6 a.m. on the midnight shift...

Sittin' in a megachurch...

I find myself in a really strange position.  The church I have attended for the past six years or so is becoming (or might even be considered) a megachurch.  It has all the signs of the very same church which on many levels frightens me. 

The building is large and modern with a cafe, bookstore, children's nursery, youth building and prayer center.

The building looks like an entertainment venue with curtains in the backdrop, three arrays of ten concert speakers hanging from the industrial looking ceiling, large screen monitors and multiple platforms for many different kinds of instruments from guitars to violins to piano to the obligatory drum in the glass booth.

The congregation is large

The pastors are beginning, in many ways, to be of a certain "type" even though at the moment there is still quite of bit of diversity in this regard (though on many levels this is also representative of the modern church). 

It has multiple campuses.

It has a ginormous budget.

Revival, signs, wonders, miracles and the names of some of the visiting preachers (cultish, celebrity-like status in some circles) are starting to cause me some consternation.

Now, don't get me wrong.  None of these things are, in and of themselvse, bad.  The church is growing for a reason.  There is a strong message preached here, straight no chasers.  It is about love.  Period.  Not the wishy-washy, self-help, feel good kind of love that makes you warm and fuzzy but the kind of love that gets you out of self. 

Not by preaching guilt, condemnation or hellfire and brimstone.  It's the kind of love whereby God is able to convict a person, if needed, or bathe the believer in love.  It is also a place of the recovering churchaholic, the person that has been abused at church or addicted to the emotionalism of the more 'charismatic' type churches. 

I have experienced this love and have healed more in the past few years than all the other years of my existence prior.  It is bathed in the Word and the head pastor is a man's man, not in a macho way but in the humbled way in which a man who is surrendered to God is strong.  Though women have a strong presence in the church, it is not effeminate.  There is a balance.

But lately I am struggling to enjoy the worship songs. 

"Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go..."

I had to check Scripture for this one.  It's certainly in there...

"Flash forth lightning and scatter them..." (Psalm 144:6)

"And he sent out arrows, and scattered them; lightning, and discomfited them." (2 Samuel 22:15)

It sounds like something Zeus would do.  Am I jaded, is my heart hardened, have I lost my childlike sense of wonder?

There is something a little too warm and fuzzy about a lot of these songs as are a lot of the books that are flooding the market.  They are very pop, in a least common denominator kind of way.  I have an aversion to watered down, syrupy Christianity and much of the church "scene" leans toward that end. 

Not that everyone can be expected to be interested in the high theology, the bedrock on which the Christian faith, but the danger of taking away or minimzing the theology is that it leads to a personal Jesus.  It is this we see in many churches today; many churches rise and fall on the pastor and his charisma.

Maybe it's my experience with rave culture and the understanding of the way in which music is used to create a certain mood, a certain emotional and mental state which many equate to spirituality.  So I'm being cautious or selfish, not sure which.

However, as Bono eloquently put it, you know I believe it.  Having seen it from the inside, I understand it and am still on board.  Lives are being impacted and there are no Benny Hinn like shenanigans here.  It's still pretty hardcore.

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

I suppose it is that divine hunger that keeps us going.  Doubt and a healthy dose of skepticism does serve a function, even in church.

Shi'ite, Isma'ili and Christian gnosis...

I must say that the spritual path that has been a constant curiosity to me over the past few years falls under the title of this post.  Most of this comes from the writings of Henry Corbin and Peter Lamborn Wilson and the trails followed in their bibliographies.

A recent article I was linked to which uses frequent references to a recent book by Todd Lawson on The Crucifixion and the Qur'an spells out my understanding of what the Qur'an says on the crucifixion and the way in which the "common" understanding entered Islamic tradition came to be (which, in my opinion, is a misunderstanding of what the text says).  If you dig deeply into the tafsir you find a variety of opinions from the scholars of Islam as to what really happened.  There is no one answer. 

This has always been the sticking point for me when it come to Islam.  The Qur'an, to me, is a book of amazing power and beauty (a few verses notwithstanding...).  However, the hadith and tafsir pose great challenges which, to me, require just as much faith as Christians are accused of needing to believe in the vast and varied tradition of Bible transmission.

Anyhow, the point is that the Qur'an does not not deny the crucifixion itself; it denies the power to those who thought they had the power to crucify him.  The idea of a "substitute" is, to put it bluntly, a silly idea.  It would mean that either Jesus lived to a ripe old age and died or resides physically in space somewhere.

So the "angelology" and the "gnosis" of these paths as spelled out by Corbin, Wilson and similar ilk I could easily absorb.  Even the idea of the "hidden" and/or "eternal" Imam (and his hujjat) would not be too difficult for me to accept. 

However, there is one question that lingers: what of the resurrection?  The Crucifixion is not the crux of the Christian faith unless the Resurrection is right there with it.  Both are necessary.  No resurrection, dead Jesus.  End of story.

The Isma'ili view gives an understanding of what this would mean from an Islamic perspective.  However, the deeper question is this: had he been crucified with no resurrection claimed, there would most likely have been no Christian faith.  Faith in what? 

