As answers were taken and things like 'big part of the Bible' and 'important to early Christian thought' were put down on the board I started to wonder. Too late I realized I needed to raise my hand and before I had a chance to respond the prof moved on to reasons why we thought it wasn't worth studying Paul.
It was in recounting this story that I realized that I am an evangelical....
I want to study the letters of St. Paul because he is a man whose life was changed forever in his relationship to God through Jesus Christ. This is a man who writes in a letter to the early church in Rome:
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8: 38-39
That is why I am here at seminary; because I want to learn more about this transformational love that sustains time and space. I want to find new and fuller ways to engage it myself and bear witness to it in my life. I want to grow in the manifestation of Christ that is at the centre of my being so that I can serve creation and those around me in the way Jesus served his friends.
When I was telling this to my friend I realized all of a sudden that I sound like someone who proclaims that Christ is at the centre of my life and that I am called to a life of witnessing to the Gospel (Greek for "Good News"...that's another class) of the love that holds the universe. I am an evangelical (Greek again) - literally a messenger of Good News.
I want to reclaim the word evangelical. It is a dirty word in so many contexts and for so many good reasons. Those who have identified themselves as evangelical throughout the history of the church have a legacy of trying to decide who is IN and who is OUT of the 'salvation' contest. Stereotypical evangelicals typically subscribe to the notion that there is only one version of truth and they have it. They proclaim the Good News that if you believe what they believe then you too can be invited to the backstage after-party that is heaven. They are associated with the famous 'Four steps to salvation' tracts handed out on street corners and tendency to literal interpretations of scripture.
But all this shadow comes with light. The evangelical tradition has always placed a premium on genuine relationship with God. They hold firm to the idea that there is more to life than meets the eye, that there is a deeper mystery at work in the world.
I would be willing to bet that many of the folks who fall under the evangelical label would disagree with me about what the Good News we are living out actually is. But it seems that an acknowledgment of the mystery at the heart of the universe is imperative in becoming more and more aware of our connection with God.
The other option is apparently what is common here at seminary in Berkeley, California, although it is by no means a rule. An upper middle class rationality and intellectual approach to faith where the more we KNOW will bring us closer to finding what we need.
The point, I think, is that we need to integrate both these things. Spirituality without reflection is dogma and reflection on its own is just mental masturbation.
I am an evangelical. I hold it as fundamental that there is a mystery of light and love that is the Good News found in Jesus Christ. But I am just beginning to live with that reality and I will probably just be beginning for most of my life. Our minds are important but for me it is too easy to get lost in the pleasure of ideas and arguments and counter-arguments and forget that I must spend time living from the place of relationship with the Divine that is at the centre of my being. Others need to go the other way and find the texture and dimension that faith takes on when exposed to reflection and context and interpretation.
The fact that the two poles meet in an authentic middle is satisfying. It speaks, I think, to the contemplative dimension of the Gospel. It is not either/or it is both/and. It is a paradox and we live in it by standing on the threshold, in liminal space, not fully on either side of the coin. It is hard to be in that place but that's where we are transformed.
Sometimes, in another kind of fundamentalism, the kind of papers and books and tests, it seems like the seminary has forgotten about the middle. But that's where I pray I can stay as this journey unfolds. As I sat there in class I couldn't believe that nobody had said that they were there to encounter the mystery of Jesus Christ and hoped Paul could help as someone who certainly seems to have lived that out. But, maybe that was my work that day. Perhaps my hand needs to go up sooner.
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