One more piece on the wounds of intellectualization in the church.
When words, doctrines, and ideas take up all the space in our religious imagination, we run the risk of making our ideas and images gods themselves. Our resistance to such institutional idolatry has been the lifeblood of our protest against the church abusing its power. Perhaps our rallying cry has made it even harder to recognize when we have succumbed to the same human tendency to make ultimate our own ideas. In our case it may be that we have made ultimate our own intellectual prowess. Divinity penetrates the very stuff we are made of and finds its way into all of who we are. Living into this transformative promise does not bring with it bulletproof intellectual arguments and rational explanations of all the faith is.
There are so many "right" answers - we can easily become closed-up people unable to be blown by the Spirit into a life that is not yet ours. This is not to say that we need to dumb-down the faith. Not at all. Rather, we are enriched by the faith we learn and learn well when it is often pushed over and tipped upside down by our God who comes to us in shapes and forms and powers we have not anticipated. Promise is too big to be able to say we have it in our back pocket or in our mind. Promise promises to crack it all open and lift us beyond all that we have claimed to grasp. It is then that we will be liberated to see how God shapes and moves a people who have become captive to their well-worked words and ideas. The great adventures of the church take place when we God once again taps us on the shoulder in the form of flesh and blood that will not be locked up by that which we claim is the whole story. Connection: It is not easy to come out of our heads when that is what is so cherished among us. We think our way into and out of situations again and again. Sometimes it would do us well to take a leap and listen to something that does not fit in - but rather pulls us out into a wilderness setting where we are out of control and must count on our God to sustain us as God is able. Sounds like a biblical scenario to me. When we are broken and in need of healing, O God, don't let us run away and hid in the midst of all we claim to know. Take us by the hand and take us out of ourselves and into the vision of your Reign. Amen. |
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