Lose That You May Find (Part 4)

Thursday, Mar. 26, 2009 Posted: 11:02:01AM HKT

At the heart of Manning's doctrine, and what he has in fact constantly stressed, is what the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard calls "the task of 'becoming' a Christian, as opposed to 'being’ a Christian." This parallel between Manning’s teaching about God’s grace and Kierkegaard’s teaching on “becoming” a Christian is made by the Christian philosopher Carl Raschke. Raschke finds in Manning a prime example of many emerging postmodern Christian ministry paradigms, which are fortunately shifting away from the late 20th century customer-driven, affluent-friendly ministry model to a radical counterculture form of ministry. A major tenet to the emerging counterculture ministry model is that Christian discipleship should naturally result in a disciple’s eventual deconstruction of the presumed moral “correctness” of the world’s archetypical quest for material and positional-evidenced success and affluence.

So back to the link between Manning and Kierkegaard. By beginning his meditation on God’s grace with the story of Abraham’s climb to Mount Moriah, Manning was evidently choosing to align his meditation with Kierkegaard’s earlier and more seminal teaching on Christian faith through the story of Abraham’s “leap of faith” at Mount Moriah. As Raschke observes regarding Kierkegaard’s influence on Manning’s reflections on God’s grace: “Becoming a Christian, as Kierkegaard explained with irony, is not climbing a ladder of spiritual, let alone material, ‘success.’ It all comes down to . . . taking what Kierkegaard himself referred to as the ‘leap of faith,’ a leap into the fearful and unknown.”

So as a primal paradigm for Christian faith, Abraham’s “leap of faith,” the letting go of Isaac at Mount Moriah, is thus paradigmatic for real decisions every believer must mentally embrace and journey through. These are the tough, risky decisions God’s grace will impose upon our will, as we travel through our personal journey towards “becoming a Christian.” What does it mean now, to “become” a Christian? “Becoming” a Christian, is to become conformed in the likeness of God, revealed in the face of Jesus Christ (Rom 8:28-29; 2 Cor 4:6).

Encountering God's grace comes through making the "leap of faith," a leap from trust in one's self to trust in God alone for our present and future existence. As Manning says, our human will plays a part. Our own will plays a part along with God’s sovereign call, because upon hearing God's call to Himself, we embrace a "decisive conversion— a turning from mistrust to trust." Even more so, Manning adds that the experience of grace immediately confronts us with the wrongness of our entire present existence in this world's order. For the truth is that our entire striving towards success, has been premised upon our aching need for have or "self" validated. We have this aching need to have our “self” validated through the acquisition of all our things— our material wealth, our positions, our achievements, our titles, and all our success.

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Rev Monte Lee-Rice
The Christian Post (Singapore) Guest Columnist