joe burnham reacts

joe burnham reacts

Joe Burnham  //  Believing the Gospel is real, I seek to look at the world from unique angles, see what could be instead of what is, and live in the tension between who I am and who I will someday be.

 
Jan 19 / 9:30am

Am I Losing My Religion?

Late last month, I quietly launched a new blog called Restorying Life. Last week, I began to share that it was online and one of the posts sparked some interesting questions about where I'm at faith-wise these days (I'm sure some recent Facebook posts have done the same).

As a bit of setup, I've been writing a series of posts that reflect on my personal journey from a year ago at this time.

In the post "Cleaning Up the Ashes" I talk about three questions I had entering 2011:

  1. What does a healthy life look like? How about healthy relationships with others?
  2. How far away was I from health?
  3. Where can I find the resources that will help me move towards health?

Since I'm not the only one who has these questions, I decided to share what I discovered so others could do with it as they will.

Now, in the post that sparked questions about my faith, I share a bit about past solutions that have failed me:

Where_do_you_find_answers

In other words, in the past, I'd experienced what this cartoon from Naked Pastor depicts:

Problem-solution

From there I go on to talk about my new plan, which required people to listen to my story first and then connect their solution with my struggle. What does this have to say about my faith? Quite a bit:

  • Last year, I decided that I'm done with pat answers from people who are quick to speak and slow to listen.
  • Last year, I decided that I'm tired of ripping verses of Scripture from their original context and using them to beat myself (and others) up.
  • Last year, I decided that I'm sick of settling for barely surviving and living day in and day out in a hellish emotional and relational apathetic void.
  • Last year, I decided that I want, to the fullest extent possible on this side of eternity, to experience what the Hebrew Bible describes as shalom and what the New Testament links to the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Now, concerning the quest to get there, well, I've drawn on a number of sources:

  • Scripture (heavily rooted in its historical context, grammatical interconnectedness, and overarching metanarrative)
  • systematic theology
  • psychology
  • anthropology
  • sociology
  • just about any other -ology that will aid in the journey

Of course, all those -ologies fuel the idea that I'm losing my religion, so let me offer a bit of a framework for how I'm using them. First, two words: magisterial and ministerial.

Magisterial: This would be your ultimate authority.

Ministerial: This is anything that serves your ultimate authority.

The Bible is what's magisterial in this journey I've taken, and all the other -ologies are ministerial. They're what Lutheran folk dub as 1st article gifts, that is, they are linked to the created order ... mostly the reason that God has granted us.

Have I been talking about the ministerial stuff a bunch? Sure. Why? Because it's the means to an end and I've been talking about a journey I've taken from where I was (emotional and relational dysfunction) to where I am (something that, more and more, looks like the Biblical idea of shalom).

So, am I losing my religion? Not at all. My religion has just been reshaped around the pursuity of shalom / Kingdom. Now, the real question might be, "Am I losing my Lutheran?" I'll flesh that out a bit more tomorrow.