A Humbled Resistance

A Response to The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President

 

 

Truth and Theology/Doctrine

 

 

It is refreshing when a postmodern speaks of truth as something more than a person’s preferred belief.  Though many truth-claims of a postmodernist are unintentional (because they basically don’t believe in absolute truth, or at least that truths can be known absolutely10 ), Claiborne makes several statements to ensure that we understand he believes in truth and it can be known. 11

 

Religious extremists have perverted the best of our traditions. But there is another movement stirring, a little revolution of sorts.  Many of us are refusing to allow distorted images of our faith to define us. (TIR 24)

 

In this one quote we see that traditions can be perverted, so they must have a true or pure form, and we see that images of our faith can be distorted, so they also can have a true form.  He also speaks of “believing all the right stuff,” so he is on record as believing in the true Christian faith (TIR 38).  Elsewhere he claims that bad and dangerous theology exists (JFP 173,180), and bad books exist so there must be some objective standard upon which to measure a book’s “goodness”(TIR 32).

 

 

Theology

 

With the exception of the section I discuss below that is strongly theological, doctrine and theology are generally dismissed as secondary at best, and are often tagged with “even if it’s true” (TIR 28, 45, 117).   The message I receive from this is that not only is doctrine unimportant, it is not even important enough to bother determining if it is true.

 

I was able to download and include the statement of faith from The Simple Way12 Web site and have provided it as an appendix.  It is basically orthodox in what it does say, and that is encouraging.  Generally speaking, people who are postmodern in their thinking do not, however, believe in absolute truth, especially in religion, ethics, and morality.  Our enthusiasm over the orthodoxy of this statement of faith (commitments) has to be tempered by the tendency of “truths” (to postmoderns) to be those things we choose to believe (matter of taste or preference—our flavor of ice cream) rather than those things we are convinced correspond to reality and that the Scriptures teach (what we believe is true whether or not people believe it).  What we have to do is test how closely what they preach corresponds to what they quietly profess.

 

When we reach page 169 in TIR, theology becomes “crucial.” 

 

THEOLOGY OF ENOUGH

 

In addition to rooting simplicity in love, it also seems crucial that economic practices be theologically grounded. I am convinced that most of the terribly disturbing things that are happening in our world in the name of Christ and Christianity are primarily the result not of malicious people but of bad theology. (At least, I want to believe that.)  And the answer to bad theology is not no theology but good theology.  So rather than distancing ourselves from religious language and biblical study, let’s dive into the Scriptures together, correcting bad theology with good theology, correcting distorted understandings of the warrior God by internalizing our allegiance to the slaughtered Lamb, correcting the health-and-wealth gospel by following the Homeless Rabbi. (TIR 169)

 

Amen!  I cannot possibly agree more.  All I can say is, “where has this Shane Claiborne been?” Now we have to ask13 why he limits his theological rigor to the area of economic practice?  Why not make sure his understanding of the gospel, evangelism, sin, repentance, conversion, the significance of the cross, the person and work of Jesus Christ are theologically grounded as well?

 

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