A New Synchroblog - Agapeology

Glenn Hager got it in his head that he wanted to start a synchroblog. So here I am. If you want to join, let him know.


"Things I Learned From Church (That Didn’t Prove True And What I Am Learning Lately)", Otherwise Known as Agapeology:

My church background is diverse. I call myself Luther-Bapti-Catho-ChurchofChrist-Foursquarian. Yup, just about full spectrum there. Interesting to me, in reflection, the ways in which these traditions differ:

• I have learned about how the Character of God never changes, yet it is new every morning.
  
• I have learned about God’s goodness, and His ire.
  
• I have learned the Bible inside and out because it’s my only weapon against the ‘enemy’. I have also learned about the ministry of the Holy Spirit because He is my greatest weapon against the ‘enemy’.
  
• I learned that babies should be baptized by sprinkling; I learned that we must be baptized by immersion at the age of accountability; and I learned that I must be baptized again to receive the Holy Spirit.
  
• I learned to pray liturgically and in tongues.
  
• I learned that one could only meet God in a church building; I also learned that I could meet Him in my living room, a coffee shop, and even a bar - yes, I have seen people saved in a bar.
  
• I learned that God only spoke through the text of the Bible, yet He also speaks directly and audibly to me and through music, nature and other people.
  
• I learned to sing hundreds of hymns by memory. I also learned to sing hundreds of Contemporary Christian Hits by memory.
  
• I learned to kneel when I pray; I learned to stand with my hands in the air when I pray. I leaned to dance when I pray. I learned to whisper and shout when I pray.
  
• I learned that only men may preach, I learned that women may preach when properly ‘covered’, (whatever that means) and I learned that women can be ordained.
• I learned that God is male, God is female, and God is both/neither.***
  

I could go on, but you get the idea. I learned from the church that God is confused - like an old woman wandering into a room and then forgetting what her mission was, or like an adolescent changing with the hormonal tides.

Anyhow, do any of the contradictions in my list above really matter?

You can call me angry, bitter, or even a heretic, but I love the church with a blind passion- I love the people who comprise the church, as faulty as they may be - for I am one of them - even the least of these. Yes, I have been hurt - who the hell hasn't? But as they say, time heals. Well, maybe not time by itself, but time with God heals, which Lord knows I have had plenty of these last two and a half years.

Still, I cannot be mute to what I see, simply to make peace. I cannot be one more voice singing our praises or one more hand patting us on the back, not until we get this right. Please know I preach to myself as much or more than to anyone else - consider yourself simply eavesdropping in on the conversation in my head.

We struggle to explain God's idiosyncrasies with theology. We study like mad people - looking to exegesis, word studies, and commentaries to guide us along. We seek the thoughts of people who support our beliefs so that we might be validated . We create labels to help define us and then we become frustrated when asked to define those labels. We condemn, we debate, and we throw stones at each other. Didn't your momma ever tell you - "People in glass churches shouldn't throw stones?"

We've ripped God's heart out and created a god-machine designed to do our bidding.

Oops, did that slip out?

Who is this God we claim to worship? How can we worship someone whose identity we aren't even certain of? How do we know we are worshiping the right God?

There is one thing I look for. The key. Love. Without love, there is no God. Without Love, it IS NOT God.

We have tried to create a God who is unwavering in should's and shouldn'ts, do's and don'ts so that we might know how we should behave; so that we might be righteous. We have tried to identify who exactly it is God hates - so that we might be sure we don't fall into that category ourselves, and so we know who we should hate as a result.

We have castrated God's heart so that we might feel free to judge one another without God's disapproval.

We say, "Oh, but we have scripture to back it up, so it's ok."

In a word I recently learned from one of my blog-friends: "Pshaw".

I have scripture, too. Wanna see?

Judging others; rules and law...does any of this sound familiar yet?

"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something."

What about this?

"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love."

Or this?

"Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?" Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them."

In other words the rules, the law, and the works are void without love. The cup and saucer are dirty without love.

I'm exhausted of being told what to believe by people who refuse to speak to their next-door neighbor because they are gay or who teach that if we give 10%, we are off the hook. What I want to hear taught is for us to love people, unconditionally and limitlessly.

un·con·di·tion·al [uhn-kuhn-dish-uh-nl] :
not limited by conditions; absolute: an unconditional promise.

This means not only loving people who are just like us, not only the people we can tolerate, but everyone. This means not only loving people who we hope will one day come to Christ, not only loving people with the misguided ideal that we will change them, not only loving people with the belief that God will one day change them. Loving them as they are. Right.Now.

It means loving people who we despise. Loving people with nose piercings. It means loving people who wear suits and ties and work in a church. It means loving people who have had abortions, loving people who perform abortions. It means loving people who are Muslim, or even Pagan.

Can we answer yes to these statements towards the above-mentioned people?

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Notice it doesn't say "Love preaches the gospel, love corrects other's wrongs, love defends God's honor, love demands accountability, love gossips, love practices false humility."

I fail miserably at these "love" things more often than not. But I WANT to WANT to TRY to succeed at them.

So maybe I've been ranting, maybe I'm completely wacko. But this is what's in my heart and in my head.

I have decided one thing. I have little interest anymore in theology. I have little use in day-to-day life for the theories of atonement, hermeneutics or eschatology.

What I want is agapeology. When they start having schools of agape, I'll be the first in line.



*** I will admit I cheated and borrowed some of the text of this post from my LettersFromLeavers post, but only because it sufficiently summed up what I wanted to say.


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Other Synchrobloggers

Glenn Hager
Lyn Hallewell
Heather
Alan Knox
Lew A
Jim Lehmer
Paul Mayers
Sonja Andrews
Benjamin
Julie Clawson
Monte Asbury
Aaron
Rachel
Cindy Bryan




Edit August 31st, 2007: As it turns out, I didn't coin the term Agapeology...Kevin Beck beat me to it. (And I thought I was being so clever. That will teach me not to Google a cool new word before I use it.) In any case, I'm quite glad someone like Kevin has begun to explore this idea, and I recommend you read what he's written on the subject on his blog Transmillenial and at Presence.tv.