Faith: Preservation or Reinterpretation?
I have been reading a book — one that I highly recommend. It is called Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. As the title suggests, it addresses some of the problems with the emergent movement by two young leaders who could easily embrace the movement. One concept that has given me much thought is how we address our faith throughout generations.
One concept is the idea of preservation of the belief. Our task is to understand what we believe in and pass that on intact to others. This tactic assumes that the faith of our fathers was correct and our job is to simply understand it and pass it on. Sounds good.
Another concept is the idea of reinterpretation of our belief system. The task here is to make the faith relevant to the changing culture. In other words, the context of faith evolves as our culture evolves. This tactic focuses more on relevance than on historical accuracy.
Hebrews 11:1 — Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith is the unknowable known. The question here is if we teach what we believe or teach a modification of what we believe to be more relevant? I struggle with this. Mostly because before reading this section of the book, I considered myself to be a teacher who blends the above. Is it possible?
I realize it seems possible in theory. The two extremes may not be our only option. I do not have the answer here… but I am encouraged to continue thinking about this. One thing is for sure: we must take care when we teach.
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