The surge of energy and the rush of thoughts that are characteristic of hypomania are often exhilarating. The clarity of thought, the universal coming together of different tangents and the flood of ideas are indeed fantastic. Some of my most productive moments have been during my mild manias. Here’s a blog entry that I made during the first time I escalated into mania. A friend of mine commented that it was the best entry of mine that he had ever read.
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"A New Kind of Christian"
Does that sound elite/l33t to you? 
I come from a fairly conservative evangelical family as far as theology and practice are concerned. In other words, as a kid I was exposed mainly to the school of Christian thinking whereby black is black and white is white. The greys are avoided as being wishy washy. Lukewarm. Church of Laodicea.
[ !! WARNING/ACHTUNG/ATTENZIONES !! ]
I would now like to call my old views "psuedo-fundamentalist", to differentiate it from "fundamentalist" views. What I believed was only what I believed. Don’t start thinking that what I used to think is what every "fundamentalist" Christian holds on to. And this is an addition, so if you find I have used "fundamentalist" instead of "psuedo-fundamentalist" when referring to my views, it is a slip-up.
[ end !! WARNING/ACHTUNG/ATTENZIONES !! end ]
In December 2003, I was first exposed to what has been now termed the "Emergent".
*cough*: This is my uninformed newbie perspective of what I’ve observed concerning Emergent. Friends-who-are more-informed, if I say anything stupid here please kick me and let me know, heh.
Where was I? Oh, yes. December 2003. I went to [a camp] for the first time, a gung-ho know-it-all evangelical. I thought I knew a lot if not all of the answers.
How wrong I was.
Yet I only truly realised how ignorant I was back then about a week ago. It’s a long story. Very long story. Takes 2 days to finish.
I still consider myself a fundamentalist. Unfortunately, the word "fundamentalist" has now come to be as bad as the other f-word among most people. Of course, it’s uncommon to find a person who dislikes both at the same time. o_o
And how do you know if you’re an extreme fundamentalist? Here comes the acid test…
*drumroll…*
Well, you would now be very angry and offended that I typed "f-word" in my blog, and assume that I’m a angsty and uncontrolled teenager with no sense at all.
(prepare thyself for a quote… S, I hope you don’t mind…)
One of my pastor friends gave a sermon where he used the… I can’t be sure… either the f-word or the s-word… and he told them, ‘I think half of you in this congregation are more unhappy about me for that one word than for the rest of the entire sermon.’
(alright, back to the grind)
But extreme fundamentalism in Christian circles doesn’t get as bad press as one particular political party with a certain sphere in the night sky as their logo. Why’s that?
It’s because fundamentalism is actually a good thing. The term was coined when people started reacting against the wave of liberalism that was terrorizing the Christian world in the last century.
But what happened? People started going the way of the Zealot. Now we know that zealous is an adjective that we like people to put in front of our names. But the fact is, Zealots were a bunch of Jews who were killing the Romans because they wanted to free themselves from Roman rule which they considered a desecration of God’s promise. Very brave, yes. Very orthodox (at least according to Rabbi Shammai), yes. But what would Jesus do?
[Note for any readers new to "schools" of Christian thought) And what now is liberalism? Liberalism in Christianity is when you say that being gay is alright as long as you accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.
Bear in mind that I use hyperbole a lot when I’m blogging in this style (many short paragraphs). It feels really fun in a nostalgic manner. My angsty beginnings had a lot of this style. The subject matter has changed, and though you might doubt it, the motives that drive me to blog. If you’re offended, I’m really sorry. I’m not trying to and don’t wish to offend anyone. The reason I’m writing is not to "make a stand in pride" the way Gay and Lesbian Unions do.
I’m simply praying and hoping that people will begin to… think.
(Dallas Willard said something in "Hearing God" that made me ponder: "Faith is opposed to sight, not reason." Why would God give to us the faculties of our mind and expect us to simply shut it down?)
For many years I accepted stuff that my parents believed without truly thinking about it. I don’t know where you are right now in terms of worldview or school of Christian thinking.
But just… think about it.
