I’m not the clearest communicator. I know this. But I may have taken confusion to new heights last week when I wrote Our Jesus.
The comments to that post (and a couple blog posts others wrote in response) have bothered me over the weekend, making me feel like I’ve failed you. Some people think I’m a relativist who doesn’t believe there are any absolutes. Others think I’m a universalist of some sort, encouraging people to believe whatever they want about Jesus as if what’s actually true doesn’t matter. So, as annoyed as some of you may be with my revisiting this topic, I think I owe it to others of you who are concerned about me and have been brought to what one reader called a “point of despair.” So here’s another stab at it.
Stephen posted a great quote from N.T. Wright in the comments that sums up well much of what I’m trying (unsuccessfully) to say:
“The one thing I want to add to that is humility. And humility includes intellectual humility. And it’s difficult, because within our rationalistic western world, people assume that if you say that, you’re a relativist. I’m certainly not a relativist. Jesus is the Lord, and I worship Him, and He is the center of my life. And that’s non-negotiable, actually. I know I could no more step outside that than I could step outside my own skin. But precisely because it is Jesus who is the Lord, it behooves me to say, as I used to say to my students when I was teaching in the university, “Listen, a third of what I’m telling you is badly flawed in some way. But I don’t know which one third it is.” So you need to live with those questions and puzzles.”
If that doesn’t clear things up maybe this will.
When I read the words of Jesus I make a decision about what he meant and how I should think and live in light of what he meant. We all do this whether we’re conscious of it or not.
Those decisions are not made in a vacuum. My politics, upbringing, church tradition, books I’ve read, people I’ve met, race, concerns about my comfort and prosperity and reputation, age, the trajectory of my current plans – all of these things and thousands more factor into those decisions.
For many years I made decisions – without realizing it – that resulted in a Jesus that rarely made me more than mildly uncomfortable. Jesus didn’t say anything that offended me, endangered me, or wouldn’t support every point of the Republican party platform. I interpreted Jesus through the filters of my preferences and experiences and came up with a Jesus very much like my parents.
My parents are fantastic people, by the way, but they aren’t Jesus.
I now try to simply be aware of the filters and biases I bring to interpretation (and the filters and biases of the “experts”) while realizing I can never fully rid myself of them. They are the dark glass blurring our vision for now.
The constant possibility that my understanding of God is biased and incorrect doesn’t make me a relativist though. Nor does it cause me to abandon scripture and interpretation altogether. It does three things for me instead that I’m thankful for: 1) It makes me – a naturally arrogant guy – more humble. I’m constantly reminded of what I do not know. 2) This makes me much more focussed on the core stuff of Christianity I am most certain of, the things most of us Christians believe in common: I am a sinner, Jesus was not, He was divine and human, He died for me because He loves me, He wants me to partner with him now to meet the spiritual and physical needs of people, and nothing I can do or not do can change how much He values me. 3) This increased humility and focus gives me less to fight with you about. Holy wars and church splits both often come, I believe, from being arrogantly certain about things that are not at the center of our faith.
Uncertainty then, for me, is a gift that enhances my faith in Jesus by obliterating my faith in my own intellect and that of the experts.
Lindsay @ Not2Us says:
“Holy wars and church splits both often come, I believe, from being arrogantly certain about things that are not at the center of our faith.”
Oh, amen! A hundred times, AMEN!
(And I understood what you were trying to say originally. I’m sorry that confusion (Satan) found its way into your readership. Living under a microscope can’t be very easy. I’m praying for you!)
Laura @ Texas in Africa says:
So uncertainty is just another way of talking about humility?
Shaun Groves says:
Uncertainty is, for me, a source of humility.
Stephen @ Rebelling Against Indifference says:
For the record, here’s the source of that N.T. Wright quote, a great panel discussion between Wright and author Anne Rice: http://www.gracecathedral.org/forum/for_20060514.shtml
Chris says:
Not bad for an unclear communicator. Great post. Well said.
Emily says:
Shaun, thank you for sharing this. I really liked that you touched upon how you came up with a Jesus very much like your parents. When I was growing up, I saw Jesus through my parents…I think many children of Christian parents do. But when they both had affairs, my vision of Jesus was clearly shattered. Though I’ve just completed college and will soon be going to graduate school, I am still re-learning who Jesus is. I had always pictured him as a mean Father who would be endlessly disappointed in me because I couldn’t be perfect. After all, I felt that way with my own dad because of the legalism that bound my parents. Now I know the truth, which has set me free from a lot of fear and resentment, but I didn’t know the truth until I learned for myself about Jesus through my experiences and saw for myself that my faith – even though I believe in the one true God – will look different from my friends, family, etc, because it’s about my relationship with God and not theirs. Anyway, thanks again for sharing I have been learning a lot this week and this seems to go right along with it.
