making the surface area even more rigid than before on areas of human sexuality and gender that previously were not part of the Creeds, Desert Fathers, or the Ecumenical Council.
Unity in Diversity
What the 20th/21st centuries have given theology is a wonderful cornucopia of lived, contextual theologies. We have black theology, feminist theology, womanist theology, asian theology, queer theology, liberation theology (and all its forms), and other theologies that are born from a people group’s experience.
Their beliefs are flexible, and some critique the rest (like feminist critical lenses), but they lead to a unity in diversity that is better grounded and relevant to those people groups than centuries of orthodoxy that white-washes over lived experience.
The great gift of theology in the 20th/21st century is that theology is contextual: it has a people group, it has a face, and it has a lived experience that shapes theology more than 1300 years of faux rigidity.
And yet we are united in our efforts to accomplish what Matthew lines out: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the accused in prison, and–elsewhere–to stand with the migrant, the orphan, and the widow. Those common actions unify us when they are done in concert with flexible belief systems, leading to a synchronicity impossible otherwise.
Thoughts?
Our call today is to draw out the historic Christian teachings of hospitality, charity, love for God and neighbor, and the ever-widening circle of God’s love for people of all genders, identities, orientations, ethnicities, and other markers of the human condition. That is the real Christian tradition, sometimes forgotten, sometimes outright violated, but a tradition worthy of Christ nonetheless. We find our unity in the harmony of loving God and Neighbor, in acts of mercy and justice, and allow some variety in beliefs to accomplish this good work.
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading and your shares on social media.
I mean Jesus claimed that Peter was the rock on which the church was built. Don’t get more dynamic than building your institution on a living human being!
Sorry, Jeremy, your blog doesn’t make it. First of all black theology, feminist theology, womanist theology, asian theology, queer theology and liberation theology, are dead-end roads. None of these have any drawing appeal except for a few intellectual types. For sure none reach the poor and dispossessed (including liberation theology, which basically has been a failure). Almost all of these are anti-something or other and certainly are not inclusive.
But that is not the greatest problem. If we do away with belief systems we have no center, no shared values. United Methodism is not declining because of rigid belief requirements but because it requires nothing. I have heard many times, “If you are United Methodist you can believe anything you want.” Ultimately, why bother with Christianity? All religions are equal. Do whatever you wish. This is not historic Methodism which, while not creedal, was known for what it believed and practiced. To start with Wesley believed one could not be a Christian who did not believe in Original Sin. To understand historic Methodism follow Wesley’s Orders of Salvation as they are outlined in the hymnal (Under the Holy Spirit).
But there is an even more serious problem. The idea of loving God and neighbor is a fine one, but humanly speaking, we on our own are incapable of that love. Our religion is reduced to something like a classroom out of control where the teacher keeps saying, “Now children, be nice.”
The idea of reducing the faith to love God and neighbor is not the gospel. The gospel is John 3:16. Christ died for the sins of the world and whosoever believe may have eternal life. What we need is not good advice, “Now children, be nice,” but grace and forgiveness because we are not nice; we are not loving; we do not respect others; we do not care for the weak and the lost; we do not love God and neighbor no matter how hard we try. In the cross we are not only forgiven but released from the bondage of sin. Then we can love others. Progressives, it seems, still hold to the myth that if we try harder we can accomplish what God’s intention is for us. The New Testament message is that trying harder doesn’t work.
Perhaps the Muslim woman in this TED Talk video can make the point that needs to be made here: http://www.ted.com/talks/alaa_murabit_what_my_religion_really_says_about_women The primary people in Christianity who have been allowed “at the table” of saying what the faith is about and enforcing its standards have been heterosexual men, many of them single and celibate. Riley Case is an example. These additional theologies, according to him, “are dead-end roads.” Why? Not because “[n]one of these have any drawing appeal except for a few intellectual types.” Nor because “[f]or sure none reach the poor and dispossessed (including liberation theology, which basically has been a failure).” Nor even because “[a]lmost all of these are anti-something or other and certainly are not inclusive.” No. The reason they “are dead-end roads” is because they don’t affirm the theology that gives Riley Case and others like him the power onto which they seek to hold over other people and which they refuse to share with others who are no less devoted to Christ than they but who come to different conclusions about how the Christian faith is supposed to look in the wide varieties of life God has created on this planet. (It’s ironic, at best, that Case says that none of the additional theologies is “inclusive,” since his version of Christianity is intentionally exclusive, pleasing only heterosexual men such as himself and keeping everyone else under their thumb.) As Alaa Murabit says in her wonderful TED Talk, everyone who is affected by the decisions made at the table needs to be given a place at the table, and the table must come to a consensus regarding the final decisions, having given everyone a chance to be heard. This kind of thing has not happened in Christianity since, perhaps, the Jerusalem Council; and even there, we have no evidence that the women among Jesus’ disciples were present or given the ability to speak and a respect for their input. It has primarily been in the past 3/4 of a century that other voices have spoken up and (rightly) demanded a seat at the table and a voice in the final decisions that have moved the Church in the direction of honoring the image of God in which all persons – not just heterosexual males – have been made. When heterosexual males finally recognize that God works through other means than them, perhaps Christianity will begin to look a lot more like Jesus. Until then, it will continue to look more like Constantine.
Compare your thinking to this comment on John Wesley’s sermon, ‘The Catholic Spirit” from The Sermons of John Wesley edited by Kenneth J. Collins and James E. Vickers:
“Considering the two grand hindrances that stand in the way of those who genuinely love God, namely, that they can’t all think or walk alike, Wesley proposed that fellowship should remain, even thrive, since all may love alike. In other words,…Wesley focused on the holy love that is at the heart of it all as the goal…of all true religion…With this reality in place, brought about by the ministrations of the Holy Spirit, Wesley was willing to extend the hand of Christian fellowship though differences remain in terms of such things as opinions, polity, modes of worship, the sacraments, and extemporaneous prayer. Such generosity of spirit, however, does not represent speculative latitudinarianism, (indifference to all opinions), practical latitudinarianism (indifference to mode of worship) or indifference to all congregations, that is, that one ought not to be well grounded in a particular theological tradition…Wesley made generous allowances for the roles of conscience and the right of private judgment ‘on which [the ]whole Reformation stands.’”
John Wesley never intended the catholic spirit to be use as an excuse for multiple understandings to be housed under one umbrella. You really ought to read the sermon for yourself, particularly the second half where Wesley describes the person of the catholic spirit. I did before the above book of Wesley’s sermons was published. The United Methodist Church is only working off the first half of the sermon when it is erroneously used to justify the theological diversity that is currently running amuck in the UMC. I have found theological diversity to be less than helpful; it left me learning nothing in particular; it also created a toxic situation for me–something the LGBTQ community can relate to. However, unlike the LGBTQ community, I decided the healthiest thing for me to do was to distance myself from the church.