Whole Food Theology II

I suppose that I could actually title this, "If you are a Christian you are this..." It was that sort of Facebook dialogue that is the catalyst for this.

My daughter says I should just clean up my friends list to avoid being embroiled in controversies. But some people are still friends though I haven't seen them for years and our opinions have diverged. Anyhow someone in my friend list was rah-rah-ing Ted Cruz for walking off the stage at a persecuted Christians gala because he was committed to supporting Israel and they saw Israel as part of the problem. I read the referenced article as well as a few others covering the event and suggested that there was more than one way to spin his exit. Well, some people, not the original poster, although she didn't like it either, were retorting with "You better be on Israel's side if you are on God's side!" style stuff at the merest suggestion that there was any other way to read the event.

There was a bit more back and forth and one of my rebuttals is the basis of this post. So, with the hubris required for me to actually quote myself:

[It's a question of ] "if you are Christian, you are this," [or] "if you are a Christian you diligently do your best to think all these issues through...

I'm thinking we have all encountered a lot of "if you are a Christian, you are this.." The aforementioned group that believes that the modern state of Israel (and it is a modern state in every way and not the restoration of the Davidic Monarchy) is the successor to the Israel and Judah of Bible times. The people who believe the opposite. The people who view the Atonement through a Neo-Calvinistic lens. The people who find that abhorrent. I've had all sorts of assumptions thrown at me about what bandwagons I had better be on from all of them. Okay, not directly, but in the writings, articles, blogposts. But you might have heard me say this before. What about not being sure yet?

Brad Jersak once wrote a book I really enjoyed called Her Gates Shall Never Be Shut about the many different options in scripture as to what happens to non-believers after death. He called it a polyphony. Truth is, about so much of this stuff, there is also the same: a polyphony. And here's where I go back to my earlier post about Whole Food Theology as opposed to Refined Theology. It's the polyphony that gives us not one but many pictures to enlighten, flesh out, and yes, even confuse our efforts to be sure of some theological fact. I could go through the list of different viewpoints plus many more and demonstrate why I can't be wholly satisfied by any one of them, but perhaps that would be too much. At any rate I return once more to my favourite theological statement, the one that really sums it up and is all I can be sure of these days: I have decided to follow Jesus...