{"id":6549,"date":"2015-11-17T08:02:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=6549"},"modified":"2015-11-17T08:02:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T16:02:00","slug":"a-deeper-probing-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-deeper-probing-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"A Deeper Probing Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cChristian ethics ultimately probes our deepest sensibilities as humans an how we, as followers of Christ, go about seeking \u201cthe good\u201d for others as well as for ourselves.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

I was recently in a room of about thirty Wesleyan pastors. The attendance was that of our leading practitioners in the practices of faith-based justice and compassion ministry. We were together to update, evaluate, and speculate how we are doing denominationally on the issue of justice and compassion based ministry. Because of our current text, \u201cThe Matrix of Christian Ethics: Integrating Philosophy and Moral Theology in a Postmodern Context,\u201d I mentioned, due to the fact of everything we were talking about in that room was directly related to what I was reading, that I think as a denomination we are unaware of our true ethics behind why we ought to be engaging in faith-based justice and compassion ministry. I said, \u201cI think we need to develop a deeper ethic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The response was one of that which usually only comes after my jokes. The sound of crickets suddenly became deafening. You might have thought I said something in Japanese. As I looked around the room all I received were blank stares. So I continued on \u2026 \u201cI think as much as we develop our theology of justice we need to develop better understanding of Christian ethics or maybe work on articulating our Wesleyan Christian ethic.\u201d Again, crickets.<\/p>\n

Now usually I am a pretty insecure guy. I usually would of thought, \u201cOh man, I must not have any idea what I am talking about and somehow showed up in the wrong room for the wrong conversation. But because of the reality of Nullens\u2019 and Michener\u2019s overview, along with the direction much of my dissertation work has taken, I knew that I knew what I was talking about and was only left to realize that pretty much no one in the room was aware of or operating out of an awareness of Christian ethics and its relationship to the conversation we were having.<\/p>\n

Now I must say, had it not been for this text and my dissertation work in this season, I would have been exactly in the others\u2019 seats with the same expression on my face. But that only makes my point of ALARM that much greater when I think of the Church and the leading leaders of the Church and the level of thought, or lack there of, that we can lead with. To me we are missing so much of the language we need in our conversations as the Church because we are not thinking and operating out of any kind of depth in our thought. We have microwaved evangelism and discipleship, we have over spiritualized salvation and sanctification, we have produced the great productions of worship services, but somehow we have removed our conversations and contemplations from the crock pot of \u201cprobing our deepest sensibilities \u2026 in seeking \u2018the good\u2019 of others as well as for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am finding in my dissertation work that not only in our Christian practice but in our leadership practice as well, we are skimming. James MacGregor Burns writes in his work, \u201cLeadership,\u201d the following:<\/p>\n

\u201cLeadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 on earth. \u2026 It was not always so. For two millennia at least, leaders of \u00a0\u00a0 thought did grapple with the vexing problems of the rulers vs. the ruled. \u00a0\u00a0 Long before modern sociology, Plato analyzed not only philosopher-kings \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but he influences on rulers of upbringing, social and economic institution, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and response of followers. Long before today\u2019s calls for moral leadership \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and \u2018profiles in courage,\u2019 Confucian thinkers were examining the concept \u00a0 of leadership in moral teaching and by example. Long before Gandhi, \u00a0 Christ thinkers were preaching nonviolence. Long before modern \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 biography, Plutarch was witting brilliantly about the lives of a host of \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Roman and Greek rulers and orators, arguing that philosophers \u2018ought to \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 converse especially with men in power,\u2019 and examining questions such as whether \u2018an old man should engage in public affairs.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

We are in a day and age that can\u2019t afford skimming. The Church, our leadership, our \u201cwhy\u201d we do what we do has to come from a deeper place and we (maybe by default) have to be a part of raising the banner and the bar. We must bring a deeper level of thought and probing into the most fundamental beliefs about the human capacity and the human condition and how on this earth we reconcile the difference. I am so thankful for this LGP5 experience as it has afforded me (while I can\u2019t technically afford it:) the time and space to discover, contemplate, and probe such thoughts, considerations, and possibilities.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Patrick Nullens and Ronald T. Michener, The Matrix of Christian Ethics: Integrating Philosophy and Moral Theology in a Postmodern Context<\/em> (Colorado Springs: IVP Books, 2010), 2.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> James M. Burns, Leadership (Harper Perennial Political Classics)<\/em> (New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010), 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cChristian ethics ultimately probes our deepest sensibilities as humans an how we, as followers of Christ, go about seeking \u201cthe good\u201d for others as well as for ourselves.\u201d[1] I was recently in a room of about thirty Wesleyan pastors. The attendance was that of our leading practitioners in the practices of faith-based justice and compassion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"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":[739,737,738],"class_list":["post-6549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christian-ethics","tag-nullens-and-michener","tag-the-matrix-of-christian-ethics","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6549","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\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6550,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6549\/revisions\/6550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}