A couple of weeks ago, I offered some reflections on the furor at the Candler School Of Theology and the Distinguished Alumni Award it gave to Eddie Fox.  Called "The Intolerance Of The Tolerant" you can read the post here.

And tucked away in the online brouhaha over that award & the opposition it generated, I came across an intriguing essay by Matt Berryman, a Candler alum and executive director of the Reconciling Ministries Network.

These are the words from the essay that will not let me go:

I am so grateful for the Candler School of Theology.  I will never be able to repay this school for teaching me to acknowledge and celebrate ambiguity in human life and therefore in Christian theology.  

So: the essential legacy that seminary bequeathed to Rev. Berryman is . . . theological ambiguity.  The notion that words and phrases always have multiple meanings, truth is rarely universal, and people are inevitably a mix of the heroic and the cowardly.

Now:  I am a great fan of ambiguity in the arts.  It's why Bruce Springsteen is rock's best lyricist.  It's why I did an undergraduate thesis on the fiction of Flannery O'Connor.  And it's why movies with rounded characters are always more interesting than those with caricatures (or, more simply, why Sophie's Choice is better than Rocky V.)

And Scripture itself contains ambiguity.  The book of Proverbs speaks a very different message than Ecclesiastes.  St. Peter is the most interesting character in Scripture precisely he is so admirable and so despicable (check Mark 8:27-34!).

However, I believe it's one thing to celebrate and acknowledge artistic and Scriptural ambiguity and it's an entirely different matter altogether to regard it as the hallmark of theological education.  Such an approach leads to indecision, uncertainty, and hesitation in Gospel proclamation.

I suggest that in the middle of the ambiguity that surrounds us, we are confronted with the assurance  and the boldness of the Gospel itself.

Imagine how different the New Testament would be if its writers were steeped in a tradition that celebrated ambiguity at the expense of confidence.

Jesus' first words in Mark become:  "The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news.  Unless it's all a mirage."

Paul's thesis statement for Romans becomes:  "For I am not sure of the gospel . . . "

Even Jesus' summary in John 14:6 changes:  "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" becomes "I Am A Way, Some Truth, the Hope of Life."
  
Acts 4:31 undergoes the saddest change of them all:  "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God . . . hesitantly."  

Thankfully, the concluding word of Acts 4:31 is not "hesitantly," but "boldly."

I'd say that's because Peter, James, John, and the others -- in spite of their internal ambiguities -- knew they were carriers of a message with universal import and eternal significance.

Whatever seminary they attended, sign me up.

In the last several days, I have seen, heard, read, and experienced some things that have caused me to do a double take.

As in:  "did I really just see that, hear that, read that, or experience that?"  So I look again.

These double takes involve moments from all different areas of life. 

Perhaps you saw them as well . . . and then, just to make sure what you saw was real, you looked again.

Here they are:  my Top Five Double Takes.

1.  David Ortiz's first pitch grand slam home run off the Tigers to tie up Game 2 of the ALCS.  With one crack of the bat, the Red Sox might just have gone from no chance to can't miss.


2.  A new-to-me duet from Dwight Yoakam and Michelle Branch called "The Long Goodbye." I heard it while watching Imus In The Morning.  One of those rare songs I liked a lot at first hearing.


3.  Isaiah 40:26 -- 

Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these stars,
the One who leads forth their host by number, he calls them all by name;
Because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power, not one of them is missing.

4.  How good looking the Buick LaCrosse has become.  A  Buick?  Really?!  Really.  Even so, I'm still not convinced Shaq drives one.


5.  One of the highest profile members of the Reconciling Ministries Network inadvertently mimicking my own argument regarding the bible and homosexual intercourse.  In an online journal about the recent "ChurchQuake" Conference hosted by the RMN, Pastor Becca Girrell expressed her discomfort with a seminar on polyamory -- multiple, concurrent sex partners -- with these words:

I got distracted looking at Twitter, where people were posting from the “queer sexual ethics” workshop. Some tweets intrigued me, some made me uncomfortable, and some were things with which I strongly disagreed, the latter two often about poly. I’m kind of all about monogamy, and I know that my approach to polyamory sounds just like the approach to homosexuality I fight against: “It’s just not what I think marriage/relationships/etc are.”

That line of reasoning is exactly the question I brought up for my colleagues on the theological left in this post called "Help Me Understand." 
 

My cyber-friend John Meunier, a UM pastor serving in Indiana, offered these historical insights recently:

  

‘Worship him by grunts and groans’

Virginia deist John Symmes was typical of many of the leading men of the American founding. Author Adam Jortner in his excellent book The Gods of Prophetstown recounts a letter from Symmes to his daughter Anna that captures the deist mood.

It was this grunting and groaning and fainting away that earned Wesley so many skeptics, too.
We certainly have changed a lot since then. These days, most of us United Methodists would probably side with the deist Symmes in casting aspersions on the worship of the grunting and groaning Methodists.


I suspect that Meunier is correct -- the majority of Methodists today would view any worship that involved "groaning" as primitive at best; delusional at worst.

Which is why I appreciate those Methodists who view such phenomenon through the lens of Romans 8:26-27:

 ²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.


Holy Spirit manifestation or Deist skepticism?

I know which one I'm choosing.