Believer Beware

I've always had a connection with Doubting Thomas. He's the sceptic among the believers and many of us can identify with that. Many of us hear a statement of belief and our response is "Yes, but...." I think Erik Hanson would understand that.

Eriks grew up in the Evangelical Covenant Church. But by the age of 22 he had developed an uneasy relationship with that group of believers. Other influences had been working on him. So when he found himself as a counselor at a camp designed to bring about a born again experience among teenagers, it was a most awkward situation.

Hanon writes,

"From Kierkegaard I knew that Truth is subjectivity, from Nietzsche that Christians were pop Platonists, and from Rene Girard that the New Testament revealed the scapegoat mechanism secretly present in all other myths. I knew Christianity, like life, was something far more complex and messy and hard and weird than you could explain to teens in a week. And I knew that it was condescending and wrong to make teens feel dysfunctional if they did not have a Jesus experience in just the way the CHIC had preordained for them."

Here's to the revolutionaries in the crowd, the protestors in the group, the divergers, those who ask the pointed question. You are walking alongside the One who wrestled hard with the tradition and found himself in the loyal opposition. Jesus loved the tradition but he sure did not see it the way the traditionalists did.


Peter