As my hope of becoming an intellectual slips away I have begun to hope – much more ambitiously – that I could one day become a disciple.
So I don’t know why those who leave comments on this site believe that their comments have to be so fantastically learned. This isnâ??t Pontifications you know. If I can post statements of the blooming obvious on this blog, so can you.
But I have got to show you two comments which seem to hope that intellect yet may serve discipleship.
From Brian Hamilton:
Could it be, I wonder, that the while Christian community is rightfully and graciously ordered, it never be ordered in a way that is structurally final except to reflect the dependence of all on the guiding presence of Christ? The church is ordered and re-ordered in each moment, always participating in Godâ??s work through the lives of all its members, but with the profound knowledge that this as often throws us on back on the lives of our children as it does on our trained theologians and pastors. It is the mark of our humility that there are no â??professionalâ?? or â??expertâ?? disciples, only all of us together pilgrims on a journey. And yet this does not imply a naive and disembodied â??equality,â?? or else it would also imply a rejection a rejection that the Spirit gives gifts of authority to all its members. And so it does not imply the rejection of a regular order that the church must rely on for regular guidance and strength. It only refuses to institutionalize and absolutize a particular order that God may at any moment interrupt, since all Godâ??s people are charged with the task of leading the faithful through in those moments for which they have been prepared. And this cannot be only an abstract point, since it is also an ecclesiological one about the multiplicity of the gifts of the Spirit.
Iâ??m not sure if this way of putting it quite works; Iâ??m aware of the tension in the trajectories Iâ??m trying to hold together. That may well be, however, a good picture of the (Anabaptist-Mennonite) tradition Iâ??m trying to represent, who at the same time rejects the absolute and untouchable ordering of a church that is fundamentally hierarchical, and still wants to speak in deep appreciation of the necessity of shepherds for guiding the church through the world. Or to illustrate the same thing in a different way: mine is a tradition that has at once maintained that all Godâ??s faithful are saints in the truest sense of the word, yet has insisted on telling stories of the memorably faithful. I find it an incredibly pressing project to articulate an ecclesiology that does not forsake the sort of ordering you are insisting on, but neither absolutizes particular structures of particular people that prohibit structurally the churchâ??s right dependence on, for example, its newly baptized.
And A. Steward says:
I appreciate your comment that,
â??Christianity stands for that order and reason that, by Godâ??s grace, will make us happy to share one anotherâ??s experience without wanting it exclusively for ourselves, and to participate in one another without trying to absorb or replace one another.â??
It might be the case that poor listening skills are predicated by this sort of failure to recognize the uniqueness of other people. We assume that anotherâ??s experience of life fits with our idea of â??timeless truthâ?? as we have experienced it, and so we end up hearing not them, but ourselves. I think your ideas here are particularly relevant to our American racial myth of the â??melting pot.â?? Perhaps Lutherâ??s doctrine of the Word might be helpful for redressing this, particularly where he talks about the need for the Word to be spoken, and this not by our own mouth, but by another, addressed to us. I always liked Bonhoefferâ??s line, â??The Word of God is always stronger in the mouth of our brother.â??
Yes, the Word of God is stronger in the mouth of our brother. Could it be that you are that brother? And all Godâ??s people are charged with the task of leading the faithful through in those moments for which they have been prepared. So speak up and say it plainly. Perhaps some aspect of our education in this faith is in your hands.
