This past week I heard a conversation between Alexander John Shaia and Rob Bell. Both figures push the boundaries of the conventional (the commonly agreed upon codes and practices of a group, at the expense of individuality) and so I find their individual work to be interesting. Both have written about the Christian faith, mysticism, and more. However, Shaia is Lebanese and so carries more of a middle eastern mindset at all times. (A mindset, mind you, that is closer to the mindset of the authors of the Scriptures than westerners are to the Scriptures.)
The conversation at one point centered around this…
“The whole system is rigged to maintain the very dualities that the Scriptures are tearing down.”
It then led me to make a list of common dualities or either/or ideas and concepts that it feels as though modern, western, conventional Christianity seek to see reality through…
- Sacred and Profane
- Worthy and Unworthy
- Guilt and Innocence
- Social Justice and Evangelism
- Faith and Doubt
- Untransformed and Transformed
- Orthodoxy and Heresy
In their stead, here are some alternatives that rise above those dualities…
- Reconciliation of All Things
- Unconditional Acceptance
- Grace
- Faith Proving Itself by Works
- Faithfulness of God
- Maturity
- Orthoamory (or Right Loving)
As someone that has worked the majority of my professional life in ministries, I can attest and agree with the fact that most ministries are seeking to maintain those earlier dualisms, often without realizing that the Scriptures uses those very vocabularies to point beyond them, to realities that transcend and yet include the very dualisms.
The mistake is thinking that despite the Bible using those terms, that does not mean that those terms are the final reality. So, if the well-intentioned ministry game is rigged against the actual Telos (goal, point, purpose) of Christianity, then it seems as though the game needs to be updated, right?
This whole thing known as ministry is actually about that second list of things, not maintaining the first.
