Problem: The Sixth Mass Extinction (p. xiii) has three classes of ELE threats exemplified by ACC, WMDs, and GRAIN. The AX problem is an imminent global catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, for an elitist tyranny is primarily responsible. Christians are oblivious to or detached from the AX problem and tyrannous regime behind it. The structure of the AX problem has been logically deconstructed in Table 1: The Seven Dilemmas of the AX Gordian Entanglement and by Table 2: Key to Table 1— Definitions of the Seven AX Dilemmas (both on p. 4). That Gordian knot of dilemmas was placed in historical perspective in the previous section, The Anthropocene Mass Extinction (AX) Reality. The philosophical and scientific deconstruction of the AX problem is now complete.
What remains, therefore, is to explore theistic aspects of the AX problem more fully, especially concerning Christianism as the dilemma between Christian realism as opposed to pseudo-Christian churchianity (cf. Table 1, Table 2, p. 4). Some conflicting ideological trends reflecting what appear to be semiotically engineered social imaginaries are subsequently be reviewed and assessed, together with the special case of the Vienna Circle 2.0. This dissertation will then conclude with the single-case study for systematic construction of a Christian realism perspective and model.
EPIC Narraphor and MRI COS 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
For the purposes of this dissertation, the abysmal state and the onrushing crisis of contemporary Christianism will be exposed through the lens of a salient distinction drawn by Leonard Sweet in his fascinating book, So Beautiful. In characteristic panache, Sweet
sharply divides churchianity from Christian realism, as the two horns of dilemma #3 in Table 1 and Table 2 (p. 4). Sweet uses different terminology to draw the distinction, but the synonymy is made clear as his visionary Christian realism is explored below.122
Sweet’s robust conception of “Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich, Connective (EPIC) narraphor (narrative metaphor)” appears as a recurrent theme in his Evangelical ministry.123 He prolifically publishes and profoundly teaches and speaks through it with road-warrior commitment and faithful fervor. It inevitably surfaces more or less directly in his distinctive patois with parallax semiosic discernment and fluent consistency.
In Sweet’s So Beautiful (2009), EPIC narraphor is presented as the user interface (UI) to the Christian Operating System (COS), especially for EPIC interaction with 21st century post-Gutenberger Googleys, i.e., “people of the screen” vs. “people of the book.” The story builds on the ‘APC’ pill widely used in the mid-20th century. A compound of aspirin, phenacetin, and caffeine, APC was lauded as a highly effective general analgesic until tests revealed that long-term use could cause renal failures, various blood disorders, and cancers, with high morbidity and mortality rates. In Sweet’s crafty imagination and deft hands, the APC pill is transformed into a sign pointing to pseudo-Christianity (i.e., churchianity) besetting true Christianity and the Church throughout their history. Sweet
122 Sweet, So Beautiful.
123 Two of Sweet’s books covering EPIC Narraphor are Leonard I. Sweet, Post-Modern Pilgrims:
First Century Passion for the 21st Century World (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000); Leonard Sweet, The Gospel According to Starbucks: Living with a Grande Passion (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2007). The concept is also invoked in; Leonard I. Sweet, SoulTsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999). For a theological and homiletic view, see Sweet, Giving Blood, Chapters 2-3, 35-60.
adroitly casts APC churchianity as the evil nemesis of “MRI”—“Missional, Relational, Incarnational”—Christian realism.124
Like a dose of the APC drug, APC churchianity pacifies and pleases. Its soothing and uplifting effects suppress and disguise pain. The all-too-often all-too-painful Way, Truth, and Life of Christian Reality is cognitively concealed by subliminal sedation and hypnotic heresy. As counterfeit Christianity, it is more Attractional than Missional, it is Propositional when it should be Relational, and Colonial in all contexts where it ought to should be Incarnational.125 APC churchianity thus seeks to entice, persuade, and colonize all ‘Other’ unlike the churchian ‘Self.’126 It deforms faithful missionary mindset, corrodes evangelism, and perverts Christ followership into invasion, conquest, and disfigurement of Christ’s already-there indigenous presence to be a conformist clone of churchian Self.
