The United States Government has made it clear that the extreme intent of Rev. Terry Jones and his Florida congregation, Dove World Outreach Center in Gainsville, to burn the Qur’an could ignite extremist reaction overseas and put American troops in harm’s way. What is most fascinating about this media focus is not that someone wants to do something sensational. Sensationalism seems to be a common method of gaining attention amid all the information options today. What is fascinating is to speculate around the edges of the Florida frenzy. If one congregation has the power to aggravate a matter of global concern with a rather trivial and defensive response, could it not also be possible that congregations with a measure of creativity and critical thinking could contribute to guiding a mature attitude and response to a global concern? Maturity of faith can provide an alternative to the depraved understanding of creation (i.e. we can destroy to a sort of ex-nihilo sort of place and start over) that keeps us competing and reacting to one another as exampled by Jones and his congregation.
Process theology offers an understanding of creation that challenges congregations to see and receive the world as it is. We cannot argue that the world sometimes presents in a chaotic and disorganized way, but that does not mean that God is not at work in it… that God is not luring our life and faith forward using that chaos and disorder. Calling upon God’s wisdom and insight, local congregations can draw the chaotic and trivial toward something more intense and enriching. Far from trying to annihilate competitors, congregations should be, in part, think tanks for the world’s most incongruent realities and find practical ways to a make a response. The question of how world religions are to understand one another has too long been an academic pursuit. It is now chaotic and depraved enough that it needs to be a pursuit of faith’s front line. If local congregations spent some time thinking about the intersections of world religions and how to provide an intelligent, meaningful and practical response for their people we may have to agitate some of our assumptions and defenses but we would not be aggravating the tenuous world situation. True collaboration with God does not allow for coercion and easy catharsis.
Process theology understands that Jesus is the exemplar of non-coercive power. Equally, process theology understands that as Jesus drew together the contrasts of his life experience (temple-household / nature-culture/ law-relationship), so his message became ultimate in its persuasion. Attending to contrasts local congregations can be the locations for individuals to transition from previous understandings and practices toward the understandings and practices that God calls us through the chaotic clues of this world and all the people in it. Now there is some heat worth producing and enduring.
Leave a comment