C Michael Patton
C. Michael Patton is the primary contributor to the Parchment and Pen/Credo Blog. He has been in ministry for nearly twenty years as a pastor, author, speaker, and blogger.
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Th.M. Dallas Theological Seminary (2001), president of Credo House Ministries and Credo Courses, author of Now that I'm a Christian (Crossway, 2014) Increase My Faith (Credo House, 2011), and The Theology Program (Reclaiming the Mind Ministries, 2001-2006), host of Theology Unplugged, and primary blogger here at Parchment and Pen. But, most importantly, husband to a beautiful wife and father to four awesome children. Michael is available for speaking engagements.
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1 Response to "The Submerging Influence"
I scored exactly 100, so I guess I am a submerger.
BTW, I am not at all sure if this is what Michael had in mind, but here are my thoughts on the entire notion of “submerging” keeping in mind that I could be describing something entirely different:
The water is the Christian faith, with all of its complexity and richness. The “emerger†is one who has come out of the water, thinking he has “broken freeâ€, but really is just not availing himself of the full richness of the experience. Down below the surface is a beautiful, but complex and varied, coral reef.
If we stay submerged, we are still fully engaged in the diversity, the richness and the complexity, but it is also a struggle to avoid either sinking down to the depths (bad) or just rising above the surface and missing out on the full beauty (bad). Thus the tug of both modernism and post-modernism which have to be properly balanced and healthy to stay engaged but not drug down.
But the double-anchor imagery is a bit difficult. If you are holding two anchors while submerged, you are most likely going down! I think either one of the sides, the post-modern, must be a bouy or life-preserver, which seems to provide the safe answer, but really just removes one from the fullness of truth. But modernism is the anchor which can help help keep us grounded and solid in what IS true, but if not “bouyed†in some way, can drag us down into scientific fundamentalism.
Some of us tend more toward modernism and its fundamentalism/legalism and need to lighten that anchor and allow the buoyancy of some post-modern flexibility and openness keep us from sinking into rigidity and error in that direction.
Others of us tend more toward post-modernism and the relativism that can come with it, and need to allow the anchor to hold us down a bit more firmly in certain areas.
By holding BOTH the bouy/lifepreserver AND the anchor, we are able to remain SUBmerged, down among the richness and complexity of the coral reef where things are sometimes difficult, and there is tension, and we have to struggle to stay there, but the payoff is the beauty, richness and greater truth.
Hey, I just saw an Imax on the coral reef, so . . .
Anyway, just some ponderings.