Running Out of Polemic

One reason I've been avoiding this blog is that for the last year or so is that I've been running really low on polemic. I'm still a fairly young man, but I can't seem to summon the vitriol for the oddities and failings of Christ's church these days. I was so much better at it in my late 20's.

When I was leaving seminary, it was obvious to me that the church suffered from an overabundance of theological navel-gazing. Then, in South Carolina, it became just as clear to me that the church needed better teaching, more theology. I became enraged about all manner of far right silliness: theonomy, Westboro Baptist, the South Carolina secessionists.

These days, I'm more mellow, I guess. I'm philosophical about the failings of Christianity in America. It fails because I fail. It's unbalanced, unreasonable, reactionary because I am all of those things in turn, or I enable those things, directly or indirectly. I encourage the liberals. I give the conservatives reason to be nervous. We all do. We're all part of this odd, skittish animal. We cannot judge it from without, and we cannot continually harass it from within.

Part of the reason I named this blog "PunkIsrael" is that, despite never having been an actual cultural punk, I felt like a troublemaker in seminary, the guy who would ask the questions that were off-limits, would refuse to fit the template of a conservative seminarian. I see now, in retrospect, that some of that was my personality and a lot of it was insecurity. I felt out of place among so many godly people, so I pulled in the opposite direction. I criticized the church because I didn't truly believe I belonged there.

I still have plenty of opinions about Christianity and culture, about the eccentricities of the church, and about life in general, but I expect them to be more positive as a rule. I've found my way back to the PCA, and I'm happy in our little church. I'm exploring ordination. And day by day, I'm learning more about what it means to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

You got a problem with that?

Comments

[Jeff]

Still reading and still being encouraged!