03.04.06
Posted in social science, sunday school journal at 1:35 pm by Brandon
A few weeks ago, I took a spiritual gift inventory for the new member class at our church. (Yes, now that Jen and I know for sure that we’ll be in Grand Rapids for at least the next 3 years, we’re doing what Zalm would term “membering up”.) As a social scientist in training, I find myself hyper-sensitive to tests of my personality. Thus, you should probably read this post with a grain of salt.
It should also be noted that I’m not trying to critique the PERSON who lead the class that followed the spiritual gift inventory, or the administration (though, I’d suggest greater selectivity in choosing the next class’ spiritual gift inventory.) Further, I’m not really trying to deal with the issue of spiritual gifts themselves. Rather, I’m just a little miffed as to the way that the test evaluated my spiritual gifts.
Some of my results were quite predictable. For example, I scored a big goose-egg when it came to speaking in, or interpreting tongues. I think much of that has to do with the tradition in which people are raised. I’ve never really been exposed to these gifts, and though I’m reticent to say that they can never be practiced effectively today, I find it a little odd that people who interpret tongues only interpret spiritual messages, like “shak a laka bulu zangiti” being translated as “Glory be to God most high!” It just seems a tad wierd that a tongue speaker would never, you know, ask “Which way to the restroom?”, “Do my socks match my skirt?”, “You can’t see my boxers through my khakis, can you?”, or “I hope no-one can tell that I just farted.” Anyway, that’s just an aside.
What really struck me were the items measuring evangelism. One particular item really got me. It went something like this: “I desire to be all things to all people in order to win them over.” I strongly disagreed. My reasoning was that I really just wanted to be myself. Another evangelism item reflected a desire to spread the gospel. I strongly agreed with that one. Another item was a double barreled question that combined both the desire to spread the gospel, and the individual’s intent to share the gospel verbally to unbelievers by telling them about the love of God or something. Here, I do have a desire to share the gospel, but I have questions about the methods and modes of that communication…thus, I split the difference.
One tool that quantitative social scientists use to understand if a scale is really getting at what they think it’s getting at, is a reliability analysis. Essentially, reliablility is the idea that if scale items are each measuring the same thing and doing it well, they should be highly correlated with one another. Logically, this makes sense. If I asked you three questions about an identical topic, you should give me similar answers each time. If however, I asked you three questions about a topic I believed to be identical and you gave me three very different answers, I would know that I probably didn’t ask questions that were really getting at the topic at hand.
My answers to the evangelism questions are as divergent as possible. I would suspect that others displayed the same unreliablity.
Beyond unreliability, I think there’s a greater issue with this particular scale (and, I’m picking on evangelism here, but I feel that there were a plethora of reliability issues with the scale.) I’m not sure that it’s really on target. I mean, I think that it could reliably measure the spiritual personality of a modern with regard to evangelism, but for a pomo, it falls flat. For me, the notion of ‘being all things to all people in order to win some’ is a rather dubious way to measure evangelism.
Further, the scale was laced with double barrelled and leading questions. So much so that I have hardly any confidence in its results. I can’t help but wonder why it is that Christians sometimes settle for such a lax view of science. And, yeah, a lot of that pops up with regard to the issue of natural science and the origins debate, but it creeps its way into all areas of academia, too. Such scales are an indicator of the greater movement in Christianity–toward academic laziness. And, amazingly lots of young ’scholars’ go to Christian colleges where, many times, this academic laziness is championed. And, the cycle begins again.
It’s my prayer that the next generation of Christian college professors are a little more critical than the last one, and they are able to bridge the nebulous gap between academia and the Kingdom of God. I suppose I’ll have to place my hope in Steve.
**Note: No, it’s not all Christian College profs that promote this ideal of academic laziness. There’s some really good ones out there, I’m speaking more broadly about a disturbing general trend.
