…more on the name: the suture zone

This is going to be a long post. I hope you’ll bear with me on this. If not, just skip this one and wait for the next.

Life used to be very simple for me. It still would be if my parents hadn’t taught me to question.

I grew up in a good family that was part of a church in the American Restoration movement. The conservative wing. A bit too much to explain here if you aren’t familiar with it. But it was… well… modern.

Now that will sound strange to anyone who comes from this movement. Because in many respects the better term among some critical insiders might be “antiquated” or among the “faithful” the highest compliment: “first century”. But in true modern-era terms you might say the Churches of Christ were really hyper-modern… or hyper-rationalistic. One of the pinnacles of a cross between Lockean rationalism and early American frontier Christianity.

And in many ways, I was a child of that movement. I learned all the rational arguments about how we were the “true church” and about how all of our practices were “right”. I learned the greatest tool in our arsenal: reason. And I used it relentlessly in my pursuit of pure New Testament-era practice.

Funny thing about rationalism. It helped me see that not all rationalistic thought was welcome or appreciated in my denomination. I began to see holes in our doctrines and practice. And I am afraid I used my handy tool to put some people (one preacher in particular, as I remember) in a very difficult public position. I have nothing but regret for that now and see it for the expression of pride that it was. But I was heady with my intellectual and theological rebellion and, though my hair remained somewhat short, I was a true child of the 1960s.

I mean no offense to those who come from the same tradition. Truly, none at all. There were and are still many absolutely wonderful people in this movement and my memories of people during my growing-up years are, for the most part, wonderful memories of people bonded together by unusual beliefs… a real extended family. Very close, yet, a very exclusive family.

The university – one associated with our denomination, yet on the edge of it – added challenges to how I thought. I was taught by many of the “cutting edge” professors in Christian thought represented in my denomination, some of whom were not welcome at other denomination-sponsored schools.

And then I began to preach.

I thank God that he put me in a small town in the middle of nowhere. First of all, they were wonderful, loving people. They were gracious and let me slog my way through the swamps of modernity. By his grace, I became one of the town pastors and got to know many people from different Christian denominations. I preached on occasion at the Methodist Church in town. Sang with my wife for the Southern Baptists. Delivered a chapel to a Seventh-Day Adventist academy. (Talk about some nervous teachers and administrators in the back row!) Even participated in a Catholic funeral mass. I found faith in many places I never knew it existed and discovered people of profound faith outside my tradition, much of it stronger and deeper than my own. I came to realize that God was much bigger than I had ever imagined. No reason could ever wrap its arms around a God as big as the one I encountered in that remote and simple place.

That’s when I left my rationalistic tectonic plate and ventured onto the suture zone of the post-modern world. I wouldn’t have known to say it that way back then. But that’s what happened. I stepped off of the surface of my systematic ideas about God and woke up to the fact that he was here, involved in my life, and I couldn’t explain or control him. He just would not fit back into that box I had inherited. And he kept breaking out of every new box I tried to construct. He still does!

You might want to call it an epiphany that God is alive, near and involved in the world around me. Okay. It’s an epiphany. But while there have been times of wonder and praise and mystery and awe, there have equally been times of frustration and doubt and downright fright, too. The ground keeps moving. The landscape keeps changing. As Alan Roxburgh and Brian McLaren said at a recent lecture series in Fresno, Jesus keeps moving. And he expects us to move with him.

If you don’t come at this from the same perspective of Jesus (or with no perspective of Jesus), that’s okay. But can you identify with the wonder and confusion and fear and ecstasy of living in a place where everything keeps changing? Where your explanations of yesterday keep shifting?

Maybe I’m just strange. Let me know either way, okay?

Grace and peace!

Owen