some thoughts about "The Orthodox Heretic"

A couple weeks ago I posted the video clip of a parable from Peter Rollins new book "The Orthodox Heretic". One of my friends, Matt, commented on the post and asked me to post some of my thoughts about the story. I didn't want to right away, for a few reasons. I didn't really know what I thought about it. That's kind of why I posted it.

I think the intention of the parable is not to declare some truth about God or people or religion, but to force us to think about something we otherwise probably wouldn't think about (or maybe even ignore because we don't WANT to think about it). I think the temptation is to dissect the story and try to place it into a category that gives us some form of stand-alone truth, or make it fit the mold we expect it to fit. But that's not what the story is about, and if we do that, then the story loses it's power.

I've listened to it a few times and I'm never comfortable with it. It doesn't resolve nicely. It doesn't offer a clear division between the "good guys" and the "bad guys". It doesn't try to give simple answers to complex questions. Instead, it asks questions that are difficult and frustrating. But at the same time, they are questions that align pretty closely with paradoxes I keep running into in my own walk with God.

Here's a couple observations:
He doesn't set the town leaders/religious people against the care-taker. Both disagree completely on how to handle the situation, but they treat each other with respect, civility, and love throughout. Both groups are shown to be people who honor God and take obedience very seriously (yes, even in the very last scene).

Notice that the "criminal" is charged with being critical of both the state and the church, and yet a God-follower takes him in and cares for him.

Peter has said in other places that the main question behind this parable (and his entire book) is (and I'm paraphrasing) "What do you do when in order to obey God, you have to disobey God? What do you do when in order to keep your beliefs, you have to betray your beliefs? What do you do when in order to remain "orthodox", you have to take a "heretical" position?"

The idea is that Christianity is constantly at odds with itself, because it is an institution that is against all institution and a religion that is against all religion. That Christianity draws a circle around who is in and who is out, and then immediately demands it's followers to leave the inside and go to the ones who are out, so in a sense those who remain "in" the safety of the circle become the ones who are now "out". It is full of what seems to be contradictions, and we Christians have caused immense amounts of pain and confusion because we try to ignore the contradictions and build a nice safe theology that tries to make everything okay. Now that in and of itself is worthy of a whole series of blog posts, but I don't want to get side tracked by spending any more time on that now.

I've got some of my own questions that were raised from this parable, and I'll post them next time in order to make this shorter and (hopefully) slightly more readable. The good news is that I've already written it all, so I'm not going to bail on you half way through like I did with the Great Emergence series...