Tags: Spiritual Gifts, Social Science
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12.22.05
Posted in faith, sunday school journal at 12:30 pm by brandon
So, where I left off last time, I was blabbering on about total depravity, truth, and reformed Christianity. I made the case that reformed Christianity’s tenent of total depravity made possible the idea that it’s impossible, due to sin, to as a human being ever ‘have’ the truth in an un marred form. Where that leaves us is a somewhat untenable position of never being able to tell the truth.
Now, the very label “reformed” implies that we can try to be something better than what we are. However, given our discussion about truth being ‘unaccomplishable’ as an individual puts us in an unfortunate position. Fortunately, we’re not charged with the task of reformation (a really packed word, which I hope to get into further soon) all on our own. As the Church–a community of Christians–we’re given the task of seeking right, truthful relationships with all the things (i.e. culture, politics, relationships, vocations, etc.) that surround us.
As a community–a group–we’re able to accomplish more than we would be able to do so individually. We’re held accountable and our ideas can be scrutinized and further reformed by that community. Now, I wouldn’t say that there’s anything particularly ‘reformed’ about the idea of community. I would say that community isn’t even a particularly Christian construct. Community happens. Groups happen. It’s human nature to relate to others within our own species. It is, however, a reformed spin on this age old part of human nature to use the community as the fundamental building block for accountablity in our search for truth.
We talked a little about this concept in Sunday school last Sunday. The basic idea of this somewhat hard to grasp concept is that groups that reflect an accurate diversity of temptations as well as reflect a diversity of strenghts are best equipped to hold its community accountable. For example, if I get into a group of people who are all hot-headed, liberal, and fame-seeking–I’d be among similar people. Those similar people aren’t likely to balance out my shortcomings. And, my strengths would probably be over-represented.
Heterogeneous groups, diverse communities are important. Fundamental to this notion of community is the idea that we’re going to butt heads with our community members from time to time. After all, if one of the most important features of community is that we’re not all the same, our differences are going to be a problem from time to time.
Oddly, this reformed perspective (which is my perspective as a person who broadly adheres to a tradition of from within the reformed tradition, rather than a popular reformed perspective) isn’t really very well done by many reformed Churches. In many cases churches in the Reformed tradition–though they’re getting better at this–often tend to be somewhat reticent to accept the idea that their theology, of change and progress toward a diverse community that accepts a wide variety of perspetives, is actually a socially progressive one.
It’s a shame, really, that lots of churches in the reformed tradition (okay, let’s be honest, I’m specifically talking about Christian Reformed Churches) are unwilling to challenge the status quo in this regard. Rather, I fear that many Christian Reformed Churches have coopted the theological tenents of Fundagelicalism in America. They’re not really interested in any progress that doesn’t include the work of convincing people to accept their version of the gospel. Of course, that’s a broad assertion which can’t be understood to apply to every church in the denomination, but it’s largely true.
I think this is one of the coolest tenents that can be applied to reformed Christianity. The idea that our callings, our vocations are realised as a community of Christians. We’re held accountable to accomplish the work of restoration of an imperfect world through these groups. Next time, I hope to get into some of the questions that Nicole asked elsewhere, and delve into some of the more troubling aspects (for me at least) of Reformed Christianity.
Tags: Reformed Christianity, Community, Faith.
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09.21.05
Posted in sunday school journal at 10:47 am by
As a part of the Adult Sunday School class I’m taking our Professor (or teacher, or leader, or whatever,) we’ll just call him Dr. Smith, has asked us to participate in a journaling exercise. He offered us blue books to journal in (he really is a professor). The class is called Desiring the Kingdom: Worship & Culture. I’m not the blue book sort, but I decided that I’d do my best to take part in the exercise. In doing so, I hope you all can get a bit of a flavour about what the class is about. I’m pretty excited about it; it should be a great experience.
Each week we get a different writing prompt. We were given the overarching journaling instructions to “learn to see our world with more critical eyes–to become more attentive to the rituals and practices of our culture.” Additionally, we’re given a more specific topic each week. I think, the hope is that we’ll be able to talk critically about the roles of the weekly topic in the overarching theme of critically evaluating ourselves in the world we live in.