Centuries of church history offer extensive evidence of this imperialistic approach and its rapacious corruption. The reprehensible enslavement and genocide of indigenous peoples of the Americas and the East by invading Spanish Conquistadores and European
124 Sweet, So Beautiful, “Introduction,” 17-51, esp. 17-20).
125 Sweet, So Beautiful, 18, 231. “ABC” is APC in other words—Attendance, Buildings, Cash.
Both identify asses in pews and assets in ledgers. Only quantitative counts count and MRI life is AWOL. Sweet refers to “ecclesiocrats” and “ecclesiocracy” in APC/ABC leadership, where a “GOOD Church” is a “Get Out Of Doors Church.” Helpful insights into proper operational Christian leadership are in Timothy G. Dolan, “Called to Lead: How Do I Know?” in Organizational Leadership: Foundations and Practices for Christians, ed. Jack Burns and John R. Shoup (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 15-34; Timothy G. Dolan, “Sustaining the Leader” in Organizational Leadership: Foundations and Practices for Christians, ed. Jack Burns and John R. Shoup (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 253-77.
126 Bruce Young, “Self and Other in Lewis and Levinas,” In Pursuit of Truth: A Journal of
Christian Scholarship (March 30, 2011): 1, http://www.cslewis.org/journal/self-and-other-in-lewis-and- levinas/view-all/; James Geary, I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World (New York: Harper Perennial, 2012), 2,8.
Crusaders are among the most glaring examples. In plain truth and in factual history, the idea of ‘Christian Empire’ is far more odious oxymoron than original orthodoxy.127
The EPIC MRI narraphor of Christian reality and our human being and presence therein consists of three parts. Temporally, the first part covers world creation through the Fall, the Flood, and the rest of the Old Testament. The second part begins where the first part ends, after a four-century interlude following the last OT prophet, Malachi. It opens with the birth of Jesus Christ, Immanuel, in Bethlehem. The story unfolds as the tale of a mortal yet sinless life, lived on the wrong side of the donkey tracks in the least of all places—Nazareth—from which no good could possibly come. It ended as it had long been prophesied, murdered by elite Jewish and Roman conspiracy on a wooden cross.128 The post-interlude second part (the New Testament) testifies to the glory and the gory of the tale, ending with John’s apocalyptic Revelation.
As the third and final part of this EPIC narraphor, we are to be the living MRI Third Testament! Sweet explains this by narraphorically connecting the MRI life of true Christ followership to a 21st century EPIC encounter familiar to most. He relies on “(his) own favorite way of talking about the MRI,” by using “the language of digital, electronic technology: MRI as the original operating system.” Describing MRI in terms of hard disk drive (HDD) failures and operating system (OS) crashes as EPIC narraphor, the MRI tale resonates harmoniously with the ubiquitous digitization of our age, highlighting the key differences between APC churchianity and MRI Christian realism:
127 Cf. Elliott, Empires; Bethell, Cambridge History of Latin America; Zinn, People’s History. 128 Paul Anderson, “Can Anything Good Come from Nazareth? The Hometown of Jesus,”
Huffington Post, March 22, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/can-any-good-thing-come-from- nazareth-the-hometown_us_58d1f758e4b062043ad4ae1a.
Western Christianity has a corrupted hard drive and an alien default OS (Operating System). Its churches are inward focused; its primary community expression is the worship of worship; and its people are afraid of others unlike them, the latter corruption given unique
expression in a variety of ways. Christians can live intellectually and liturgically, like premodern tribal cultures, in sealed-off universes.129
Methodists can buy and read books and resources written only by Methodists; Baptists by Baptists; and Catholics by Catholics.130
The church is to reach out both with the good news and as the good news. We as a community are the good news (or are supposed to be). What happens when the salt loses its saltiness, when the good news goes bad?
What happens when the operating system goes bad?
Three procedures are needed to keep your software running properly: antivirus surveillance, defragging the hard drive, and systems scans of the OS. What a systems scan is to the OS, a defrag and a devirus are to the hard drive.
