[Editor’s Note: This is the third and final post in a series by Devin Murphy, a theologically conservative Christian who attended the recent Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina. Read his first post, “The Emergent Church and Me: A Disclaimer,” here.]
Conversations You Don’t Forget About — My final* entry on my time at the Wild Goose Festival
Possibly my favorite moment at The Wild Goose Festival began when I got to meet Mark Scandrette. I didn’t know a lot about him other than rumors that I heard on the Homebrewed Christianity podcast about being the best dressed Emergent. Those rumors were true. He had some cool earthtone plaid shorts with a carefully matched color bandana around his neck. He had a pair of glasses on with a thick black frame which may or may not have had lenses, it was dark, so I’m not sure. His face was also partially covered in mud. Doug Pagitt introduced us to him with a grand introduction saying “This guy has a book that just came out with IVP!” So that was an easy starting point. We started off talking about the basics of life like what my job is and if I have kids, all the good stuff. Then we started talking more about theology. I had (and still have) basically no idea of what he believes about doctrinal theology other than as Christians we need to be living a Christian life tangibly and not merely in our heads.
I talked about how excited I was to see Frank Schaeffer at the festival and he went on to tell me that he shared in that excitement. If I am remembering my numbers correctly, he mentioned having read all of Francis Schaeffer’s works by the time he was 14 then later reading through all of Frank’s books too. He told me stories of reading his Bible and getting a knife and holding it to various body parts thinking about removing them from his body. He then said slightly emphatically “Who was taking the Bible more seriously?” He made an excellent point. While he and I both know that the interpretation of such a passage is brutal language about the effects of sin on lives, would the average Christian today actually cut something off if we knew it was meant literally? In the same way we read passages about loving our neighbors which we really do know that it is meant literally but so often we won’t even talk to our neighbors most of the time. This kind of view can easily lead us into legalism. I dare say that some people from both sides of the fence (prominent Calvinists and Emergent voices). This usually happens when a moralistic statement is made without clarifying its roots in the Gospel. Mark was careful to distinguish that what he goes for in his ministry and his new book is not legalism but a call to mental+physical consistency in the Christian life. I say all of this because the rest of our conversation (primarily listening to him talk about his life and orthopraxy).
As I began telling Mark about my life, where I was and where I am now, he made some simple psychological/social observations. There was no talk of my theology being wrong or off, he was merely piecing together from my life story how I got to the place I am now. I grew up as a kid who just had fun playing basketball and skateboarding. I never really had pressure to get smart and make good grades. My family was pretty all over the place in how they lived their lives and I’ve basically become the exact opposite of them and how I was. Mark had a great way of communicating this to me and my 2 friends there with me by nudging my shoulder and turning to them saying “looks like somebody needed a little bit of structure eh?” alluding to my strict theological stance that I now hold.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things (out of a ton of interesting things) that he said was this: “You know, I don’t see a difference between young neo-calvinists and young emergents.” He said from his interactions with both that they live basically the same lifestyles. I take it that most of these interactions are from the Mark Driscoll-style Calvinism as opposed to the RC Sproul-style. I have to agree with him in that Emergents I know and Driscoll-style Calvinists mostly look the same. Indie rock, tobacco, struggling with sex before marriage and so on. Now, he wasn’t saying this as a hit on either side, he was more-so leading into the next interesting thing he brought up: “What people believe about God doesn’t effect the way they live.” He said this based on the example of the Emergent/Neo-Calvinist similarities. I found it especially interesting because it was actually something I’d never thought deep about or questioned. That quote by Tozer was drilled into my head by most of the preaching and reading I’d been through.
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
While I still believe that in one sense, it seems that our young American Christian spirituality affirms that the shift from modernity to post-modernity has taken its toll on faith happening in our daily walk. The rise of global knowledge gets us stuck on studying and looking/sounding spiritual when we really aren’t putting a dent on world hunger or ministering to the needs of disease-ridden countries. Let’s think about it, how many people profess to be Christians in the world? How many people are actually out there doing missions? Whether they be on another continent or even here in the United States? I think it’s pretty easy to see the contrast. During the time of the Puritans there was a huge emphasis on communal ordeals. Basically because they didn’t just have a huge store they could go buy food from, they had to round up their own. They could really see themselves living a life that was more consistent with their faith as opposed to us. Our environment no longer fosters community or even healthy communication between neighbors. I may be preaching to the choir about this, but I’d argue that it’s an epidemic that has to be healed before the world around our homes can be.
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