Each week, on Wednesday, I’ll post our weekly topic and my response to it. I would extend an invitation to any of you who’d like to play along with this little escapade to jump right in, the more the merrier, right? Either way, your feedback will provide me with helpful thoughts about my own journey of discipleship and desiring the Kingdom. Okay, so, here’s the first topic:
In the coming week, find some time to reflect on what you hope for. Does your hopeful expectation about the future shape what you do in the present? If so, how? If not, why not? How should our hope shape what we do with our time in the present?
What do I hope for? I think another fair way to ask this question is to ask, in what direction do the desires of my heart point. I think there are probably a number of different ways to answer that question. Concretely, my heart points in the me in the direction of becoming an educator and a researcher. I hope to eventually become a professor so that I may help to shape some of what we know about the process of human communication. I hope to be able to participate in the lives of young people. I hope to help those young people find their own hopes and give them some of the tools to realise their dreams.
More theologically, I like to at least pay lip service to the idea that my hopes point me in the direction of pursuing the Kingdom of God on earth. I say that I pay that notion ‘lip service’ because I’m not always convinced that I’m REALLY pointed in that direction. My habits, as they were presented in the overarching goal of these writings, sometimes belie the fact that I’m probably not AS committed to the idea of the renewal of all of creation as I would like to believe myself to be.
For example, in the process of the dialectic here I think I sometimes am more enchanted by the idea of having my blood pressure shot through the roof, than I am by the idea of participating in a real and honest dialogue. I would imagine that I’m not all that uncommon in this practice. The way I bring things up sometimes can be more combative than transformative. In that sense, I’m not convinced that my hopes of furthering the Kingdom are outweighing my hopes of getting a ‘rise’ out of an argument.
Too, I think my habits of outrage are a tad out of whack. By this I mean that I’m not sure that the things that outrage me are the things that really should be outrageous. For example, I find myself outraged by Ingrid’s Slice of Laodicea, and her discussion (diatribe) about why feminism is ruining families and America, when folks like these probably aren’t doing massive damage to the Kingdom. I happen over there when I need something to write about, when I need to stroke my ego by seeing a post with 30+ comments. All the while, I find myself needing to manufacture outrage about people living on less than a dollar a day.
Perhaps, my hopes aren’t pointed as squarely at the Kingdom as I hope for them to be. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think feminism is an important movement in the furthering of the Kingdom, really, I do. However, I think that it’s possible that I (and I would probably venture ‘we’) focus on these issues for the wrong reasons. I think that issues of equality are essential, but responding in outrage because some folks espouse views that offend MY OWN PERSONAL values is probably where I tend to fall short. Feminism isn’t important because it’s a value important to Brandon. Feminism is important because equality is a value important to our community. And, feminism in Christianity is a value important to our community because equality is a value important to God.
When I respond out of personal offense, I think I miss the point. My hopes (though I like to label them as ‘Kingdom-ward pointing’) are distinctly pointed at myself. In short, I’m one selfish son-of-a-bitch. My individualism is a lens that clouds my view of the Kingdom.
Now, I don’t think that means that I have to give up the entirity of my sense of ’self’ in order to point my hopes, my motives Kingdom-ward. I do think, however, that I need to be a more active participant in the process of critically thinking about my outrage. Asking myself, why am I outraged? Am I upset because of my own personal values?
I think what I’m trying to say is that my personal values and the values of the Kingdom don’t always match up 100 percent of the time. This should surprise no one, but I think it pays for all of us to hold our personal values up to the light. It probably pays to be critical of our outrage before we jump right into the self-gratifying (almost mastubatory) act of frothing at the mouth about it.
The above is hard to confess. I hate falling short, but we all do it. I wish I could say that I could just toss on a set of ‘Kingdom glasses’ and write the truth all the time. Unfortunately, though I try to be a ‘wearer’ of ‘Kingdom glasses’ even with corrective lenses, my vision isn’t 20/20. Oh, heavens, do I ever need the body, the community of Christ.
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