Resolved, To Believe The Best About Other Believers

I’ve been pretty critical of the preachers at Resolved (with one exception) – and I’ll have more by way of critique next week when I share some thoughts on fundamentalist churches as “bonding” communities – but I want to wrap up my series of reflections on this conference by highlighting the best of what I learned about the people there:

• They were some of the most thoughtful Christians I’ve ever encountered: That’s not to say that they’re more thoughtful than, say, Emerging Christians, but I’ve heard plenty of people paint fundamentalists as mindless automatons. That was definitely not true of the people at Resolved. These are smart folks who know their stuff – they’re just committed to a different perspective of Jesus and the faith than I am.
• They were some of the most reverent Christians I’ve ever encountered: I was genuinely moved by the level of seriousness with which they engaged worship, fellowship, and their own self-education in the faith. Admittedly, this kind of religious reverence can be inappropriate and fake – and it can be fear-based – but that’s not what I sensed last weekend. These are people who genuinely admire God, and seek to honor God. That’s a good thing.
• They believe and preach what they do out of a deep care and concern for one another: This plays into some of what I’ll write next week regarding fundamentalist communities. Based on what I observed, both in the lobby and on the stage, the people at Resolved interpret the Bible they way they do because they believe the world is dangerous and humanity’s condition is a serious threat. Hence, the message they preach is a message of warning about danger and escape toward the safety of the community. If that sounds too much like a critique, then let me add this: they preach this message because they’re deeply concerned for one another. It’s like they’re screaming about a fire in a crowded theatre or sternly rebuking a child for reaching toward a hot stove. If the preachers on the stage weren’t ministers they would have been firemen, or policemen, or soldiers – because fundamentalist theology is primarily a hermeneutic of forceful, heroic rescue.

So, for my part, I’ve decided to reaffirm a posture of first believing the best. It’s too easy to throw stones at caricatures of the Christian faith. Easier still when the targets of my projectiles disagree with me. I still have strong disagreements with them that I will continue to point out, and it’s not that I think all their motives are virtuous – nobody’s are. But it’s hard to continue judging people once you’ve met them in all their sincerity and complexity and see a small bit of yourself, and more than a fair bit of Christ, in them.

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