Dwight Friesen - Friday Afternoon @ Off The Map

I'm getting there.....I'm getting there. Not very many of these left!!! I hope you are all enjoying them.

One of the most interesting aspects of Christianity is the plethora of voices in the mix of God's family. This mixture consists of "liberal", "conservative" and "non-categorized" voices. As a result, there are some voices at the extremes of the continuum. The emergent conversation is no different. I am proud to be a part of this conversation. It is stretching me, solidifying my faith, and making me think. I pity the Christians who "have it all figured out". It appears to me that they have given up on the glorious education that the Holy Spirit leads us to. Embrace the mystery! There is truth to be found across the continuum of voices.

I was introduced to Dwight Friesen through "An Emergent Manifesto of Hope", the book edited by Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt. This book is the most thorough collection of emergent thought that I have yet found. It covers the complete gamut of the continuum. That means that there are voices from the extremes. Dwight wrote an essay on Orthoparadoxy that really struck a nerve (in a positive way) with me. His session at Off the Map expanded on this concept of Orthoparadoxy.

Okay, Brad, why the preamble about emergent voices? Wouldn't that indicate that you consider Friesen to be at one of the extremes? Certainly not. However, I cannot say that I agree with, nor condone, everything in "An Emergent Manifesto of Hope". That's another blog entry, though.

So, Orthoparadoxy is an understanding that we are blessed by a glorious mystery in the scripture. By embracing the paradoxes and differences of Christ's words, I experience more of the depth of Christ's teachings. I can't do the topic justice...read the book, please!!!

Example: In Luke's coverage of the infamous sermon on the mount, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and not condemn them. Yet he turns around and then tells us to discern "good fruit". Wait. How do we unconditionally love our enemies without judgment, yet then judge their fruit?

Dwight opened his session with the question, "How do you embody grace to those who are 'other'?" We then split into small groups to discuss. First, "other" defines anyone who does not agree with or is different from you in thought or manner. How would you answer this question? Why? Did you really think about it?

Actually, I want to back up a second. Look at the picture of Dwight. See the candle? The first thing he did was to light a candle. Whenever he does a session like this, he lights a candle to symbolize Christ enlightening the conversation and permeating all that happens. I thought it was so simple, but awesome.

He’s a professor here in the Seattle area at Mars Hill Grad School. You can really tell, when you listen to him talk. His session was very participatory, with him sitting on a bench at the front of the class. Dwight was extremely engaging, asking people questions, asking them to “unpack things further”, and then letting their comments be commented on or rebutted by the rest of the audience. Yet, he was clearly in control of the conversation the whole time. I’d love to get to know him better. I love his title: Professor of Practical Theology. I wonder who the poor bloke is who gets to be the Professor of Impractical Theology. HA HA HA

He tied everything with embodying grace back to one thought. The only way we overcome our differences is through the unity of the gospel.

Someone brought up the topic of authenticity, and the question was responded to by another in the audience, “What does it mean to be truly authentic?” Dwight kind of hummed and hawed over this one. I don’t think it was clearly answered by him or anyone in the audience. Someone mentioned sincerity. Well, one can be sincere….and sincerely wrong. Authenticity is a two way street. You can be authentically good or authentically bad. The original question, though, was around how we should be completely authentic in our churches, but that people outside the church don’t recognize Christianity as being authentic. I guess I would have dodged that question a bit, too.

Dwight made me want to study more. I guess a good professor does that. He mentioned Fr. Richard Rohr, whom I’ve read before, but not recently. He said that Rohr said Jesus was asked 183 questions in the gospels, but only answered 3 of them directly. I laughed really hard. I now want to know if that was 183 unique questions, or if it was a set of duplicates in the synoptic gospels, or what. HA HA. So, I guess it’s time to make up a table in Excel and dig into the gospels again. What fun.