Emerging

Coming out of the Social Work bubble long enough to read and contemplate elsewhere, I'm sad to hear that Neil Postman died last week. It's odd to think that while having no direct or personal relationship to him, I greatly respect his broad influence and writing, and consider it like a sage or "prophet" of our own era has now passed beyond us. May his works continue to shake secular and Christian out of the insidious lure of entertainment zombie-ism. In the conservative Christianity article, I am reminded of an interesting article on Sam Keen (former Christian, turned Buddhist? Humanist? oh how quickly I tire of that trend...) that I had to read for my human behavior class. Among other things, he offered that as people we have lost our sense of wonder, and that this is one reason that as he talks with people he finds such despair and hopelessness. At one level I rather agree. Our faith is rich with mystery (the sufficiency of the cross, communion/Eucharist) and the wonder (the incarnation, resurrection) and transcendence of the Trinity, but I get lost in achieving the mechanics most days and forget to be in true AWE of the Master. Last Sunday after church I just drove around Kalamazoo taking pictures of the gorgeous amazing changing leaves, and marveled at the pleasure of looking at creation. The link that sparked the connection to me: as we put ourselves increasingly under any brand of teaching, we get consumed by its perspective. Depending on the chosen teaching, our perspective in obedience either grows or narrows. Immersing ourselves well enough to understand and think/speak intelligently on a subject or genre of thought is fine and useful, but I see too where the longer we go on submitting our attention to a single area, the more difficult it becomes to even consider a perspective outside it. The prof for whom I read this article continues to challenge me about whether I even can "question" my Christianity or look at it from outside my usual submissive perspective. My questions to him go back the same way about his (also) no longer Christian morphed to Eastern worldview. At points I can do this more fairly than others, but even as I step aside to try to view another take on Christ-following, I become more convinced of its all-sufficient, all-demanding, all-encompassing nature. The more I am obedient to a Biblical perspective, the broader I see reality, humanity, the nature and experience of God Almighty. The scary part, and point it seems if I interpret the conservatism article rightly, is that we've (the wider Christian church, we) let the fullest, best, "rightest" teaching of the Triune God via the Scriptures be laid aside for lesser and more poorly constructed philosophies on which to pin our hopes and aspirations. It works equally for Liberals, Christian or non. (That's who I've been listening to lately via the school of social work and I see the same tendency repeatedly demonstrated as with the conservatives.) We become slaves to our philosophies/worldviews, them truly being what they are, our whole lives hang upon them as we live what we think and believe.