Perspectief 2014-26

2014-26 The Changing Face of Unity, or: Cutting the Right Edges 25 Reag eer subjective knowledge, and a relationship is a shared experience. 14 The church is an experiential community of believers who share their life stories with one another. Their relationships are their truth. Man’s spiritual life is his social life, as James McClendon wrote: ‘the moral life of Christians is a social life’. 15 Obeying Christ implies a moral commitment to caring relations. Therefore, let churches be places of social formation, relationally open for experiential truth. 16 (2) Understanding new forms of unity implies knowledge of new forms of diversity as well. The idea of diversity is not only to be understood in terms of confessional heresy or liberalism, but more so in terms of having no story about the miraculous (such as divine intervention) and having no story about the experiential reframing of reality. This is exactly what younger believers in Holland try to find in the church: experiential confirmation of a God-given restructure of life. Therefore: let churches be places replete of stories of divine intervention and with the miraculous. (3) One of my colleagues at VU University examined basic semiotic perspectives on the narrative of conversion in two Dutch churches, an Evangelical Seeker Church (a Baptist Church) and a Pentecostal Church. Her conclusions point into the same direction as indicated above. Churches open to creative ways of binding and bonding are committed to sharing a social imaginary world that invites churchgoers to stretch their imagination. 14 E.g. one could wonder if a church should necessarily split if the majority of the church allows female elders/ministers to preach. Is the mutual care and love not strong enough to survive the dissent on the issue? Cf. the dynamical coherence of the notions of unity, truth and caring relations in Eph. 4:13-16: ‘until we all attain to the unity of the faith (…) But speaking truth in love we may grow (…) into him from whom the whole body (…) makes itself grow (…) in love.’ Another example, taken from family life: parents set out rules and norms at home, such as ‘no smoking here’ and they expect their children to respect family ethics. But if a child refuses to do so, and parents have to perpetually cross red flags with their child, are they compelled to give up their child in the end and break contact? Do they stop loving their child because their truths are being neglected? I do not say that truth is unimportant, but I defend the Biblical point of view that relation is more important than being persistent in pressing one’s truth on someone else. I won’t say that truth should never divide a community of believers, but only after effort has been made to build strong relationships. 15 James Wm. McClendon, Systematic Theology , Vol. 1: Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002) 165. 16 I use the term ‘experiential truth’ in an ecclesial way. The church comes together to hear the Word of God, and because Christ is in the church, people 'experience' the viva vox Christi and 'know' the truth of the Gospel in their life. The moment they pass on this knowledge, it becomes tradition. So, experiential truth lies firmly embedded in the sidetracks of Scripture and tradition. If experiences are not co-sided by Scripture and tradition, there is a danger of alienation from the faith.