Words mean things

I am amazed and frustrated with "the conversation" that is postmodernism and emergent church thinking. If you're unfamiliar with this discussion let me frame it up briefly:

The emergent church believes that the historic (traditional) church has so messed up the teaching of God's Word and living out of the gospel that church must be "re-invented." (The church does need constant pruning and growth, that is true.) They teach that God is so immense as to be unknowable, and when he speaks to us (the Scriptures), even the clear words he has spoken convey truth so imperfectly that we can't trust them. So (they conclude), what God really wants is for his people to redeem culture by healing the sick, relieving the suffering of the broken and ending poverty (etc.). In the end (some of their teachers conclude), they aren't even sure that the atoning work of Christ was necessary or efficient because they hope that salvation will be universal.

To characterize their teaching another way (I really like this quote from Kevin DeYoung from his book, co-written with Ted Kluck, Why We're Not Emergent [by two guys who should be], pp. 20-22--it's just ONE sentence!),

(By the way, if one or MANY of the contingents in the following paragraph apply to you, that doesn't necessarily make you an emergent Christian! I listen to U2, drink lattes and have read Stan Grenz and Brennan Manning and have couches in our student "worship center" [among other things]. And I might not be an emergent Christian.)

"You might be an emergent Christian if:

you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, N. T. Wright, Stan Grenz, Dallas Willard, Brennan Manning, Jim Wallis, Frederick Buechner, David Bosch, John Howard Yoder, Wendell Berry, Nancy Murphy, John Franke, Walter Winks and Lesslie Newbigin (not to mention McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D. A. Carson, John Calvin, Martin Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem; if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu; if you don’t like George W. Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage; if you are into bohemian, goth, rave, or indie; if you talk about the myth of redemptive violence and the myth of certainty; if you lie awake at night having nightmares about all the ways modernism has ruined your life; if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you search for truth but aren’t sure it can be found; if you’ve ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths, candles, Play-Doh, chalk-drawings, couches, or beanbags (your youth group doesn’t count); if you loathe words like linear, propositional, rational, machine, and hierarchy and use words like ancient-future, jazz, mosaic, matrix, missional, vintage, and dance; if you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naïve, and rigid; if you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic; if you disbelieve in any sacred-secular divide; if you want to be the church and not just go to church; if you long for a community that is relational, tribal, and primal like a river or a garden; if you believe doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus; if you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business and no one may be there anyway; if you believe salvation has a little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its Maker; if you believe following Jesus is not believing the right things but living the right way; if it really bugs you when people talk about going to heaven instead of heaven coming to us; if you disdain monological, didactic preaching; if you use the word “story” in all your propositions about postmodernism—if all or most of this tortuously long sentence describes you, then you might be an emergent Christian."

It's ironic that these people who say that you cannot understand God through his revealed Word use WORDS to object. It's even more ironic that proponents of emergent church thinking (I cannot call it "theology," for it is NOT theology) want to call their vehicle of "God-discovery" a "conversation." Why have a conversation if our words don't really mean anything? Why write books, post blogs, write out propositions (etc.) if we disdain propositional communication?

Ultimately, the mantra of this movement is that we don't, or can't really know anything certain about God (they say this in very self-effacing and humble language that you almost want to believe them), and that we are all on a "journey." In fact, it's very valuable to be "searching for God," but it's taboo to actually "find" Him.

But God can be FOUND.

Isaiah 55:6 says, "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near."

2 Chronicles 15: 2b says, "The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you."

And while no one would pretend to have God figured out completely, we must agree that where he has spoken plainly about himself that we can indeed KNOW Him! In fact, Salvation is, at its heart, Knowing God.

Galatians 4:8-9 says, "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?"

And finally, John 17:3 says it very plainly, "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

The Word of God communicates actual propositions about an actual God who commands us to know Him. To not know God is death (and destruction--final judgment).

I am not on a journey. I have been found by God. My search is over, and life is full. Do I have an incredible adventure ahead of me? Ya, I don't know which way certain roads will turn, that's for sure. But I am certain of my ultimate destination, which vehicle is going there and which vehicle is NOT going there.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He who has the Son of God has life.

May we not change the Word of God to make it "relevant." It is relevant. In a world of "maybe," God's Word is sure.