My Manifesto on What's Emerging

So I just want everybody to know that I have spent most of my free time in the past couple of months reading about the Emerging Church and Postmodernity. I have a fairly solid understanding of what the Emerging Church is all about and am starting to grasp what in the world this thing called Postmodernity is all about. You can see from my survey that I am 68% Postmodern/ Emergent. I can perceive some positive elements of this movement (see, I am postmodern)- the emphasis on praxis, the importance of community, the validity of experience, the focus on being authentic, the call for humility concerning man's knowledge, the possibility that sometimes A can not be true but that does not necessarily make B true, and the need to understand our culture just to name a few.

However I cannot and will not become Emerging on the basis of the philosophy behind the movement being heretical. I cannot bring myself to reject man’s ability to know absolute truth (I know Him, He saved me, His name is Jesus), to view communication as nearly impossible (I talk way too much and listen more than I talk and hate the thought that I have wasted my entire life), to weaken the Bible’s authoritative claims (as I said, I know Truth, He knows me, and He says his Word is truth), to explain away the need for the gospel as Romans presents it (all of the world is guilty, sorry people, but we suck and we can only be justified by faith in Christ), or to place more trust in the philosophy of Derrida and the traditional creeds of the Church Fathers than in the Word of God. Once the authority of scripture is challenged, we are left questioning everything we thought we knew and thinking about every new idea with no foundation for evaluation besides what those around us think. I do not want to be like the emerging pastor I heard on the radio today who has (based on Derrida’s philosophy) almost rejected everything based on the authority of scripture (essentially the last 400 years of orthodoxy) and also (based on Derrida’s philosophy) openly reconsidered every heresy since the church Fathers wrote the great creeds and is left incapable of answering any question confidently even if God’s word is clear on the issue. Sorry, but the Word of God is living and active (Hebrews 4:12), it is not dead and open for any and every interpretation- each being equally valid.

I have the option as a person to place my trust in something- as a Christian I chose to trust in the God of the Bible. I could trust in something else- the brilliant philosophers who use words to tell me that words have no meaning for example. But I chose to trust in the Word (John 1:1) the ultimate meaning and source and sustainer and purpose over all of Creation (Colossians 1:15-20.) I fully understand that the Bible presents a metanarrative- it tells us where we came from (Genesis 1 &2), what we should be doing here (2 Peter 1:3, 1 Cor 10:31), where we are headed (Revelation), and what you need to do to properly fit within the metanarrative (Acts 16:31.) I understand that it is a narrow metanarrative (John 14:6) that oppresses those who do not fit within it (Revelation 21:27), and marginalizes those who disagree with it (Romans 3:4). (The postmodern may ask how what I am saying right now fits within her or his metanarrative which marginalizes those who have a metanarrative.) If there were no concrete basis for the Biblical metanarrative, it would be “intolerant,” but since it is the Word of God, it is truth (John 17:17.) And although it does demand people to conform to this metanarrative or else face condemnation, those who properly subscribe to it are not sent out to condemn, but to follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus (Luke 19:10) and to proclaim his message (Matthew 28:16-21) which can and will save these people from the condemnation that they are bringing upon themselves (Romans 1:18.) I understand that I do not know everything and I do not claim to know everything, and to do so would in fact be unbiblical (1 Corinthians 3:19.) However, I also know that God wrote the Bible so that we can learn from it (Romans 15:4), and that while every other thing written under the sun may be wrong regardless of how cunning it may sound, the Bible is different (2 Peter 1:21.) Since the word of God is truth (John 17:17) we can not treat it merely as another book. We must hear the voice of divine authority, seek a proper understanding of it, and live in obedience to it, or else face the consequences.

So what should I as a Christian do with postmodernity? I need to continue to seek a better understanding of it (as a missionary would in another culture.) I can accept the elements that do not contradict scripture, but I can not defer authority to postmodernism or its tenets over scripture. I will judge postmodernity according to scripture rather than view scripture through the lens of postmodernity. I need to be able to present the gospel to a postmodern culture in a way that they will understand it. The postmodern culture has pulled on the church and those who have accepted it have swung like a pendulum too far in that direction. Most likely those who do not fully accept postmodernity will fully reject the emerging church and everything that resembles it and will swing too far in the opposite direction as the church historically does with every new movement and idea.

I want to remain true to the Bible while also being relevant in a postmodern culture. This may involve presenting the experience of Christianity while evangelizing and living that experience to its fullest, but it cannot change the content of the gospel by removing man’s depravity or the exclusive claims of Christ. This must involve emphasizing orthopraxy, but only if it is based on orthodoxy, or else it is worthless. This may include stressing the importance of community — not to determine community truth, but to be united based on the commands of absolute truth. Believers should be involved with social justice but that is not the ultimate purpose of the church. While there are positive elements of the emerging church, there are too many negatives to be reconciled with the truth of God’s word. Many of their complaints raised by the emerging church concerning the traditional church are valid and need to be addressed. But the alternative that the emerging church presents is worse than the status quo. For now, I am better off not being a part of the emerging church in its present form and will continue to strive to bring the traditional church into closer alignment with the truth of God’s word.