{"id":29080,"date":"2022-10-13T16:19:17","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T23:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29080"},"modified":"2022-10-17T07:13:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T14:13:48","slug":"embracing-questions-not-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/embracing-questions-not-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Embracing Questions not Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his book A Failure of Nerve<\/em>, Edwin Friedman moves from traditional thought by addressing poor leadership as an internal problem rather than an external one.[1]<\/a> He posits that this internal problem is one that blocks imaginative growth because it has created a society that is \u201cmore oriented toward safety than adventure.\u201d[2]<\/a> Friedman continues by explaining that this tendency toward exploration is not grounded in a cognitive deficiency, but rather comes about through an emotional process.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the emotional barriers that Friedman argues contributes to what he calls imaginative gridlock is a tendency to \u201clook for answers rather than reframe questions\u201d[4]<\/a> \u00a0An example that Friedman used especially resonated with me. When considering how fast it was possible to run a mile, for a long time it was widely accepted that a four minute mile was an unbreakable barrier. When Roger Bannister finally ran a sub four minute mile in 1957, three more men accomplished the feat the following year. Friedman goes on to acknowledge the wisdom from an African runner in 1994. \u201cWhen asked how he thought his colleague was able to lower the mile record by one of the largest amounts ever accomplished in one race, he replied, \u201cHe is not caught up in the mythology of Western runners\u201d.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

I believe that these same emotional barriers plague Christianity as we are familiar with it here in the United States. It was striking how central the doctrine of inclusion appeared in Edwin Arrison, Rene August, and Allan Boesak\u2019s presentations. I wondered at what allowed for a widely accepted (at least in our small sample size) view of the centrality of liberation theology that seemed contrary to (or at least broader than) theology as I learned in seminary. And this thought flashed in my mind. What if they were, in a sense, not caught up in the mythology of Western theology? Or in Friedman\u2019s language, perhaps Western, White Evangelicalism is experiencing a \u201cfailure of nerve that always accompanies anxiety and a quest for certainty.\u201d[6]<\/a> \u00a0that keeps it from experiencing \u201cthe emotional atmosphere of exploration [that is] conducive to excitement and adventure.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

During my time in seminary I was on staff at a Chinese church. There were many times that I was told my church\u2019s cultural expressions of faith were \u201cunbiblical\u201d. As an Asian-American in predominantly White, Evangelical space, I have felt the tensions that this \u201cquest for certainty\u201d has caused. The late Richard Twiss pulls from Scot McKnight\u2019s book A Community Called Atonement<\/em> and \u201cfinds the source of this tension be the conglomeration of Euro-American scholars, ministers and lay folk who have, over the centuries, used their economic, academic, religious and political dominance to create the illusion that the Bible, read through their experience, is the Bible read correctly.\u201d[8]<\/a> In determining once and for all what is acceptable and \u201cright\u201d theology, the broader Western Evangelical movement has made an infinite and eternal God small.<\/p>\n

In order to break from this limited theology, a wider array of voices need to be heard. For this to happen, the Church in the United States needs to heed Friedman\u2019s call to reframe questions rather than look for answers. When it comes to theology that arises from the experience of people of color and people on the margins, perhaps rather than asking \u201cis this right or wrong?\u201d simply ask \u201cwhat can we learn?\u201d. In addressing this idea from an Indigenous perspective, Randy Woodley, in his book Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview<\/em> quotes his friend Adrian Jacobs \u201cI am proposing that Aboriginal culture, worldview, frame of reference, and in this case, Aboriginal Christianity, offers hope to Western missionary autism. Aboriginal people are not your problem, we are your cure.\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (10th Anniversary, Revised Edition) (Church Publishing, Inc., 2017). 14.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid, 14<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, 22<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid, 37<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid, 47<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid, 45<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid, 45<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Twiss, Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys: A Native American Expression of the Jesus Way (Downers Grove, Illinois) (Intervarsity Press., 2015). 61.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Woodley, Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: a Decolonized Approach t Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Michigan) (Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2022). 37.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his book A Failure of Nerve, Edwin Friedman moves from traditional thought by addressing poor leadership as an internal problem rather than an external one.[1] He posits that this internal problem is one that blocks imaginative growth because it has created a society that is \u201cmore oriented toward safety than adventure.\u201d[2] Friedman continues by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2347,236],"class_list":["post-29080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp01","tag-friedman","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29081,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29080\/revisions\/29081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}