... and make a blog post of it since it only happens once: Happy 500th birthday, John Calvin. Did I do anything to commemorate? Sleep in. Eat Cheeseboard pizza. Get groceries at Safeway. Consider ordering a new book on Calvin. Decide I have too many other unread books at the moment. Read blogs. Write dumb comments. Begin rereading Witsius. Practice Wushu. Think about posting a cool Calvin quote. Shrug and post this instead.
In the aftermath (or midst?) of a string of tragic high-profile deaths this year, I wonder if our internet/media culture has replaced the traditional somber silence with busy racket.
A friend sent me a link to Time Magazine's "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now." I don't know if it's in any particular order, but clocking in at number 3 is the New Calvinism (click here for the link). Putting aside for now the obvious American-centric selection of ideas that Time chose to herald as world-changing, I find it a little curious why of all (American) religious movements, neo-Calvinism would be singled out. Aren't the post-modern emergents and the neo-pagan gurus far more prevalent in the culture? At least they seem to sell more books. And when everything these days seems to have a "post-" or "neo-" prefixed, perhaps it says something about our times.
Perhaps the warm-fuzzy mysticism that emergent Christians and neo-pagans have in common is no longer seen as world-changing because that's what the world (American world?) has become. Or arguably, it is how the world always has been, to one degree or another (especially if we drop the "warm-fuzzy "part). Or maybe neo-Calvinism happens to be the idea most likely to get a rise out of someone. But is neo-Calvinism really so world-changing? R. S. Clark, in Recovering the Reformed Confession, compellingly identifies some of the past heroes of neo-Calvinism such as Jonathan Edwards and Martyn Lloyd-Jones with what he calls QIRC and QIRE (quests for illegitimate religious certainty/experience, from the perspective of the historic confessions of the Protestant Reformation), meaning there are certain affinities with today's dominant spiritual and religious landscape. One might then wonder whether neo-Calvinism's world-changing stock is sufficiently different. Movements come and go, and at the end of the day, Ecclesiastes is vindicated when it says, "there is nothing new under the sun."
One thing I appreciate about many self-proclaimed paleo-Calvinists (with whom I tend to identify more) is the lack of pretension or triumphalism that often comes with world-changers. Or is the more appropriate label, neo-paleo-Calvinists? Something about being busy trying to speak a Gospel of life in a messy, repetitious world filled with tentative, double-edged solutions. It doesn't have to be dour, but can be as fun and full of smart-alecs as any world-changing idea or movement, as demonstrated by the folk over at the Nicotine Theological Journal.
Churches fare no better, particularly as I repeatedly encounter on the blogosphere comments that attempt to be fair-minded, yet end up labeling one side or another as "the enemy." Sure Jesus speaks of loving and praying for your enemy. But since it seems to me a fairly major stretch to claim that our political leaders are out to get us, whether it be Obama, McCain, or Bush, isn't it more fair-minded to invoke the category of "neighbor"? It's perfectly okay to disagree with your neighbor without turning him into your enemy.
When the churches confuse the earthly kingdom for the heavenly kingdom, good advice for good news, the law's commands (imperatives) for the gospel's promises (indicative), and a personal Jesus (i.e. imaginary friend) for the Jewish carpenter from Galilee who was crucified, risen and ascended in real time and space, it becomes no surprise that we look no different from your run-of-the-mill power-hungry, entertainment-obsessed worldly institution.
Whether it takes the form of Falwell's fire and brimstone, or Osteen's smiley platitudes, "do more" and "try harder" sets a bar for people who measure up and people who don't. Sucks for those who don't. Christ, on the other hand, levels all of us as those needing rescue and not just propping up. Someone once described Christ as the most inclusive of all exclusive truth claims because it's not about how good or bad we are; it's about an external word that kills the old self, and makes alive a new self. Acceptance and forgiveness has nothing to do with how we measure up, but is due to Christ who measured up on our behalf. Maybe it's we ourselves who are really our own worst enemies.
And if can stop identifying one set of politics as being the gospel, and another as being anti-Christ, maybe the actual gospel of Christ and what he has done could get a better hearing. As Michael Horton writes in Christless Christianity, "They may not like our message anyway, but at least they might be relieved that we have stopped holding ourselves up as the way, the truth, and the life."
