True enough!
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Clavier+" <anglican@...>
To: <faithandlife@...>
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 8:40 AM
Subject: Re: [FaithandLife] PRAYER BEFORE LECTIO DIVINA


> Mike+,
>
> I spent my entire Bible Study on this yesterday, but from a different
angle.
> I first instructed them about worldviews, or metanrratives, and how they
> dominate our perception of reality.  I the explained to them that we are
now
> moving from an Enlightenment worldview to a postmodern one, and how, in
> postmodernity, the story or the narrative is everything.  In a sense this
is
> less a development than a restoration.
>
> When you look at Acts, you don't find Peter, Stephen, and Paul teaching
> doctrine.  Almost always they tell a story, and almost always, that story
is
> the epic of Israel culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
>
> This is very different then how we have proceeded with teaching the faith
> for the past 300 years (and more especially the past 100).  During this
> time, doctrine was the thing taught.  Catechisms focused on explain the 10
> commandments, the golden rule, the Lord's Prayer, and definitions for the
> Church, sacraments, etc.  What hasn't been taight is the story itself.
Few
> Anglicans know many of the biblical stories at all, never mind, knowing
them
> well enough to be informed by them.
>
> In the 20th century, we moved away from the Biblical narrative for many
> different reasons.  But among those reasons, the one I hear so often is
that
> the Old Testament stories are no good, because when the children grow up,
> they will see that their all historically ludicrous and stop believing
them.
> A thoroughly modern way of looking at things (ie science is the sole
> conveyer of truth).
>
> In the postmodern world, the Church is going to have to get back to the
> story.  Doctrine remains important, not because it gives us a bunch a
rules
> about God and ourselves, but BECAUSE it tells us how to read and live out
> that story correctly.  And by reading and living out the Biblical
> metanarrative (to which I would add the history of the Church) that
people's
> lives will be shaped and their faith nurtured.
>
> Most of our people are older and thus immersed in modernity.  I have found
> that the only way to get them to begin to appreciate Scripture is by
> challenging their modernist assumptions.  This usually ends with some of
> them in tears (their world has been rocked), but the sort of tears that
> breeds enough humility to move forward.
>
> Mark+
>
>
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