A Student's Perspective on Emergent Thinking

The blog below is written by one of my student's who has been thinking on the challenge that faces us of the Emergent church. I think he gives an interesting perspective.

Jeremy says:

I have read an article on Rob Bell not being affiliated with The Emergent movement, but the article did note some of the issues with his writing. Like I said before, to read his first book will help me understand this big picture issue.

I was thinking today; generally Christians will not think about the potential falsehood of a human writing. They will however generally defend what they agree with. In the emergent books that you've talked about a standard among criticisms deals with postmodernism's relative truth and whatever you call the lack of absolute truth(probably just "relative"?). Perhaps the best counter to this is to build the foundations of absolute truth to all believers before the call to actually argue discrepancies in doctrine in a public setting. It's funny how people will change their mind so quickly when they figure something out themselves as compared to having someone tell them about the facts.

I think that foundations go a long way. Even as developed believers we need to hone our foundations so they don't lose their strength. Emergent pastors bring up a great point. Our culture is post-modern. What can we do about it? Go down to the basement, dig up the old material we learned and taught when we first started our walk on God's perfect path and fill it back in with the only thing that fits. His word.

I was thinking about an analogy when these thoughts of fundamentals and foundations came to mind. The basement that I'm working on with my dad's business. The foundation of this home is old, really old. It's strong enough to support the house, that's for sure, but the problem is that over the years it’s been overlooked and weathered too. Now we're digging it all out and filling it back in with the same stuff that it was built with, mortar. Only its fresh, strong and its going to last another age and probably a few generations before it needs taken care of. When it was first built the joints in between the stones were small and many stones sat in between the larger ones. Now that we've dug the old dusty mortar out most of the small stones have come with them. The new mortar fills the holes of the old joints and fills the holes of the small stones.

In the same way when we are saved we start to take an interest in things eternal and we [usually] start studying God's word. We build up our faith on everything that happens to us during that time. Definite and indefinite. Later in life when we re-examine ourselves or question whether or not what we believe is sound, or structurally sound. We start to take a huge interest in our foundation. It's natural to set the things that we found were dubious and false aside and mentally block their existence. As if we would be wrong to have found the complete truth. In the end we have a stronger man of God and a more sound faith.

Foundations are always important. Whether they are idlely supporting us or actively being built or repaired. The point is, we must examine the stone walls of our current self.