Guest Blogger #2

Hey all. My friend Jacques is writing this week. He is a good mate of mine from Seminary days. I’ve always really respected his persistent search for truth. He also comments regularly on this blog, so those of you who have been following for a while will have read some of his stuff already. Jacques, his wife Nicki, and their two little boys are currently living in Korea teaching English. Please leave some comments as I’m sure Jacques will get back to you. If you want to get in touch with him personally let me know and I will hook you up with an email address. Here he is:

Holding On – Letting Go

I recently did a little online quiz to help me determine where I place in the grand scheme of religion (I know! let’s leave it up to internet quizzes to determine the most important issue ever). This may seem a little weird to most of you but the truth is that I haven’t been whole-heartedly committed to any single Christian body for most of the 10 years that I’ve been a committed follower of Jesus. This hasn’t been out of lack of desire to join a Christian community but rather due to an inability to decide exactly what I believe about Christianity.

My top-ten results were as follows:

1.    Orthodox Quaker (100%)
2.    Seventh Day Adventist (97%)
3.    Eastern Orthodox (96%)
4.    Roman Catholic (96%)
5.    Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (90%)
6.    Hinduism (86%)
7.    Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (81%)
8.    Liberal Quakers (63%)
9.    Sikhism (57%)
10.   Unitarian Universalism (55%)

Now what I find interesting is that I didn’t even know what a Quaker was until after I took the test and while I’ve always considered myself to be basically mainline protestant before anything else the test didn’t think so.

I’ve come to the conclusion recently that being part of a specific Christian body is about what you hold onto and what you are willing to let go of. All of the groups in that list hold onto certain beliefs about God, religion and spiritual practice and let go of others.

The Quakers are willing to let go of almost everything except the light of Jesus within them (which at times I’m also willing to do), which is why I rate so high on the Quaker scale. In this regard I think Quakers have a lot in common with Emergent Christians like Brian McLaren and is probably why I usually enjoy emergent church content and conversation.

The Adventists are basically Evangelical Protestants who feel we shouldn’t have let go of quite so much of our Jewish heritage (things like the Sabbath, 10 commandments and kosher laws) something I’ve also seriously wrestled with over the years. I’ve explored the Sacred Name Movement and Messianic Christianity and can fully get where these people are coming from (and back it up with scripture too). In the final analysis though I think their focus on externals led me to let go of their interpretations.

The Orthodox and Catholics are the historical Church, now you either believe these two bodies corrupted early Christianity or you believe they are the direct outcome of early Christianity. What you hold onto in that regard will either make you a part of one of them or a Protestant. As a supposed Protestant I find it extremely difficult to actually answer that question. At heart I’m a mystic and these two bodies are the fountain-head of Christian mysticism. Protestants generally rejected the mysticism of the early church, but mystical Christianity is a major part of Catholicism and the live-blood of Orthodoxy. While I still struggle significantly with certain Roman Catholic ideas about Mary, the Pope and Purgatory, I don’t struggle at all with Orthodox theology and actually prefer it over most Protestant interpretations. My biggest struggle with Orthodoxy is over liturgical practice rather than Theology. This leaves me asking whether it is the Orthodox understanding of Christianity that God is asking me to hold onto.

Apparently I’m only slightly more Protestant than I am Hindu and therefore I don’t think it is really fair to continue to hold onto that label in reference to my beliefs. I’m pretty sure it’s only their rejection of Christ as God that placed them 4% lower on the scale. Not a very significant difference in degrees given the hugely significant implications of holding onto that belief – One that I’m not willing to let go of!

I think in the end my biggest struggle is between the weight of the historical tradition and my postmodern relativity. I mean either I’m a Quaker (or an emergent) who believes that just about everything goes as long as I’m following the internal guide of Christ/The Holy Spirit or I’m an Orthodox Christian with a massive amount of established church tradition, dogma and praxis. The truth is that these two options are on completely opposite ends of the scale and yet they are both equally attractive and seem reasonable true depending on how I look at it. Whenever I lean too far to either side the distance of the other pole makes me question whether I can let go of it in order to embrace one or the other. What I do know though is that being stuck in the middle simply leaves me drifting rudderless on the open sea and I’m growing really tired of this aimless journey with no destination in sight.

Lord, please show me where you want me to hold on and where you want me to let go and if anyone reading this feels the same way please give us all the grace to find you in the plethora of options called Christianity!

Much Love in the Lord Jesus
Jacques