Grovesfan says:
Thanks Shaun. For being concerned enough about the struggle of others to do your best to explain yourself. Thanks too for doing what you do and being passionate about what God continues to do in your life. I’m grateful that He has given me the gift of your friendship, your wisdom, and your willingness to teach.
sillydoodah says:
Kudos to you – for both posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your process.
dub says:
Didn’t someone once say that true wisdom was that in knowing that you know nothing?
I think that would apply here.
JZ says:
Great points made by everybody. One thing that we often forget though, is that Jesus was and is love. Love for those who love you and love for those who hate you. Pure and simple. Not even hard to communicate, but all to often easy to overlook.
Veretax says:
Actually, Shaun, I didn’t understand the post at all and though you were perhaps just telling an anecdote to make a point that somehow escaped me on that post.
As a person that loves to debate in online media, I know what its like to say something and then find out later that what you thought would be clear, concise language gets interpreted six ways past sunday.
So no worries here.
Suzanne says:
I have been misunderstood in the past. Usually from my own thoughtlessness. Never the intention to hurt anyone, just being honest. Once I became a believer, I was hurting people all over the place, because now I was narrow-minded and a Jesus Freak!
I am seeing a theme in my life though, through Him we care more, we are more humble, we are more patient. We try not to let our surroundings, upbringing, etc. influence our actions. The Bible is clear, that others will hate us as they hated Him. This is the narrow path, this is the walk. I also believe the Lord is clear with His intentions (through His Word), it is us, mere humans, that twist it around and make black and white, grey.
Brad says:
well said. we’re all clueless, yet saved by grace.
Matt says:
Perhaps this is a good reason to avoid teaching/accepting systematic theology. If God planned on us knowing him systematically, wouldn’t the Bible look more like a textbook?
God wrote a story, and its in this story (and perhaps even in our own story) that we begin to understand him.
Loren says:
interesting…I remember taking systematic theology in college. HUGE book, 18 year olds and a professor espousing on why our doctrine was right (at least that is what I remember). It didn’t lend to open discussion on theories of atonement for example, but cemented them more as facts of atonement.
I’m still glad I took the class, although I do wish NT Wright taught it.
Amy @ My Friend Amy says:
As the one who said it took me down the path of despair, I feel I should apologize. You were right to say I was being dramatic, I am very dramatic, but it was a little true. I only mean that I am so completely uncertain so much of the time that sometimes I long for a little certainty. Sometimes I just want to look at what can bring us together rather than what keeps us separate. (I’m not saying you were focusing on that and I think you actually were trying to bring us together by helping us understand that no one’s got it all right)
Thanks for your grace, Shaun.
Shaun Groves says:
No need to apologize, Amy. I completely understand. I wonder if our shared longing for certainty is a longing God places in us for Him, for the day this glass we look through will be broken forever.
Bill Whitt says:
Again, great thoughts! And well said.
1 Cor. 13:11: “Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.”
It’s a fact that we’ll never get it exactly right here on earth. But I hope that fact will not extinguish in us a constant desire to learn more about Jesus everyday and to pursue a deeper and truer picture of Jesus each day than we had the day before. Maybe that journey is exactly what this post is about!
BYW, as great as unity is, I still think some things are worth the argument. Could Jesus be one of them??? (Think about other cults or religions who believe in “Jesus” … but not the same Jesus of the Scriptures at all.)
Stretch Mark Mama says:
I understood the first post completely, if that helps any.
I’ve spent the last 5++ years throwing out my old definition of “Christianity” and trying to write a new one. My old one was filled with pages and pages of certainties and the new one? Has not gotten any further than this:
Love God. Love others.
That’s all I got.
I’m old enough now (mid-thirties) to feel comfortable with all my questions, though. I just don’t lead a small group. I would be tarred and feathered.
David says:
What so many others are struggling to understand here (and misunderstanding your writings as a consequence) is a timeless truth that I’m glad to have grabbed hold of several years ago: The more you know about God, the more you know you don’t know.
The brightest, most educated, and most spiritually mature pastors and Christian leaders I’ve interacted with have corroborated this fact for me.
It’s sort of like realizing that the Earth isn’t flat, then once you circumnavigate the Earth to verify this fact, you discover in the process that the Earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa. So upon setting out to explore the solar system, you discover that the galaxy is staggeringly more vast than the extent of the comparatively tiny solar system. You have now learned more indisputable truths about the world around you, but you have also learned that the world you thought you knew is only the tip of the iceberg.
This is how my experience of being a Christian works, anyway. It doesn’t mean I can choose to selectively ignore truths I’ve already learned. But it constantly reveals that God is more vast and complex than I previously gave Him credit for. It reminds me that the bits of knowledge that I have managed to attain over the years are trifling fractions of molecules of crumbs of the full knowledge of God’s truth.