Joe's Bookshelf #2

It's been a while since my last entry of this sort and it is high time for another one, since I've got a backlog of probably a dozen books to post about. Anyway Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) is one of the best non-fiction books I've read in a long time. The authors, Ted Kluck and Kevin DeYoung, provide a helpful critique of the dangers and problems of the Emergent/emerging church movement. The movement is hard to classify and engage with because, when pressed, so many of its adherents want to argue with you about terms (emerging or Emergent? "movement" or "conversation" and so, irritatingly on...) or absolve themselves of any connection to anybody that is part of the movement when it suits them apologetically ("Well, I like Brian McLaren, but I don't agree with him about everything."). What makes the book so appealing is that it engages with those in the "emerging conversation" on their own terms and is written, in many ways, like a book by Donald Miller or Brian McLaren, but minus the theological fluffiness and unwillingness to make the hard choices that must be made to remain authentically Christian.

Kluck's chapters are usually written in the sort of highly conversational "story" type way that should be right up the average "emerging" Christian's alley, while DeYoung (Kluck's pastor) writes with a more studied, theological emphasis. Both contribute to a meaty critique of the major issues raised by the emergence of the emerging church. Among their criticisms are:

• Many in the emerging "conversation" seem to feel that dialogue is an end, not a means, thus they are content to engage in it for its own sake. In this way, they are like the Athenians on the Areopagus, "who spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas" or those the NT describes elsewhere as "ever learning, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth."
  
• Often the emergent cultivate ambiguity on issues about which God has spoken clearly, such as homosexuality and the authority of the Scriptures over a believer's life. Truth has become "truth" for far too many emergents. Truth can be more than propositional, but it is never less than propositional. Indeed, it cannot be.
• The emerging desire to draw a distinction between Jesus and Christianity, or even between Jesus and the apostle or between Jesus and the OT. It's a failure to realize that without the OT, there is no Jesus worth mentioning. Without the apostles, nothing is known about Jesus or his teaching. Without Jesus, there is no Christianity. While the emergents may not like every aspect of who Jesus really was or about the "movement" he founded, that's more a problem with them than with Jesus. There simply is no Jesus worth mentioning sans doctrinal formulations, propositional truth, rationality, and Truth. After all, Jesus got crucified for stating in propositional, hard categories some truths the Jewish religious leaders disliked. Jesus didn't start conversations for the sake of conversations, but to help people find Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, apart from belief in Whom there is no salvation.
• The emergents' tendency to focus on the way something is said rather than the truth of what is said. That is, when you talk to emerging Christians, often they will say "Well, so and so is just so nasty in how he says things" as if 1) that constitutes a refutation of what was said; and 2) harsh criticism doesn't count.
  

This is a great book, and at risk of sounding like I'm gushing over it, I really do think every Christian between age 16 and 40 should buy a copy and read it multiple times as it will help your brain deflect a lot of the mushy headed substitute for thinking that seems to be in the air within Christendom these days.