The Regular Reformed Guys
A friend of mine mentioned a Reformed podcast he listens to so I thought I would give it a listen. It’s a group of lay men podcasting about topics of interest to them mostly as people who have become Reformed while living in a mostly evangelical church world. I found it fascinating.
First impressions?
These guys are nerdy and I mean that in a good way. I recently saw a College Humor piece on “Religious People are Nerds” and despite some of the condescension (I could nerd out on Charles Taylor stuff over this but…) the piece made a very good point.
These are lay people who like to read theology, enjoy insider terminology. It was fun. I’m still not quite sure about all their terms. I’ll have to listen to some more.
These guys are committed. These guys are serious about their faith and being faithful. I think they would probably be really prized by their pastors or perhaps frustrating depending upon the pastor’s agenda. In any case I liked them.
Reformed out of What?
The podcast made me ponder the nature of this Reformed movement that began as a response to medieval Catholicism by modifying the outbreak of Luther and others. Calvin was of course a second generation reformer who synthesized and refined a lot of what the first generation of the movement had created. He also popularized.
How does reforming out of evangelicalism differ from reforming out of Catholicism in the 16th and 17th century? I find it fascinating.
My background is of course out of the Dutch Reformed family of Reformed churches. The background of the Christian Reformed Church is of course a secessionist movement reacting to modernistic influences in the state church of the Netherlands through the Afscheiding and the Doleantie. (Is that nerdy enough for you?)
These guys find themselves in a broader evangelical pond trying to figure out how to live their Reformed convictions. Topics deal with eschatology, dispensationalism, infant or believer baptism, soteriology (“Doctrines of Grace”), etc.
The Gideons
As I was pondering the podcast I saw two older gentlemen trying to figure out how to find me here at the church. I recognized one immediately, a lovely kind man I had met a few weeks ago who is a Gideon looking to recruit a new representative from our congregation. Years ago we had an elderly couple join who were committed Gideons. They were lovely people but passed away a number of years ago. I attended a Pastor’s Appreciation event with them and had the regular experience of feeling a bit of a Dutch Reformed fish in American evangelical waters.
This lovely old couple never managed to recruit a “Christian businessman or professional” to the Gideon cause from our church. The older gentleman who came by today mentioned that their ranks are getting older, and I believe that.
- The culture and style of the Gideons might have felt far more mainstream during the Cold War but elements seem strange today. The fact that Gideons are mostly men, and there is a “women’s auxiliary” will of course raise eyebrows and offend in blue state Sacramento.
- The fact that they must be “business men” or “professionals” was an issue 14 years ago when they tried recruiting here before. Many of our people work for the state and would probably not quite find themselves at home in Gideon culture.
- There was also the fact that to be a Gideon you had to subscribe to a literal “lake of fire” as found in Revelation 20.
Truth be told I’ve got nothing of love in my heart for the Gideons. As I mentioned I dearly loved the Gideons who joined our church years ago. I have an uncle who was a Gideon. I think the Gideons do wonderful work. One could spend their time and money on far worse things than passing out free Bibles and placing them in hotel rooms. No one has to accept a Bible or read it. I wasn’t offended when I traveled to Utah to find the book of Mormon in hotel rooms. These people want the best for others and this is what they consider best. They are in my experience lovely, loving people who want to share what they cherish and they do so in a generous, kind and respectful way.
At the same time the strangeness of their subculture isn’t lost on the high school and college kids who receive a lot of these Bibles. My kids noted that there are two things given out outside of their high school, condoms and Bibles. I thought that an interesting juxtaposition.
To Be Human is to Tribe Up and Nerd Out
I’ve been reading Slate Star Codex lately. The author “Scott Alexander” is an atheist therapist who writes a lot of honest and interesting stuff. A post this week dealt with tribalism. His posts are long but have a lot of interesting content. He tells the story of the Robber’s Cave Experiment in which 22 boys are divided into two groups and not told about each other and how they tribe up. Fascinating stuff.
A lot of this gets also into the work of Jonathan Haidt (another atheist who is an academic in social and evolutionary psychology) who studies how and why we develop moralities. He’s been making noise mostly about the coddling of the American Mind.
There is something deep within us that must both have a tribe within which to live, but also totalize that tribe and connect it to the transcendent. Pluralism is of course the experience of knowing that our transcendent tribal claims are not alone. Lesslie Newbigin differentiated between pluralism as a reality and pluralism as an ideology. Yet Newbigin also pointed out “there is no neutral standpoint, only that point from which I stand.” which I would doctor to “only that point from which I see.”
Newbigin exposes the great parable of pluralism as simply a implicit grab at knowledge hegemony.
In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, so often quoted in the interests of religious ligious agnosticism, the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of the truth. The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmation mation of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind there would be no story. The story is told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth which all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality which relativizes all the claims of the religions and philosophies.
Lesslie Newbigin. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (p. 10). Kindle Edition.
Part of the optimistic advantage of being a Christian is that we believe that while the reality of pluralism exists we believe that the only one who can see the elephant also reigns over history. Humanity, needing and knowing from our tribes that both bind and blind isn’t simply the unfortunate victim of the laws of time and space. Humanity is a cherished child in a real drama owned by the master of the universe.
What this knowledge does is help us in our little projects, whether they be our nerdish theological tribe, or our earnest but aging mission, or our break away tribe that tries to make sense of the narrative far larger than the reach of our control.
One might dismiss this all as wishful thinking yet upon what basis is their pessimism and if their pessimism is true why must they hold it? What escape from calamity does their pessimism afford them beyond the pride of accurately forecasting their doom to a cold universe that will remember it not.
God Bless His Little Tribes
So God bless his little nerdy tribes. History is the study of thousands more. May we enjoy each other as the author of history seems to afford their amazing yet earnest diversity.
Leadingchurch.com 