Honesty and engagement

Tomorrow night we begin a six-week teaching series at church, and I am a co-teacher. The announced topic of the series is "How To Live the Christian Life." Fundamentally, I want to give a compelling account of personhood.

If the Christian life entails a set of practices, I suggest that the most basic is self-searching. Self-knowledge is the ground of both doubt and belief, it is the pre-condition of repentance, and it is the basis for healthy interaction with others. We are told, "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment" (Romans 12:3, NIV). My first goal is to inspire us to "sober judgment," that is, personal honesty.

Now, I hope to escape a charge of therapeutic hogwash by looking in later weeks at how our honest view of ourselves is in fact shaped by our membership in various higher-order abstractions, of which we will consider three: the family (week 3), the parish community (week 4), and the global culture of the Church (week 5). In other words, my second goal is to inspire thoughtful and healthy engagement in the "emotional systems" in which we live our lives.

This cycle of honesty and engagement frames all sorts of great questions:

• What do I believe?
• Why do I believe?
• How does doubt work?
• What communities ought I to be a part of?
• What does marriage mean?
• How ought I to raise my children?
• What is worship?
• Who are these people?
  
• What is the Church?
• How does "normal" society affect persons? families? parishes? the Church?
• How does the Church, etc., affect society?
• Where is society going?
• What role does technology play?
• What do we do?
  

Our format is open and interactive, and I'm hoping for some lively conversation—though with six weeks this can only be the beginning. In the end, I hope the result will be a truer self for each of us, stronger families, and a healthier parish community, better able to worship and serve. Feed back to Chad Whitacre.