Along the Way: The Upward Way

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For more than a decade I have been on a journey often referred to as “emergent Christianity.” [1] It has taken me into that part of Christianity called “progressive.”  It has been a life-changing experience in more ways than I can name in this post. Many of my previous Oboedire posts illustrate the specific expression of my progressivism. And as the song says, ‘I wouldn’t take ‘nothin for my journey now.”

One learning along the way is how progressives are caricatured as those who don’t believe much, those who “dillute” the faith and are theological minimalists. My journey into a more progressive Christianity has revealed that the exact opposite is true. The fact is, progressives are maximalists, people who affirm the Grand Story that comes from God to us all. Far from “going down the slippery slope,” progressives are those who sing, “I’m pressing on the upward way. New heights I’m gaining every day…Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”

We look for the places in the Bible that reveal the Message in ways that maximize light, life, and love (the three primal elements in the original creation) and which ignite compassion and a commitment to the common good, summed up in the Bible in the word ‘justice.’ For more than a decade I have read Scripture underlining in blue the passages where words like “all” and “everyone” appear. They’re everywhere, and the sum of them shows that the “high ground” of the Bible is found in oneness and union, not partisanship and division.

The apex for this “highest” is found in Paul’s words, “Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11). More than anything else, moving into progressive Christianity has expanded (in depth and breadth) my Christology, as Paul described it above, both in terms of Christ’s Lordship and his universality.

In this vision I see the comprehensiveness of redemption, that “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:22). This is what we call “the Christ mystery”—that is, we do not know how God will work this out, but we do know that God’s plan is “to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). The focal point for this is Christ’s death on the cross “and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Colossians 1:20).

This is not minimalism! On the contrary, it is utmost faith in the highest. It is the vision that creates deep ecumenism in the human family, the vision which removes walls that divide, and restores the oneness God has intended for us from the beginning. It is this vision of Christ’s ultimacy in principle, purpose, and power that is at the heart of the Awakening progressives are seeing today as another recurring act of God to do a new thing (Isaiah 43:19).

It is the cosmic Christ who is creating new wineskins for God’s wine, discarding the brittle and leaking “ kingdoms of this world” with the supple and sound Gospel of the kingdom of God. It is this maximum vision of the Christ, who is Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:17) that puts this song into the heart of every progressive Christian, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”

[1] It began when I read Brian McLaren’s ‘A Generous Orthodoxy’ in 2009. It came together when I read Phyllis Tickle’s book,’The Great Emergence’ in 2012. In 2013, I put my own experience into words in my book, ‘Fresh Wind Blowing.’