Ack. Some Followup.

I started out responding to Camassia, who mentioned what I wrote in a post today, and realized I was writing a post of my own.

I think part of my reservation about such programs as "Living the Questions" (LTQ) -- and I must confess I have not examined the curriculum in detail -- arises in the slogan Camassia quotes: “Wisdom is asking the questions for which there are no answers” I agree with Camassia that the focus on the questioner is something of a problem. I would ask, is it just another means of self-preoccupation? Don't we have enough of that already? And can't the church offer something more than that?

But I also wonder if there is an ideological use of "questions" too, which then can avoid talking about, say, the incarnation or the trinity and so forth, move away from talking about the "tradition" or "the church" or "religion" or what have you and talk more about "spirituality", some nebulous human trait divorced from the particularities of one group or another. Conceived thus, it seems like one more way of underwriting a radical individualism ("We each have to find our own answers.") If that is true (and that LTQ is doing so is only a hypothesis), then I find it a highly suspect move. If it is true, I don't mean to claim that there is any malicious intent, my calling it "ideological" notwithstanding. But I think there are all sorts of reasons to consider this division dubious.

I'm also not sure that wisdom is "asking the questions for which there are no answers." First off, it sounds way too sloganized to be anything approaching wisdom. "Wisdom doesn't have a slogan" might be a better slogan.But I also certainly don't think that there is any particular wisdom in asking a question -- there might be penetating intellect, and that is certainly to be commended, but it's not the same as wisdom, is it? It seems more like wisdom is knowing when the answer to a question is insufficient, or (even better) living in the absence of a sufficient answer to a good question without giving up. Or maybe I just don't know what the heck wisdom is; I am skeptical that is can be made into a slogan though. (Gosh, I wonder how much bandwidth I'll burn up when I actually read LTQ?!)

And I should hasten to add that I am just as familiar with the Alpha Course as I am with LTQ, which is to say "not", beyond second-hand accounts, so this is not a back-door endorsement of Alpha. Part of my entire point in riffing on Camassia's original post (and so many of the other rants, ahem, thoughtful posts I have put on Gower Street) was to point out the wide-ranging similarities between liberals and fundamentalists, and in the process, hopefully, encourage us to get over it and move on to something else more helpful.

If on the other hand, the emphasis in LTQ is simply on "questions" as a way to get people exploring together, and to respect the mystery of God, and not lay out the theological story in a way that (in effect) dissects God and lays God out on a gurney for examination, I'm all for it. (That is very dull theology, too, and I'd hate for people to be turned off of one of the most amazing things in the world.) Lee expressed this great sense of mystery succinctly in a reply to Camassia's post, saying

It may be worth pointing out also that the classic dogmas of the church (Christ’s two natures, the Trinity, etc.) Don’t actually purport to give all the answers. They do remarkably little in the way of explanation about how everything is supposed to work. Instead, they set the boundaries for how Christians are supposed to talk about these things, which leaves a lot of room for mystery. In fact, mystery is insisted upon.

Read, learn, mark and inwardly digest. (Also check out Lee's blog here.)

Shucks, as usual I've run off at the keyboard. Please understand that I blog partly to clarify my own thoughts and partly to enter an ongoing conversation. But I'm not ever trying to nail anyone to the wall, flame anyone, or even sound snarky (well, unless I can be snarky and make it sound funny).

(Every once in a while I look at something I've written and wonder if I come off sounding like an apologist for fundamentalism or something: no one has ever said so, but if it has crossed your mind, gentle reader, let me assure you I am not. Fundamentalism is every bit as much a child of modernity as theological liberalism is, and I find them both, simultaneously, quaintly passé and too trendily newfangled. I do hope, though, that I always interact with proponents of either perspective -- or any other for that matter -- with charity and respect.)