Liberals who watch FOXNews - uncomfortable on purpose

Scripture is often a source of great comfort for many people. When there is a funeral you can but there will be a reading from Psalm 23. When you hear 1 Corinthians 13 is read, 93.6% of the time you are at a wedding. When there is tragedy in real life or in a play, you can find scripture be a source of strength and comfort.

In the same breath, scripture is also the source of great discomfort. When Jesus tells the people to sell all they have and give it to the poor. When we read about God destroying people and nations. Where there is a difficult teaching for which there is no simple answer, you can find scripture to be a source of discomfort.

We watch the news to be comforted. This is why conservatives will watch FOXNews and liberals watch MSNBC. We watch the news in order to hear others tell us that our worldview is correct. We love to hear our side is correct and the other side is wrong and idiotic.

For many Christians, we tend to read scripture like we watch the news. We choose the places that we like that affirm our worldview. We choose the places that provide us comfort and provide discomfort for others. We choose our own canon which we feel is "truer" or "more in line with God" than other scripture.

Do yourself and the world a favor - read the discomforting scripture. Watch the "other" news channel. Allow for the possibility that you may be wrong. The irony is that by listening to only the sources that bring us comfort, we actually harden our hearts through the phenomena of expectation confirmation.

What is true learning? Not addition.

A church person once told me that they attend church in order to learn more and "grow in their faith". When pressed on what they mean when they say "grown in their faith" this church person said to grow in faith is to be built up in the grace and knowledge of Christ.

Like creativity, growing in Christ is about subtraction.

That sounds like a great church answer. 

Of course we are looking to be shaped in the ways of Christ. But let us address something that maybe we know but forget.

Learning is not about addition↬. It is a common understanding that when we learn it is like just filling up a container (our brain) with more information and data. This is a big reason we want our children to go to college, so they can learn "more" because there is a sense of lack without that education. 

If you have attended any level of education and reflect on your experience, it is clear that leaning is about subtraction rather than addition. 

We do not come to school with a lack but with an abundance of "what we know to be true" and the challenge of education is that it asks us to not add to "what we know to be true" but calls into question "what we know to be true". Learning is, at its core, about subtraction. 

When we attend church, and if we are there to grow in the knowledge and grace of Christ, then we must be reorient ourselves away from addition and toward subtraction or (ironically) we will never grow.

*On a separate note, this is post #800!

Spiritual Journey? Not for me.

Perhaps the most common metaphor to discuss the idea of faith or life is the metaphor of a journey.

In the church we use this metaphor a lot. We discuss how your "walk with Christ is going" or express we are on the "spiritual journey" or the "journey of faith". Even sermons are critiqued on if the preacher "got somewhere" in their sermon. You may have "arrived on a mountain top" in your life as you were "marching to Zion" or "walked in the valley of the shadow of death."

It is a rich metaphor which makes it difficult for me to abandon. But it seems like the church must put this metaphor down and learn to embrace other metaphors.

Why?

Because the underlying assumption in the journey metaphor is that there is a destination. We walk by faith toward some goal or until we arrive at a destination. When we use the journey metaphor there is an unspoken assumption that we would not be on the journey without the destination. No one likes the idea of "meandering" or "wondering" - even thought these are words that fit the journey metaphor they are rarely invoked in a positive light.

We want to reach for the "highest goal" that we "might receive the prize." Because "when we all get to heaven what a day of rejoicing that will be".

The journey metaphor gives us a built in excuse to avoid religion all together if our lives are not moving toward the goal we feel we should be meeting. If our lives are not becoming better or if I "don't get anything out of it" then we are free, under the faith as a journey metaphor, to abandon religion and/or faith. Journey metaphor means that when we are not reaching the goal in a timely manner we have a crisis of faith and then we turn to the metaphor for some help in understanding only to find that everyone else seems to be suggesting that you are in fact being carried by Christ on your walk.

Finally, the metaphor of a journey is the fact that the primary actor in the metaphor is the individual. Not God or even the community, but the individual. We can be on a spiritual journey and not have room for God, which is fine for other religions but not Christianity.

To some the walk metaphor is comforting and I am glad that it is. However, for many people (this author included) this metaphor has too many problems to be held on to for much longer.

Do you have any suggestions?