Metaphorically speaking...

I wrote this a while back and thought it might be interesting fodder for the PRF.

Say you have a group of English students who call for schism at the university level and they want to purify the academic system to give themselves a more foundational approach to their own education. The call is for grammar, for writing structure, and for classical literature to comprise the whole body of work which is to be studied … they deem it ‘fundamental English’.

The regents support this and allow it to happen and soon, the English department is recognized as the country’s best, attracting the brightest talent and demonstrating unprecedented growth. After a couple cycles of churning out students who hold to this, things level off. Much of the leadership has grown weary and there is growing opinion that some classics are worthy of study while others are not. Some grammar is necessary but the plain matter is, the faculty has exhausted any interest in probing the subject any further. Some hard-liners feel it can always be studied, always advanced, always serve as the standard by which the department should be measured but popular opinion is that to get any further into this is just boring.

Because the shear force of ‘fundamental English’ was what made the department what it is, no one denies this is the core of the program. But, increasingly, the reality is, the core is withering away. The program starts offering more practical coursework, always paying the requisite (yet nominal) homage to what got them there, but emphasizing more popular and more ‘relevant’ and thus, less stringent and less academic coursework.

A couple cycles later and the program is suffering from serious fragmentation. A deterioration of the core values and a bevy of specialized tracks for graduation have led to disunity and downright hostility, akin to the original schism. Reputation has also deteriorated to the point where the department has lost its prestige, and enrollment is beginning to show cracks. Yet still, the hard-liners who stayed the course are suggesting that new and exciting developments have occurred within ‘orthodox’ English. The Classics have not changed, but good scholarship has led to an apocryphal shift in how they are viewed. Higher and more complex grammars, thought to have been antiquated and exhausted, have been further refined and polished and the old guard is crying for the entire department to come back to the table and enjoy the thrill of new discovery. The solution to the recent decline, they say, is return to their first love and grow within that context. The contention is that the fundamentals are sufficient for perpetual and meaningful and appropriate study and in order to regain respect within the academic community, this must be done and quickly.

Unfortunately, the neo-experts are in the vast majority now and the overwhelming call is to explore new and more modern forms and streamlining the modern curriculum so that they will stay relevant to the culture. Conformity is required, but it is a conformity to what the department has become, not conformity to the original call. The impetus behind this majority opinion is the self-realization that most of the tenured faculty have built their career around this and a return to ‘fundamental English’ will spell the end of the line.

Bringing this back to the real world to church application and perhaps denominational direction, I think some of the ruling parties in the various evangelical circles are indeed solid on Bible, yet they have too much at stake in other things to put all their eggs in one basket. It would be occupational suicide for some to purify their approach to ministry and act accordingly. Often in one’s personal journey, one counts the costs and decides the cost is too great. See rich young ruler parable. The constructs, both Biblical and not so, are firmly embedded and weave to undergird lives, communities, and churches..

Others simply lack the desire or ability or exposure to serious theology. Others go down the path and legitimately come to different conclusions.

I believe this latter group serves a valuable role in the Kingdom. On the negative, to illustrate how believers can differ and be incorrect and that will be the case until we are all united in the by-and-by. On the positive, there are those who emphasize a social gospel, or a relational gospel, and while we may think the emphases are misplaced, they are illustrative of the different gifts God gives and can be a wonderful thing.

The point I’m getting at is while I will continue to call for reflection, study, and ultimately, reformation, these differences are differences between believers. We press on recognizing these differences, making headway with them, and doing our best to co-exist as joint-heirs to the Kingdom.