The Emergent Church-Does Relationship Trump Truth?

In this blog series inspired by Jim Belcher’s book, Deep Church, I’ve reported three highly esteemed values of the emerging/emergent church: authenticity, community and mission. Who could disagree? Shouldn’t every follower of Jesus be fully devoted to such values? But would you put such a high value on guarding relationships that you would decline to discuss doctrinal distinctions?

In this blog series inspired by Jim Belcher’s book, Deep Church, I’ve reported three highly esteemed values of the emerging/emergent church: authenticity, community and mission. Who could disagree? Shouldn’t every follower of Jesus be fully devoted to such values? But would you put such a high value on guarding relationships that you would decline to discuss doctrinal distinctions?

Or attend a church where the pastor didn’t deliver his message with a specific outcome in mind? 

In 2006 Jack and I attended John Piper’s conference on The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World. Piper told the story of sitting down to discuss the rising tensions between the traditional and emergent churches with Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt of Emergent Village. In an attempt to establish common ground Piper asked Jones and Pagitt what they believed about Jesus’ atonement. Out of concern for committed relationships they declined to offer their view. Piper left the conversation thinking that, for Jones and Pagitt, it seemed that committed relationships trumped truth. Jones and Pagitt left the conversation wondering how a committed follower of Christ, a "minister of reconciliation," would not be more deeply committed to reconciliation.

In Deep Church Belcher asks Tony Jones to discuss how he pursues knowledge of God. We have a "relational hermeneutic," Jones explained. Truth is discovered in community, together, with the Holy Sprit. The way the Holy Spirit spoke to God’s people in the Old and New Testament is no more authoritative or "privileged" than the way he speaks to our communities today. When the community gathers for teaching the pastors are not simply steering the teaching time toward a foreknown outcome of what God is saying. The Bible is a player in the conversation, but not a privileged player. In the search for truth nothing can be privileged over the community. This is what it means to many revisionist emergents to value authenticity and community. Others (perhaps most?) emergent/emerging churches share a firm commitment to the Bible as far more privileged than the community.

Truth, by its nature, divides between what is real and what is not. Truth can be hard on relationships because, with our limited reason and understanding, good and godly people have different views of the truth. We are all aware of how our nation and the church is divided over views of the truth. Even Jesus, who prayed for the unity of his church, knows what it means to have your prayers go unanswered. The emergent/emerging church is trying to recover community in an era of culture wars and scathing blogs.

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." (Eph 4:13) When we look to Jesus we see an unwavering commitment to both truth and love: "For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." (John 18:37) "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.  (John 15:13)" As I try to follow Christ I find it difficult to pursue both truth and relationship as courageously and tenderly as Jesus does. In my life Truth triumphs over relationship too much, I’m afraid, and my relationships have suffered as a result.  I am asking Jesus to change that.

God has been teaching me much about cognitive humility and speaking the truth in love on our radio show, The Things That Matter Most. The deeper I go with evolutionists, intelligent design theorists, confident atheists, best-selling skeptics, people of prayer, ex-prisoners, screenwriters, psychologists and archeologists, the more I discover…there is so much that I don’t know. And others do. People and ideas are vastly more complex than can be sound bitten in a news show or a stump speech. Those whom I used to dismiss with an attitude because I didn’t see how they could believe such nonsense I now understand much better. I see compelling reasons and evidence I knew not. (When I consider the reasoning and the high regard for relationships that drive some emergents I’m convicted about my own regard for relationships.)

And yet, as I read and talk to others who disagree with my belief in God or the privileged stature of the Bible, my convictions have been strengthened. God’s Word is established in the heavens, most perfectly revealed in his Son, whom we come to know through his written Word. Above all the abandoned ideas of modernism and the doubts of postmodernism stands the giant figure of Jesus—more than the Answer to Our Questions…the Answerer, the living person whose real presence we need. He is the Logos, the Word, and his written Word withstands the most withering critiques. It transcends our Christ-following communities and provides truth to which our communities can be held accountable. If the Bible is not privileged how do we hold our communities accountable?

Yet God has been showing me that we must be respectful in our appeal to truth. I’ve learned that it is hard to have an attitude towards someone I disagree with if I really get to know them. I really enjoy the Muslims, the New York liberals, the self-deprecating atheists like Bart Ehrman and Victor Stenger. More than once as they have talked and laughed with us they have commented that they have really learned something in our conversation. So have we. 

I have people at churches who come up to me and say things like, I don’t know how you can be so nice to these people." And I think, we Christians can have such a small view of what it means love people and answer their questions, per St. Peter’s firm admonition, with "gentleness and respect." I also empathize with them because I began our show with much less patience and appreciation for people who disagreed with me. I’m afraid our "us vs. the world" mentality encourages it. But I’m so thankful God is, by his grace, changing my heart. Making me realize, as the emerging church insists, that the church does not exist for herself but for this world of people who doubt and redefine the Bible and condescend from their Harvard pedestals to talk to us. May we have something to say out of lives that live the "truth in love." Maybe that verse means that those times when we are seeking to speak the truth are the times when we need to be most mindful about the love. Truth divides, but love unites.