For some people, fundamentalism (maybe even my psuedo-fundamentalism) is good. It’s uncomplicated. It’s like me banning myself from music. It’s easy. It feels like you’re some sort of John the Baptist or Elijah. Austere. Just two weeks ago I was still into ascetism.
But it’s not the only way. Jesus did a lot of stuff that offended the religious people of the day. He didn’t seem to care when his disciples didn’t wash their hands and ate grain on the Sabbath. In fact, his disciples were a bunch of fishermen, fanatics, fund-raisers and fakes.
What if Jesus came today? Would he insist that you read your Bible every year? Yes, he would encourage it, but only if you really understood what you were reading. Last year I read through The Message with B. I blogged some kewl stuff… for about a few months. Then I went AWOL and B did all the other books after… circa the Wisdom Books I think.
This is sounding very random. It is. Brian McLaren and other Emergent guys offend a lot of people. I was offended myself at first. But why do I want to read him now?
It’s because I want something more than a faith that has just easy answers.
I’ll put it this way:
Fundamentalists say, "The Bible says this so we follow it."
Liberals say, "The Bible says this but it’s figurative/just-a-suggestion so we don’t have to really follow it."
Emergents seem to be saying (I’m new to it), "Yes, the Bible says this. Yes, we follow it. But we must do it for the right reasons. We have to fully understand what we’re doing."
I’m not painting fundamentalists as the new Pharisees and emergents as the true disciples. That’s crap. Who actually is saved is something I will not touch on as I can barely understand it.
But I want to try to understand stuff I don’t understand.
I can’t get to infinity, no, not yet.
But I aim for it.
And I keep moving forward to get closer and closer…
In other words:
Faith is something like calculus. We can only get the f’(x) (or if you prefer, dy/dx) in this life. I want to find out the ultimate Truth, but I cannot until I jump into hyperspace and enter Eternity. So I’m just cruising along, hopefully closer and closer to Eternity.
I must thank T for coming up with the concept using calculus to explain striving for perfection. Some of my thoughts and analogies here have been helped along in their shaping process during and after our "aggresive negotiations" (to those of you who get this reference: yeah, I really want to watch it ASAP). We sometimes don’t agree on a lot of your things, but we’re cool.
But I’m not using the normal route. The path I’m taking is off the map. I don’t believe mine is the only way, but it’s a slightly different way from the normal ones.
So, in order words, I am just trying to be, a new kind of Christian.
NOTE: Chances are this post might confuse you about what I really believe in at the moment. Just to let you know, I don’t believe "all roads lead to Rome". I still believe that there is only one Truth, one God, and one Way. If you think I’m contradicting myself, then perhaps the Emergent way of thinking is not really for you. Maybe you prefer the simpler route of fundamentalist thinking today. I used to. But I can no longer just be satisfied with superficiality. Richard Foster, author of "Celebration of Discipline" says his book:
"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people."
And thinking in a new way does not make anyone "special" or "elite". We are all still imperfect beings (and yet so loved by God). If by thinking in a new way I begin to think myself better than others, then it’s better for me to think in the old way.
When it comes to skills/gifting at the particular thing, I like to think of humans as a guitar and God as the amplifier. There are many kinds of guitars. The Silent Guitar (developed by Yamaha) cannot project any sound by itself to our ears. Some guitars, for example folk guitars can be very loud unplugged. But no matter what the guitar, it’ll be louder plugged into the amp. I’m no folk guitar when it comes to reasoning or rhetoric.
But anyway…
Thanks B. Thanks S. Thanks M.
extra crap: Y’know, at one point I thought that I shouldn’t praise people because I should give God all the glory. I said, "When we give too much credit to the man, we forget that behind the man is the Son of Man."
That’s quite true. And that’s the "psuedo-fundamentalist" view I had.
But then I thought, when we see a cool robot with his inventor next to it/him/her/shim/etc, we might say, "Wow, you’re a really cool robot!" Are we just praising the robot alone and ignoring the man beside him? Aren’t we in reality giving the creator of the creation more credit than the creation in itself?
Questions? Present. Answers?
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