Now, to put it in more postmodern terminology, God is defragging the church and rebooting it with the original Operating System. MRI is the
original operating system of the Christian faith. MRI is the operating software on which human life and faith were designed to run: Version 1.0 is known as the First Testament; Version 2.0 is known as the New Testament; Version 3.0 is the Third Testament, the Gospel According to … you.131
MRI brings up the dreaded ‘E-word,’ of course—Evangelism. Once upon a time, the E- word was not profanity and evangelism was not politically incorrect behavior violating safe-space etiquette. A crass swap-meet of ideological terminology between churchianity and corporatism has Fortune 500 CEOs (e.g., Starbuck CEO Howard Schultz) replacing “Executive” with “Evangelist” in their title, while the church re-imagines mission and vision in the image of corporate rank and file calls-to-arms for marketplace warfare.
129 Caricature of Len Sweet attributed to ©Rich Melheim (date unknown, used by permission).
There should be at least one fawning canine in the drawing.
130 Sweet, So Beautiful, 37. 131 Ibid., 35-37.
Figure 8: Len Sweet
The cognitive dissonance of corporatization of Christian realism’s MRI roots twists them. It deforms churches, turns them into mainstream, institutional clones of vile cathedrals of consumerism. The worst are hell-bent on rapacious exploitation of 501(c)(3) tax exemption, promoting heretical ‘prosperity gospel’ to amass personal wealth.132 Table 3 shows the differences between APC/ABC churchianity and MRI Christianity:
Table 3: MRI Christianity and Its APC/ABC churchianity Nemesis
APC (aka ABC) churchianity pollutes the spiritual terroir, poisoning the wellspring of Living Water nurturing the Christian Way, Truth, and Life that is Jesus.133 Indeed, the
132 Leonard Sweet, “The E-Word! Part 1,” October 15, 2018, on Napkin Scribbles (podcast),
licensed under Creative Commons, 5:32, https://soundcloud.com/napkinscribbles/the-e-word-part-1. Also Leonard Sweet, “The E-Word! Part 2,” on Napkin Scribbles (podcast), licensed under Creative
Commons,7:03, https://soundcloud.com/napkinscribbles/the-e-word-part-2.
133 Sweet, So Beautiful, 153-54, extends the idea of ‘terroir’or “somewherenes,” to asssert that
APC/ABC churchianity is “a faith with no terroir … a faith without ‘somewhereness,’ a faith with no domestic vintage or memorable value.”
deadly malady attacking MRI Christianity’s Christ-followers is “Jesus Deficit Disorder (JDD).” JDD is epidemic, chronic, acute, morbid, and mortal in spiritually catatonic or cognitively comatose “Church As We Know It (CAWKI).” Table 3’s borders around APC and ABC emphasize churchianity as ‘church in a box,’ suffocating from its own toxic exhalations. MRI Christian realism, by contrast, is wildly out-of-the-box off-the- beaten-path, exuberant, exultant, following and abiding in Jesus!134
Characteristically, ever the playful symbolizer, Sweet coins a portmanteau that stands for MRI Christianity. It identifies two very different poles of Christian being and presence in reality: simple childlike faith in resonant harmony with complex systematic theology—i.e., “simplexity.”135 MRI simplexity follows Jesus as the Way in Truth for
fullness of Life in human being and presence as the Reality he promises. This is also easily illustrated in a pair of symmetric images, correlating Mission to Way, Relation to Truth, and Incarnation to Life, illuminating resonant harmonies between the two:
134 John Eldredge, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul, 2nd ed. (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson Inc, 2010); cf. Sweet, So Beautiful, 152, 231; Stasi Eldredge, Defiant Joy: Taking Hold of Hope, Beauty, and Life in a Hurting World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2018).
Figure 9: The Way, Truth, and Life of MRI COS 3.0 Simplexity
The causal Gordian entanglement of dilemmas at the core of the AX problem is repeated here to further underscore pseudo-Christianity as APC/ABC CAWKI JDD churchianity vs. Christian realism as MRI COS 3.0 simplexity:
Table 4: The Seven Formative Dilemmas of the AX Problem