"Why I'm Not Emergent" By One Gal Who Could Never Be

Upon finishing Kevin DeYoung's and Ted Kluck's Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), I hope I have a greater understanding of the movement that is apparently sweeping the world of Christendom, though this more informed viewing only reveals that there's not much new in the movement, but more of the same ideas that Christians have battled since the beginning.

While the emergent movement calls Christians to be more loving, which is good, it seems to focus way too much on people and not enough on Christ (which is why there's nothing new about it). Particular to the emergent movement (apart from other heresies) is its mother, postmodernism, which (according to Wikipedia), "Largely influenced by the Western European disillusionment induced by World War II, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy... and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality." Wikipedia later mentions its philosophy founders, who were predominantely men who really hated God.
The emergent church embraces postmodernism and seeks to not only fit in with the postmodern culture, but be itself postmodern as well. When I first heard about this movement, I picked out the postmodern influences immediately, was shocked that they called this movement Christian, and was even more shocked to find out that the above mentioned connection (the fact that this idea was started by atheist should be a red flag) did not cause any concern in the people I know who are caught up in the movement.

Some things to beware of about this movement (that I found in the book) are:

• The movement focuses more on Christ's life and not His death. While emulating Jesus is what Christians are supposed to do, it IS kind of important to know what a Christian is: a former "vessel of wrath" who was chosen and set apart by God in the beginning, purchased by God per Christ's sacrificial death, and transformed by the Holy Spirit. The Cross was the reason Jesus came - for there is no other way a person can be righteous before God but by wearing Jesus's righteousness. Hopefully this does not represent very many emergents, but whenever you consider the real gospel a footnote instead of the focal point, you've got MAJOR issues.


• What emergents are most known for is their pride in their "humility". They take the ambiguity factor of postmodernism so far that they claim that someone who thinks they know something about God is just being arrogant, because no one can know anything about God. The movement finds more beauty in "mystery" than the knowledge of God. So the point of the Bible is...??? and this leads into the next point which is...


• False dicotomies - TONs of them. Like the one above, they say God cannot be known completely and fully (and I agree). However, they also say that if a person cannot exhaust God, then they can't claim what they do know about Him. Which is False. Just because my finite mind can't possibly comprehend everything about the infinite God does not mean that I should claim ignorance of what He's clearly revealed through creation, scripture, and Christ.


• The emergents generally have an errant view of history. They claim that understanding of scripture, exegetical preaching, and doctrine all derive themselves from modernism and the enlightenment (1600's - 1900's). I'm guessing that they haven't read much Augustine, Luther, Calvin.


• I think one of the main causes for all the stirring in the emergent church is emergents' problem with authority. They don't like people who actually know what they're talking about (which is why all their "leaders" constantly claim that they don't know, or that they may be wrong), probably due to the whole 'self-esteem' thing we all want to be equals. Maybe they think only authorities are totally depraved. Maybe they were traumatized when they were spanked as kids (dang parents who don't "spare the rod"!). Who knows. As DeYoung assesses, "Much of the emergent disdain for preaching is really an uneasiness about authority and control. Discussion, yes. Dialogue, yes. Goup discernment, yes. Hearlding? Proclamation? Not on this side of modernism!" Brian McLaren (the main guy [of course titleless] in the emergent church) promotes leaders who are like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz: "Rather than being a person with all the answers, who is constantly informed of what's up and what's what and where to go, she is herself lost, a seeker, vulnerable, often bewildered." WOW. Could this be an example of "blind leading the blind"? I think so.


• The movement is full of verbiage that lacks real meaning, other than sounding mystical. Most of the phrases just make me laugh, but there are some that cross the line. I'm tired of hearing sacred words like 'incarnate' thrown around when someone could say 'personified' or 'lived out'. Overusage tends to dull down the word so that what it really means no longer has the punch. "Incarnate" should be reserved for speaking of Christ's divinity, so that it can bear more weight of the concept.
  

As with most wayward works-focused movements, the emergent movement puts the cart before the horse, for how can a person act like a Christian unless he first knows Christ? How can he know Christ unless Christ can be known?

This movement is so troubling to me because I can see how people fall susceptable to its deceptions. It is sneaky because it sounds uber-spiritual, nonconformist, and novel, but really the emergent movement is smoke and mirrors, like what Dorothy at first believes is the true Wizard.