plurality of truth

Having grown up in the Evangelical church of the 90’s awareness of the doctrine wars sits heavily in my heart. In my own life having made progress from conservative evangelical – complete with a stint at an evangelical college – to liberal protestant – complete with a degree from an progressive, liberal mainline seminary – to ‘progressive emerging’ (if that exists) – complete with stints at my kitchen table reading everything I can get my hands on – I have been imbedded in the conflict for many years.
People of faith – of many traditions and the multitude traditions within traditions – are beginning to realize more and more that narrow ways of viewing the mystery that we are imbedded in to no longer work. We recognize more and more that we are on a journey and that our faith traditions provide vocabulary that enriches and inspires the journey. But when it comes down to it and we are sitting next to our more conservative Christian friend or our Reform Muslim friend – or any combination of perspectives from any number of traditions – that it is our common humanity and a faith in that which calls us to be our best and most w/holy selves that unites us. In this regard conversation on prayer, worship, scripture and doctrine is less about ‘convert to my way’ as it is a conversation of awe at the multitude of ways we have of exploring the mystery that we find our selves in.
Such a view allows us to enter into a concept of truth as plural. As Christians we affirm a God who exists in plurality – a triune model of God –, which allows to contemplate faith in a plurality of viewpoints. Such a model allows us to recognize that all our theology – or ‘God-Speak’ – is nothing more than our conversation of making faith real in our minds, or ‘faith seeing understanding’.
As Christians we engage in community-based worship, and communities by their nature hold a diverse range of views. To be Christian is to be centered in a common narrative and to share a common cup and to explore what it means to be a Child of God together. If in today’s church Liberals and Conservatives cannot feed the poor together and ask our nation for better practices in resolved conflict with out violence then we have already lost the Work of God in our generation.
I want to stay on this point for a bit. I am saying this as a PROGRESSIVE Christian – conversations of biblical inerrancy, women leadership, the welcoming of other peoples paths to God as appropriate and the inclusion of LGBT people in all levels of the life of faith are non-issues for me. And yet I believe that any church that holds only MY VIEWS has entered into a dangerous heresy.
Too often when we begin to believe that we have the right path or way we too often assume that those outside of our perspective have nothing to gift us with. What happens here is that we begin to enter into a deep heresy which consists of the Idol Worship of ideology rather than the God and Spirit that stands in the midst of our conversations, calling us into deeper relationship with humanity, with the earth and with his/her self.
If faith is about journey and relationship then any use of doctrine that removes us from relationship then steps into heresy. Again we refer to the triune model where God him/herself is in a relationship with Gods own self. Here the concept of truth as plurality can draw off of the rabbinical tradition – faith in this tradition is exemplified as a community of rabbis sitting in community debating the meaning of Torah out of a mutual love of Torah.
Can we Christians not adopt a similar perspective? Can faith not be a ‘rabbinical’ action of those of us who love faith, scripture, Jesus and God engaged in dialogue and debate of what it means to love these things and do it out of love?