Even gnostics, though obviously with a different interpretation, understand there to have been a "resurrection" of some kind and to a very large extent it would appear that Isma'ilism picked up this thread as filtered through Neoplatonic thought. 

If Christianity had existed without a resurrection what would it have been?  What message would have been so substantial for it to have spread as it did?  Would there have been an Islam?  A Shi'ite or Isma'ili Islam?

So again, the question I have yet to find from a Shi'ite, Isma'ili or Shi'ite Isma'ili viewpoint is their take on the Christian view of the resurrection.  Would the idea of it being a "spiritual" or "esoteric" event have been enough of a message for it to have spread as it did for hundreds of years prior to the advent of Islam?

The idolatry of being relevant...

Found a great website that pokes fun at Christian culture, an oxymoron if ever there was one.  There are some others out there but this one is pretty spot on.

Whether satirial or irreverent I cannot tell but it taps into the irrelevance of church that I've been feeling lately.  Jesus has become just another product to sell and is packaged in pretty much the same style that marketers might try to sell us a car or a pre-packaged formula guaranteed to sell us the latest salvific berry from some exotic locale.

Personal faves:

Relevant churches (the inspiration for the title of the post)

Cheesy hair (a combination of 80s hairspray/highlights and desiring to look bad-ass without being able to to do so which, of course, makes them look like a 90s boy band hangover...). 

Soul Patches (don't forget to read the end note of the post)

Inocuous Music (for which, see South Park episode 709)

Personally, I am sometimes much more comfortable "in the world" than I am in the often sanitized and insular world of the "church" today.

Seem to recall that Jesus spent more time with undesirables than he did with those who thought themselves desirable.

Besides, is saying "ass" or "damn" any worse than saying "freakin'"?

Osama bin Laden as Christian litmus test...

If any Christians are gloating or celebrating today over the death of Osama bin Laden, they should pause.

We are Christians first, citizens of a given country (in this case, America) second.  Jesus never advocated taking the life of another; he advocated loving our enemies.  I don't see that he qualified this statement.

What if Paul had been killed because he killed Christians?

I understand Osama’s role in the taking of the lives of others over the years.  This is not the debate.

The issue is whether one’s faith in Christ or one’s nationality (or humanity, for that matter) rules their lives.   

Jesus set a much higher standard and an event such as this becomes a litmus test.  How deep does your Christian faith go?

If the death of another human being is being celebrated, as a Christian, I challenge you to think it through. 

You can’t have both.

Henry Corbin, Ismaili Gnosis and Modern Christianity

I am reading Henry Corbin's Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis again (just saw it on Amazon for $25 for a used copy...least expensive I've ever seen it...).

As I'm reading it, I'm listening to my wife's recent fascination with "heaven" after having read Heaven Is For Real and now moving on to Nine Days in Heaven, a "modern" rewrite of a nineteenth century book (at which I quipped "what's next, 30 days in heaven, then 3 months in heaven, each one upping the game?").

She questioned how we know they aren't true. A valid point. Of course, how do we know they are?

At which point I remembered the statement from the Acts of Peter quoted by Corbin in his book:

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui ("I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in").

And the lightbulb came on...

As for the child who was behind the Heaven Is For Real book, I realized, he, having been raised in a pastor's home, had no doubt heard stories and has experienced images of things he saw. He had a framework through which to filter what he experienced. His openness (his 'capacity' to use Corbin's term) allowed him to have the vision he had.

He lost me here:

“So what did the kids look like? What do people look like in heaven?”

“Everybody’s got wings,” [he] said."

At that point the story lost traction. While the father scours the Scriptures for other of his boy's descriptions, this one gets no such scrutiny. While I certainly can't deny his experience, the idea that humans have wings when they die is not supported by Scripture. This falls in the category of myth/folklore/tradition (or a child's imagination).

However, the idea of 'capacity' explains the different accounts in all the other books (and there are countless...) out there. Each one's capacity is framed within a certain context and it is through that context that these visison are filtered. After all, if they are, as Paul mentioned, beyond words, then we can only express them in the words and images that we know.

Modern Christianity has become, in many ways, Gnostic in this sense. This is not the "Gnostic" as opposed to "real" Christianity (whatever that is) but is a form of gnosticism, personal knowledge, that is present within churches, even, or perhaps especially, of the so-called fundamentalist/evangelical variety.

This drive for the "real" Jesus means many churches rise and fall with the vision of the pastor. It is often "pastor" not "church" centered. Of course these churches emphasize the "Holy Spirit" as their guide but it is peculiar that there are so many churches all claiming to be led by the same spirit and many of them have different litmus tests (Jesus prayer, speaking in tongues, your dress code, zip code, etc.).

We might argue that as long as they preach Jesus and him crucified we're all on the same team.

However, the "modern" church today seems to be quite gnostic in essence. Each Christian experiences "Jesus" according to his/her capacity for the theophanic vision of which Corbin speaks.

Personally, I'm ok with that. This actually helps me make sense of the New Testament (and, with it, the Hebrew Bible) and allows me the freedom to glean from Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant theology, along with books such as Corbin's.

If these things increase my capacity to experience "Jesus" then talem eum vidi qualem capere potui.