An Evangelical Social Gospel?. Timothy L. Suttle
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Sam tells the story better than I do, but basically when she got home to an empty house fresh from watching her mother die, the blocks came out of her bucket. Not one-by-one in an orderly fashion, but she unceremoniously dumped the entire bucket on the table.
Here’s the weird thing. The moment Sam dumped her theological bucket on the table she realized that there were tons of other blocks already there. They were not hers. She’d never seen them before. Sam discovered that they belonged to people in her community of faith. When she looked up she realized that these people from her community of faith were actually all seated around this same table, crammed elbow to elbow. The table was packed and pieces were falling on the floor and some of her friends were playing catch with them, some were looking at the blocks with magnifying glasses, some were building pyramids; it was crazy. The table was full of people, and blocks, and conversation, and laughter, and tears, and suffering and healing, and tension and freedom.
Life had this way of forcing Sam to open up. She carried that bucket around for so long and she had it packed so tightly that it really wasn’t doing her any good. About all she could do with it was swing it wildly to keep dangerous people at bay. It was rigid and closed off and when her husband left and her mom died, the bucket was useless dead weight. When she finally dumped it out she learned that the table was full of life because there were other people there, and new blocks and old were bouncing around like popcorn. She realized her old bucket was really just an illusion. These blocks weren’t meant to be carried around in a bucket or wielded as weapons, but for building something beautiful with friends.
I don’t think Sam is closed off anymore. And she no longer views me with suspicion. We don’t agree on the worth of every theological building block on the table, but we sit at the table together. What Sam learned more than any other thing is that she was never meant to have her own bucket in the first place. She didn’t own those blocks, they belong to the people of God. When she closed things off and packed them into a rigid system, they became unable to help her when suffering dragged her into the depths.
Perhaps this is a good metaphor for how theology should happen. It should be like children at play around a table filled with little blocks. Everyone should know that they will never be anything but little children when it comes to theology. The metaphor implies certain freedoms and options for how things can fit together and be organized. We can build all kinds of things. Every child of God around the table contributes. It also implies a certain amount of disorder at all times—after all we’re like children. Sometimes we make a mess. It also implies that if you want your blocks back to take with you at the end of the day, you can forget it. The blocks stay on the table, for theology is a corporate enterprise.
God, the loving parent walks around the table and leans over our shoulders and says “Let’s build this,” or “Let’s build that.” We join in because we know this loving parent always has great ideas. The metaphor implies community, freedom, trust, guidance, and it implies play.
This all sounds really great until we get to our favorite block: freewill, predestination, penal substitutionary atonement, Eucharist, Baptism, liberalism, or conservativism. These blocks mean different things to different people. Some are considered sacred, some profane. What about our most basic building blocks of what it means to be a person, or a Christian? Are those on the table? What about the most basic question “What is the Gospel?” For many seekers of truth this question is in play. Sadly for many people it is not. What about sin? What about salvation? What about the kingdom of God? It is these rudimentary building blocks which are the focus of this book.
Those are difficult questions to ask and they can be a little scary. But I believe there is a beautiful room in the human heart which only opens from the inside. And it will only open up when we give up our need for answers and just commit ourselves to pursuing the questions. I once heard David Burrell say that there is a huge difference between those who need certitude and those who search for truth. Personally, those who need certitude have always made me a little nervous. But I’m constantly attracted to those who have the courage to pursue the questions.
There is something profound about the Jewish tendency to answer questions with more questions. In the Scriptures we often find Jesus conversing with those who were asking the difficult questions of their day. What’s amazing about Jesus is that he seemed to be able to get to the real question behind all of people’s other questions. Perhaps one of the most important questions behind all of these questions could be “Do you need certitude or are you searching for truth and understanding?” It is this question you will need to wrestle with as you read this book.
Too many people live their lives as though they have spiritual bulimia. They sporadically binge on ideas and then spit them back up without ever really properly digesting them. After awhile all of the answers they come up with start to sound the same. I think Jesus wants to invite us to this place where we cease with our own agenda and we stop trying to get Jesus to say what we want him to say. Because he’s really not interested in telling us what we want to hear, he’s interested in telling us what we need to hear. I did not go looking for most of the things I’ve written in this book, they just happened to me gradually as I lived among the people of God. There was a time when many of these things would have been offensive to me. But through the conversation at the table—my childish playing with blocks—I have come to see that understanding comes through tension and tension comes through relationships with others who are different from me. This book emerged out of the questions I’ve been asking with my faith community.
I would like to invite you to come and play with me at the table. Bring your bucket full of blocks and dump it out with mine and some of my friends’ that I’ve brought with me. We’re going to have a conversation about life and what God is doing through the church. God is here, God will guide us. God is pleased when we come together and lay it all on the table. Come and play!
1 Rock and Roll, Shotguns,
and the Art of Car Maintenance
One of my favorite childhood memories has to be sitting in front of my parents’ console stereo listening to records. Forget about iPods and mp3’s piped through terrible sounding headphones. This was a real stereo hi-fi, big enough to lie down and take a nap on. It was long and loud with a smooth, elastic, analog tone. I would sit beside it listening over and over to vinyl LP records (or 8-track tapes), by REO Speedwagon, Journey, Kansas, and believe it or not, John Denver. I’d go to the closet and pull out one of my parent’s tennis rackets and hold it like a Gibson Gold Top guitar, and check myself out in the reflection from the picture window in our living room. Striking my most rebellious rock star pose, I’d windmill like Pete Townshend and sing my heart out, butchering the words to Take It on the Run, Baby, and Carry on My Wayward Son. I would lie in front of that giant stereo and stare at the album jackets for hours. I loved looking at the live shots of the bands. I loved pictures of musicians in the studio with their long hair and funky clothes. I wanted to be in those pictures. I wanted to be in the band.
So I started to play, guitar, piano, harmonica, or anything else I could get my hands on. I found that I actually had some natural ability for it. After graduating from college with no prospects, and no marketable skills, I did the most sensible thing I could think of at the time. I started a band. By 1998, my band Satellite Soul hand landed a record contract and was travelling and playing full time. We inked the deal and walked into Ardent Studios in Memphis completely wet behind the ears, ready to take our shot at the big-time. Before we knew it our first record was released, our first music video was shot, and the first single was breaking into the top five on the charts. We had no idea what was going on. This wasn’t really supposed to happen was it? We were just an indie band playing bars and churches around the Midwest. When it finally sunk in that for some reason God was giving us a platform, we made each other a simple promise: we would make this about something bigger than ourselves and our careers. We wanted it to be about the gospel.
I remember one night later on that same year we were opening for the Newsboys at Universal Studios in Orlando Florida. I was looking out across this sea of people, there had to be eight to ten thousand of them, milling around and talking—just waiting for the show to begin. All of the sudden, the lights went dim and the crowd began to yell that high-pitched