maandag 21 juni 2010

"Boring as Hell" of "Preken alsof we vijanden hebben"


Als volgelingen van Jezus is het enorm belangrijk om te vieren. Maar dan wel goed vieren. In Preaching as though we had enemies legt pacifist Stanley Hauerwas uit wat hij daarmee bedoeld. Preken moeten niet boring as hell zijn. We moeten preken alsof we vijanden hebben


Hier eerst drie quotes.Lees in ieder geval de tweede. Onderaan deze blog een link naar het hele artikel.

Allereerst beschrijft Hauerwas onze situatie (het probleem):
The moral threat is not consumerism or materialism. Such characterizations of the enemy we face as Christians are far too superficial and moralistic. The problem is not just that we have become consumers of our own lives, but that we can conceive of no alternative narrative since we lack any practices that could make such a narrative intelligible. Put differently, the object of modernity was to produce people who believe they should have no story except the story they choose when they have no story. Such a story is called the story of freedom and is assumed to be irreversibly institutionalized economically as market capitalism and politically as democracy. That story and the institutions that embody it is the enemy we must attack through Christian preaching.
I am aware that such a suggestion can only be met with disbelief. You may well think I cannot be serious. Normal nihilism is so wonderfully tolerant. Surely you are not against tolerance? How can anyone be against freedom? Let me assure you I am serious, I am against tolerance, I do not believe the story of freedom is a true or good story. I do not believe it is a good story because it is so clearly a lie. The lie is exposed by simply asking, "Who told you the story that you should have no story except the story you choose when you have no story?" Why should you let that story determine your life? Simply put, the story of freedom has now become our fate.
En dan wat de kerk volgens Hauerwas in antwoord hier op heeft gedaan:
God has entrusted us, His Church, with the best story in the world. With great ingenuity we have managed, with the aid of much theory, to make that story boring as hell.
Dit is dus de uitdaging:
... hopefully God is inviting us again to engage the enemy through the godly weapons of preaching and sacrament. I pray that we will have the courage and humility to fight the enemy in Walter Rauschenbusch's wonderful words, with "no sword but the truth." According to Rauschenbusch, "such truth reveals lies and their true nature, as when Satan was touched by the spear of Ithuriel. It makes injustice quail on its throne, chafe, sneer, abuse, hurl its spear, tender its goal, and finally offer to serve as truth's vassal. But the truth that can do such things is not an old woman wrapped in the spangled robes of earthly authority, bedizened with golden ornaments, the marks of honor given by injustice in turn for services rendered, and muttering dead formulas of the past. The truth that can serve God as the mightiest of his archangels is robed only in love, her weighty limbs unfettered by needless weight, calm-browed, her eyes terrible with beholding God." May our eyes and our preaching be just as terrible. Indeed, may we preach so truthfully that people will call us terrorists. If you preach that way you will never again have to worry about whether a sermon is "meaningful."
Link naar het hele artikel vind je hier. Klik je op de link, dan vind je John Pipers mening over dit essay.

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