Emerging Caricatures of Orthodox Christianity

Above all caricatures emergings make concerning the church it's the one that says, "You're not allowed to ask questions there," that really makes me think of the person who says this as a liar. I've attended more churches that I can remember, and every single one of them is nothing but discussing question after question. There is no end to asking questions and discussing issues. So it's an absolute lie to phrase it this way.

Instead, what they really mean is that these orthodox churches don't allow them to pursue and espouse heresy and false teaching as the answer to those questions. Well, duh, of course not. If I were a doctor, we can discuss medicine all you want, but I'm not going to say that your eating dirt as a solution to cancer is valid. Sorry. Likewise, churches shouldn't just make you think every solution is valid, even when it goes against God's Word and the orthodoxy into which He has led His people throughout the years.

And that's just it. Emergings want to be validated, regardless of what they believe. That's what they mean by "being able to ask questions." It really means that they want to believe whatever they want to believe, and they want the church to shun its role in dealing with things that the church has been set in place by Christ to deal with. They want the church to give up on the certainty of truth, so that they can believe heresy and take part anyway. They want a church that validates subjective experience over external authorities, such as the Bible and the Church. In essence, they want a Christianity that conforms to postmodernity rather than a postmodernity that conforms to Christianity. They want to play the serpent's role and be forever skeptics, saying to all things they don't like, "Did God really say . . ."

There is a time for questions (our asking) and a time for answers (we should be asking God through His Word and Church that can give us answers). The pomo church just wants to live in questions because a world of no answers means a world to believe and do as you see fit. It is a world of no lords but the Self, and as such, it is the opposite of orthodox Christianity. So, of course, those forever damned to questions without answers will never find solace in the historic, orthodox Christian Church of God, because love answers, rather than ignores, its children. But this doesn't mean one can't ask questions. This is just a way to present the Church as unthinking and close-minded when, in fact, I've been in emerging circles where you can't bring up numerous questions of what they're doing without being berated with insult and disdain. I think this is a case of liberals who like the idea of tolerance, but don't see that they're the greatest offenders in not giving it. In other words, it's simply the pot calling the kettle black.

But the lovers of Self, who want to preserve the Self by muddying the waters with questions seeking no answers, or what are really dogmatic assertions of heresy in the form of questions, simply want their own religion, not the one provided to them by God through Christ and His apostles. Well, so be it; but why attempt to take over Christianity? Is it because Christianity has the greatest explanatory power and they want to be seen as intellectuals? Is it because Christianity is seen as the greatest threat to pluralism and they want to take it down from the inside out? Or have they been deceived into thinking theirs is the more enlightened way and all of God's people in the past have been mistaken? Whatever the case may be, the continual asking of questions and being skeptical that one can come to a certain position of truth allows one to fall back on the Self and one's own experience (i.e., their journey) to discover truth apart from an external authority, such as Scripture or the Church, to tell them what is true. If that's true, why even go to church to discuss ideas at all? The asking of questions in every church I have been in exists because people are seeking answers to those questions. As Luther once said to Erasmus, "How shall I know what to do if I do not know what to believe?" That's a paraphrase of course. But the idea of a question is that one is seeking an answer, and that's what all real believers do, because God is truth and they seek to love and worship the true God rightly. They want to love one another rightly. They believe that if they ask God for the Spirit of Truth that He will give Him to them, as a child who asks his father for a fish knows he will not receive a snake instead. Any other kind of questioning is but the hymn to the preservation of the Self, not a song of love for God and others.

Hence, there are people described in our midst as those who are interested in spirituality, have an appearance of godliness, but deny the power thereof (1 Tim 3:5). They are self-seekers, not God-seekers. They want to explore what they think, not what God has said. And as such they are described as those who are "always learning, but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth" (v. 7). As Paul says, "Avoid such men as these" (v. 5)