“RE: Emergent Church Spreading Cancer” or “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!!!”

This morning I pulled up Google news and discovered an editorial titled Emergent Church Spreading Cancer by Marsha West. In this article West takes everything from Oprah to Desmond Tutu; from New Age to the Emergent church and summarizes it as, "a cancer to the church. Her writing bares little or no distinction between any of these individuals and instead links them all together and places them in a box. Once she has done this, she removes the emergent leaders from the box (After labeling them wrong and liberal of course) and accuses them of not following after Biblical principles (i.e. her opinion of what Biblical principles consist.) It is amazing how ignorant this article and the writer are of the subject matter and truly by her own admission:

According to Emergent leader, Tony Jones, "At a basic level, Emergent's mission is no different from any other group of Christ-followers: we want to follow Christ and we want to help others follow Christ. Of course, where it gets tricky is when we start talking about what it looks like to follow Christ. All along, Emergent has been about the melding of theory/theology and praxis, and we want to promote fresh, creative, and imaginative thinking about each. It seems that many organizations get to emphasize one side over the other in the theory-praxis equation, but we really are going to struggle to keep both of those in an equal, reflective symbiosis. What does it mean to be the church? What does it mean to follow Christ? We want to serve as a catalyst for conversations that attempt to answer those two questions, and to bring together the most creative people we can find for those conversations. But, conversation alone leads to paralysis by analysis, which is why we have always made sure that conversations are led primarily by practitioners rather than theoreticians and consultants." Huh?

It is actually quite simple Marsha. Orthopraxy is just as vital as orthodoxy…still too hard? Ok, practice what you believe. West continues to fail on her own understanding:

"Emerging church practitioners are happy to take elements of worship from a wide variety of historic traditions, including Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, the Orthodox church, and Celtic Christianity. From these and other religious traditions emerging church groups take, adapt and blend various historic church practices including liturgy, prayer beads, icons, spiritual direction, and lectio divina." [10] In other words, whatever unbiblical practice floats your boat.

Lectio divina is unbiblical? I wonder if she know what this means? She assumes, I am guessing, anything that is not in Scripture is unbiblical. I guess it must really be hard for her to vote since that specific practice is not in Scripture. I could continue writing but to be really honest, I would be wasting my time. Besides, I have to go do something unbiblical like…go to a meeting?

To read her article go to: http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/mwest_20080418.html

Today’s Prayer

God,

Why did I have to wait for 30 minutes today at Sonic? I was starving and it took them forever to get my food! I only have 45 minutes to eat like most people and the guy who ordered after me got his food before I did! Teach me to be patient…teach me to show mercy and to remember that I have been in shoes like that. Grace, peace, kindness I find I am in lack of these…

The food I ate at Sonic was disgusting! I am pretty sure that if I would have left tater tots in my car for three days that they would have tasted better than the crap I had just eaten. Grant me understanding and a strong stomach.

Your people, God, they suck! Sometimes I feel like people that are on the outside of this whole Jesus thing have more love in their hearts than those who do. Why do those who profess your name do wicked against me behind my back? Can they not have a backbone? Remind me God to understand that they are ignorant of your love. Teach me that these evils are not of you. Show me how to respond to judgment and help me to not render evil for evil, but to turn the other cheek.

Yours is the Kingdom…

Bring this Kingdom here to our world that we may join Heaven and Earth which is your dream…

Have mercy on me…

Tash and Aslan

In C.S. Lewis' book "The Last Battle", which is the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, the reader is introduced to a character named Tash. Tash is referred to as a malevolent deity or demon by those in Narnia. It can be reasoned that Tash is the direct opposite to Aslan in both appearance and action. Those who worship Tash are called the Calormenes. The Calormenes practice human sacrifice to appease Tash.

Latter on in the story, C.S. Lewis tells us that several of the Calormene do not believe in Tash. Several of these Calormene formulate a story that Aslan and Tash are the same and give him the name Tashlan. This confuses some of the Narnians which causes some Narnians to follow Tashlan.

Emeth, a Calormene soldier, does several things to serve Tash and when he searches to confront Tash latter on in the story, he goes searching into Aslan's Country. What he finds instead is Aslan himself. Aslan tells Emeth that everything that Emeth did in service to Tash that was good was done in service to Aslan. Aslan then explains that anything which is good is of Aslan and anything which is bad is not of Aslan. He explains that Emeth's pious devotion was really to Aslan, rather than to Tash, although Emeth had not been aware of this, and Emeth finds great happiness in this revelation.

What is C.S. Lewis saying in this story?