2 minute read
Show me a person who’s virtually unchanged over a 20-year period and I’ll show you someone who’s terribly boring and likely suffering from trauma-induced stagnation. It’s an entirely natural psychological process of human growth and development for people to have experiences that influence their worldviews, personalities, relationships, interests, and values. Therein lies a lot of the fun of being a Jesus follower! It’s good and healthy to question our backgrounds and gain new insights. We should wrestle with God to work out our faith with fear and trembling.
This is one of the dynamics I find most bizarre about Christian culture in general, but especially for clergy. There’s little room for maturation. Does anyone else find it odd that the ordination processes in many different traditions are built around the expectation that 30-year-old fresh seminary graduates will permanently lock-in their theological commitments and pastoral practices for the next several decades? Sure, I can see the core creedal stuff like the Trinity, but have you read the level of minutia in these denominational Confessions and Statements of Faith?
There’s a quote I love from Rev. Timothy Lovejoy. He claims to be part of “the one true faith: the Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism.” I’m 38. 20 years ago, I was a self-righteous jackass coming out of fundamentalist Pentecostalism. Then came my dogmatically Reformed phase followed by a good stretch as a spiritual vagabond intentionally learning from the Orthodox, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Moravians, etc. I ended up Anglican, but lack the myopic certitude to think it’s the one true faith.1
As an ecumenical mutt who’s done a ton of spiritual deconstruction and reconstruction, I’ve come to believe each tradition has unique points of insight and beauty as well as blind spots and ugliness. That’s why we need one another. Yet I also think it’s sheer madness that we’re expected to stop evolving and pledge fidelity to these theological fiefdoms. It seems to me an essential part of Christian culture that needs to be reconfigured is not merely a passive openness to ongoing growth and development, but an active expectation of it as a sign of a Christian’s spiritual vitality.
The original beatniks saw life as a journey. Jack Kerouac‘s novel, On the Road, being the perfect literary representation of this mindset. That metaphor has become cliché over the past 60 years, but there remains wisdom in it. Instead of distrusting change as atavistic Christian culture tends to do, beatnik Christianity is inclined to distrust those who remain too unchanged. Here’s the essence of this push-back: to my mind, too little change suggests a lack of dynamic faith that fails to be emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually receptive to the Holy Spirit‘s leading.
One of the main reasons I ended up in this tradition is that I love its relative flexibility. There’s plenty of room to spiritually wander and explore in this tradition.↩
